Duck Dreams

Someone on Kijiji is giving away ten assorted ducks for free. One glance at the ad and all my hankering instantly returns for a homestead. I have always been in love with ducks. It is all I can do not to go get them. I have visions of a duck pen and small pond in the side yard. A greenhouse. An array of raised vegetable beds. I could raise a lot in that space. Add some solar panels and beehives and re-establish the old well and I'd be self-sufficient other than olive oil. 

My husband has other plans for the yard -- a gathering space, a community meditation garden, a place to walk peacefully under shade trees. And I could also see that happening, and it would be lovely. But it would be lovelier -- everything is lovelier - with ducks.

Temporary kitchen

Hubby cobbled together a brilliant little temporary kitchen for us to use while we're at the church renovating. He used a laundry sink and a cabinet discarded by a neighbour. I love it.

I'm starting to think I don't need a fancy Ikea kitchen at all. There's a pallet company just down the road -- maybe we could make our own cabinets. And bed and table. And meditation benches and fences and raised garden beds...

I'd probably spend as much on sandpaper as I would if I just bought wood from Home Hardware, though...

Lucky

My husband is at the church this week, trying to cobble together a temporary kitchen for us to use while we work on framing and drywalling. While he was puttering, he happened to notice a smell coming from the utility room. Upon investigation, he discovered the sump pump wasn't working...and hadn't been working for a long time, apparently. Probably since the last time the concrete floor was jackhammered. 

Luckily he caught it before things flooded. Luckily he is handy and knew how to take it apart and clean it out. And luckily the pump hadn't burned out and still works now. He called me tonight to report on the project, and to tell me he got a third of the lawn mowed before the rain poured down. He's got some more projects to do before he comes home in a couple of days, and the mower batteries are charged and ready in case things dry out enough to finish mowing. But he sounded upbeat and cheerful throughout -- he's just happy to see some visible progress happening. What a wonderful guy I married!

Some before and after shots

Before:

 

After: 

Before:

After:

p.s.

And yes, I know how utterly ridiculous it is that I'm fluttering around trying to choose the colour of my cupboard handles while people are clinging to the outside of airplanes trying to escape Afghanistan. I have been blessed with a stable environment and a calm life, and I don't take it for granted. This church was built to shelter and nourish, and if I could cram every last woman and girl in Afghanistan into it and care for them, I would.

Kitchen Design with Ikea

Yesterday, my husband and I spent four hours wandering through Ikea to look at kitchen ideas. Of all the myriad options, I think we've narrowed down our preferences to two...or maybe three. I went into it expecting to go for something very light, either off-white or dove gray. But instead, my favourites are blue, dark gray, or black. Yup. 

They don't feel too dark when you add light countertops and flooring and proper lighting. There are a lot of space options, and I can imagine any of the three we liked working with the period feel of the church. My personal taste tends to be more modern and sleek, but that wouldn't look right in this 1930s building. We need something ageless and classic to suit. 

I fell in love with the ivory-coloured cupboard handles, like milk glass, which would be perfect for the 1930s. But they look best on the blue cupboards; hence the willingness to have a deep blue kitchen. But at the same time, I can't see blue fitting in with the rest of the earth-tone plans for the building, so I'd have to re-think all that. It might be better to just buy one of the milk-glass-looking handles to finger once in a while, and not buy the whole kitchen to match! Or I could find a place to use them in the bathroom, laundry, or my office.

The dark gray is just a soft, beautiful thing with a smooth surface I love to touch. It pairs up nicely with my favourite laminate countertop (yes, laminate. It can take a beating and it's $19 a foot as opposed to the quartz (which I admit is beautiful), which is $195 a foot. And we have a lot of countertops. So yeah. I suppose it's silly to spend this kind of money on a building and balk at $8000 countertops, but still, it seems terribly extravagant. And it's silly to buy cupboards just because I like their texture best. How often will I sit and stroke the fronts of my cupboards? And I'm iffy on how that shade would match the rest of the place.

One of the current counters

I think the winner in the end may turn out to be -- of all things -- the black option. It's classic and timeless and rich-looking when you add the right hardware, and it would go well with the countertop I like. I can also see it pairing with a very light birch, which I want to use in the adjoining room. It would seem too heavy for upper cabinets, though, unless you add glass fronts, and I don't have anything lovely enough to display in glass fronts. I suppose I could frost the glass. Or do stained glass in it. Or forego upper cabinets altogether. 

My indecision drives me crazy. I know it isn't a right/wrong sort of decision; it's just about preferences. But it's still paralyzing.

Then comes the tough part -- the layout. We're a bit hobbled because the drain and the water lines for the sink are embedded in the concrete floor, so unless we're prepared to jackhammer, we have to keep the sink in its current position. But that messes up the U-shape I want to form, because the drain is four feet out from the wall. We also can't put the cooktop near the sink, because that would mean having to drill through a thick concrete inside wall and putting a pipe across the laundry room ceiling to reach an outside wall in order to vent the stove hood. I think the better option is to put the stove under the window and vent out that way -- but that's fifteen feet from the sink. Aargh.

