Escape To Serenity Cottage

Cottage Building - We've Now Moved In!

It took us a couple of moves this summer... from 118 Boardwalk we moved part of the furniture to our new condo at 10 Yonge Street on the 22nd floor at the corner of Queens Quay and the rest up to the new cottage. 

Problem though... in early July the cottage wasn't done and it all had to go into the garage.  Then in the first week of August, all those boxes and furniture got moved inside plus we moved a bunch of stuff from our old cottage over to the new one plus we used our little trailer to move a couch and love seat down to the condo in TO.

I say 'us' but it was really Sally!  She did a fabulous job while doing most of the organizing and packing and reorganizing.

Now that it's all done we can say 'that was easy' but if you've ever thought of building for yourself or doing a major renovation, make sure you can devote the time necessary to do the job.  It does take a fair amount of energy to do it right! 

We lucked out by choosing a great builder and a contractor who did the job very professionally... friends of ours have been renovating a MUCH smaller rear addition in Leaside for almost 9 months and are still not finished.

Take a look and see what our dream cottage looks like all finished!  Glad it's done - we can get back to work :).

By the way, we're still waiting for the perfect buyer for our old cottage - see www.StoneyLakeCottage.com for info if you know anyone cottage hunting - we'd give them a good price. 

Until we sell our old cottage, we've got it available for rent on a weekend or weekly basis.  Take a look at www.StoneyLakeCottageRental.com for info and available dates.

Cottage Building - Start To Finish In 6 Months

So many decisions to make - it was incredible!  Far more work than I ever thought, and we weren't even working on the site itself.

Typically we spent at least 1-2 hours every day doing something cottage related and made decisions on... fireplace, tiles, hardwood flooring, exterior and fireplace stone, concrete design for front porch, plumbing fixture locations, electrical fixtures and wiring locations, internet and sound/media wiring and systems, appliances, septic system, rain water handling, paint and stain colours, stair design, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, water treatment and well, heating and cooling (we went geothermal by the way), kitchen and bathroom sinks, stair railings, decking materials, landscaping etc, etc, etc!

Other than a few weather glitches early on, once the cottage was sealed from the elements, everything went really smoothly with no delays.  Our contractor Mike called in favours from all his trades and they came right when we needed them.  From the time we started clearing the lot on February 14th to the finish date mid-August, it took us 6 months to do everything we wanted to do!

Cottage Building - Framing

Now it really started to get exciting!!!  Seeing the actual walls of our dream cottage going up and being able to actually walk through the spaces which were going to be the living areas.

We had purchased our cottage as a custom designed package from Linwood Homes out of Young's Point north of Lakefield.  Kim and Mark were excellent at interpreting our design wishes and putting those ideas to paper.  Once we'd approved the design the entire house was 'pre-built' out in BC and shipped to the site on three flatbed trucks (you'll see the piles of materials in the yard in the photo show below).

Linwood also recommended several contractors and we chose to use Mike Parlevliet from Parlevliet Construction.  He came with lots of excellent references and turned out to be a pleasure to work with.

Every Friday night we would arrive up at the site with great anticipation and usually pull in with the lights on and gaze at the growing structure.  Because we were on site so much I was able to tweak a few of the room wall placements.  We were also able to change the laundry location from the second floor down to the main floor so it would be easier to hang washing out on a clothes line.

Take a look below and see how it all went together.

Cottage Building - Foundations

Sally and I decided to go with what's called an ICF foundation (Insulated Concrete Forms).  It's two layers of solid foam insulation (totalling 5 inches thick) separated by a series of hard plastic spacers.  There are also drywall screw attachments built into the material.  The big benefit here is the insulating factor is extremely high (counting the thermal mass of the highly insulated concrete in the middle it rates an R-40) and it eliminates the need to build a plywood frame for pouring the concrete.

Once the concrete is poured between the two levels of insulation, the work is done.  Voila, a solid foundation wall!  We decided to go to nine foot ceilings in the lower level since there is going to be a walkout to ground level on the water side from there.

Cottage - Shot Rock

Who knows what 'shot rock' is?  Not very many of us I suppose :).  Once the solid granite was blasted away to make a hole for the new cottage foundations, you can appreciate that nothing is level and the whole surface is pretty jagged and mushy.  That's where shot rock comes in.

