One week later – we have a roof! And as expected, it’s the perfect match to the red steel we have on the house. We are really impressed with how the roof-lines match up – like it was meant to be!

Next steps is a railing down the walkway and screens. It won’t be used too much in the winter, but we will be Spring ready!

I have probably mentioned in previous blogs that about one-third of our property is Environmentally Protected. Anyone familiar with the County knows this means swamp marshland!

It’s a beautiful view, but it’s buggy, so almost from the beginning we knew we’d be building a screened-in porch. We had a few false starts, which ended up being a blessing. Our dearest friend Bob Cowan, of The Miller’s House B&B,  introduced us to Mark Middleton the owner of  Midark Construction. Bob also brought us the idea of building a walkway from the veranda to the screened-porch – brilliant!

Mark’s team are really wonderful. They are all such nice guys. They work really hard, get lots done, and when they leave at the end of the day, everything is cleaned up – I am not kidding. We’ve had 2 inspections by The County and I was told “these guys really know what they are doing”. And they are totally not bugged by Walter following them around all day long. You can’t get much better than this!

Here’s how it’s looking now, it should be finished in a few weeks, weather permitting!

If you’ve visited PEC you will have noticed the Barn Quilts scattered on barns, businesses and houses around the County.

We wanted a quilt designed and created for us and found out there are a lot of restrictions on the designs. In talking to this with our nephew James and our dear friend Andrea we never expected them to take action. We are so thrilled to receive our custom quilt, with the chicken design we love, and have put it up on the Cottage.

We finished the house in late February, and from April on we have had people come visit. We haven’t captured everyone here, sorry if you were missed and it means you need to come back again! We think one of the best reasons to live in The County is that people want to visit, we’re sure they are coming to see us, not the wineries, restaurants, shops, farmers markets, lovely drives and wonderful beaches!

Here are some of our friends and family that have come for a visit over the past months.

Spring 2018

Summer 2018

Fall 2018

Well, it’s done! We are so pleased with how the hardscaping has worked out.  When Mike Goheen of Goheen Construction Co first started working on the property it was way over a year ago. Lots of things got in the way of getting this wrapped up this Spring – but I really think that the delays helped us hone in on how we want the property to flow.  The final day was this past Saturday. Mike brought along Mark, who not only is a really hard worker he is also one of the nicest guys we’ve worked with. Mark and Walter became really good friends – probably because Mark didn’t mind Walter’s constant barking to have a rock thrown to him! Mike focused on leveling and evening out the grounds as Mark worked on raking. The rake was MacGyver’d by Mike and Mark earlier Saturday morning and it removed the larger rocks so it’s easier to walk on the land as well as get the grass cut when it starts to fill it. We won’t be doing much cutting, but will keep the grass down around the house and the sides of the driveway. Here’s the progress we made on Saturday:

Raking and dozing:

Mike and Mark also placed a stone by the side of the porch, for the rain barrel.

When Mike was smoothing out the gravel he built me a special surprise – a walkway from the BBQ stone to the drive. We realized after the gravel was finished that we walk from this side of the house to the garage all the time. We were planning to ask Mike to come back with additional gravel to build the path. I was overjoyed when I came around the porch and found a big dust bowl! It really makes the place looked finished.

So here’s how it looks!

Whenever the Goheen guys would leave the property they would always give me a “toot-toot” of the dump truck horn. This past Saturday was our last “toot”!

Our County friends Alysa and Jesse of South in Milford run an Old School Bluegrass Camp each summer. You may have read  in the Globe & Mail about the ’70s school house Alysa and Jesse bought in PEC, and then converted it to a house for them, their 3 children and 2 dogs. They also took a classroom, the library and the office and made it into one of the most unique B&B’s we’ve ever stayed in. This is “awesome” unique, not “weird” unique!

