A roof over our heads

Is it a metal roof, or one made of low, clingy clouds? Certainly it's a roof that will fit in with whatever Mother Nature decides on weather-wise.

Seeing the roof sitting so proudly atop our new nest is a lovely sight to see from our distant New Zealand vantage point. Denin Homes takes photos pretty much every week, and posts them to our log-in site. They generally are viewable at our end on Saturday mornings - for the past 16 weeks, that's been another reason to look forward to weekends!

But the batch that arrived this Saturday am only included a glimpse of the roof. We mentioned that during our Skype meeting with Caleb and Hillary that morning. I suspect it was Caleb himself who darted over to the site and snapped off a few more pics, including the handsome one above.

The rest of the windows and doors will be put into place this week, along with the siding. That will then mark the official 'it's now weather tight' milestone for the project. The Denim team can then head indoors for the winter.

We'll be peeking in the windows every so often to see how the interior work is going,

Meanwhile, behind the scenes the team involved in this project includes Shelley at Burchell MacDougall Lawyers in Wolfville and Tammy at the Wolfville branch of Royal Bank of Canada - both play a key role in helping us pay the bills.

Sue is also working closely with Stephanie, who leads interior design work at Denim and is the owner of Mariposa Interiors in Wolfville. I'll leave it for Sue to talk about the invaluable assistance Stephanie is providing us. We'll see a lot more of her impact as the project heads indoors.

Flatland

This is the floor plan for the house. It should have featured in an earlier post, but until today I couldn't work out how to get it from a giant pdf plan file into here. Today I had the old genius screen grab idea. Voila.

This house is designed especially for us. Two bookish home-bodies who like to throw dinner parties. And our dog. I'd call it very practical and slightly quirky, just like us. It's also designed to make the most of natural energy -- sun and the heat in the earth under the house.

The original plan was the work of our friend Thom, who was stuck at our place in Wellington for a few weeks back in 2011, and used the time to observe our habits and design us a house for the way we really live. We've worked with Josh the designer at Denim Homes to simplify and tweak things a bit since that first drawing, but all the elements are still there. In no particular order:

The utilidor
In the practical department, I'd say my favourite feature is the utilidor (utility corridor) running between the garage and the greenhouse, with loads of storage space, a laundry, a loo and wash-up area, and a giant freezer. I judge a room design by my ability to imagine using it, and from the first time I saw it drawn, I was striding through it from the garage with a wheelbarrow full of groceries, hopping in from the garden to dump off a crop of carrots, popping out to the cool storage area to grab a jar of fermented veges, or just hiding out there for the fun of it. I love that it lets us do all the messy things without trapsing through the house. It's a mud room on steroids.

The greenhouse
This was a must-have to extend the growing season (and to allow at least a chance for me to grow lemons and figs in Nova Scotia, which I fully intend to do). We deliberately had the house foundation with its frost wall extended out to the greenhouse. In theory this means plants will never freeze in here, even if it is -20 outside (and it well could be). It's 20 ft x 10 ft. Sorry metric readers. We've had to switch back to imperial measures -- I can't believe how easy it was to regress.

The first shoots of the greenhouse -- the footing for the frost wall.

The media room (aka man cave)
Finally, the chance to banish the TV to its own room. Now you can watch the game or a movie with flaming guns and explosions, and the rest of the house can remain a quiet sanctuary. It will also allow for private viewings of mock-worthy home reno and other reality shows. There are no windows, a lovely dark cork floor, nice subtle lighting. Yum.

Sitting room
This wee spot off the main living room should be cosy or cool, depending on the season. I imagine curling up with a book in there after dark in the winter. Or having a nap there on a really hot day in summer. There's a fireplace in there, small and mostly for ambiance and a backup for the electricity.

Living room
The dining table will be in here, and some other seating which isn't clear in our minds yet, but this will be a serious garden viewing and bird watching spot, with big windows and glass doors. It looks down the length of the back yard, and will get the morning sun.

