Field Of Dreams

Long time no see. Well fortunately we sold our house in Ayr. We had a two week closing time reduced to ten days once the conditions were closed. We packed and moved our belongings to a nice couple of storage units in Alliston. Our leather furnishing and electronics are comfy in an air conditioned room (nicer living arrangements then ours). We are living in our lovely tin box with all the comforts of home minus air conditioning, heating , dishwasher, shower, walk in closet etc... We wash in a bucket on the side lawn. ( if you have a black hose in the sun you can even get some nice warm water) We do our laundry at the laundromat. We haven't done that in twenty years...it takes alot more quarters then it did then. As of yesterday, we purchased a new turbo wifi internet thus a new posting on my blog. I now it has been quite some time and a lot has changed at the schoolhouse but you must be patient. I'll try and post everyday or so to catch up with our progress. ( and there has been quite a lot) By the way, the picture above is of our neighbours ...the potatoes...we ate some of the little buggers tonight.....Yummy!!!!!

This is Steven....he is our neighbour and he has done the back filling for us. It may be hard to believe but it took nine loads brought in to do the job.

Here Ross is compacting the fill in the garage looking all buff and manly.

The back of the school house.

A view of the garage.

This is the stone slinger filling the basement and garage with clear stone in preparation for pouring the concrete floors.

This is Ross watching the stone slinger thinking how happy it makes him to know he doesn't have to wheelbarrow and shovel 22 ton of stone. If he was facing the camera, you'd see a grin from ear to ear.

Jake "the ferocious kitty"

Okay...this has nothing to do with the schoolhouse renovations but he is sooo cute. This is Jake the newest member of the Turner clan. He's about 8 weeks old and a cousin of the late, great Chico. (R.I.P.)

We spent a couple of days at the schoolhouse last week with my dad in tow. He is a mason by trade and we enlisted his skills on repairing the damaged brick on the original building. Ross, as seen in this picture, is removing the form on the garage door by using the kicking and yanking method while balancing on said form. What a brilliant man, my husband. This could be one reason why he is always falling and hurting himself. Ross attached the black plastic wrap stuff (not it's official name...it escapes me at the moment)and wheelbarrelled (is that a real verb?)the gravel over the weeping tile. We had our inspection and now we can back fill.

This my dad, Al Burns. He is 74 years old and learned his trade in Liverpool, England following in the footsteps of his father. He re-pointed the stone foundation and removed and reset the loose and damaged brick.

The brick arch on this basement window fell forward and had been repaired with a slop of cement. Arches were used to support an opening. Today we use steel lintels, they provide the support but lack the decorative nature of the arch. By the way, Dad isn't a lazy mason. He fell down the stairs at home and hurt his coccyx. (for those who think I'm talking dirty...shame...it's his tailbone) Anyway, the chair puts him at the perfect height. We feed the seniors we have working on the job site and ply them with beer, wine and provide comfy sleeping arrangements on our kitchen table/extra bed in our trailer. So don't you feel too sorry for him. Feel sorry for us...he snores...loudly!



The finished arch ready for a new window.

The finished corner repair.

This is only the beginning of the brick work. There will be alot more in the coming months so Dad....we LOVE you...you are sooo talented.(this is me kissing up)

Foundations!!

Ross and I spent finally began constructing this week after months of demolition. On Thursday , Ross worked with the excavator to dig out our foundation and build our new driveway.

This picture is taken from the side door of the existing building. The footings are poured and Ross is placing rebar in the bench footing. It looks like Ross might have the start of a smile on his face....he's so excited about all the work we have ahead of ourselves. (written sarcastically)

The foundation walls are not done until Tuesday because of the long weekend, so we are back to working on.....demolition. Under the oak strip floor is maple hardwood. We are lifting both floors and eventually will replace the hardwood later. The old square head nails are into the tongue every 2'. They are coming out relatively easy thank goodness for me since I get the glorious job.

This is Chris and this is Chris's tool. It works on C02 cartilages. Ross has to attach his to a compressor. He probably has tool envy. (BTW Chris...that bald spot is looking a lit bit larger.) The next picture stars Spencer, our godson who so generously helped me de-nail the floor boards. Notice the left foot cast. (he broke his foot walking backwards...ha ha)Notice the fridge....guess what's in there....your right. I'd also like to thank Dianna for making Ross a fantastic grill cheese sandwhich for lunch. She is such a wonderful cook.

Tuesday morning 7am. We have forms up.

This is the bench footing looking striaght down from the old schoolhouse. It is there because the old basement is a foot and a half higher then the new one. This will shore up the old foundation wall.



Finishing the forming and pouring the concrete.

We Have Permits!!

Finally, we have our permits and are a go ahead. So while we wait for the excavator to schedual us in, we had more demolition to finish. Taking down the lathe and plaster involved Ross climbing into the attic and sledge hammering it from above. It took about a half hour on each side...quick but it produced clouds of dust that billowed out the windows.


