Spring is here. Well. I use the term “spring” lightly. I should say that the 3 feet of snow in our yard has started to melt. So now we have a foot in some areas, grass,gravel and dirt in others. And LOTS of puddles. I long for the days when I don’t have to live in fear of a freak snow storm and temperatures in the -20’s… which will probably be some time in June.
Things have been quiet around the blog lately, which is apparently the route I am going for 2013. I thought I would pop in to say hi, and let you know what we have been up to the last month!
To be honest, there hasn’t been a ton of house stuff going on. We did get our roof shingled in early March, which was a huge sigh of relief. It was a bit crazy how it all went down. We wanted to hire it out. That was the plan, and we did have it all arranged for Dec 3. And then our dude didn’t show up and we were back at square 1. Our roof is a bit steep… and I am still not sure what happened with the fellow we had hired, I think he had some personal life things going on… but I am thankful that we hadn’t paid him anything. So, I went around trying to aquire quotes in January… because Dec/Jan was pretty busy with the holidays, not to mention it was -20 for the majority of that time. Matt was working away in January… which brought us to February.
It can be very frustrating being caught in limbo. I often hear that it is difficult to manage/get reliable trades people… We haven’t hired any so far, so we haven’t experienced much of that. We did not want to have piles of snow sitting on our roof. So, in the end, we ordered our shingles the last week of February, and bit the bullet to get it shingled ourselves. Not our first choice, but thankfully everything went very smoothly! I have to give a shout out to my hubby, and to our amazing friends and family who offered their assistance and expertise {Heath, Ben, Andrew, and Dad aka Nick} Believe it or not, I too shingled, flashed and counter flashed {yay skylights!} We do have a bit of shingling left on our bay window, and will have more to tackled once the covered porch goes up.
The bathroom update in the existing cottage has been slow… I have 50% of the wall covered in wood- and need to take the sink out to complete the wall. But, my super handy man has been busy with a lot of film work {yay!} which has meant he hasn’t been available to move the plumbing around. So, heres looking at April. It would be wonderful to get the toilet moved, the new stink installed {our old one is leaking quite a lot…} and change the swing of the door! Then I can put in the finishing touches. I hope to have that ready to share some time this month 🙂
Matt and I are looking to the next steps on the addition- we installed the large Triple Patio door and I think it is beautiful! I am so thankful we were able to upgrade it to give it a chunkier trim profile. We just need to have the final slider installed by a tech, and we are good to sign off on that. With spring and warm weather upon us, Matt and I are looking to prepare for siding, soffit, facia, eves, electrical and plumbing. Once all framing, electrical and plumbing are complete, we will be ready to have the inspector in so we can insulate, and get the walls boarded up! It will come time to start making final decisions about finishings…. Soon the fun, and expensive part begins!
We have really gone back and forth about what to do for siding… our existing Cottage is clad in painted cedar siding… unfortunately it is a very rare profile, I brought in a piece to see if we could have it matched, and they would have to custom mill something. Cu$tom and Cedar $ounds like $$$$$ So we are going to have to get a bit creative. We are planning to use sealed Cedar Shakes on the majority of the addition, removing the vinyl from the existing house to refinish the Cedar underneath, and then incorporate a similar profile onto different areas of the new build to tie it all together. Keys here are Color and visual balance. I have looked at a million homes, and may be over thinking it when all of the homes around us are covered in vinyl… however, I really want to turn our little place into a beautiful home. Just walking through the lumber suppliers and walking by large slabs of maple makes my heart go pitter patter… There is something about Wood that speaks Life to me!
I hope you all are able to find a little patch of Sun today!
Be Blessed,
-Miss Ash