Last day for 2011 - Nov 5th

It's my last day here on Cortes for this year and I took these shots to remind me of what Mike and I have built and of course, how much remains to be done.

Yesterday we installed the last of the siding and painted the corner trim on the upper back side (pic #2). So now we are beginning to see what the final colour scheme will look like.
The third pic shows the west side, the living room in the foreground and the bedroom behind with its little deck.

After I leave here, Mike will carry on with some concrete work and finishing trim.
And I'll be back here next April to start on the interior...

November 2nd

It's early November and yes, I'm still here on Cortes Island at May's Garden. But not for long... I will be leaving this weekend to head back to Vancouver for the winter.
Mike and I have been plugging away in the wind and rain, pushing to get the siding finished. At this point we are about one day away. Today we did the wall of the dining room, to the right of the french doors. Yesterday we finished up around the back door and did the final wall upstairs. (The plywood you can see on the lower roof is just there for safety and will be removed before the weekend.)
So it's down to the short strokes... for this year anyway. It feels great to have got to this stage and I can walk away knowing that, as Ulysses said, "Tho' much has been accomplished, much remains." 
(Actually he said, "Tho much is taken, much remains." in Tennyson's poem. But hey, this is Cortes, who cares;)

Doors!

Doors! After windows, getting the exterior doors installed is a major milestone on the road to that magical state called "lock up". Last Friday I drove down to Victoria to pick up our doors from the company there that has been making them. When I got there they told me they'd had a problem and the doors would not be ready until Tuesday afternoon.  Sooo... I decided to stay with my friends Dan and Naoko that night and head over to Vancouver for a couple of days on Saturday. It all worked out fine and yesterday I picked up the doors around 5pm, drove to Campbell River (3.5 hrs) and caught a late ferry to Quadra Island. I knew it was too late to get to ferry to Cortes but decided to stay at the Heriot Bay Inn and catch the first ferry in the morning. All went according to plan and I arrived home at May's Garden mid morning. Mike showed up soon after and together we installed three of the four door, saving the big french doors for tomorrow.
In the pictures you can see the upstairs deck door, the cute little bedroom door, and the main entry door -- yes we still need to build  deck for the main entry.

Still Siding - 2

With day after day of clear sunny skies the siding work is proceeding at a good pace. Not without a few hiccups though as we resolve the challenges of getting the corners to line up etc.
The two top pix are looking at the living room and bedroom walls on the ground floor and the west wall of the upstairs. The gable ends will remain with their tyvek covers until next spring when we'll finish them with cedar shingles.
At this point we have one more wall to do upstairs and one and a bit downstairs. So one more good day will see it finished!
Meanwhile, I had Robbie come back and dig a ditch for the generator electric feed to the house. The generator will be located at the workshop where we will have the freezer. The feed to the house is mainly for the fridge and for lighting etc.
Tomorrow, I'm heading for Victoria to pick up the exterior doors. There's rain in the forecast so it looks like a good time to go....
I feel a need to add a note here about what a joy it has been working here for the past week or so. The fall colours are spectacular and the sun has been warm enough during the day to work in just a T shirt.  I feel blessed!

Still siding

Siding is pretty much my full time occupation these days. We have a pretty good set up for cutting and installing the cement boards and it's going quite smoothly. I'm very pleased with the choice of pre-painted siding because the weather is marginal for painting and getting cooler by the day.

 

I did find time on the weekend to help David smoke some salmon in his newly built smoker. It's designed for cold smoking, so the fish gets smoked but not cooked.  We used a combination of apple wood, from the pruning I did last year, and cherry. Last night we vacuum packed about 50 bags of delicious smoked salmon!

Siding start...

Today we started installing the cement fibre board siding and this the first wall. We started at the back recognizing that there would be a learning curve in cutting and nailing the stuff. It is made from cement, fly ash and other stuff and comes in 12ft x 8 1/4" "planks". The planks are only 5/16" thick and quite heavy so a lot of care is needed in handling them or they will break. Cutting them is also tricky although Mike has a guillotine gadget that makes a nice clean cross cut. Ripping (cutting lengthwise) requires a table saw or skilsaw and generates lots of nasty dust that you really don't want to breathe. A good dust mask is essential.
But for all its "issues" the end result is very nice. We opted for the pre-painted version and chose this olive green colour. The vertical corner pieces will get painted the same colour as the siding. So a start has been made. Mike estimates about another 12 days to get the siding finished. With winter approaching, the push is definitely on...

Thanksgiving windows...

Thanksgiving weekend and Danielle comes to visit...  luckily we had one gorgeous sunny day that allowed us to get the window trim primed and painted. By choosing to paint it white we have minimized the less than elegant white vinyl windows.
Once we install the olive green siding, it should all look quite pretty.

For thanksgiving dinner we cooked a salmon and shared it with Julie and Eric, a couple we met on the ferry on Saturday. They are both school teachers in the Cowichan Valley and also musicians. So after dinner, the four of us played music together, Eric proving himself to be an excellent guitarist and Julie blessed with a beautiful voice. We felt like we had known these folks for a long time, and hope that we will!