Flex room
Lots of flex here. A guest room and bathroom, with its own outside door, and enough room for a reading chair and table. I'm hoping to get a Murphy bed in here, so we're not using all the floor space up when we don't have guests... because this is also a tiny yoga studio where I will practice and maybe even teach tiny classes. It's also a sewing room. And those are just my plans for it; who knows what ideas dc might have up his sleeve.

Master closet
The bedroom is pretty standard, but I'm stoked about this walk-through closet (an idea we picked up from our dear friends in Arrowtown). This will be all the storage we need for clothes and linen, we won't need any furniture in the bedroom aside from the bed.

We're also going to pinch this hotel room idea for the shelf over the bed and simple side tables.

Kitchen
All nice and standard, and based roughly on the look and functionality of our kitchen now, which we love. A new build was a chance to get a built-in bookshelf for our cook books, which will be on the end of the pantry cabinets.

Airlock
I have to mention the airlock, just for its novelty factor. Obviously we don't need things like this in New Zealand, but in eastern Canada, we do. It's to stop the frozen air flooding into your house when you open the front door. So you come into the air lock, shut the door, brush all the snow off, kick off your boots... and then open the next door into the house. Weird, I know, but there you go! I'm actually really looking forward to trying it out. I know it's not a toy, but hey...

So that's the run-down of the flat plan. I've imagined walking through this place so many times... waking up early and going outside to the garden, cooking, feeding just us, feeding a crowd, reading, writing... it's all in the imagination, but it's so clear. Not quite in 3D technicolour, but almost.

The great outdoors (aka outdoor dining area)
There's one more 'room' that warrants mention, and sk has handed me the pen to tell this particular tale. The cosy space outside the living/dining area and in front of the greenhouse will - I suspect - become a go-to spot for eating and relaxing for at least three seasons of the year. It won't look like much when we first arrive, but it will eventually grow into an outdoor kitchen and dining area. maybe a fire pit and cosy chairs just out of the frame. A resting spot while pulling weeds and harvesting crops, or simply relaxing with a coffee and the Globe and Mail. We will have propane feeding the house (no natural gas in this part of NS), and have included a line to this space - ready and waiting for when and where we plant the outdoor kitchen.

In the frame

So this is what our house will look like.

After months of staring at one-dimensional renderings, there's nothing like a couple weeks of good weather, skilled people with hammers and a load of lumber to turn those drawings into, well, the framework of our house.

This has been the November activity on Orchard, and it sets the stage for the metal roof (Sue had to remind me what colour we eventually settled on - I won't give it away here) and siding (no, I can't remember the colour of that either). Both tasks should be completed before the Christmas break.

The view from Orchard Avenue

The view from the other end

But let me linger on the framing stage. This is the part that takes me back 50 years or so, to the community just down the road - Kentville. We moved to a brand new house in a brand new sub-division in Kentville in 1960. Ours was the second or third house to be completed on the street, and over the course of the next three years that we lived there, a favourite activity of some of us local kids was visiting - after the builders had departed for the day - various housing projects on our street.

We weren't up to mischief; mostly just nosing around and being curious, while keeping an eye peeled for protruding nails. As kids, we were forbidden by our mothers to be on these sites; I suspect for the very same nail-in-foot fear. We did it anyway, with no safety incidents to report.

We were busted once by my mother. I suspect she simply spotted us from the kitchen window as my brother and I wandered around the building site just up the street and within line-of-sight of our house. My memory of that bust was being sent to bed without supper. It was the first and only time that happened. And I would have eventually had a supper if I hadn't pretended I was asleep when mum checked in on us a couple of times.

I think that ended my building site wanderings. But I still remember the smell of the wood and concrete and freshly turned earth. Those memories are triggered when I look at the photos from our building site. Thanks to Caleb and Jeff at Denim Homes for snapping photos of the project.

The day-to-day of long distance building

If it wasn't for the internet, we'd never be able to pull this off. The internet helps us deal with the long distance relationship thing, and also means the time differences between New Zealand and Nova Scotia don't derail us. Here's how things have been working.