The only thing we are sure of is that the end of the room, which is currently all cabinets and shelves, will become a three-piece washroom, tied into the septic. That way we don't have to navigate steep stairs at night to reach the toilet. It would also allow the building to one day be split into two separate self-contained units, if someone wanted to do that. Upstairs, we're planning to put in a small kitchenette for use during functions (hey, that would be a great place to use the blue!), which could easily be turned into a full kitchen.

I want to keep the pass-through hatch, too, because it is a handy place for recharging lights and cell phones and lawn mower batteries.

ANYWAY...I've gone on far too long. You see the clutter going on in my head right now. Luckily we don't have to make a decision right away. We're still a long way off from construction. In the end, I may throw my hands in the air and turn the kitchen design over to my son the chef. He and his brothers will be the ones inheriting this place, after all.

Dancing through the Demolition

With the work going on at the church, we're not able to be on site for a while, and I find myself pining for it. The city feels so noisy and crowded now! I can't walk the dog without bumping into people. Some neighbour must work a late shift, because his car zooms down our road in the wee hours every morning with bass thumping so loud it rattles our windows. (What is he listening to?) There are constant planes overhead from the nearby airport, and dogs who bark through their fences, and sirens, and cars choking the roads in front of Tim Hortons. Even in my garden I am bombarded with sound, and Brio goes into a barking frenzy as people walk by. I haven't had a good writing session in what feels like ages. I want a quieter life, a slower pace. Space to wander in nature, breathing clean air. Room to spread out and do yoga and dance. 

I was driving in the car with my son the other day, and he played music from his phone over the radio so we could both hear it. I love his music selections -- every era and genre, from Big Band to Swing to Jazz to Korean Pop to 50's Dance to Nordic Folk to Bing Crosby to 80's Rock to something wonderfully epic from a video game. When Smashmouth started walking on the sun, it was all I could do not to pull the car over right there and dance on the side of the road. Once the church is habitable, I want to throw open the doors, crank up the sound system, and have a village dance. If Covid will ever allow it! Maybe we could dance on the side lawn. My son would make a great DJ.

Let the demolition begin!

Crew beginning the tear-out on Monday. I am not sure what to expect once they remove all the lath and plaster. We aren't going to plan too meticulously until we see what we're left with. I'm hoping to find some surprise cubby space beneath the stairs. We won't be able to go back up to the church for a little while, until the mess is done, and then we'll start framing, insulating, etc. Need to find an electrician. None of the renovators/construction companies in the area have time to do the project -- they're booking into the end of 2023!--so we'll do much of it ourselves. I'm looking forward to getting my hands in it, to see visible progress. This is the exciting part.

I'm also taking over more of the work at the city house, to free my husband up to focus on the church. Poor man, this isn't how he intended to spend his retirement. We'll have to make sure we incorporate long walks by the lake, too, so that it isn't an unrelenting slog. 

I find change invigorating and exciting, even if it's slightly scary. My husband complains that I can never let things coast along peacefully for any length of time. I always have to shake things up periodically. I understand the fatigue factor. But I also wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life reading one book, would you? Sometimes you have to explore new ones.

Washed in Colour

Because we are starting renos on the lower level, we have moved everything upstairs for now. We've set up the couch and computer and a temporary kitchen in the sanctuary, and the bed and my workstation in the vestry. That way my husband can be out in the sanctuary practising his chanter while I'm working in the other room. It means having to run up and down the stairs to fetch water for the dog or grab something from the fridge (moved into the laundry room), but it works.

It is a very different experience to lie on the couch and watch the sun come up through the stained glass windows. Green and pink light bathes everything in a beautiful glow, and you feel you are being washed in colour. The ceiling fans move the air up and out the Eye of Horus window, so it's quite comfortable.

We spent a good deal of time last night sitting on the couch, imagining flooring and wall paint options. I want something light and airy-feeling, a cream tone to the walls, a wheat or oat carpet. At the same time, if we're having functions in this room, a polished wood floor is probably the best option, in which case I feel we have to go with dark, to match the beams and windowsills already in place. But an entirely dark expanse of floor would be a bit much. Can you mix colours of wood or would that be strange? There's a section at the front of the room where someone has removed the dias and installed gray-blue linoleum, like a dance floor. We'd have to try to match the rest of the wood floor, and I'm not sure what this wood is...Fir? Elm? Will have to research it.

To get away from the chaos and clear our heads for a while, we spent much of Simcoe Day yesterday walking along Lake Huron in Bright's Grove. The colour of the water was magical, a deep turquoise fading to pearl gray as it neared the shore. A gentle cooling breeze, just the right temperature, and pulled pork on a bun from the food truck at the end of it. A perfect day. I feel so lucky to be so close to such beauty.