Month: April 2021

New projects this spring include building a new dock on the lake – just as the water started rising and then over April staycation – getting the kitchen trim painted that was installed last year (yes a year ago!).

First the dock. The permit came in just before the water level started to rise. Ryan and his dad rented a post hole digger and the first Saturday got the posts installed (it then rained all day on Sunday). The next Saturday they got the rest of the main framing/joists done on the dock.

Trex decking came in the next week in time for our staycation. Ryan spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday installing the decking on the ramp part of the dock. It then rained for a few days but he was back to it on Sunday. He probably has a full day or two left to finish off the decking at this point.

The old dock will come down in the fall and we’ll close out the permit. We are looking forward to a nice dock that should last!

While the dock was in progress I focussed on the kitchen trim project. First I had to sand and prep all the trim in both the kitchen and diningroom. Next caulk in the kitchen and priming. I focussed my attention mostly on the 2 sections that needed the grey cabinet paint because it’s oil based and I wanted to do it while the kids were in school. Any other time I had I got some of the trim (especially around the cabinets) painted and some of the wall in the kitchen.

The diningroom trim is all primed but not yet caulked or painted. It’s quite a large undertaking and hopefully in the coming weekends I’ll have time to make some progress there.

That’s it – all caught up on house progress. I’ll add a post on the garden soon as that project kicked off in March with seeds starting and I now have plants in the greenhouse.

Another update – more family related. I’ll just caption some photos.

Sorry – in progress .. more photos coming soon

That was 2020! I’ll do a spring update in a bit – that was a lot of photos but a full year in review.

2020 was quite a year but staying home and having no activities meant we had lots of time to focus on the garden. The garden it turned out after building it was really easy as gardens are the first year. Not a lot of weeding because the beds were new (I am in for a change this year I can already tell).

Some pictures from the garden at the end of the summer.

A very successful first year gardening and now planning and starting up the garden this year already. I’ll do a separate update for that!

In September the girls went back to school with extra Covid precautions. Work was busy for both Ryan and I and we were both working from home plus picking up the girls at 2pm so they didn’t have any bus exposure or extra daycare. This meant we were exhausted mostly.

Ryan managed a few interesting projects however throughout the fall and winter. First he installed this little cabinet over the fridge as part of the trim finishing. It has a little flip so we can put items on the fridge for storage but it folds back down.

Ryan worked on getting the hallway spackle and trim done this winter. He installed a new front door (once it finally arrived) and we have a lot more light in the hallway now.

The surprise winter project was the basement gym Ryan decided to build out. He really wanted a treadmill to run more so he sheetrocked most of the basement then finished off the one smaller room with trim, electrical, a door etc. The room isn’t totally finished but it works for the treadmill for now.

Ryan also built a sliding barn style door which looks great.

The room isn’t finished – we will leave the ceiling open but we do want to finish the floor and organize it a bit. For now it’s useable at least.

That was winter! Now spring has hit and we have new projects underway from our annual April Staycation which I’ll update about after I do my final garden update from last year.