We are up and about around 6am here in New Zealand. Most days there are emails from Hillary or Stephanie waiting for us. The glass shower shield we picked is too small for the space. Would we like this one or that one (links to manufacturers websites) or do we have another preference? Have we set up an account with Nova Scotia Power yet? Have we signed off the kitchen plans? Did we decide on the dark or the light finish on the doors? There's a change order waiting on the project website for us to review and sign off. The foundations are finished, and framing will start as soon as it stops raining.

Every morning we get the feeling there have been busy people in Nova Scotia working on our house. If I fire a reply off immediately, I hear back from Hillary before she goes home for the day. Stephanie must work in the evenings, because well after business hours she's quick with a reply and advice about the finer details of the bathroom finishes. Then they go to bed, dc and I talk, do some internet research, and email our decisions back. Waiting for them when they get to work in the morning, and we're sound asleep again. It works really well.

Denim has a project management website for clients, so we can log in at any time and see what's going on. All our documents are there (plans, change orders etc) and photos of the building site. Jeff is the site manager. He takes photos on his phone, presses a button and we can see them on our client site. I love that.

On Friday morning we get our weekly official project update from Hillary. That's always exciting. She also usually gives me a weather update -- I think to help me get prepared for this new climate experience!

On the home front, we've loosely divvied up jobs, depending on our levels of interest and expertise. dc is managing everything to do with wires, fibres and cables. He's also in charge of large appliances, the bank and the lawyer. I'm handling the interior finishes, the kitchen and lighting. We consult each other, but don't drown each other in details. It works really well.

Laying the foundations

This is the team. Hillary from Denim Homes, project manager and details whizz. She's keeping all the numbers together, sending us regular updates about what's happening on the job, putting us in touch with the right local people we need to contact, and chasing things up so everything happens in the right order at the right time. Hillary is also an energy efficiency specialist, so she's helped us make many decisions about materials and design to ensure we have the most energy efficient house we can afford.

Next to her, in the plaid shirt is Caleb. He's the chief of Denim Homes. Caleb has had a ready and intelligent answer to every single question we've asked (and we've asked heaps) during this process. He obviously knows what he's doing -- and everyone in town we talked to had good things to say about him and his company.

In the red cap is dc. Client.

And in front of dc, in the red shirt is Kari, the owner of Down to Earth landscaping. Kari is in charge of everything outside the house. She really shares our vision for a natural landscape, home to birds, bees, native plants, humans and a dog.

I took this picture before the bulldozer arrived. We were discussing the orientation of the house. Would it face South or "solar South" which was several degrees more South than regular South. North and South aren't as fixed as you'd think. This needs to be a South-facing house to catch the sun. (In New Zealand, you want a North-facing house, being in the Southern hemisphere.)  But solar South orientation -- the one that would get us the absolute maximum sun available -- put the house on too harsh an angle, and messed with the views from the living room. So we opted for regular South. Still plenty of sun, but views down the whole acre from the living areas, and a better feeling of privacy.

______________
When we left Wolfville at the end of August, the front of the land had been cleared of scrub and weeds, and the beautiful red soil was piled up into huge mounds around the perimeter of the site. One piece of advice our landscaper, Kari, gave us was "Don't let anything leave the site while the building is happening. We will use it all for the landscaping." Good point. Nothing is leaving the site.

Over September and October, the foundation has been put in. Compared to what we do in New Zealand it's pretty extreme. They dig a trench 4 ft deep -- that's 1.2 metres. This is to get the floor insulation under the frost line. It's staggering to me, but the ground freezes a meter deep there. Yikes!

I think this is the greenhouse, attached to the back of the house.

