Finally have a roof over our heads

So we are now ten months into the construction of our new build.  Every week gets more and more exciting as things are progressing a little faster now.  We also get a little nervous (at least I do) to see if the decisions we made, many close to a year ago, were the right ones.

So far our plan seems to be working  (knock on wood).  It helps that John has been at the site as much as he can and we’ve been able to make some small tweaks along the way.  Mainly due to practicality and function as it’s so different when you actually get to stand there and look at the space.

John has been commuting back and forth between Toronto and the County almost every week for 2-3 days at a time.  We usually do a check of our calendars once a week and then make a plan based on my work schedule, the kids activities and which trades will be at the house.  So far things have worked out well.  We have been renting a house in Picton for the last 6 months to make it easier, which also gives us an opportunity to go up with the kids on the weekends and do more exploring.

Below are @novatayonaarchitects drawings of the house which we shared in a previous post and similar shots of where our build is now. The only modification we really had to make so far to the exterior is the addition of the balcony on the north side. This was required in order to get our permit but I have a feeling we are going to love this new view.

North facing side

 

From the street view you can only see the 2.5 storey, which looks quite tall and distinct which is what we love.  A bit ‘unusual’ for some (which is a comment we received from a passer-by).  The intention is for this to be a modern farmhouse with very clean lines and simple details while still keeping the same feel of the house that was once there.  This part of the house will have our bedrooms, small living room and dining area. The one storey in the back will have more privacy and be hidden from the street.  This will be the kitchen, main living room and screened in living space.

As you can see the metal roofing has started to go on which will be completed this week. Our windows have also arrived and are almost all installed.  We have been waiting for this stage!  The windows were one of the very first decisions we had to make (and most costly). They have been sitting in a warehouse for over 3 months waiting to be delivered and installed so it was a great moment the day they arrived.

We have chosen to go with a white everything farmhouse, which is my favourite colour for a home. The roofing and windows will both be white as will the siding.  Believe it or not there were a lot of whites to choose from so let’s hope each of our choices go well together. The roof is a Cambridge white from Vicwest, the windows are Ultra Pure White from Ridley and the siding is Ultra White from Maibec each coming from a different manufacturer. The siding will likely go up sometime in the summer, which John hopes to do himself.

 

The framing started in October and finished end of March @mattmoreyconstruction passed inspection a couple weeks ago which was no surprise given our experience with their team. Matt kept saying that the house was designed to survive a hurricane.

There was certainly a lot of framing to do for this build as we have many rooms.  Our plan is to use this as a vacation property so we wanted to make sure we had sleeping room for friends and family and of course as the kids get older their own space to hang out with their friends.

The framing stage has been my favourite part to watch, you can see the build of the one storey below which started a little later.

 

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Building the screened in living space has been great so far and definitely the room John is anxiously waiting to use.

 

The floor joists that were salvaged from the old house (top left photo) were used to make the trusses, stamped and approved by our engineer,  which are reinforced with some custom fabricated steel plates that John painted black. We then found a weathered pile of hemlock at Chisolm Lumber in Roslin that we used for the roof decking. Thanks to some very careful and precise construction by Matt and his crew, it really ended up exceeding our expectations. We also love to see pieces from the old house being used in the new.

While the crew has been doing their work, John has been spending his time up there doing all of the electrical.  He learned this skill doing our home and cafe renovations in Parkdale and it has definitely come in handy. He passed the first inspection and the next will be in a week when all the electrical rough-in is done. I made sure I took photos of his handy work (below). Our hydro pole has been in for a while now and should be connected very soon!

So far through this process John has put in:

4000 feet of wire
100+ electrical boxes
50+ potlights

 

While the wiring is getting done we also needed to make some decisions about our actual lighting.  Which rooms will have potlights vs. hanging lights, will the bathrooms have sconces, where and what will we use for exterior lighting.

The biggest area of contention was the switches, how many and where should they go.  I often tell John to be careful of what decisions he wants to involve me in, especially if it is something I won’t really notice.  If you ask me I will definitely have an opinion and won’t necessarily make the process easier, this I know for sure.

We had many differing opinions about light placement and switches which sounds unnecessary (which it was).   I think we have landed on a plan, also thanks to a few friends who came out to visit (MMKK) and weighed in…more to share on that visit in an upcoming blog.

