Spring is officially here! The cat said so!

Mark your calendars! Spring officially came on April 13th this year!

Each year we know that spring is finally here to stay when our cat, Jazzy, runs outside all on his own with no prompting from us. Well, it just happened. He's never been wrong. (Likewise, when he stops asking to go out in the fall we know that summer is over and winter is just around the corner). Jazzy is our own personal meteorologist.


Also, this weekend our lake finally began its thaw.

This is the lake yesterday. Still lots of ice.


This is it today.

The ice is almost all gone now and we can see and hear the loons too.

Awww... springtime, finally!

Winter Activities

Here is the skating rink Matt and Mom made on the lake. These photos are from last weekend. Right now the rink is buried under 2 feet of snow!
And the snowman made with the neighbours.
We are currently experiencing yet another winter storm and are confined to the house today. So what's going on? Tearing down a closet of course!

Feeling HOT HOT HOT!

After one year of living with electric heat, and much debate over the various heating options, we finally decided on a forced air propane system. The installation began in January and took a week to complete. They started with constructing all the ductwork in the crawlspace. In the picture below, you can see where they had to knock out some blocks in the foundation wall to run the supply and return pipes. You can also see one of the vents which is heating the crawlspace -- now the floor is at room temperature, instead of a chilly 4 degrees.Due to the limited height in our crawlspace, they had to mount the furnace on its side. It's a pain to access, but it's nice that we didn't lose any living space.And here's our new fancy furnace. The flex pipe is for the humidier.
Our new programmable thermostat! Hey look, we're not freezing! It's hard to imagine that we won't have to adjust 8 individual thermostats anymore. Not that we actually adjusted those, since they were essentially self-adjusting (to random temperatures).Gaylord made us some wooden vent covers to match the maple floor in the living room and...
the ash floor in the master bedroom.
With thanks to Uncle John's electric expertise, we safely ripped out all the old electric baseboard heaters. We eventually donated them to another home through freecycle.
We are still in the process of removing all the wires that ran to the thermostats for those electric baseboards. It's going to take some time and eventually we'll have to patch up the holes.
Our propane gets delivered to three little pigs. Porky, Miss Piggy and Babe?
We are now toasty warm from our feet all the way up!

Bedroom Part 8: A-trimming we will go...

If you are just looking at the blog now, you should probably stop reading this posting and scroll down and begin the Bedroom story at Part 1.

This will likely be the end of the Bedroom story until next season when it is warmer outside and we can finish trimming and staining. It is too cold to work outside and too dusty/smelly to work in the house.

The blog is now in real time. Matt did this work yesterday and today.

We found this picture in a magazine and Matt is going to try and replicate it.
And this is what Matt came up with. He bought just regular pine and used his new router table to make all the pieces.

A close-up, it still needs one more little piece on.
So maybe in the spring will be finish up the bedroom. We still need window trim, door trim and baseboards and we are still hunting for a new bedroom light. Oh and we have our eye on a new bedroom set. We are still using hand-me down stuff that was supposed to be temporary, oops 12 years later.

The current project underway is our furnace install. They began the ductwork last week and the furnace goes in this week sometime. Once the project is all done we will share it here on the blog.

Bedroom Part 7: Mission Organization

By this time we had moved back into the bedroom.

We bought a Rubbermaid closet organizer. We threw out the previous closet stuff, although we did like the warped shelves it was time for a change.
This picture is a bit misleading since the closet doors are not attached yet.
And the clothes returned.

Then the closet doors were attached. Much easier to open then lifting the entire door each time you need to get something out of the closet.

Up next Part 8: A-trimming we will go...

Bedroom Part 6: Floor it!

The day had finally arrived. The floor install. The floor is 'Distressed Ash' stained coffee bean. It was leftover stuff so we got it for about 70% off the regular price.

During the install, with Otis helping as usual.
A close up. We mixed 4" and 2 1/4" boards since that what they had left in the discount section.
Framing in the trap door to the crawlspace in the closet.
And then it was done. This floor install was a lot easier compared to when we had the floor put into the living room back in April.
We love the new floor. But just a note for everyone, dark hardwood shows every little fluff.

And it bedroom saga continues with Part 7: Mission Organization

Bedroom Part 5: A little dash of colour

December arrived and we were down to crunch time. The floor install date was almost here. Time to get painting.

The colour was Soft Gold. We had bought the paint for our bedroom back in Guelph but just never got around to using it. So when we moved we brought the paint with us.
We also changed all the receptacles to new white ones. The paint was more yellow than I remembered so I was a bit worried that it wouldn't match the curtains that I had made in the summer which have gold in them. But thankfully, they match.

With a few days to spare, we were ready for the floor install.

Next up is Part 6: Floor it!