June 7, 2015

This is the corner where the dog shower will be. The pipes you see on the right are the heating pipes coming from the concrete floor of the barn. They will tie into the ones you see coming up out of the concrete floor here in the carriage house. There are also domestic hot water lines in there too (going to the dog shower and out to my studio in the barn). That squared-in area of framing will be an access panel to get to the section where they all connect.

Mike having breakfast in the pantry.

I'm standing on the other side of the closet taking a picture of Mike standing in the pantry. The walls of the pantry and closet are 8 feet high so don't go all the way to the cathedral ceiling. This openness will help with heating and air circulation.

In this picture you can see the doors to the left and you can see how the walls don't reach all the way to the ceiling. The pantry door is going to be across the hall from the TV room door. Both doors are going to be the old style sliding barn-doors using the original, 100 year old,  door roller systems that we salvaged from the carriage house.

Our late-blooming Azalea smells great.

It's been a couple weeks since my last update. Still lots going on - a yard full of vehicles belonging to various tradespeople every day - but, day to day, a lot of the work hasn't been visible. But, over the past couple weeks all together, there's been a pretty significant change. Still lots to come but here are a few pictures to keep you up to date:

This is looking from the house toward the barn. The entire carriage house was gutted and a cathedral ceiling put in. On the left you can see the picture window that will look out over the car park. The vertical boards on the left are the beginnings of the framing for the pantry and closet.

Three days of rain and a yard that doesn't drain well or fast left us with a flood behind the barn where the ramp is being built. Matt pumped it out and everything was fine. Part of the construction of this part of the project includes a drainage system which just hasn't been put in yet.

This is a typical sight in our back yard on any weekday. We think we may have, single handedly, solved the unemployment problem in Nova Scotia.

This is the outside of the carriage house now. It doesn't look like much at this stage but that big hole in the wall will be a picture window. The doorway to the right will lead to the basement.

Through it all my Muscat grapes are doing really well. Patrick and Sol and I pruned them and tied them up a week or so ago.

This is a little bit clearer view of the laundry/utility area leading to the barn. This is almost a foot of insulation in the ceiling and almost as much in the walls. Heating and cooling this space is going to be much easier than the older parts of the house.

We had to re-shingle the TV room during the renovation and since the skylights were really old and only contributed to letting too much light into the room - we decided to get rid of them. This is Jonathan getting ready to board over the hole in the ceiling.