Of course the best part of this process for me has been sourcing our lights.  The potlights are pretty straight forward but the rest will likely come from antique markets and The Door Store like some of the ones here.  We have our eye on the one with the green stripe for one of the bathrooms.

We have also been preparing for our heating and plumbing.  We will be heating the house with radiators, similar to what we have in our house right now.

Our engineer has already calculated the amount of heating (BTUs) we will need in each room based on things like room size, number of windows etc.. So our job was to find radiators that are suitable for each room, we will need a total of 12 in the 2.5 storey.

We have managed to source all, which will be the old cast iron/ steel.   We found half locally in the county from another renovation project and the rest from here in Parkdale at Addison’s.  You can see from the image on the far right they have plenty to choose from if anyone is looking,  but they are very heavy, the smallest one we bought was about 150 lbs.

 

So that covers the framing, electrical and heating.

Once the roof and windows are installed that will complete the work of the construction crew and the rest is in our hands.

The next phase will be the interior starting with insulation and drywall. John has met with half a dozen drywallers and is now waiting on the quotes to come in.  We are trying to determine what work we have time to do ourselves and what we need to hire for.  As much as we have enjoyed doing this type of work on previous projects now having kids and being close to 3 hours away from the property makes it much more difficult.

Before the drywall though is the insulation – spray foam or batt or both – any opinions? Another decision we have to make. One is cheaper but takes longer to install the other is quicker but more expensive.

My days of watching HGTV, specifically Sarah’s House has come back to test me.  I remember Tommy always going back to that contractor triangle or ‘triangle of priorities’ the options were this:

 

FAST and CHEAP but it won’t be GOOD or

GOOD and FAST but it won’t be CHEAP or

CHEAP and GOOD but it won’t be FAST

I think we are going for the Good and Fast option but are working at getting it closer to Cheap.

The next couple of months will be focused on getting us through both the insulation and the drywall stage. We are hoping to have this complete by the end of June. We can then use the space or camp on the property when possible in the summer.  This will also give us a couple months before John’s one year sabattical comes to an end.

Although I have really enjoyed the contruction process more than I thought, I am getting excited to start the interior designing and planning of each room.  I can finally pull out all of my Pinterest photos which I have been pinning for months. Did I mention I met the Diversity leader for Pinterest a few months ago?!  After chatting about our work (I have a similar role) we of course got right into how we use the site and she mentioned a book that Diane Keaton wrote called The House That Pinterest Built.  I don’t have 6000 pins like Diane, I am closer to 300 and almost certain John will dismiss half of these.

Our first room to tackle will be the kitchen, we have already done the layout and picked out most of our appliances but now it’s landing on style and finishes. We both really enjoy this part of the process but also know going in this will be where many debates happen.

Stay tuned for that process but here are just a few of my pins for our kitchen to get started.

 

 

 

Aside from all the actual construction, the last 6 months have been filled with A LOT of fun.  A few girls weekends, friends and family visits, learning to make maple syrup and new emails and photos on the history of the property which we are so excited about.

We hope to have that post out soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Concrete and grasshoppers

It’s been 10 weeks since we started construction and thanks to all the trades we’ve accomplished a lot this summer.

Excavation
Poured footings and foundation walls
Main Drainage pipe and back filled
Insulation of one storey floor
Waterproofing basement
Built stone window well
Excavated septic mantle
Roughed in plumbing for kitchen,laundry and bathroom
In floor heating

You can see from the slideshow below how the site has changed since we took down the old house last year.

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I now have a new appreciation for the construction process even though I grew up around quite a few construction sites- my dad being a Quantity Surveyor for large commercial properties and my parents love for buying new houses pre-construction. We would watch the entire process for months from seeing an empty lot right through to framing and finishing as they re-designed rooms and moved walls around so ours never looked like all the other suburban houses on the street. Once my parents carefully decorated right through to a finished basement,  which our whole family helped with (this is how I learned to use a drill and how to drywall), we would sell and start the process all over.  This was my childhood.

What I didn’t maybe appreciate is all the different trades needed to do this one construction and how knowledgeable, skilled and creative this profession is.  We have 4 main people involved in our build- our Architect Nova Tayona, a General Contractor Matt Morey Carpentry,  an Engineer Edward Trought and of course John who is Project Managing the full process.  To stay within our budget and be hands on with every step we decided to lead the build ourselves which meant searching and hiring for all the trades ( excavation, concrete, plumbing, framing, doors, heating, electrical etc..). Thanks to a number of sources including the Prince Edward County community page, we were able to hire both local and just outside the county area.

