It has been a while since I've posted. It's winter, and although Mom and Dad are working as hard as ever on the house, things progress slowly in winter. We are down to the details, but there are literally dozens of them (I actually made a list, 138 to be exact) to call the house finished. Some will take years to accomplish as most things need to happen in a specific sequence. Landscaping is on my mind. Although the yard was leveled and compacted in the fall, which should settle nicely over the winter, and was necessary to get runoff draining away from the house, the yard around the house is to be built up another 6 inches to more than a foot in some places. The next time I'm there I want to map out exactly where site features will be. I'm designing three porch decks, and three sandstone retaining walls. I'll post the design when I get it all drawn up, but I'm sure it will change once I see the yard again anyway.
Back to what has happened since the last post: The spruce trees along the fence-line behind the house were crowding each other and the house, plus many roots were cut when the foundation was dug out, making them potentially unstable, so six trees have been removed. An added bonus according to my parents is that the house is much brighter inside, and we now have a view out to the dam and golf course.
I took the photo below last June, showing the trees behind the house. The six from the left are now gone.
Lois took these pictures behind the house showing where the trees were, and Syd Munn's house beyond.
View out of the Butler's Pantry (the old Dining Room) window
The stump of the big spruce that was at the east end of the line of trees.
Dad refinished the china cabinet that George Lowe built. It used to sit attached at the side to the chimney in the Parlour. I took the photo below in 2008.
Below is the Parlour in June 2010, when Mike and Dad took the china cabinet out. You can see they found red wallpaper behind the cabinet.
The chimney is now gone, so the china cabinet couldn't go back in the same place. Although the Parlour is now the Dining Room, it made sense to me to move the cabinet closer to the Kitchen, so Dad installed it where the sideboard used to be in the old Dining Room, now the Butler's Pantry. Mom painted the interior Farrow & Ball Lulworth Blue, a traditional English Regency colour from the early 19th century, typically used inside china cabinets!
The colour will nicely compliment the wallpaper that I hope to hang when I'm there in the summer, Golden Lily by William Morris, a paper that was designed in 1899.
Each final little detail makes a huge difference in how the house feels. I think the house is looking fantastic but bare. Having the old cabinet back up is a big step toward taking the house back to how it used to be. A little different, but familiar. As always, Mom and Dad have done an amazing job in bringing the vision to life.
