There are a lot of things to tell you about that have happened in a relatively short time.

Renovations: the bathroom renovations are moving smoothly, with only a few more things to be done.  The project is shaping up to be quite attractive.

Fall Colours:  The fall colours were probably at their peak on the Thanksgiving weekend.  There will still trees that were quite green, but as of Monday the leaves started falling, and there are many on the lawn.  This was a view of our driveway and then on the road by our mailbox.  Last night we had our first frost, and today there were brief snow flurries.

Guests:  We had Brian’s sister and brother-in-law up for a visit on the Thanksgiving weekend, and then friends from Ottawa, Hal and Monique Hamilton, for three days this weekend.  I worked with Hal when I started out as a stockbroker.

The Bala Cranberry Festival:  We took the Hamiltons to the Bala Cranberry Festival today.  This is an event in a tiny little town; we tried it last year for the first time, and it was charming.  That weekend was cool and rainy, but this weekend was not.  The place was packed.

A little highway is the main street through town, and the traffic was literally stop-start.  The crowds were huge, and there were all kinds of attractions including many street vendors.

The Bala falls are a beautiful piece of traditional Muskoka scenery with all the rocks and trees.

All kinds of groups were represented, including the local volunteer fire department.  My view was that if my mother could do things with dinosaurs, then I could have all the fun I wanted.

We had seen signs for camel rides, and were laughing.  How ridiculous.  How could this possibly be?  This was before we met Todd.  Monique and I had a rather unique experience.

Tod was from the Bowmanville zoo, maybe a two or three hour drive from Bala.  He had been born in captivity, and now was considered a fairly young camel of 12 years of age, given a normal life expectancy of 30 years.  When he handler was slow in getting started, Tod would nudge his shoulder to indicate he was ready to get going.

On our drive home, Monique noticed two moose very near the road.  I got a hurried picture of one before they moved off.  It was an unique end to a unique day.

Oh, I couldn't resist.  A Thought For The Day from the Bala Cranberry Festival.

I am sure you think I have disappeared off the face of the planet, but when I arrived back from Edmonton, our bathroom renovations had just started a day beforehand.  This meant moving our dressers from the master bedroom (big) to the guest room (little) to hold our clothes while the drywallers were at work.

This is what the room off the master bedroom looked like as a closet.

They drywalled the ensuite and two new closets in our master bedroom.   This meant cleaning the house from top to bottom because drywall dust gets everywhere, despite how careful the workers can be.

A new closet, freshly painted inside!

This week, the carpenter and tiler were big workers, and I was trying to get walls painted so that I wouldn’t have to work around fixtures later.  They were trying to avoid getting their picture taken, which is why the picture is blurred, but you can see they practically were on top of one another.

Today the plumber and electrician were in, so the bathroom is partly functioning, in good time for guests arriving Saturday.

In the meantime, we have had intermittent internet access for a few days (it finally worked prperly yesterday), Windows 10 hid my new pictures (I found them today), and my printers had to be reinstalled for them to work properly (also accomplished today).

Brian is vacuuming as I speak, which is the norm after a day of workers.

Next week will feature a fair amount of painting (including the master bedroom) so pictures may be boring for a while, but I will be better in keeping touch!

Much more work before play....

As we get ready to go on our trip to Victoria, we have been forced to do a lot of work while the weather has been hot and sunny.

I have had several projects on the go; this one is called “The Door from Hell”.  When Brian left for his 3-day kayaking trip a month ago, I thought it was a great time to refinish the lower bathroom door.  It had been painted at least 3 times, and the other side was lovely wood, so I thought I could achieve the same thing by stripping the painted side.  For Brian’s convenience, I was going to get it all done while he was gone.  That was really stupid.  First I tried paint stripper.  Four applications and only half of the paint was gone.  Then I tried steel wool, sandpaper, and ultimately the heat gun.  Then I bought a better quality stripper.  According to a professional on the job, the door was finished in a white “faux finish” that stuck on like concrete.  In the end, I got 95% of it off, stained it and resorted with touch-up paint to cover the remaining white.  Only three weeks later, with many many hours of work done, the door was rehung.  This is called a “Five Foot Job”.  In other words, as long as you stand five feet away, it looks good.

Getting hung up on doors seemed to be the theme, because the next project was painting the white trim on two exterior door frames on either side of the breezeway.  This time, they did get stripped and repainted in just 3 days.

The final project is only part of a longer term requirement.  We had the outside of the house chinked by a professional after we moved in.  It was well worth it for the savings in energy.  What we didn’t realize was that the previous owners, in desperation had tried  silicon (as in bathtub caulking) to seal some joints.  That was a bad thing, because nothing sticks to silicone, including new silicon.  Also, some of the chinking started lifting a few years later because nothing sticks to silicon.  So, at numerous outside corners of the house, I have to strip out all the old chinking, all the old silicon and any other garbage in there.  This is not a trivial job.

Once that is done, then I have to put foam “backer rod” in the larger joints to help support the chinking, and then caulk away by hand ‘til it’s all done.

You probably will never have occasion to chink, but just in case you feel the compulsion, here are some hints from personal experience.

