The next weekend we could not wait to get back to our new cottage. We were supposed to have propane delivered and set-up, but after that fell through it turned into a busy week of work around the property.
After the work was all done to get the cottage in place, the septic installed and the water and power implemented, we were left with a bit of a mudpit. We also had a bit of a long step up from the deck into the cottage, and this weekend we decided to tackle some of those jobs.
In addition to the work outside, on the evening during the week prior we spent a ton of money buying all the things we needed to make the cottage livable - dishware, cooking utensils, pots and pans - that sort of thing. Not very interesting, but necessary to make the place livable. We had a very packed car (maybe the fullest we’ve ever had) for the trip over on the Friday night ferry.
We spent Friday night unpacking and organizing all the new things in the place. It’s crazy how much packaging that creates. Fortunately, most of it was cardboard, and since we wanted to burn some broome on Saturday, that was going to be easy to dispose of. We were up until almost midnight getting ourselves organized. One of Justine’s best purchases was a cover for the couch our neighbors had given us. Made it look like new!
The before and after of our “new” couch.
OUr very tiny living room, all set-up.
Saturday morning, after a better sleep (the mattress on the floor was still freezing to get into!), we were up and at it to tackle a few projects. First up was installing some stairs - from the ground onto the deck, and from the deck to the front door.
We had bought a couple of sets of metal stringers (we like the look of them) and we have lots of wood for treads kicking around. The height wasn’t quite prefect so I needed a spacer board under them, but as they are (hopefully) only temporary for a year or so, they should work quite well. It was good work for the morning.
Stair project… check!
Brad from Galiano Excavating came by and we talked him into bring up a couple of loads of material for us to work on some landscaping. We needed to fill in the area in front of the cottage to level it out, and we wanted some gravel to fix the driveway and create a path so we could start to transform our mud pit. So he brought that up, and in between slinging dirt and gravel I started a fire and burned down our big broome pile. Burning broome is a pain - it requires constant attention, but does allow me to pull broome around the upper level of the property as well as feeding the fire. So we made some good progress.
Brad brought us a load of fill, which we used to fill in the area out front of the cottage. It will form a base for the path we want to build. He also brought up a load of gravel and spread it out for us over the driveway. There was still a lot to move around, but we called it a day. A very busy and successful one!
Sunday was spent moving a lot of dirt and gravel around. But eventually we completed our landscaping work, and have a very nice path all the way from the front of the cottage to the workshop.
It started raining in the early afternoon, so I used that time to spread a couple of bags of grass seed. I’m hoping it will start to fill in the dirt and start to give us something of a lawn around the cottage. Last year, because of COVID, if got away from us at the beginning of the year and we never really recovered. We will see what a little maintenance does for us this year.
Update: I missed some of the photos I had taken this weekend, as they were on my other camera.
On one of our afternoons, we spent some time planning out a trail from the top of the property to the bottom, that we could use to get to the trail to the beach. It was good, as we don’t see the bottom part of our property much. We then headed down to the beach and spent a little time at the shore.
