I'm back

Sorry I disappeared for a while there. The car died, the home furnace died, and the basement renovations back in the city were completed, so my attention got drawn away for a bit. I'm back now, and looking forward to a couple of weeks at the church, writing and isolating from Omicron, which may be a futile exercise but a good excuse for some time away from the city.

I anticipate 2022 will be much the same as 2020 and 2021, but I will look for ways to bring light into my world and the lives of the people around me, and there's not much better a place to start planning that than in a church filled with stained glass!

St. Clair Regional Conservation Authority

It turns out our church falls under the jurisdiction of the local conservation authority. We have applied to the township to rezone it from institutional to residential, but the conservation authority has to make comments on the application and grant a permit for change of use. I am assured that this is not likely to be opposed. They will also respond to a property inquiry and let us know any guidelines around erosion, flooding mitigation, placement of septic systems, etc. so that when the time comes to do any actual changes to the property, the permit application should go more smoothly. They seem quite easy to work with. Our next step is to draw up a "map" of the property to submit. I'm not much of an artist, but it will need to show not just structures and measurements but elevation and trees, etc. We aren't planning to make any significant changes to the appearance of the side yard beyond the parking spot that the township requires. At one point I had hoped to install a greenhouse, but it doesn't look like that will be possible now.

On a side note, I have been reading about the sacredness to indigenous cultures of cedar trees. I have been graced with eight of them beside the church, rather scabby and spindly-looking, but tall. I will need to nurture them and keep them going rather than remove them. This project is going to need all the blessings and support it can get, and I want Mother Earth on my side.

Idea for in-the-wall storage

The wall between the laundry room and the water heater room is a supporting wall, and the water heater room itself is low-ceilinged while the laundry room has a high ceiling. I like the idea of using the water heater room (I really must think of a shorter name for it -- water closet? WC?) for storage, but it's like a crawl space -- difficult to get in and out of, especially with bad knees. But storage space is at a premium and I want to use every inch I can.

Hubby has come up with an idea I think is brilliant. Above the door to the WC, high on the laundry room wall, we can put a row of cupboards which won't impact anyone walking past because the ceiling is so high. We can insert cubbies between the studs of the supporting wall, extending into the WC space, with cupboard doors to cover them, and pullout shelves within the cubbies. They would be accessible from the laundry room (no crawling required) but still utilize the WC space. They could be quite deep, too, for storage of canned goods or laundry supplies or tools. I see potential for doing this under the stairs as well, in both stairwells.

Since we seem to be stuck in the tradesperson bottleneck and can't get any contractors to respond within a reasonable timeframe, we are having to park our renovation plans for now. But we could at least be working on this cubby project ourselves so that we can see some sort of progress. It might help allay the impatience I'm grappling with elsewhere. A nice carpentry project would be fun to work on together over the winter.