Back to School

Oh, good, that's a relief!

I love following along...

Please keep posting updates!
What a great place!

One last photo I forgot to post. The west side of the building in full sun now that the cedars are gone:



I spent quite a bit of time brushing Thompson's water sealant from the bottom of the foundation up three courses of "blocks". It's hard to tell from the photo but these aren't really blocks. The walls are poured concrete with a "skin" of pebbly concrete on top. Think of plastering a wall and then stamping it with a design. Well, the design the builders used was to press lines into the concrete to make it look as if it is made of block. The concrete around the windows and doors and at the corners has been lightened to make it look like stone. Only at the back of the building was it left smooth.

Next small carp to consider sometime...

there's a dip where the chair is. And, it's hard to tell, not sure the soil level drains away from the building... that this tends to be a good idea is something confirmed for me the hard way. I know you have the water sealant.. still, surface drainage away is good, if only to a nearby swale.

Well, you're sort of right osso. Actually the chair is at the same level as the rest of the lawn, it's just that the soil has built up where the trees used to be. If we could find somebody local with a stump grinder we could pulverize them and remove all that excess soil (we're looking into it). We've been hacking away at the roots but not making much headway. Unfortunately it's the root system that's holding the dampness. There's only a few inches of soil in most places and then you hit limestone and the water drains away quickly. (Thanks for checking in -- I know you know about this stuff.)

I'm still recovering from seeing my chair next to your schoolhouse

~~~

Really marvellous work you're doing there. It's gonna be fabulous!

Good for you and Mr. Fix-it.

It was a gift from my mom last Canada Day, ehBeth. (You obviously both patronize the same up-scale grocery store chain .)

The sub floor is finished! Mr. Fix-it and I managed 3 long weekends this fall to finish off the floor. As you can see, we managed to save a portion of the original flooring. We've spoken to a neighbour about milling local pine in the spring for the finished flooring.

All the time we've been working up there we've caught 2-4 mice a night. Once the floor was done? None! I know they'll find another way in...

Looking good! Thanks for the update!

We really debated about leaving some of the flooring. Why replace 3/4 of it and leave that little bit? It wasn't so much the cost as time; we wanted the floor all closed in before winter. Mr. Fix-it spent a lot of time UNDER the old floor with a flashlight and screwdriver testing for rot (crawling through shed snake skins and squirrel nests and broken glass) making sure the remaining joists were in excellent shape. Since they were, we decided it made no sense to rip them out.

As it was we removed about 6 utility trailers' worth of old flooring. A neighbour took some for his shop's wood stove and we've got campfire wood stacked (away from the building) for a good long while.

What's the old saying about "one step forward, two steps back"? After a summer-long drought we got torrential rains this fall, some of it driven vertically at the roof, and...we got a leak...on our beautiful new plywood sub-floor. <<sigh>>

Luckily, it turned out to be nothing worse than some worn caulking around the chimney. Unluckily, the chimney is really, really high. Much tying off of ladders and Mr. Fix-it for sure. Being an optimist, he figured it gave him the perfect opportunity to check out the rest of the roof line. (No photos exist; I was too busy having heart palpitations...)

You will have to take my word for it -- that is a deer on the old ball field. There is another one back in the trees. They visited twice on our first trip this fall. We were lucky enough to see two young stags with three does in tow on another weekend on a neighbouring property. Our last visit was on the (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend and the deer were laying low -- bow season had started.

Tai, I love your school house. Is that a tin roof? The scenery is breath taking and gives me such wonderful memories of Virginia. I guess you named that deer Bambi, right?

Mr. Tai looks quite sure-footed.

Yes, Letty, it's a tin roof and seems to be in really good shape (former owner owned a roofing company so I expect they did a good job). It's interesting to listen to the roof noises as it cools down on summer nights.

Bambi and her kinfolk are everywhere. This last weekend was the first time I'd been up to the island and NOT seen a deer. (Of course we narrowly missed hitting one on a major highway on the way north!)

Good going, Mr. and Ms. Fix-it!

I think it'd great that you saved some of the old floor.

Thanks for the update!

Lovelove love it!

Thanks, everybody! It's been a lot of work but we think it will be worth it in the end.

Thanks for keeping us in the picture, Tai Chi. Oh, brave Mr. Tai Chi....

I just saw the pictures on page 1. Are you really keeping the original blackboards? That's the epitomy of coolth. Tell me you are.

Hi Roger! Yes, we are absolutely keeping the blackboards in place. The original teacher's desk is still there. We salvaged an old kid's desk from an outbuilding (we've found lots of cast iron desk legs but the wood was burned some years ago ) and the original globe is still hanging from the ceiling in the corner. I don't necessarily want to live in a museum but this stuff is pretty cool, I agree.