Then they build a concrete frost wall:

The front door

Then they load up with insulation:

Garage, front door and guest room

And lay all manner of plumbing stuff:

Looking from the master bedroom, across the sitting room into the utilidor (utility corridor)

Put all that soil back in and Bob's your foundation:

View from the street

All that happened over the past couple of months. We watched from afar. This can be a bit of a dangerous thing. We were convinced the orientation of the slab was wrong -- not solar South, or even regular South, but even less South. I was wondering why there seemed to be a toilet in the hallway. A little long-distance knowledge can be a dangerous thing!

August was decision month

We went to Nova Scotia in August for 12 days to make all the decisions that needed to be made in person. We made an awful lot of decisions during that visit.

Taps, sinks, doors, door handles, skirting boards, floors, toilets, tiles, siding, roof colour, position of lights and light switches, wood stove and hearth, kitchen, appliances, tiles, bath tub, vanities, paint colour... what way the windows would open... I'm really proud of us that we got through that without a single scuffle or scrape. We just seemed to know what would work for us, and we each knew when the other had a bit more knowledge or passion about a particular detail, and let them go with it.

We were guided every step of the way by the wonderful team at Denim Homes. Stephanie, their interior designer was a delight to work with. She took the time to get to know our tastes, left us alone to make initial decisions, and steered us straight when she thought it was a decision we'd regret. She kept us sitting at the table until every tap and door knob was nailed down (not literally). She came out to the flooring showroom and helped us get the cork to match the bamboo to match the tiles. She zeroed in on perfect shades of grey for the paint work, and got the roof matching the windows matching the siding.

At this point the house is still just a concept, a drawing. I think I know what it's going to be like when it's built. I think we'll be happy with the decisions we've made, but I don't know for sure. I just take the time to imagine being there, in slow motion. I imagine driving up the driveway, and seeing the front door. I imagine reaching for the door handle, stepping into the airlock (yes, people, this house has an airlock! It's really just an entrance to the entrance, which helps keep the house warm in winter, and gives you somewhere to shake the snow off!). I imagine looking down the hall, looking up at the ceiling, walking down to the kitchen... There's only so much imagining I can do, but I think it's all going to be great when it's done.

It was a holiday of sorts, with a working rhythm to it. We stayed at our favourite Wolfville accommodation, perfectly named The Cottage in Wolfville. We'd wake up, make a breakfast of muesli, yogurt and the gorgeous local blueberres. We'd sip coffee in the sun for an hour, and read the online papers. Then we'd go to work. That might mean a trip to the bathroom showroom in Dartmouth, a meeting with Hillary and Caleb at Denim, an appointment with the bank, a cruise around the appliances at Sears, or a drive in the Valley to the fireplace showroom. We had our list for the day, and we dutifully ticked everything off it. We'd pop out to Fox Hill Cheese House for an ice cream if time allowed, we'd stop in at one of the grocery stores or supermarkets for our dinner supplies... unless it was Wednesday and we'd go to the Wolfville Farmers' Market instead. We'd come home, make dinner, eat outside. We might walk up to the land to check on what it was looking like at that time of day. Was it still sunny? Was there a breeze? We'd walk back to the cottage, go to bed exhausted and wake up and do it again.

It's strange being in a place that's going to be home, but isn't quite home yet. All the time on this trip I was trying to imagine living in Wolfville rather than visiting it. That's actually really hard to do. I've only ever been there in summer, and I know (from the weather web cams mostly) that it's not leafy green and warm all the time. It's going to be snowy and bloody cold a lot of the time. I don't know how to imagine that, as I've never lived anywhere like that before.

But this whole exercise is a bit of a mystery, so really the only option is to go with the flow, make the best decisions we can, and enjoy the ride.

The day before we left Wolfville, we got to see the bulldozer start flattening the building site. That was pretty exciting. Three years since we bought the land, we were finally seeing some action on the site. The best thing for me was to see how gorgeous the soil was under all that scrub and weeds. It was red and rich and crumbly, just like you want soil to be.

