We bought the tree last Wednesday at Ikea ($20!) and had tasty meatballs for dinner. We decorated on Thursday. We’re ready for the season’s celebrations!

Halloween was a bit of a bust this year; we could barely give away our pack of 70 candies. Near the end we were just pouring them into the bags. The weather wasn’t great either (wind warnings and chilly) and to top it all off, we actually had a black out for about an hour and half. Part of the success-less-ness can be blamed on our street, 4 houses participating this year. Shame on you all.

Here are our 2009 pumpkins:

Click here for Halloween 2009 photos.

Here are a few shots of our lovely tomato harvests…we are getting about 5-10 every couple of days. Although entirely home grown organically, I am rather disappointed in the lack luster taste, they are OK but not great.

Our Best Harvest so far

My Craft. We had this old window which used to be a mirror in our house at The Upper Beach until it came to its untimely demise on the living room floor. I kept it knowing that one day I would like to use it in our garden (our decor now is not so much cottage as it was in the Upper Beach days).

My Craft

The new deck needed a décor element to take your eye away from our neighbour’s ladder hanging on the side of his house, so I thought, what better way to use our ancient window?

I say “my craft” with some humor since I actually did very little of it. JT kindly prepped and painted this lovely ancient window frame, cut out the plywood board inserts and painted them too. All I did was the fun part: cut out and apply the tin, and then create a hanging mechanism for the tea light holders.

Close up of My Craft

The distressed tin background is meant to reflect the candle light.I used little silver thumb tacks to ‘rivet’ the tin onto the plywood background. I am really pleased with the results. So that is “my craft”

Today is Canada Day, therefore everthing is closed (thank goodness we stocked up from The Depot, the LCBO and Metro!).  We got off to a great start and skirted the back of the deck. By 12:30ish we had the arbour up and capped. Lunch was a tasty wrap and a tower of tomatoes and buffalo mozarella….YUM.

Wraps with Tomato and Buffalo Mozerella Tower

Although the weather forecast called for rain, we didn’t get any! YIPEEEEEE. We worked like crazy to get the top box finished for the steps from the living room and by the end of the day, JT was skirting behind the BBQ and I was cleaning up.

The deck is done, but the steps to the patio still need to be done, and you know what that means…Trip #6 to The Depot tomorrow morning!

The Cocktail Lounge Arbour

The Cocktail Lounge

The Reclaimed Dining Area

Cocktails with Hungarian Cheese Sticks (my Aunte Agi’s recipe) will be served promptly at 5:30 on the New, Mother of All Mothers, Cocktail Lounge (furniture is TBD, we will use this in the meantime). Shortly thereafter, dinner will be served de plein air (as they say) in the newly reclaimed dining area! Cheers!

The morning started out to be quite sunny. But clouds did manage to float in and we had a few minor showers, which didn’t stop us from working.

We got most of the uprights put up, ready for the lattice and we got the bottom box made for the steps from the sliding doors off the living room. The we broke for lunch.

Build Day 5 - the rain continues

During lunch, the skies opened up again and poured like there was no tomorrow. We decided to make our 5th trip to The Depot to pick up a few things. My bet was 4 JTs 5.

By the time we got home it was after 2pm and still raining, so we had to call it a day because tonight we are picking up our new Diesel Jetta and trading in the poor old buglette. Unfortunately, it is directly in cocktail hour. Cheers, anyway!

The New Diesel Jetta

The New Diesel Jetta

Paul and T are on vacation and they are in Hawaii. What the heck was I thinking that on MY vacation I would build a deck? There is not one muscle in my whole entire being that is not screeming and writhing with pain. Hawaii? Pain? Hawaii? Pain? Oh ma goh!

Today we got off to another good start: Trip #4 to The Depot. We ran out of screws (we have already used 300 and need another 300, or so!) and step stringers. Thank goodness for the drill with a screwdriver bit, otherwise I think I would have thrown myself onto a large sword by now!

We got on a roll and finished the decking by 1pm, at which time, we broke for lunch. During lunch loud, cracking thunder. I look up and the skies are black. We ran to get everthing in the garage, but just before I was able to grab the tray of food, the skies opened up and buckets of water poured down. Rain like no other. Then hail. It lasted about 10 minutes and then petered out to a light rain.

Sunny One Minute to Teaming Rain the Next

It rained pretty much the entire afternoon, but we managed to skirt the deck and get the stringers strung. Lowes sent the wrong deck boards for the steps so, guess what? Yep, another trip to The Depot!

Day 4 Deck Skirt

We’re also trying to figure out the steps from the sliding doors; they will be very tricky because the gas line for the BBQ comes our directly where the first step up is. We’ll figure it out. Here is a rendering.

