Testing! Testing!

I knew that my first winter living here would test me and the house.

On Easter Sunday I will have lived here exactly a year. When I moved in I used only the main floor while the second storey floors were sanded and finished, the bedrooms and bathroom painted and the tub installation completed. Doors were installed. All of the windows were framed and the trim work happened around me. The kitchen counter, sink and dishwasher were installed. Work on closets proceeded. When George left in June I was very glad to see the end of sawdust, plaster and inept carpentry, glad that I no longer had to share my living space with gangs of men, especially since much of that experience had been lived without doors.

I began to hire individual people to do different jobs. Jim did the outside stairs. Tom and his crew built the screened-in porch. Fritz finished jobs George had been unable to complete properly. Dan completed the staircase Fritz had left unfinished.

Mother Nature may be testing us with snow this year, but last spring she sent floods down the mountain, causing the road to crack open so that there were two streams coming down to the lake, one right through my road. Eric arrived with huge earth moving machines and built two massive retaining walls to prevent the road from ending up in the lake this coming spring.

The first holding tank proved inadequate and was placed too far from the road for the pumper to reach in winter. Eric installed a second one closer to the road, and there is now a system of alarms and a pumping system to move the waste to the higher tank.

I love the in-floor heating, but the hot water system that heats the floor keeps throwing the breakers, my electricity bills for the first four months of winter have totalled $1170, and I have used nearly $1000 worth of wood as well. A boiler system will be on the list of things to do before next winter.

What has winter thrown at me? Tons of snow of course, enough to make snow plowing and shoveling a huge challenge. But that snow has also built up on the roof revealing more construction flaws ... inadequate ventilation ... badly installed flashing ... improper ventilation. And that in turn has caused leaking and interior damage to ceilings and walls. More plaster dust to come. All of that will have to be corrected before another winter.

The dryer was left unvented and that too is a summer project.

We still have to sand and polyurethane exposed wood, do touch-up painting, clad the house with board and batten, and build a deck.

Tom has to finish removing the debris from the old cottage.

And with the amount of snow that has fallen, I think it may be July before the snow melts and we can think about summer jobs.

The house has suffered damage, and my heart is acting up. We did not do as well on the test as I had hoped, but we are still standing, the house and I.