We moved from Austria to Canada and now have a very different life! We're finishing our house, we are trying to provide as much for ourselves as we can, and we homeschool. It is all an adventure!
We celebrated today with homemade Austrian Salzstangerl and Bretzel,
and our last jars of Oma's Marillenmarmalade and Erdbeermarmalade. :-)
It is April 17, 2020 and today we are celebrating one year since we broke ground to start building our home! It is exciting to look back and to see just how far we have come. We are not yet in the house, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel! We hope to be moved in, to an un-finished but liveable house, in 5-6 weeks. It will be amazing to have our own place again- and to have the land to raise some animals and a garden. This was our hope in moving to Canada, to be able to accomplish this. Dominik and Jonathan have worked almost every day together during this last year- a construction apprenticeship that Jonathan wouldn't have otherwise had. He has learned as Dominik has learned, how to do construction and wiring and plumbing and tiling- the list is endless! We did have contractor help at the very beginning, to get the framing done, but everything else that we could do ourselves we have. We didn't drill the well or wire the breaker panel, but the rest is our work. We are thankful now that spring is coming (slowly- it is actually snowing again today!!!) because it will make work more pleasant.
We have reached the point now that we are able to put in drywall and tile. Floors will come later. Our priority is that we can just move in. For that we need a bathroom, water, and septic. The septic should come in early May. The well is drilled and we are just waiting on the well pump to be delivered. The hydro is about to be connected. As soon as it is warm enough Dominik will complete the tiling in the toilets and bathroom/shower. The bath tub that we would like is hundreds of dollars cheaper in the United States, so we will have to wait until the border opens to get that! We will paint the plywood floors to help keep them cleaner until we can put in the wooden flooring, which we will make ourselves. The outside of the house, to be board and batten, will come in late summer or early autumn- depending on whether or not Dominik will manage to get to Austria to work again this summer.
I hope that you enjoy this little look back at the last year of building. The video is the second one in the process. :-)
Breaking Ground: April 17, 2019
First view from the roadside
Ready to pour the footings
Footings poured!
Starting the foundation
Working together
Floor joists and floor boards going on
The front door area and floor
The first wall is up!
Outer walls and one inner are done!
It is a family job.
Roof joists delivered
Roof joists are on!
It's beginning to look like a house!
Thankful for help getting the metal roof on.
We had a break in Austria in July for a wedding and for work.
In early September the windows and doors were in.
The kids helped a lot insulating the outer walls.
Autumn came beautifully. Dominik worked all winter on wiring and plumbing and other details.
Finally we can start drywalling!
Some ceilings are in!
My pocket-door pantry is closed in.
A WC is almost closed in.
Here is the next video in Jonathan's series. :-)
From Jonathan:
Just a few more
interesting things that were not in the video. The steel beams were dropped by
a big truck just OUTSIDE the foundation. Well, they actually slid off the back
and the truck just drove away. Then we had the problem of how to get them
INSIDE the foundation so they could support the floor. Using a few logs (and
five people) we were able to roll them in. Almost like the Egyptians managed to
move 40 ton blocks of rock to build the pyramids. Just on a smaller scale. At
least we had a winch to lift them up.
Even though every
floor truss had to be cut to size and are built to hold a lot of weight, it went
pretty fast. Some old multi-storey houses are built without floor trusses, with
only one heavy beam across the middle to support the whole house. Otherwise, installation
went so fast that there isn´t anything else to say on that subject.
Building code says that
we have to glue, nail and screw the sub-floor. So I hope it won´t ever move. If
gluing, nailing and screwing still aren´t enough I don´t know what else you
could do.
For the framing
(putting up the outside walls), several other people came to help. There was a
contractor who was half Portuguese who was really happy that we were European.
In his words: Europeans know how to work (no offense 😊).
There was a bit of a wind going when we were lifting up the walls, so we
weren´t sure if the wind was going to blow the wall over the side of the house.
Fortunately, there was no problem at all. When we were lifting up the longest
wall, (on the south side) it didn´t seem like I was doing any lifting at all.
Nor did it to my dad. It seemed that the guy in between us was lifting up the
whole wall himself. And that was the heaviest wall of all. We might have been
lifting the other walls, but we were both glad that he was between us.
We built the front doorway
in 4 feet (1.22 meters) from the front wall, because, who needs a 13 foot
hallway (3.96 meters)? Maybe a king. But we aren´t kings, so we don´t need our
entry way that long. If we were kings we would probably be living somewhere
else. And our holiday resort would be somewhere on a tropical island.
While doing the framing
the blackflies were insane. They were very annoying when we laid the
foundation, but not this bad. It became even worse because it got very warm
during the day and the blackflies still didn´t want to go away. At one point I
was debating putting on a bug hat. In the end I just used a thick sweater with
a hood. There was something very interesting about those blackflies. They
didn´t bite us. They would be in our face and buzzing around, just asking for
trouble. But our faces were fine. I didn´t use any bug spray, and the person
who was using tons and tons of it had his arm bleeding from the blackflies. On
the other hand, he was only wearing a t-shirt or a thin, long sleeved t-shirt.
Maybe bug spray attracts those kinds of black flies.