Concept for Steps from Sliding Doors

And it’s that time of the afternoon again, yes, it is cocktail hour. Cheers!

Build Day 2 Weather

We started off OK at 9ish, but very overcast. We made a rookie error which cost about an hour and $20 but really 5.5 hours because it started teaming rain! And, of course, Trip #3 to Home Depot.

Mother Nature Hates Us

Rain, rain and more rain. At around 2:30 the rain stopped and we immediately got back into it.

We did well, but time, energy and screws ran out (the wood kind, get your mind out of the gutter). Here is our progress today:

6:30pm Progress

Weather permitting, we should be able to have cocktails on the new deck tomorrow! Cheers!

I am just getting too old for this type of sillyness! OHHHH my aching back.

To say Build Day 2 got off to a slow start is an understatement. Not for a lack to trying. One challenge after another. I won’t bore you with them, but suffice to say that we made our 2nd run to The Depot by 10am. JT bets 5 by the end of the build, I’m hoping for far less, but we already have the list for the next one (dare I guess 4???)

Here we are at 1pm…see what I mean about slow start?

Build Day 2 at 1pm

We got the old fence post cut (by hand), some more demo, I moved 9 cement blocks into position, blah blah blah blah blah!

But eventually and fortunately, we got on a bit of a roll, and by 5pm we had the base box accomplished (plus dug an extra post for support).

Build Day 2 at 5pm

Hopefully Build Day 3 will be smoother. For some god forsaken reason, both JT and I have this inhumane urge to finish quickly, even though I have the entire week off. Cocktails anyone?

We decided to get as much pre deck work done during the week as possible to allow for concentrated deck building during my time off.

Tuesday June 23 – Demo Day 1 (actually it was evening): Remove overgrown shrubs. Now THAT is manual labour. The root ball of one overgrown evergreen shrub was intensely embedded into the earth. On the plus side, we are quite fortunate that our soil is actually sand so digging isn’t that difficult!

Demo Day 1 - Remove Overgrown Shrubs

Demo Day 1 - Shrub Removal

JT did all of the demo himself during the day. It was horrible mainly because the deck was solidly built, but the temperature was absurd +30°C with high humidity. UGH!

Demo Day 2

Wednesday June 24 – Demo Day 2: I couldn’t believe what difference removing the pickets could make from looking out the living room doors — we could actually see our beautiful garden!

Demo'd

Jt brought the deck down in record time!

Demo Day 3

The space we gained was incredible!

Friday June 26 – Demo Day 4: JT spent removing debree so we would have space to work. That entire pile made its way to the driveway. All the new lumber which was delivered to our side yard on Thursday morning was moved into the garage to keep it safe and dry! Thanks JT, that was not the fun part!

The New Post

Friday June 26 Evening – Build Day 1: Building a deck onto an old house does not come without its challenges. We designed the deck with a large ‘arbour’ covering our neighbour’s brick wall (see photo above). For this we planned to sink four 6″ x 6″ posts (trying to keep consistent with the existing arbour) — no-can-do! It would seem that 3 out of the four existing fence posts are directly, exactly, couldn’t be more exact space where we wanted our new posts. In cement. Did I happen to mention that the existing posts were cemented into the same exact location where we wanted our new posts! UGH! (I may be saying that and perhaps a few choice words over the next week!).

Back to the drawing board, literally! What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I had planned to use my brawn over the week, wanted to turn brain off….

We came up with a plan. We will retrofit the existing posts to make them ‘look’ like 6″ x 6″’s – Obstacle 1 averted.

Unfortunately, post #2 was in the wrong place and fortunately, there was enough space to the right of it to dig a proper hole to sink another 4″ x 4″ so that we can have equal space for our lattice ‘arbour”.

And that is what we did Friday night. Of course, cockails thereafter!

When we decided to add onto our kitchen, we knew we had to give up our lovely cocktail deck JT and I built about a year or two after we moved into our home. But we had bigger plans! A new, bigger, better cocktail lounge to replace a semi useless, puney little deck off the living room! The mother of all mother cocktail lounges!

We had planned to put on this new and improved deck during the reno, but because of timing and such, we were were not able to then. We decided it was time, so I am taking a week off to help my husband build a deck. Believe it or not, I love this type of manual labour, blue job or not! A few photos for a general time line:

Pre Cocktail Area 2001 at the time we purchased the home

Cocktail Area Before Reno around 2002-3

Cocktail Area During Reno 2007

Cocktail Area after the Reno 2008

Site of the Upcoming Mother of all Cocktail Lounges