It has been so long

We have been waiting since May to get permission to renovate the old farm house. All that seems to be happening is that we are constantly sending the lawyer more money. I swear, he gets on the phone and it costs us $100. ANyway since we need somewhere to live we have found a loophole in the law!!! We can put a mobile home on the property. However, as neither my husband nor I want to live in a mobile home and we have a ton of lumber stored in the barn we decided to build a little cabin on skis. Theoretically it can be pulled. We may need something big to pull it, like an excavator, but it can be pulled.

The last couple of weekends we have been working on it. It is so cute. It is 20 x 12. The top floor (Or loft I guess, since the walls are formed by the roof) goes the full 20 feet but the main floor is shorter by 4 feet so I can have a screened in porch. This is a necessary thing as the black flies and all manner of biting and flying insects are horrible in the spring and early summer here. And they LOVE me.

The whole thing is on top of 2 9 inch by 9 inch by 21 foot hemlock squared logs. These would be the skis. As soon as I get to the computer with the pictures downloaded on it I will post them.

Janet

ARRGH

I hate dealing with government. Especially when we are in a separatist part of the country. But now we have to get the lawyers involved. I just want to have a place to live. Is that so much to ask? Anyway, hopefully the lawyer will be able to deal with the whole abandoned house issue. WE have people who will swear the house has been inhabited post 1972 (which is when the house has to have had no one living in it in in order to be considered abandoned). Other people have told us (so we take this with a grain of salt) that some farmer with some pull wants our farm and is causing all these problems for us.
Cross your fingers that everything works out and doesn't cost too much money.

Stalled

I just realized that it has been over 2 months since my last post. WE are still working on cutting and moving the trees however we have reached a snag in the whole house building thing. That being, the government. Basicly they said they will never give us permission to build. That was a bummer, but never deterred we moved on to plan B, which was to renovate the old 150 + year old log home on the property. Problem, they say they won't give us a renovation permit because they consider the house abandoned and thus not a real house. Not a real house? It was a real house when we payed taxes on it the week before. We will get to the bottom of this, but we are in limbo right now.
I will post pictures of the log house next week. It is cute but needs work. A new roof, the floors need to be leveled, the dark brownish read bead board on the inside needs to be ripped out. Some new windows ,a new summer kitchen, new bracing on the second floor.
Here is an interesting fact I discovered. The floor is not attached to the walls of the house, so the floors are sagging towards one corner of the house but the walls are almost perfectly level. My theory is that it originally had a dirt floor and then the floor was added later and then they dug out the cellar( which really is just a hole in the ground).

Janet

Valentine's day

I have the best husband. He took me and the kids out to dinner and with 4 kids between 4 and 8 that is a big undertaking. Yay, no dishes! He also got me the best present! All his friends thought he was going to get into trouble for it but I thought everyone here would understand. He got me...............a router. And not just any router but the heavy duty hitachi to work on our logs. It is a thing of beauty. Much rather have that than a bunch of roses.

Janet

Templates

This is another view of the hill upon which we plan to build. This is taken from the entrance to the farm, but we plan on having another entrance from the far side so we are closer to the road and save money on electricity hook-up. If they have to put up a pole, it will cost lots of money.

We have been passing this little house on our way up to Maniwaki and this is what we are basing our cabin on, right down to the balcony. We will not, however, have the vinyl siding. Just the bare logs. But we will have the wrap around porch. I have posted the house as our header for now until something better comes along. Plus, I'm just so pleased with being able to do that by myself. My husband can make a computer sing and dance, I tend to make them throw up.

OOPS

Sorry, I don't know what happened but the pictures didn't post as they were in my version.

Janet

Truely Pictures and changes

Finally, here are the pictures of the place we are building. Well, the lot at least.

The first picture is from the top of the hill looking out at the road. The road curves around to the left and that is where the entrance will be. Those trees will be staying.

The middle picture is a view from halfway up the hill. The trees on the left will be thinned so we have some view but most of the ones at the back will be felt as awind break. The road is off screen to the left.

The last one is of my youngst son (who is 4 )with the horse we use to skid out the trees. The horse is really gentle. Well, really gentle with kids and women, he is not to fond of men and will run at them. We call him our guard horse. He is over 2200 lbs, so having him run at you can be quite frightening. Be hind the horse is the barn and the hill with the lot on it is to the right.

More pictures to come if we go up this weekend. They are calling for 23 to 30 cm of snow (which is 12 inches I think, I don't work well with conversions). I hope to get a picture of the big piles of logs we have skidded. Plus my beautiful black eye.

The rope I ran into with the skidoo was the same size as the one my son is holding onto. Always wear a helmet kids.

My husband has changed his mind again (and they say women can't make up their minds, HA). He has now decided he wants to do 5x3 inch logs and then tongue and groove the 3 inch side. So now we are looking at the easiest way to do this. Either using a router with a dado, or a tablesaw with a dado or with a planer/moulder. They all have pros and cons. The one my husband likes is the last one as we can get custom blades made so each log only needs 2 passes. Needless to say , it is the most expensive. But 2400 feet of logs will take some time to work.

Janet