Winter Projects





Renovating is so much more work than we had anticipated...probably our age more than anything.  We are discovering that things we did in the past take so much longer to accomplish now that we are "seniors".   Our family room looked like a Home Depot warehouse with kitchen cabinets, boxes of hardwood flooring, a dishwasher and the microwave exhaust hood.

Our handiman drywalled the hall and worked on the mudding.  Oh joy, oh joy, sanding is next...LOL...the house is so dusty there's just no point in cleaning.  I suppose I could look at that as a positive for me.  Our bathrooms are now done and we are so happy with how they turned out.  It was quite the process, especially the main bathroom which was in such bad shape that it was pretty much a complete gut...

 

main bathroom before and after

 

            

 

 

                       

 

 

 





                                          2 piece before and after

Before

After

  

I started to remove wallpaper from one of the bedrooms while Michael put kitchen cabinets together...CRASH, BANG, BOOM...oh dear...his little fingers don't work like they used to.  I had most of one wall stripped in the bedroom and then stopped....ah the joy of retirement...no pressure here to get anything done.

We had some spectacular days this winter.  Moving here in the fall we anticipated a bad winter where we would be snowed in for days on end.  Well, we were wrong.  We are in a little pocket down here that seems to miss most of the snowstorms.  When we do get them it is beautiful but we probably get more rain than anything else.  We bought a huge upright freezer thinking we would be in for the winter but we soon learned to take our windows of opportunity....a storm coming then head to town....storm hits then head to town 2 days later...LOL....we got it figured out pretty fast but we still had a huge freezer packed with food, enough to last a year I think.
 

 

 

       



 

 

The deer don't come around too much, probably because of the dogs, but when they do unexpectedly show up,  it is magical...

            

Just when we thought we were through the worst of winter we got that March 2014 storm of the century.  We've never seen such winds.  The day of the storm the wind blew and the snow came down with such force that you could hardly see anything outside.  We were snuggled in prepared for the worse, at least that is what we thought.  Early evening the wind let up and we thought the storm had ended....WRONG...we were in the centre of the storm, just like a tornado.  After we went to bed the wind picked up again and the direction changed.  The house shook with the wind.  It was very unsettling.  CRASH.....the wind actually blew in the bedroom window.  We were lucky the glass didn't break but parts of the frame were broken and Michael had quite the job to get it back in.  We had to have someone out to repair it...oh joy....
 

Our Shelagh Duffet wall is growing.  We love her art....it is bright and cheerful and always puts a smile on our faces.  I could keep on buying and buying (I love her original works) but alas my retirement income keeps my impulses in check.  We have since bought another original and 4 more prints.  I always said I wanted to fill the walls with Nova Scotia art and it looks like we are.

       

 

                     

The long winter got my creative juices flowing.  I dug out our paints and started painting birdhouses.  I joined a quilting group where I met some great ladies and learned to quilt.  The quilt below is my first large quilt which still is not finished.  I learned pretty quickly that I love making the tops but hate the actual quilting so in future I will do like everyone else and send them out to be quilted by someone who knows what they are doing.  All in all winter actually went pretty fast.