Choose a colour that looks nice on your face, arms and in your hair.

Work from the top down instead of bottom up:  when you go bottom up you tend to place your hands on the area you just smoothed so carefully.  Several times.

When at the top of the ladder, watch your bucket of rinse water.  It makes a spectacular mess when it drops to the ground unexpectedly.

The good news is that this is still better than door stripping.  Mostly.  And you do get worthwhile results.

To while away my time while working, I love to play my IPod, and I just bought this amazing tiny speaker that works incredibly well with it.

The bad news is that two days after I got the speaker the IPod gave up the ghost.  Now Jim has to take me shopping at Costco when I get to Edmonton.

With all that hard work done, it is now time to play.  We leave Wednesday morning for Victoria for Brian’s Military College reunion and our next post will be from there.

A Week of Work and Play

Last week started with a heck of a lot of work.  Brian rented a log splitter from an acquaintance, and we got to work moving split wood into the woodshed (which I built myself). 

We eventually got the woodshed completely filled which sets us up for a cold winter season.  I estimate the woodshed holds between 8-9 bush cords of wood; a bush cord of wood is 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long.  We are both relieved that that chore is done.

In the meantime, I was stripping a bathroom door of 6 coats of paint, thinking this project would take two or three days.  Instead, it has plagued me for 3 weeks.  Some of the older coats of paint were resistant to paint stripper, heating gun, steel wool polishing and sanding.  If there were a thermonuclear explosion, the door itself would burn, leaving behind an intact skeleton of white paint. Another chore was stripping paint from a couple of outside doorframes, which were much more cooperative when faced with the heat gun.  There are no pictures of this, because I don't want to look.

All this work justified an adventure day on Friday.  We started the tradition of adventure days some years ago, where we would go out to something or somewhere new.  Friday featured a trip to French River, about a 2 hour drive north of us.

This little park had a tremendous museum, focusing on the activities of the voyageurs, since this was a main route from Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay.

A fundamental aspect of the French River is that it is carved through Precambrian Shield by glacial activity, and it is not terribly wide.

We followed a foot trail through to Recollet Falls, which was a challenge to the big freighter canoes.  The change in level was not dramatic, but there apparently were more than a few dunkings.

The foot trail was a challenge to humans.  At first we thought the trail was paved, and then we realized that it was on highly polished rock, sometimes covered by very determined vegetation.

It was a great adventure day because we learned about far more history than we expected, we had a good walk in nature, and we went out for dinner afterwards.  Now back to work.

Signs of Fall

Despite the warmest weather we’ve had this summer, there are many signs of fall approaching.

Some maple leaves are well on their way to changing colour, and some sumacs are showing promise of the bright colours to come.

The fall wildflowers are out in full bloom including Marsh Milkweed and Goldenrod.     

                          

The backyard is busy as usual.  The turkeys have finished their moulting, leaving feathers anywhere, but this has not prevented them from continuing to enjoy hearty dust wallows or nice snoozes in the back yard.

What the poor hen doesn’t realize is the danger lurking behind her in the guise of a red squirrel.  The turkeys don’t like squirrels because the squirrels move too fast, and often you will see a turkey leap straight up into the air when a rodent goes by too quickly.  Our big Tom, Lincoln, has learned that there are good things like peanuts near the patio, but unfortunately there are also rodents nearby.

The chipmunk is too impatient to wait for things to fall on the ground, so he comes up our laps to the patio table to see where the next booty is coming from.  (This was a special picture for Austin.)

In the meantime, work in the form of a logsplitter arrived to help us deal with the piles of wood to be cut and stacked.

Clogging classes are almost ready to be resumed, but in the meantime we are giving some demonstrations at fall fairs.  We were in beautiful downtown Elmvale on Friday, dancing up a storm on a VERY small stage.

We played hooky from stacking wood this morning, and took advantage of the cooler weather to go cycling on a quiet road near us.  This is on the very of Canadian Shield Country, with all the beautiful rock outcroppings.

There are lots of little wetland patches and we came upon a huge pool of waterlilies blooming. 

Now it is back to woodstacking...........

Brian's Kayaking Trip August 8-10

Brian has just come back from a 3-day overnight kayaking trip to One Tree Island in Georgian Bay.  This is an annual ritual because the Perseids meteorite shower peaks at about this time, and with no light around the viewing is excellent.  One Tree Island is in the midst of Canadian Shield country and the rocks are really impressive.

One Tree Island is named because there is only one tree.

The scenery is beautiful from the shore.

Brian knew this was the right place because as he was approaching the island he was greeted by a landing party of two loons.

Placing the tent can be a little challenging, because there are no real soft spots.

Brian checks for a lot of beasts because he has woken up to things like snakes cuddling up under the tent for warmth.  He forgot one thing this time.  There were frogs in the pools.  Eternal night-calling frogs.  Loud ones.

Much of Brian’s kayaking is very solitary, but this time he was joined by a friend.  It may have well been a young one, because it was extremely curious, and at times laid down to better supervise Brian making dinner.  He could practically touch it.

The sky was a little too hazy to see much more than a couple of meteorites, but it was still a good trip.