July 2012 - We Dismantle the Cottage

July 2012

The month started out with a visit from my brother Tim & Nita’s kids – nephew George, niece Angiee, and her friend Brandi.  We shared a fun sightseeing day in Niagara Falls, and they were able to see our condo for the first time and the cottage for the last time.

So now that we were officially moved out of our Pickering house, it was time to clear out the cottage before it was demolished.  Even though we THOUGHT we didn’t have a lot of things there – it was after all a cottage – it really added up!  Many more trips to the storage locker.  The big task here has been disconnecting the mechanicals.  We arranged to have the following physically removed:  oil tank, furnace, central air, plumbing, septic system parts, electrical box and woodstoves & chimney pipes.  We kept whatever we could including our clawfoot tub, the water pump, heater & pressure tank, some electrical fixtures including ceiling fan and woodstoves.  More stuff to store! 

And we tried to find homes for other building materials that were salvageable.  Laminate flooring, pine tongue & groove paneling, interlock patio bricks, and our old fridge were all given away to neighbours.  Others dug out hostas.  Even the roofing vent found a new home.  We were down to the studs in quite a few rooms.

Weekends in July also saw Ibby & I working diligently on cleaning up the felled tree in the backyard.  Ibby did the "heavy lifting" with the chain saw, and after he cut it I was dragging away the brush and breaking it down to manageable sizes with a garden pruners.  He was also working on an extreme slope of about 60 degrees to trim the limbs off.  Not to discount the degrees of heat & hot weather we had in July!  We'll have lots of firewood, but there were many days we just ached when we crawled into bed.

We had requested that the hydro be disconnected on Tuesday August 7, however I got a voicemail Friday July 27 saying that it would happen on Monday July 30.  Needless to say, we dropped everything and scrambled to pack whatever we could that weekend while we still had lights and running water.  A lot of disconnection work had already been scheduled for that last week of July / first week of August so we just soldiered on without power.

We’ve had so many people offering great advice along the way.  Things they learned when building or repairing their own homes that we should incorporate right away.  We’ve already had to make some decisions on what to spring for now and what to leave out.  The items we’re splurging on are good windows and things that are now-or-never.  For example, we’re getting a cathedral ceiling in the master bedroom.  An extra few grand for a different roof truss design, but it’s not like we can tear apart our roof and add that in later.

Jaime and his housemates came up to the cottage for a BBQ on Sunday July 29 – as it turned out, the last day we had power and running water.  Our neighbours were kind enough to take the boys out for a boat ride which was a real thrill for them!  Big shout-out THANK YOU to Rob & Cindy Wilson!