This is about a third of the lathe. We spent two twelve hour days burning the stuff. It kinda looks like a beaver dam.

This is the mess inside.

And this is the schoolhouse with everything removed from the main room. The ceiling joists are 30 feet long and 9"x3". The wall studs are all pegged and notched into a 9"x9" beam that sits on a 2' thick rubble foundation wall. They don't build them like this anymore...I'm not quite sure if that is good or bad.

Insulation Free

Christina and Shawn joined us at the schoolhouse to finish up the insulation removal (we filled a 20 yard bin) and smash some walls. We burned alot of lathe and crap wood. Shawn didn't shower for a whole two days....disgusting ....ha ha. I learned to play hearts and whipped their asses....yumm yummm yum!!!

The majority of the plaster was removed. The window wall , a small section of the back wall and the ceiling is left to finish. We should have it done next week.








Under the maple strip flooring is 3"x
1" solid maple. It looks in great shape with tight joints.






The front section of the schoolhouse appears to have been built after the main building. The front section is double bricked unlike the main building which is only single bricked. It could be the schoolhouse was of timber construction prior to it's numerous renovations. we do know that the brick existed prior to 1897. We also found a wood strip ceiling and wood strip walls in this area.


Ross and Shawn took down the Elmgrove Community sign down. Behind the sign, we found a birds nest (40 years in the making) about 3' x 6' x 2". Unfortunately there was 6 eggs at the top of the nest (we transferred to the nearest tree). So imagine how many individual straws/sticks were carried over the years to construct it.("minus the shite" says Ross)

Where's Rossco?

Hope you didn't look too long...sorry he's not there.

A Windy Day in Hell

Here we are in our hazmat suits....we kinda look like "Canadian Gothic".We're hoping to get our permit application in tomorrow. Another delay on Monday occurred because we didn't have our stamped truss drawing. It's always something.

Our most disgusting job thus far is the removal of the ceiling insulation. We had a quote for $1800-2300 plus about $500 for dumping fees. I thought it was a s*%t load of money ...so we decided to do it ourselves. (well Ross wasn't as keen ...I'm the cheap one). We figured we could use the leaf blower/vaccuum, attach a long dryer vent hose, drop a sonotube through the ceiling and have me fill garbage bags with the insulation. It was a good idea in theory. In practise, it macerated the insulation into a fine dust the blew through the tube into the bag, out of the bag, up in the air and rained down on top of me from every angle. DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!!! So we adapted our plan and just shovelled the crap down through the holes in the ceiling into a giant pile and after the dust settled, we shovelled it into bags. PRESTO!!! 10 hours later.....job accomplished!!! That's like paying ourselves $230/hour. TAKE THAT POWER VAC...ha ha. It was a dirty job and the dead birds...and I'm talking big birds....numbered at least 100-200 totaly freaked me out.

This our home away from home at our future home...or something like that. I call it the "igloo". We spent our first night in it on Monday. It was friggin' just above zero that night. Thinking the end of April would be somewhat warm(should have known better) I only took a couple of light blankets...we froze our asses off and Ross froze his poor little bald head off. Next day, after a nice hot coffee, Ross went into town and purchased a heater. Best sixteen dollars we've spent in a long time. Although the igloo was nice and warm the next night, the wind continued to howl at a good 50km an hour....there was some bitchin' rockin' all night long. It continued the next day....we tried to cook a nice breakfast on the bbq but couldn't get any heat from the burner. We haven't put up the canopy tent either because of the strength of the wind.

One of the many carved names in the schoolhouse brick. This is David Alder(wordy)? dated 1912. David carved his name in a few different places. This is one of the oldest. They date up to 2009. The older ones are done in beautiful cursive. I wonder if the teachers back then punished the students for vandalizing the schoolhouse.

Where's Rossco?

Swingin' Edie At Recess

Ross and I were back to the schoolhouse this weekend in demolition mode. We made good progress on the front wall. With help from the Murphy family we took down the chalkboards. They ranged between 3/8th to a 1/2 inch thick slate. We are happy that one of the chalkboards will be hanging in the Murphy's new bakery down the road.

Guess what planet that I come from? Okay...it's just a joke. I don't need any smartass answers from any of you. Believe me, all that face apparatus is necessary. The dust and plaster coats and gets inside everything.
Cleaning up the insulation and plaster is the hard part but the smashing is actually invigorating and fun until a chuck of plaster smacks you in the face or a dead bird falls out of the wall on top of you. Unfortunately, there will be plenty of deadbirds, mice and bat when we start demolishing the ceiling.

Ross looks like he's surfing in this picture but I think he's just tossing a piece of lathe. "Hang Ten Dude" (this is for Nikki who thinks my blog is corny)This is the finished front wall. As you can see, there was a door in the centre and a window toward the right side. We are not sure when they were closed in but it happened prior to the chalkboards' installation. Some of the horizontal clapboards are 13 inches wide!!

Where's Rossco????