One of the most important trades for me is our concrete guys who I met recently- Craig and Jack.  Their team put in our foundation and next will be pouring the floors for our basement. Most importantly he will be pouring our concrete slab in the more modern part of our house which will end up being polished as our flooring.    This means the colouring has to be just right and the seams of the floors have to end up in the the right place (no pressure Craig).

As much as I love the look of the breweries and how charming the cracks in the concrete look, I’m not going for that exact feel in my living room and kitchen- stay tuned, the slab goes in soon, it will then take 30 days to cure.  By the way Craig I am going for this colour —->

What is also very exciting about this new build is we get to pick all of our doors and windows.  The not so exciting part is its the largest cost to our budget. The process started last February as we needed to select windows that fit the design, scale and function of the house and they needed to be included in our drawings for permit.

This is Emily and Max on one of our many lengthy visits to the manufacturer.  As you can see Emily was not so impressed with the smell of fiber glass. Max on the other hand looked like he was ready to get to work.

We were also able to design our front door which will be two narrow 8 ft. tall doors. We lucked out that a friend of a friend knows a craftsman who will be building these for us. Here’s the mock up John did, we are still deciding on colour but for now they are yellow.  Hard to believe that our front doors have to be done this early but they need to be installed during framing.

We have a few more small stages before our framing starts, but we are still on schedule.  The plan was to have the framing start in the fall so that the insulation, roof and wrap on the house would be done before winter which should take about 6-8 weeks.  We would then be done with major construction, John would work on the inside and we will start to design each room and see how far we get before he returns to teaching next September.

In the meantime most recently we have spent our time getting the property organized.  We saved at least 80% of the material that came out of the old house to use if we can in the new place. Look at all this beautiful wood!!! I think my parents called it “junk” 😊

You can see from the above all the wood that was taken out.  I also thought I would include a photo of my retired mom who helped me load, move and unload several trailers of this wood.  It has now all been sorted and de-nailed (below) ready to use as beams, flooring, cabinets, stairs and the nice wide 12″ planks will likely be used for a dining table (hint to John).

As we continue to watch this build progress, we also make sure we enjoy our time up in the county.  We spent a couple weeks here this summer with the kids and as many weekends as possible.  They have definitely started to pick out their favourite spots:

Our Property: best place to find frogs, snakes, praying mantis, crickets, grasshoppers and most recently wild turkeys. Not to mention that Emily has claimed her favourite rock to pee on. When it got too hot, what better than a game of Connect Four in the shade.

Snake skin!

Little Bluff: best place for swimming, skipping rocks, spotting water snakes and all the piles of drift wood

Picton Harbour Inn: best place for fishing right before sunset and breakfast! Didn’t hurt that our airbnb was right across the street. This summer Emily learned how to bate a hook and take a fish off the hook by herself.  I guess I’m the only one left now to do this on my own.

As much as the summer seemed to pass us by so quickly, we somehow found the time to get through the kids list back here in the big TO.  Here was their Top 10 list:

African Lion Safari, Ripleys Aquarium, Toronto Zoo, CN Tower, Black Creek Pioneer Village, Baseball Game, Afternoon Naps ( pretty sure I put that one in and I think I got 2), Bowling, Bike riding and seeing the movie Despicable Me 3- check to all the above!!

The CN Tower was the last item on our list.

We also found out that Emily much prefers playing baseball than watching. She made it to the first 5 innings before letting John know she was extremely bored and they had to leave.  Thank goodness for the popcorn that may have carried John through an extra inning.

Ok so I think that’s enough photos of the kids.  My hope is they will read this blog one day and not only appreciate what went into building this place for them but all the adventures we had in between.

So while I’ve been writing this blog over the past week or so, there has been much anticipation by John for what arrived at the property yesterday…our very own port-a-potty!   Although he claims that we may now have everything we need to camp there, not sure I’m convinced.

This will be for the framing crew that we hope will start in the next couple weeks.  No need to camp as we managed to find a place for the next 3 months where John can stay when needed during the week and we can come up on the weekends.

