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.

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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. 

In the beginning.....

We were in Melbourne, Australia, when we decided to make an offer to the owner of this one-acre lot on Orchard Avenue in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. That was in mid-April 2011.

By then, we already had our sights on Wolfville as the next destination on our journey together – a journey that started in a corporate boardroom in Vancouver in 1995 and that, nine years later, took us to New Zealand - initially to Arrowtown and, after a few years, to our current nest in Wellington.

I don’t recall when we settled on Wolfville as our next destination. But that decision was followed by countless hours trolling through listings on mls.ca and Property Guys looking at houses, none of which stirred us. We had renovated two nests already, so knew that what-you-see doesn’t have to be what-you-get. But even renovations have to live within the existing bones of a nest.

We were ready for a fresh start. For a nest where no nest currently existed. I don’t know which of us came to the light bulb moment first – why not build our own nest from scratch? – but it immediately energized us. No more peeking through listing windows. Just show us the wide open spaces, thank you very much.

And that’s what happened on Orchard Avenue. It began as a Property Guys listing, followed by email exchanges with the owner; exchanges that continued while we were on our Melbourne holiday. Then an offer, a counter-offer and then an accepted offer. All by email.

Technology had taken us this far, but a real journey was required to complete the deal. Actually, we could have closed the deal long-distance, but for one tiny detail – neither of us had actually stood on this land, had not walked it, nor gazed up from under the tree (actually two intertwined trees) that dominated the posted images. That was a journey I needed to take.