The Great Search for Doors

WE HAVE INSIDE DOORS!!!

Mel, Andrew and Nancy went to Toronto for a long weekend via Cobourg where we stopped at Legacy, a wonderful architectural salvage place. We found great porcelain doorknobs and old hooks there. Hopefully there’ll be an opportunity to check out their other treasures once the house is a little further along.

Nancy went on to visit Kath in Paris, and Mel and Andrew met up with them in St. Jacob’s at Artefacts, another fabulous salvage store. It was certainly the pot of gold at the end of a long search for inside doors, and we also found amazing shutters that are needed for the kitchen. Artefacts offers great quality, reasonable prices, fantastic organization, and terrific service - which included shipping the doors to Montreal at a truly affordable price! Both places are definitely worth a stop if you are on the hunt for a little ready-made history.

Scrutinizing the doors

Measuring each door

Progress on the new cottage:

The Duval team has been hard at work at the Lake: the basement cement has been poured, plumbing and wiring is well on its way, and the heating vents are almost all installed. The base for the fireplace is to go in this week and they plan to start closing in some of the walls in the next few days.

Plumbing

Sue and Ric checking out the living room

Kitchen doors with a view of the lake

Nancy and Ric

Montreal's losses are gains for the Lake:

Meanwhile, in Montreal, under Mel’s leadership, the purging of almost 30 years of family living in the same house has begun. Much of it (as pictured here) is destined for the Lake. It is so wonderful that so much of our family history will fill the shelves and drawers of the new cottage.

Mel and Andrew are off to India next week until early July, and they can certainly go in the knowledge that they’ve helped break the back of the moves facing us to the new cottage and to some new and smaller place in Montreal.

Boxes and chairs for the Lake

Nancy Surrenders

Thanks to the persistence of many of you, we have decided to have a second bathroom on the second floor of the cottage! It is only a powder room, mind you, but hopefully a compromise that will make you all a little happier.

The house progresses well in other areas too. The heating vents and plumbing are being installed and the electrician will start to work this week or next. This last weekend we decided on switches, ceiling and wall fixtures, and plug locations thanks to the input of our in-house electrician Dave, as well as Mel and Andrew, David and Tassy, and of course our contractor-wizard Jean-Marc.

Mel, Andrew and I (with the support of Pam Del Maestro) have been hunting for salvaged pine doors and shutters, reclaimed bathtubs on claws, pedestal basins and other wonderful architectural antiques, in the hope of helping the house find its old soul. We’ve some good leads here and are going to have a look this weekend in Cobourg, Toronto and St. Jacob’s (thanks to Goodie Heeney's recommendation).

We are very excited about the progress - the cottage is already wonderful in and of itself, but is similar enough to the old cottage to feel comfortable even in this early stage of development.

Toute la gang

Front entrance

Stairs up to the second floor

Second floor hall

View from the McEntyre's road

Happy Holidays

The architect - Michael Werleman

Seeing the house with its windows, some (though not all) the doors and many of the rooms framed-in is very exciting and very emotional. It makes the house feel much more real. 'Real' is amazing because it promises a future that is tangible - wonderful moments to come and memories to be made. 'Real' is also difficult because it makes one face up to the change and the newness of everything, to the fact that so much is different and there is much that just isn't there any more. But in the balance, as you can see from the pictures, the excitement of the future takes the day.

It was wonderful to visit the house with our architect, Michael Werleman, who had the opportunity to meet Francois Duval for the first time. Jean-Marc showed us all the progress they had achieved, and we discussed several changes that could/should be made to the plans. Some key decisions were made - including moving the location of the stairs that go up to the second floor, shifting a couple of doors a few feet one way or another, and adding a vestibule.

It looks like it is a go with the hybrid electric-wood furnace that can be adapted to include geothermal heat (or some alternative energy source) when we are have figured out the best and most affordable way to do that.

On the general news front: there's a ton of snow (as you can see) and the lake is now ice and snow covered...though the snow came a bit too soon on the newly frozen lake for the ice to be very strong.