Shot rock is dumped in to the bottom of the hole and spread evenly everywhere.  Then it's tamped down to compress it.  The big value of compressed shot rock is that it provides a very secure, solid base for the foundations and it's permeable so that ground water perculates right through it and is transferred away from the lower level of the cottage.

They Don't Call It Stoney Lake For Nothing !!

One of the unknowns when constructing a brand new home in the country is what the soil composition is going to be like.  Because of that, we were unable to get a firm price to prepare the site for the foundations - you just don't know what's under that layer of dirt.

We chose a location for the new cottage right between two north-south berms so the basement would have a walk-out at ground level and theoretically cause less excavation.  It turned out that way too except for the rear of the foundation and the area where the garage is going to go needed to be excavated down to the same level as the front.

So when it's rock, how is that done?  By blasting of course :).  Watch the video below to see how they drill the holes to plant the charges, cover them up with thick blankets of tires and then head away a distance before blowing their horn three times and calling "Fire in the hole".

Here's What Our New Cottage Is Going To Look Like

Sally and I bought a whole pile of new homes magazines and tore out the photos and plans of the ones we liked parts of.  Then we took the summary of those various ideas to the folks at Linwood Homes and they created the custom design for us.

Take a look at the Front Elevation facing the lake.  We'll have a wrap-around covered porch with white pickets so there'll be plenty of places to sit and relax with a lake view.

Here's a view of the Main Floor layout.  Although it's a bit hard to see (you might have to 'blow up' the PDF view and maybe rotate it), there are three walk-outs to the porches with skylights over each walk-out to make sure there's lots of light entering the cottage.

It will be exciting to watch all of this come together!

The Snowstorm Of March 8th Was Heavy !!

I decided to take a walk down our access road coming in from Dunfords Road during and after the storm.  I actually enjoy being in the middle of a snowstorm - it's the extreme cold I don't like :).

During the construction phase, we've had our neighbour Elwyn clear the road with his snowblower.  We're going to be clearing it ourselves next year with a Kubota tractor which can have a snowblower attached on the rear.  That and 4-wheel drive on our vehicles and we're all set.

It's certainly been a fantastic year for snow shoes - Sally and I have owned them since we bought the cottage but this winter is the first time we've really had enough snow to use them.

We're Recycling Everything - Our Wood Chipping Experience

Wood chippers are absolutely awesome.  We rented a 6" machine last weekend to help us clear up the mountains of branches that were taken off the trees.

One choice of getting rid of them was to have a giant bonfire but we didn't feel comfortable with that.  Our neighbour Elwyn suggested getting a wood chipper to do the work - and we could recycle the chips later and use them to cover our pathways to the waters edge.

Watch the video above... the sound the machine makes is amazing.  This machine has an automatic feeder so you just stick the branch or small tree in and it does all the rest.  The power to chew up large size branches or trees is amazing and out come mounds of wood chips.

We're going to use those to line flower beds, for mulch and for any pathways that we create from the cottage down to the beach and dock.  It will look very natural and it will ultimately decompose back into the environment.

Next the big caterpillar gets to work digging out the foundations for the buildings.  We'll use the big rocks we uncover (lots I'm sure) for our landscaping and the soil will be used to fill in a few dips in our lot.  More video and photos to follow :)

Clearing The New Lot - Cutting The Trees Carefully

The excitement has begun!  The first step for us is to clear the lot around where our new cottage is to be built.

The lot has been designated 'environmentally sensitive' which means that we have to avoid any construction or erosion from the construction site into an area 30 metres (100 feet) from the water's edge.

We've installed a silt fence around the building envelope area and then started to clear the trees inside that area.

Our neighbours at the cottage, Gloria and Elwyn Cartwright, agreed to do the clearing and cutting up of all the trees.  It turned out to be a much bigger job than they imagined for two people.

Take a peek at the video of how they attached a rope to the tree and then cut it down so that it would not fall outside of our building envelope area.

Once the trees were cut down they had to be limbed and the branches piled up around the sides of the building area.  Soon we had an enclosure that was so high, and thick, that we could defend ourselves against any invaders :).

One teensie little problem... Gloria was scrambling around the top of a high pile of cut wood and slipped off.  She ended up breaking her hand and having a cast for several weeks!