Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Difference of time

This weekend was weird weather-wise (see what I did there, again?). Saturday morning we woke up to a lot of fog sitting heavily over both land and water. Everything hazy; muted, calm colours. Beautiful.


A few hours later we returned from town with some new lawn furniture. I snapped this picture which couldn't be more different than the scene a few hours earlier. Crisp, bright colours awaiting the sun. Happiness.


Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Building a foundation

Last year we made the decision to replace an old shed that's been on the property for decades. It was rusting and starting to cave in, and well, it was its time to go.

What a mess.
Despite its feeble appearance, it was anything but. A sturdy sucker, it took three men solid hours of work over a couple of days to bring it to the ground. Not only were its bolts rusted in place, but over the years its foundation had sunk about half a foot into the soil making it extremely difficult to detach the side panels from the submerged frame. That meant a lot of brute force and one huge pry bar were necessary. Okay, and some swearing. But only a bit.




To avoid a similar fate, Spence and I decided to put everything we learned last year to good use and build a foundation for our new shed. Luckily Sunday was a perfect sunny spring day so we celebrated by rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.

We learned a couple good lessons along the way (like when you're measuring for joist positioning, you start on the outside of the first one, not the inside). Also, it might be wise to wait until the frost is completely out of the ground otherwise you're going to spend a couple hours chipping away at piles of frozen logs and soil that the previous owner left piled behind the old shed. Y'know. There's that.

Overall, though, I'm happy to report it was a smooth, injury-free process! By mid-day,we'd figured out a system that kept everything running smoothly. I brought the raw materials to the saw bench, measured, and marked them. Spence cut each piece, carried it to the foundation and installed it while we both held it in place.

We put the final piece of subfloor plywood down just in time to pack up and hit the road at our usual time. Success!

Building material

Making everything square and level





Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Water, you are a formidable foe

The thaw is on. Finally.

As wonderful as it was to welcome the warmer weather (see what I did there?), the snow still got the last laugh. As almost 6' of snow on the deck turned into water, it decided to make itself comfortable in our guest room. Guess it really is an inviting space.

Much to our chagrin, our newly laid floor spit out water from its edges when you stepped on it while a big pool of it lingered lazily in the centre of the room. There was only one thing we could do: move all the furniture out of the guest room and pull up the floor. The subfloor will be sitting bare for a few weeks until we're sure it's complete dry. Then operation reinstall floor can begin. Sigh.


On the bright side our flooring planks are plastic so they're good as new. I would have been so sad if we had to buy brand new flooring after only using this stuff for about a month.

Last weekend was a weird mix of winter and spring. You could fall through 2' of snow in one spot and be standing on bare earth a mere few feet away. Our little river was roaring with power, its water level so high that our bridge is completely submerged.




I'm hopeful I'll get to see our koi next weekend!