Looking forward to the fall and seeing how much we can get done before the end of this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pink Window

Thanks to some begging and pleading from Max we made last-minute plans and went up to PEC for a night this past weekend. It was definitely worth the trip, each time we visit we discover so many new things…first the property.  I had the chance to rummage through pieces of the torn down house and some of the items we have kept aside to use later. We also managed to salvage enough wood, we hope, to use as flooring in the new house, wide 6″ planks 12 feet long that would usually be very difficult and expensive to source.

Tin ceiling

Wainscotting

When taking out the old stairs John discovered the names of three people written on the underside – Kurt, Rachel and Marg. We also found these same 3 names on the old well with the date 1983, so they must have been from the more recent family that lived in the house. We are curious to find out who they are and assume they must now be a similar age to John and I. Will do some further digging and report back on what we find. We will definitely need to find a creative use for these.

While staring at the last section of the house still standing,  we spotted the pink window. Not sure how we missed it before.  Likely because it was in the room with the big bee hive that we never went in.  These were fairly harmless bees and as John would say “you would have to poke the Queen” before they would actually get upset and move.

Well Emily was thrilled of course to see a pink window so that will now be set aside and used for something in her room.

Now that the house is down, we also had a chance to see more of the treed area of the property and start thinking about what we don’t want the construction to ruin. The property on the south side has about an acre of trees and beyond them is a small area with a seasonal pond where we can see lots of daylilies. I attempted to make my way through but didn’t get too far, a bit of a chicken after hearing a few noises.

Next, the real reason the kids wanted to visit in the first place was to ride the tractor. Emily was the first to jump on, not realizing mowing the grass will likely be her job here in a few years. Max on the other hand was nowhere to be seen as he was off looking for grasshoppers, frogs and other bugs that are easy to find right after the grass has been cut.

After our visit to the property, we spent the rest of the day exploring more of the county.  First a visit to the lavender farm, which I recently had read about. It’s just west of Picton, close to many wineries. It’s high season there right now so the roads are filled with cyclists. We somehow made a deal with the kids to let us stop at just one, TerraCello Winery which came highly recommended by one of Max’s teachers.

The hay fields this time of year are beautiful, this was behind a parking lot at one of the places we stopped. It’s not easy to pick hay as Emily discovered but she did manage to bring one stalk home.

Our last stop was to Wellington where we made a quick visit to the archives, a place we now know well.  John managed to find out who may have built and owned this old house, we’ll share that discovery later.

We also had to fit in some fishing, beach time and a much needed good cup of coffee for the late drive home. A new place to add to my coffee list in PEC The General. One of these days I will write a post about coffee but for now, this is what a good cappuccino looks like, notice no fluffy foam. I will stop there.

This was the last of our visits until mid August, during this time Max will turn 6, John and I will celebrate 15 years together and I will have hopefully enjoyed a nice cup of coffee on Fogo Island.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

North Marysburgh

“So where in the county are you exactly?”, seems to be a popular question. Since we’ve only really been there a handful of times the most obvious answer right now is, the furthest point east, 3 hours from home, which will make our friends in Ottawa happy.  Thanks to GPS we have discovered at least 5 different ways to get there.

A friend of ours, who also happens to be a pilot, took this aerial photo below.  Our place is close to the point in the top left of the frame- good thing she is great at multi-tasking.

This would be North Marysburgh. We recently learned that our farmhouse is right at what some of the locals call “The Horn” where county road 7 and county road 8 meet. Just 10 mins away from Lake on the Mountain and Waupoos, for those that are familiar with the area and 20 minutes from downtown Picton.

In June of last year we made our very first visit to the county for a weekend of wine tasting with friends.  It didn’t take us long to realize how great it would be to have a property there so we started our search.  We looked at around 10 properties in total and knew when driving up to the house below (yes that’s a house) we found our place – even my dad was excited. The realtor listing didn’t even show the house, just the barn, we were obviously the only ones pleasantly surprised by this. Although the house was clearly abandoned all we could see was the old wood beams and stairs, aged wainscoting with a beautiful mint petina, and tin ceiling- these are the things I dream about!

We initially had thought about re-habilitating the house on site but after meeting with an engineer and considering the process of lifting the frame to put in a new foundation we decided against it.

So over the summer, John’s first task will be to carefully take this house apart (stay tuned) so we can use some of the materials in our new build…not for the structure but the finishes (for all the worried people out there).

Last but not least the final selling point to this location was that we are walking distance to the lake since we are out on a peninsula. This means lots of fishing time for John and the kids and let’s be honest some quiet time for me.