It's starting to feel real

It's three years since that day in Melbourne, when we made the offer on the acre in Nova Scotia. In those three years we've bought the land, we're 95% complete with house plans and a landscape plan. We've booked tickets for a visit in August, and we're planning to move to there in early April 2015. When I re-read that, it sounds like a heck of a lot of progress in three short years, but it's actually felt like a lot of slow motion to us (who will not be remembered for our patience!). Here's the quick version of how we got from April 2011 to here -- less than a year out from moving back to Canada.

2011 -- offer to ownership
The offer was quickly accepted, and all we needed to do was satisfy our only condition -- that one of us stood on the land, and liked the feel of it. David was more flexible with his working hours at the time, so he headed off to do the deed. When he rang me from a phone box to report "mission accomplished", he sounded a bit miserable. It was raining and cold, he'd been en route for 36-ish hours, and what we thought was a flat acre, actually sloped downhill in the back corner. But over the next few days he walked the land over and over, declared it a good piece of land, and we bought it.

In November 2011, our dear friends T + J came to New Zealand for the first time. That trip is a story in itself, but the short version is that J got shingles in her head, was seriously sick, and was housebound for 5 weeks. The upside to that story was that we had two architects captive in our house, observing our patterns and habits. With nothing else to do, they drew a floor plan for our Nova Scotia nest. Our new house started taking shape in our imaginations.

2012 -- we both stand on the land

The christening party.

14 months later, in July 2012, we both stood on the land together, and T + J (fully recovered) came to see it too. I loved it. Loved It. David was very relieved. Turns out he was worried that maybe I'd get here and be disappointed. But no. I immediately felt that this was a special piece of land. Yes it was sunny, the birds were chirping, and there was huge patch of wild raspberries down the back (sold!). But those things aside, it just felt like home, right away, and I was happy.

A new method of surveying.

Before this visit, we spent many hours online looking for a builder and landscaper. We zeroed in on Denim Homes, who seemed to have the best local expertise and reputation for energy efficient house construction, and Down to Earth landscapers, who we just sensed would be a good fit for us. (OK, judging purely from the photos on their website, I loved them.) This visit was a chance to see if the chemistry was right -- to see if we felt comfortable entrusting a big part of our dream to these people. It was, and we did. The people at Denim were smart, knowledgeable, and gave us confidence our nest would be in the best hands. Kari from Down to Earth stood with us on the land, listened to us dreaming out loud, then said matter-of-factly "I get it! You want to live in a nature park!". We'd picked a good team.

2013 -- bound for Nova Slowtia

2013 was the year I seriously started wondering if this project would Ever Happen. It took more than 2 months to move a few thousand dollars between our bank on Main St Wolfville to the builder's bank a few kilometers down the road. Don't ask me why, except that internet banking ain't what it used to be! That one transaction involved faxes and mail and real signatues in real ink and a cheque to be picked up at the branch teller! But we got there. 

We've spent the best part of 18 months going back and forth with the house plans, getting various options costed. We mostly communicate by email, and occasionally have a Skype meeting. We are almost at the point of signing the contract with the builder. Still ironing out a few details.

We lost contact with the landscaper for most of 2013, but we persisted and we're now all busily sorting out the components of our nature park. There won't be an inch of lawn on the whole acre. How about that! 

2014 -- the home stretch?
If you drove up to the acre on Orchard Ave today, you wouldn't think "home stretch". It looks exactly as it was three years ago when David stood on it for the first time, and two years ago when I stood on it for the first time -- scrubby and full of promise.

But the dream is getting closer. We'll visit again in August and spend a couple of weeks finalising all the fixtures and finishes for the house, and maybe even watch the bulldozers roll in and start clearing the building site. We'll walk the future pathways, say hello to the fledgling orchard which will likely be partially planted by then. I'm going to pick a very special tree and plant it myself -- a tree to watch carefully, and get to know, as I get to know the land. I am going to have to learn a whole new way of gardening in this place -- a new scale (the acre is 24 times bigger than our current section), a new climate (there will be real winter!), a new flora and fauna altogether. I'm going to want a special tree with me on that journey.