Landed

We’re here. It was a long long journey. 15,345 km (thanks Google), four flights, from the 41st parallel in the Southern Hemisphere to the 45th in the Northern. From the end of a gloriously warm dry summer in Wellington to the end of the snowiest winter in years in Nova Scotia. It was a ten-year journey too, all the way home to New Zealand and all the way back to Canada.

We landed in Halifax late Sunday evening, and stayed at the airport hotel. We woke up to this view out the hotel window. It was fascinating for the snow, but even more interesting was the mangled plane at the far end of the runway (doesn't show in the photo, but we could see it). It crash-landed earlier in the day, no casualties. I’m really glad I didn’t know about that until we’d finished all our flying for this trip. The first we heard of it was when we collapsed onto the hotel bed, connected to the wifi and started reading emails titled “OMG, are you OK?” We were OK. The plane at the end of the runway had seen better landings.

Monday we picked up a rental car, beelined for Sears and bought sheets, pillows, a duvet and a toaster, and headed for Wolfville to check out the new house. In my mind I was going through all the home reno reality TV shows I used to be addicted to. This was like having our very own 'reveal', exciting but nerve-wracking. Architectural plans and drawings are all very well, but what’s the place going to actually feel like? Are the rooms going to be big enough? Will the kitchen roast a perfect chicken every time? What about the views out the window? The light? The colours, the flooring and tiles we picked months ago in the middle of a whirlwind summer visit? No wonder I’d been having so many heart palpitations! This is our home, finished, and we’ve never even been inside it yet. 

We drove up the street, and into our driveway. The house was the same size and shape and colour as it had been in the photos, and it still looked lovely. It was surrounded in deep snow, and looked absolutely charming.

There were three things that struck me about the house when we walked in, three qualities that have stayed front of mind as we get into the day-to-day rhythm of living here. This house is warm, open, and calm. (Interesting that those are qualities I work to cultivate in myself, and here they are already built into the house. Marvellous. I hope they rub off.)

Warm 

This place gets a lot of sunshine, being oriented to the South and having lots of big, triple glazed windows. The windows feel like radiant heater panels when the sun has been on them. The house is super insulated and air tight so the heat from the sun gets trapped in the house. When there’s no sunshine, there’s a super quiet heat pump to warm us up. But on a sunny day, even when it's minus something outside, the house heats itself and is very comfortable. 

We knew this in theory, but to experience it first hand is intriguing and almost puzzling. It really does work, exactly they way it's supposed to. 

The mostly unfurnished living area. The floor is cork tile, strangely warm underfoot, even though it's not heated.

Our working, eating, and newspaper reading station. 

Open

This is a pretty small house by neighbourhood standards--167 square meters (1,800 square feet). But it feels big because of the open plan design, the wide central hallway, and the lofted ceilings in the hall and living room. The big windows also add to the sense of space. It also feels big to us because it is the biggest place we've ever lived; we've been mostly apartment and small urban house dwellers until now.

And it probably helps that there is hardly any furniture in here yet. (We've got a truckload arriving mid May.)

Calm

There is a lot that contributes to the sense of calm here. The colour scheme is calm. The materials are mostly natural (cork, bamboo, wood, stone). Being surrounded by trees and snow and dirt is calm. The triple glazed windows and thick insulated walls mute noise from the outside. I'm surprised at all the different bird calls when I go outside; we can only hear the crows from inside.

The best-dressed room in the house, with a cosy ring-side view of the snow.

We've been here almost three weeks now. Springtime has definitely arrived, and the snow is disappearing to reveal just how much soil we have on our hands here.

Out the bedroom window

Out the living room widow

Me on the site of the soon-to-be greenhouse.

We’re really happy with our warm, open, calm home and our giant-sized garden.

Now that we're here, we can appreciate what a big thing it was to have this place built while we were on the other side of the world. It has been nerve-wracking watching from a distance as it got up off the drawing plans and into life-sized 3D. But we needn’t have worried. It’s good as gold.

Lovely fluffy white stuff

How lovely is this? The blue sky, the long low house profile, and all that lovely fluffy snow. All the recent photos of the exterior of the house are snowy. Every time I see one, I get a bit giggly. 

This shot of a corner of the living room really caught my attention. Where did that hill come from? And how gorgeous would it be to have a window seat there, loaded up with soft cushions and blankets, a cup of tea and a good book?