The girls and I are off to Paris for Christmas with Cecile and Emma - leaving on December 21 and returning on New Year's Day. Dave is staying here and will be living at the playhouse and celebrating with the McEntyres.

Our family is wishing you a wonderful Christmas and holiday, and hope you have a happy and healthy New Year filled with joy and peace.

View from the playhouse

Driveway view


Our contractor and architect with their house in the making

"Do we move the stairs to the second floor...?"

Francois and Jean-Marc Duval with Michael Werleman

Bay window to screened-in porch

Living room door to open porch

Upstairs sitting space with bathroom beyond

Snow

It is very snowy, at Lac des Iles, as you can see.

With the ground floor roofs on and shingled, the cottage feels wider and more like home. Kudos to Michael Werleman for working so hard to keep the roof lines similar to the old cottage.

Installing the insulation is well underway. Finishing that and closing in the roof is the priority this week. The windows and doors have arrived and will be put in as soon as the Duvals have finished with the insulation and the roof.

View from the lake

View from the road

Our future screened-in porch

Equipe Duval

I arrived at the Lake to find a mere dusting of snow but below zero temperatures, and a hive of activity at the house. Toute la famille Duval (including Jean) and their team were in action and the verandas and the downstairs bedroom were being prepared for roofing. Jean-Marc hopes to have the ground floor roofs up and shingled within the week. They've also started installing the insulation so that all will be ready when the windows and doors arrive early December.

Jean, Jean-Marc & Gilles Duval

Benoit Duval

Francois Duval

A Roof & Verandas

First things first: The wonderful news is that Sue brought Ric home from Ste-Agathe on Nov. 1st and he is recovering very well from his heart attack. Needless to say, we are all thrilled for Ric and for Sue that he's back and doing so well! So too is Mark Gagnon, Jenny Lindsay's husband, who, many of you will have heard, suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this week but is most wonderfully and miraculously on the mend. That family has certainly had far more than its fair share of excitement in the last couple of weeks and they are all much in our thoughts and hearts.

As for the house - its rising from the ashes, which is as exciting as it is scary and emotional. It was certainly very special to arrive on a beautifully sunny All Saints' Day and find the second floor framed, a plywood roof covering the main structure and great piles of shingles waiting to be installed. As you can see from the pictures, a team of three men managed to complete that job on the morning of Sunday, November 2nd, and did so in about three hours.

The current pictures show that the next step is to complete the building of the balconies and erecting the rest of the roof. Jean-Marc says that in another couple of weeks we'll be able to see a fairly complete outline of the house that will welcome us and all of you come next summer.

Thanks to everyone for their input on windows and doors - it's been quite a journey. In the end, we have ordered Bonneville double-hung wood windows - eastern white pine inside and white aluminum clad on the outside. The French doors will also be white pine inside and aluminum clad outside. Fiberglass windows were hugely tempting for a lot of good 'green' reasons, but are still too expensive, and in the end, not as good insulators as the wood ones. We are learning that there is an enormous amount of give-and-take in this world of trying to minimize one's footprint.

The next big decision is around the heating system or systems. We're still hoping to figure out some way to involve geothermal heating out of the Lake, but it's not as easy in Quebec as in Ontario. A fall-back possibility is to have a hybrid electric/wood furnace that could be modified to include geothermal heat in the future. Suggestions and advice are always welcome.

Porches are on their way...

Jean-Marc our our new verandas

November 2nd

The next day, the shingling has begun!

View from the lake with shingles on the roof

Tassy & David - our first guests

November 1st

Edmond discovers that the new cottage has a roof!

Sue & Nancy admiring the new roof

View from the dining room into the living room & kitchen

Aunt BJo

Our beloved Aunt BJo died peacefully on Sunday morning, October 19th. She was such an inspiration to all of us at Lac des Iles.

Her marvelous and lively spirit will continue to support all of us who were privileged to love
and be touched by her.

A House is Born

The ground floor is up!

L'équipe hard at work on the first floor

Driveway view