Well, that little burst of writing in December didn't last, did it? I was teaching and we're building and time got away from me! Now, I'm home (like most of the world) but we are still building...with an even greater sense of urgency. Well, we're pressing on with a light at the end of the tunnel. We hope to move in by the middle of May, Lord willing. But for now, we're going to take a quick look back because we have a video to show you! The only real update from the last blog is that we won't be off-grid. It would have been wonderful, but in the end it didn't work out to be as cost-efficient as to make it worth-while. The fuel costs to run a large generator, which would need to run every day for a few hours in the winter, plus the cost of the generator itself (and I don't mean the kind from Canadian Tire!) put our calculations over the top. We are still focused on being energy-efficient but now we will have a much lower initial cost. -Cathy
From Jonathan:
Finally, after almost 12 months, we have our first video of building our house. When you´re building a house, you normally have hardly any time for other things (like making videos). But here it is: Video number one, of us building our house. Enjoy.
There were also some other steps, that you did not see on video, for example:
Before we were able to scrape off the dirt we had to move mple:some frozen cedar logs (in April). The only way we managed that was with the help of the neighbor, who came with his tractor to move them away.
We also had to cut down some trees and clear away some bushes.
And, (in case you´re wondering) here is what happened to the flat tire that started coming off: We called the rental company and they told us that their insurance does not cover a flat tire. So it´s our responsibility. They recommended somebody who fixes tires though. He pulled up in a bright yellow pick up truck with all his equipment.....and left less than an hour later with a big smile on his face (fixing the tire wasn´t cheap). Then when we were going to park it for the night, we started hearing a hissing noise. Another hole, in the same tire!!! The guy came back in the yellow truck and fixed the tire again, this time (luckily) only charging us 20 dollars for the second fix.
After the backhoe had scraped off all the dirt, it was left at the side of the road by our property for a few days, with the name of the company potrayed for everybody driving by to see. That was some cheap advertising for them. They even got payed for it!!!
From the beginning of the video to the end of it was a time period of about 1 month, because we had to wait for,the building permit to come through, good weather, weekdays (because of helpers) and more good weather.
The laying of the concrete blocks themselves took about a week, we were hoping for it to take two days, although it looks so fast in the video.
More to come, if we can find time to write and edit videos.😉
Isn't it amazing how quickly time flies by? Not just when having fun but when you're busy. Well, with homeschooling five kids, building a house and living with my parents we're quite busy already. But then throw into the mix that Dominik goes to work full-time and I fall back to part-time! Plus hockey and dancing and a few riding lessons thrown in for fun! It's been fine but we are really thankful that Christmas is here! It is lovely to have a break and to now be able to blog a bit again too.
We got back from Austria and enjoyed two weeks at our cottage, up in Lanark County. It was good to have that break before we started building again. We didn't catch too many fish, but just being away from town and out on the lake was wonderful.
Jonathan has finished a video about building our house- it doesn't quite bring you up to date but another video is on its way. I start to think that we will need another computer so that there isn't a queue for working on this one! To date we have ('we' being Dominik!) managed to finish the wiring of the house, the inside walls are framed in, all windows and doors are installed, the chimney for the woodstove is already in place, and the outer walls of the house are insulated. Our next steps will be to wire the breaker box and lay the plumbing, then we can insulate the ceiling and install our woodstove. Then we will be able to chip away at work in comfort! We won't drywall the interior walls yet as this will allow the woodstove to heat most of the house. Dominik and the kids cut a lot of firewood in the fall, so we're ready for the stove! Our new 'hope-to-move-in' date will be as soon as we can in the spring. When the ground thaws a bit we will get the septic done and the well dug. By that time we hope to have enough finished to have it liveable.
We have decided to make this house an off-grid home. We hadn't really seriously considered it when we started planning, but the cost of hooking up to the electric system here made us re-examine solar. We visited a friend-of-a-friend nearby and he bought his solar package from a company in British Columbia which is really very affordable. With that decided, we then have to think differently about appliances and anything which runs on electricity. This doesn't really change too much in our lives, but it certainly gives us a satisfying feeling that we will be able to be more independent and self-sufficient in our living. We already want to use propane for the stove and for hot water. Maybe we can find a way to connect the woodstove to the hot water as well, in future. For now we just want to get set up and get in the house! :-)
In other news, Jonathan, Jeremiah and Josiah have been enjoying playing hockey in the Kids Christian Hockey League in Brockville. They each play just once a week and they all look forward to it! Rebecca has continued with Irish Dancing and is able to help with the younger classes as well as being in a class of two at her level. We attended the performance at Christmas and could see how she and her dance partner had improved this year. Elena did some riding in the fall and will continue with that in the spring. It was great for her to get out and ride and to become more confident around and on the horses and ponies.
Besides house-building and home-schooling, Dominik came in to work for 6 weeks at the Christian school because one of the teachers was found to have cancer and had to go for treatment. This was a grades 6-8 class. I was still working, although mainly part-time (an occasionally supply-teaching), and it was fun to be in the same work environment together! Now he knows about all of my co-workers and who the kids are that I see every day. He's had his 'retirement' in December and I will be taking the grade 6 class in January.
We have begun meeting with friends to have church on every other Sunday, and this has been going really well. It's an answer to prayer to have a group to be involved with, where people can use the gifts that God has given them, and to be where others can come to 'church', without it maybe feeling like church. We've had a good number of people come out to that and we look forward to see what God will do with this in the new year.
We stayed here at my parents for Christmas and have two Austrian Bible students from Colorado visiting us. They are the sons of co-workers of ours from Schloss Klaus. It's great to have more Austrians around for the kids to speak German with and to play hockey and endless games of 'Jungle Speed' with!
We wish you a joyous time over the Christmas holidays and a blessed New Year in 2020!!!!