As I said, Alysa and Jesse have 2 big, beautiful dogs, which are great to have around the schoolhouse, except when you have 70 people at your place for a Bluegrass Camp! So we offered to have Elsa and Ernie come and stay with us – really, we already have 3, what’s 2 more?! Elsa and Ernie are such good dogs. Elsa is very chill unless someone comes down the drive. Ernie is a bit afraid of little dogs, and sometimes his shadow, but after a couple of days he fit in really well. It was a really REALLY hot week, but we kept fans on the dogs when inside the house and made a few trips to the beach. The drive was also really enjoyed, as we had the AC on full blast in the car! Here are some photos of the good times we had. Although I’m not thinking of getting more dogs (right now anyway) I sure did enjoy having Elsa and Ernie around!

Waiting for a Weber to go on sale is like waiting for snow in June – unless you live in Newfoundland it’s not going to happen! So we bit the bullet and got Home Depot to deliver. And man are we happy to finally have a BBQ!

The boys were there to help too! You’ll see a black and green lead. These are for Manuel – who likes to bolt, and Bloo – who has a bit of doggy Alzheimer’s and gets lost a lot. With grass up to our waist in places it’s just easier to put them on leads until we get a fenced in area for them. Tying up Walter isn’t needed – no way we’ll ever lose him!

Our lilacs are just lovely! The County is literally “stinking” with lilacs – as you drive down the county roads the sweet scent wafts into the car.

We didn’t recall seeing such loveliness last year. At first we thought it was because it was so crazy busy with digging the foundations, septic, monitoring the house build. And shamefully I don’t have one photo of the lilac bushes up on the road, my focus was solely in the other direction.

But I read on Cottage Life’s webpage that lilacs bloom in their full glory every second year. So maybe we didn’t miss it at all last year – they were saving themselves for when we could appreciate them! Truly a gift from God – check out our lilacs.

The landscaping and driveway are not finished, but it’s built up enough for us to take the railings off the porch. Mike Goheen and his team have dropped a couple of loads of fill to even out the ground  They also brought the area around the porch up a couple of feet in some places, so all we need to do is build the step. Taking off the railings and putting out the conversation set really makes it feel more like home!

Well I can’t believe it, but we are FINALLY in a place to finish the driveway and start the landscaping, and get the pile of rocks out of the way! At first we thought they were amazing – that that amount of rock could possibly be dug out of our basement. Then they were charming – a sign of things to come, often asking “what should we do with all these rocks?” But alas, at the one-year mark, we just wanted them MOVED! Here’s some photos of what I’m talking about, from the beginning:

The excavator began digging in April 2017. Once started it actually moved quickly, and was also quite a processes. The Cottage was easy – just digging down a couple of feet and building up the crawlspace to be 5 feet. The Main House was significantly more complicated.  The land drops down from the road to the Main House by about 8 feet . We didn’t want the Main House to dwarfed by the Cottage, so we had to dig down at the front of the house, but then build up at the back. Now I was told if we moved the house to be closer to the road we wouldn’t have these problems. But do you live at the road, and hate how close you are, or do you go deeper into your “Toronto Money” and put your house where you want it to be. Ka-ching!

So we ended up with rocks, lots of rocks…and really big rocks.

The driveway was put in over time. At first a rough road to get the construction trucks in. But the construction continued into January 2018,  so we had to wait until Spring to get things re-started. And as we had a really wet Spring it was just about 3 weeks ago when we got the roughed-in drive laid. But it was still wonderful because for the first time we didn’t have to trudge through mud to get around.

So this week, we started moving the rocks! And by “we” I mean Mike and Mike of Goheen Construction. We had to do the placement based on the stack of rocks. The first one is for the BBQ, so they built up the fill, then placed the stone.

The second stone is for the step up to the Main House. We placed it, then decided it was too high, so the grading had to come down. You can see that once the stone is placed it has to be “tapped” into place. It’s really cool how such a big bucket can gingerly move the stone closer to the porch.

Number 3 went to the Cottage!

The next one was really big! We weren’t sure if it could be moved and this was confirmed when the strap snapped. Now that strap is rated for 12,600 lbs. so that was one big rock! When the strap broke it dropped the rock and it broke in two. Mike used the bucket to shove it over and use it for the garden circle.

Here’s what the circle looks like now. It’s a bit rough, but if you squint you can see the potential!

I’ve been told Goheen has almost finished the grading, driveway and top soil – I promise give an update after the weekend but to make my next post much smaller!