Snow is romantic from a distance. It's really got me under its spell at the moment. I have lived in snow before, just once for a couple of months, in January and February in Pennsylvania. It was very very snowy, and I was in love. The first day there, as we were driving past an open field, I shouted from the back of the car, "Stop! I want to get out!" I got out, stepped onto the glorious white stuff, and immediately slipped in up to my armpits. I had to be dragged out, laughing hysterically of course. That was when I started to understand the immensity of it. 

But back to the snow in Nova Scotia. There have been record snow falls this year, but still work progresses on the house. 

Many days it's too cold for putting up siding, but slowly, surely the house is being clad. The siding is cement board, which we chose for its low maintenance needs--it won't need to be painted until we're underground, if ever. We found out during the design process that the siding material didn't have much impact on the insulation of the house -- that's mostly determined by the foam in the thick walls. I am really pleased with how this colour looks. It's quite weird to choose a house colour from a little square sample in a windowless boardroom... but it worked out. I reckon it looks particularly good against the snow. 

Here's a grey day and dirty driveway, just for a reality check.

Even though it's been slow going on the outside, inside the house things have been charging ahead. During January and February, inside rooms got framed, the lighting and electric wiring got done, the whole place got insulated, and the dry walling got done. 

The kitchen looks incredibly full of promise to me. I'm going to learn how to make amazing ice cream in this kitchen, come summer.

The painters have been through, and the interior doors and trimming is happening. 

The closet and headboard wall is shaping up. That hole is for a recessed over-the-bed shelf. The paintwork is really grey, not beigy... I hope!

This is the hallway, looking straight on to the airlock. Open coat closet on the right, guest room and bathroom on the left. The photos of the doors were all looking a bit beige, but I'm assuming they are wrapped in some kind of protective covering, and will be sparkly white when unwrapped.

The plan is for us to move in to this house in one month and 2 days. I'm half hoping it will be springtime when we arrive. And the other half of me hopes there's still heaps of snow around. 

The gardening issue

The most frequently asked question when I tell people we're moving to Nova Scotia is "Will you be able to garden there? Like in winter?"

You see, in Wellington, I can garden all year round. We have never had a frost in the five years we've been at this house -- unless you count a tiny dusting of it on the car windscreen one morning in June 2010. We grow lettuce, all sorts of herbs, green onions, and all sorts of greens outside, year round. Basically, nothing dies back, it just keeps on growing.

So, I look on the Denim Homes client website most days, and there's a weather app on there that swings madly from -10 to +3, back to -5 and up to zero... all over the map. Right now it says "-4, feels like -9. The worst one I saw recently was -29. I actually didn't believe that one... surely a malfunction in someone's thermometer?

Anyhoo. I am a gardener, and I fully intend to garden year round in Nova Scotia. Those of you who know me know that when I set my mind on something, I'm doing it. Hence the glasshouse extension.

That's the glasshouse, sticking out from back of the house. It's got a frostwall around its foundation, just like the house has, so it will hang on to the heat of the earth from about a meter down. It won't freeze, in other words. The back wall will be insulated just like the house walls. All we need now are some glass walls and a glass roof, and I will be a year-round gardener in Nova Scotia.

I truly hope this isn't a pipe dream. I've got my heart set on it. And it looks like it will be a gorgeous sun trap. The door runs from the Utilidor into the greeenhouse, and that little window is just a peep hole from the kitchen. I will be able to see what's growing from the kitchen sink. Perfect.

The only hitch with all of this, is that my expectations of a glasshouse for Nova Scotia conditions, and what is actually required of a glasshouse in that climate are miles apart. (That's a kind way of saying I haven't got a clue.) I was busy searching online for nice garden glasshouses, that didn't cost much, thinking how perfect they would be for extending the growing season. The quote came in, and frankly I was stunned. The specs on these rooms blew me away. But it has forced me to admit that I just don't get it yet. I don't know what that winter is going to be like.

I've been back and forth with the designer and the suppliers about this glasshouse so many times. But here's where it's standing, still a sketch, waiting for me to sign it off.

It looks exactly the way I imagined it. It costs way more than I imagined. That's because it's made of super winter-proof glass, with super insulated aluminium joints. It's also got bug screens (that's another thing nobody in New Zealand has ever heard of, except in their tents!) I just need to accept this is what I need to be a winter gardener in Nova Scotia. The people who live there know better than I do. Of course they do.

So I'm going sign off on the drawing, and get over myself on the extra cost. The garden is definitely my happy place. It's the place I get inspired, the place I get absorbed and lose track of time (that's being in the zone I guess). Plants and me, we have something ancient and profound going on. We're going to have the best glasshouse ever!

I've just popped out to the Wellington tiny glasshouse. It's +29 out there.