To Everything, Turn Turn Turn..

In two weeks, we will have spent four seasons in the house. In one week, we mark the second anniversary of our first look into what lay ahead. I had NO idea. My husband did. I mistakenly thought we would bash a few walls about and then re-drywall and paint. He looked at it and with a designer mind said "See this roof??? GONE". "See this wall? GONE." See this front door?? GONE.".

So we walked into the livingroom which is what you see on the left, and within months, the fake brick wall was removed, the wall with the ugly wall paper came down, and the guts for a new, improved house began to be placed. The living room on the right, is where we sit now. There have been more changes since this picture was taken. And there are more to come. One day, the wood floor will be refinished. And my steam floor cleaner will be busy keeping it clean.

When we first took a look at the house, one of the landmarks were these horse hedges. Not our favourite. GONE. This picture was taken after the roof had been removed and the upstairs bedrooms had been added. You can see the insulation pile covered with a blue tarp on the left side of the picture.
The front door was all wrong. No feng shui. But hundreds of pounds of demolition material was carried out that front door before it was removed.

At one point the electrical wires hung precariously. The one where the front porch is now, was the most scary. One day, it sparked so much that we had to call my father-in-law away from a party he was at, to come and take a look at it. He is an electrician. He disconnected the wires. This was a good thing. From then on, we had a major amount of extension cords running from the barn. If the saw was being used, no one could shine a light. We became very creative in the use of alternate sources of light (for instance, from my cell phone, while my husband put the new front door on late one night).

The day that I came to the house and found the front door gone, and the windows gone, and a few more gaping holes, was a day of despair. I remember saying to the guy who was helping us out "I didn't think it could get any worse, but I guess I was wrong." The rains came right after we ripped the roof off. The sheep wandered through the house at will. We were constantly finding leftover junk from the previous owners - some of it buried beneath floor boards. I was WAY out of my comfort zone. Still, my husband laboured away good-naturedly. Every time we finished up a day of work, he would say "It's really coming, huh?". It became a bitter-sweet joke. Yes, it's really coming hon. I have no front door, and no windows, but I am really encouraged.

Every Saturday was a marathon. The boys were troopers. They spent hours hauling away, breaking up, stacking, shovelling, dumping. I know this was a very difficult process for them. I sometimes think it was too much - but when you are without doors and windows, you have to muscle through and keep going, or else, you will never see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We spent a LOT of money at fast food restaurants. There was really no other choice. The boys worked hard all day, and I had no where to make a lunch. The fridge which was left behind, had no cord, because the mice had eaten through it. And the stove had become a convenient place to place boxes of nails, random tools and reams of plans. Fast food lunches became the tradition. I would phone and see what everyone wanted. I am not quite sure why I did that, because they always ordered the same thing. And then I would pick it up and bring it out to them, and they would climb to the top of the roof and eat it and enjoy the scenery. Then they would go back to bashing out walls and I would sweep and pick up the pieces.

We did this for a whole year. In between, we saw our #1 son graduate, went to work, and fielded questions from curious on-lookers. "How's it going?" I got a little cagey about my answers. I didn't really know how it was going. For so many months, it looked like nothing. And then the windows went in, and I gained a little hope. Eventually, the doors went on, and hope grew. The siding guy showed up. More hope.

And when they started the front porch, I began to dream again. But the day that really clinched it for me, was the day the dry wall went on. I came into the house and I held back my emotions, but I immediately began to compose a country music song entitled "Dry Wall Makes Me Weep." From there it was another marathon of painting and making plans to move. By that point we had moved out of the apartment, and were living with my in-laws. I think my mother-in-law began to think we were going to be with them forever. It was a little tempting. We played games at night and drank lots of tea, and she taught me to enjoy the word puzzles in the daily paper. But on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend in 2010, we moved into the house. My bottom line was that I needed a toilet. My husband made that a priority, and so we began the adventure of making The Pokeaway our home.

We still have a long way to go. I have no kitchen. But I have a dishwasher. And I have a system. And every few weeks, I look around and note the changes that have happened. We have a great back porch. We have a wonderful front porch. We have doors on the bedrooms, and the computers are set up, so I can blog upstairs, downstairs and in my ladies' chamber. We have had birthday parties, Christmas celebrations, and community suppers. We have watched the blossoms on the trees, and the snow on the ground. We have weathered all the seasons in the house. We have also weathered this section of our journey which as we travelled through it, has given us a new found sense of coming home.