Bigger and Better

We are putting an addition on our wee house. I joke about our home being the smallest one in our community, but I think it actually could be in the running. At 700 square feet, it's pretty small. We sleep in the basement. It's dry, warm in the winter, and cool in the summer, but the multitude of trips up and down the steps in the night is getting old. When I fell down the steps in the middle of the night a couple of years ago, and broke my toe, I started to dream of a bedroom on the main floor. So an addition it is.




Three hundred square feet will be added to the back of this house. This will give us an eat-in kitchen, a larger bathroom, a closet and hey....a bedroom on the main floor! Not large rooms, not swing- your- cat dance halls, but a little more space for us old folks to enjoy.



I got to thinking about the process. First we had to pack and store all the junk in the little mudroom off the kitchen. This is a gleaning process...what do we really need to keep? There are some things of value out there, but much can be tossed. Treasures must be boxed for the day when the big kitchen emerges - bake wear (not used since 2006), small appliances, boxes of tea, more boxes of tea...



Then we had to go through all the junk in the office. Actually, it's all mine. My other half doesn't need to be around to witness the purge. I have plastic drawers filled with little things. Little things that I might need "someday." How does one sort and part with the daily minutiae that make life easier? Paper clips, push pins, ribbon, old picture frames, gift cards, stamps, labels, Westjet headphones, watercolour pencils, staples, wrapping paper and highlighters? Old glasses cases, cassette tapes, liquid ink, family photos, income tax forms, wrist weights and binocular lens caps?



Throughout the process, I keep asking silly questions. My first was -Do the builders just come and chop the back of our house off, leaving us with a gaping wound of siding and insulation? And more importantly, I queried - What about the air conditioner? Sorry, but the thought of going through a complete Southern Ontario summer without AC is a little daunting. God bless the builders, who moved the air conditioner and booted it up and we’ve not been one day without it!



Happy to report that after only 13 working days, we are at the lockup stage. Windows and doors are in and the roof is on. But the partition between the actual house and the addition is still there. My questions continue.....What’s next? When the walls, come down, will there be workmen wandering around in my stationary 700 square feet? When I am working at my desktop, will some guy with dirty jeans eating a sandwich and drinking coffee from a thermos be lurking behind me?



Yesterday, one of the workers told me that it would probably be two more months until completion. My dreams of a rather large turkey dinner being prepared as I gaze through the skylight at that deep October blue sky are dashed. Guess it will be more like Christmas when we gather in the new kitchen and breathe deeply, having survived the “Great Building Project of 2010.”



More to come....

Our neighbour's cat sneaks a peek.