Is It a Present for the House, or Mom?

We have gotten into the habit of giving presents, whether they are birthday, Christmas, etc. that are actually for the house, things that make living there easier. There are many details to be completed as I keep saying, so it made sense to give Mom something that would help her in the kitchen. The room is almost complete now, other than finding or having built the upper kitchen cabinets, blinds for the windows, and the ceiling fan, so I ordered the fan. 

It will hang from the top of the vaulted ceiling from an extended 2 foot long rod over the table to provide more light and air circulation for when the warm weather arrives. I like it for its nautical character, and the nice thing about it is, they sell it at Burke Electric in Charlottetown, so it is easy for Mom and Dad to pick it up the next time they are in Town. 

On another note, David and I have booked our tickets and will arrive at The River on June 26th, and Dolly is coming with us again! We will be there for 2 solid weeks. I am already trying to figure out what I want to accomplish while we are there. This will be more of a vacation than when Dolly came with us before and I want to show her, and David, around the Island. When we were there together 2 years ago, seeing Anne of Green Gables was not on the agenda. We were kinda busy, see below.

I myself have not done much exploring of the Island for a long time because the trips over the last three or more years were devoted to the house project. However, I think we will tackle some landscaping and I hope to build at least 2 of the four stone retaining walls that the grounds will eventually have. This will require moving some of the old foundation sandstone.

Those are some very big, very heavy stones!

So if you are coming to the Island when we are there, and happen to have a Bobcat, bring it along. 

I'll soon be posting the plans for the landscaping and walls, and I'm assuming I'll totally redesign it once I get there and get a feel for the lay of the land, which has been graded, filled and changed since I was there last June. 

Mom is 70 Today!!

My mother was born Mildred Elaine Gilroy on April 16th, 1942 in Leamington Nova Scotia, a small farming community just outside of Springhill. She has three older sisters, Kay, Nina and Alva, and a younger brother Russ who passed away in 2003. Her mother was Lottie Wright Gilroy, who passed away 10 years ago at the age of 95. Mom's father Ken died 60 years ago from polio, when Mom was 10, just a few months before the vaccine was discovered. 

Mom's parents, taken in 1948

Mom with her dog Skippy

Dad's mother Janie (Grammy) and Mom's mother Lottie (Granny), 1979. Two great ladies.

Mom at Northumberland Park 2008

Mom and Aunt Winnie, July 7th, 2010

Watching the foundation being poured, November 1st, 2010

Christopher, Mom and Dad came to Lincoln to spend Christmas with us in 2002

The days of cooking over a wood burning stove are over!

Happy Birthday Mom

Kitchen Wainscot & Trim

It has been a long while since I've posted and not sure if anybody is still watching, but I will do better to keep the progress updated here. Although Mom and Dad are still working constantly on the house, it is down to mostly the details now. Their strategy is to finish the interior one or two rooms at a time instead of working on a lot of projects little by little with nothing getting completed. The kitchen is the most important room in the house so that is what they have been concentrating on. Dad spent the last few weeks on the second floor where all of the old trim is stacked, cleaning, stripping, scraping and priming the original trim from the kitchen to have it reinstalled. Mike McCarthy, my general contractor, came back last week and installed the trim in the kitchen and Mom immediately painted it, twice, and finished that project this past weekend. Not only is the trim now restored and complete, but the room is almost completely finished and they will be moving on to other projects now throughout the interior. The kitchen looks great, and its character has been restored. 

The trim was painted gloss French Gray, the same colour as the cabinets and doors in that room. Below is the door from the front porch.

Below is the door as it looked when I was there last June

 

 and today...

 

The new floors are an inch lower than the original floor so a new base trim was added at the bottom to cover the gap. 

Below is the new wider opening to the rest of the house as it was last June, and below that, as it looks now.

 

 The kitchen as it was... 

...and this is the narrow window behind the stove, finished...

...as well as the window looking out to the road!

Below is the north west corner of the kitchen, as it looked until 2010.

The door to the dining room has been widened, and the door to the pantry has been moved to Mom and Dad's new closet in the basement. Below is last June.

 

This is the same corner now.

This is Lois, Ralta, Sandy and Loreen sitting on the fainting couch in the kitchen during Dad's 70th birthday party in July of 2008.

 The same window today, above the sink

The trim below the sill is new. The old stuff was pretty much destroyed by the removal, as was almost half of the trim. This couldn't be helped. It was built like a fortress and held in place by 100 years of paint. Dad discovered that the wainscot is maple, and the original finish was varnish. That would have looked great when new but far too much work to restore, and too much damage would have been visible. We always knew it to be painted anyway, so it's painted again, ready for another century.

Thank you very much Lois for taking these photographs of the finished trim. It is always wonderful to see the progress, and with every passing day, to know it is becoming a home again.