Loose Ends and Erosion

I really need to find time to update more often! We’re still busy chasing loose ends to tie up, but I imagine that’s a never ending process. We lived in the Old House for 15 or so years and never ran out of them. Hopefully as time goes by, we’ll find fewer and those we do find are more fun. Like replacing plants that disappear over winter. Which has been an issue this year. Last winter was an old fashioned uphill both ways in 10 feet of snow type winter, and despite a generous amount of patience which is completely against my character I have found no evidence of the return of several key plants from the front garden. For some reason, it seems my favorite local nurseries didn’t have the two I most wanted to replace-Agastache and Butterfly Weed. Now I have some uneven holes in that garden. In addition, the bee balm got REALLY tall to try to compete with the bacopca and made a big green blob between the holes so it looks even worse.  AND the one day lily, the yellow one, shrank along with most of the lavender (that was winter die off, I have no idea why the daylily clump is not only smaller but it's also not nearly as tall as usual). So, I’m not sure this year’s photo update of the front garden will be a super awesome "even better than last year" follow up. Sigh. I’ll try to fill in with some things I can split and maybe next year I can find something to plop in there. I am going to try to start a new Butterfly Bush or two from existing plants that made it (we lost a lot of those too) to fill in where bicolor and purple emperor left holes this year at least. I might not get many (if any) flowers from new starts but at least it won’t be a blank spot!

I just spent the better part of three hours weeding, watering (because as a follow up to a cold winter with lots of snow we are now HOT and dry with a steady wind) and moving plants.  And...it looks about the same. UGH. Maybe I won't post pics of the front this year!

Here's the garden where the $8 birdbath ended up instead!

Last weekend we went to some open houses and saw a stark reminder of what life on the South Shore of Lake Ontario is all about. It’s a peril every structure here will face at some point and there’s not much we can do about it (including buying insurance, which is not available). We purposefully bought a home that wasn’t too close to the shoreline, even though it was a compromise on view. This is why.

We spoke to the neighbor, this all happened this past winter and spring. The realtor didn’t bother showing up for her own open house, we are guessing the biggest chunk fell recently and she figured it wasn’t worth it. Surprisingly, a lot of this isn’t from lakeside erosion (although that also causes a few feet of loss a year). It’s from groundwater erosion. We’re putting in (more) drainage to help slow this on our property, but unless everyone along the shore does it, it’s a hard battle to fight.  Even the drainage won't be enough to save our old Apple Tree.  I'm looking out the doors at it silhouetted against the lake as I type.  I'll miss it dearly.  We figure between lake side erosion from the water beating our bluff and groundwater erosion under washing the topsoil as it runs along the top of the clay layer it has about 2-3 years, maybe at best 5.  It's just too expensive to put in a stone revetment.  Back in the 70's there was a grant to put in shoreline erosion control, I wish the folks that owned the place than had taken advantage of it!

Our tree back in 2010 when we first "found" the Cottage, before it was even for sale on the MLS (so about a year before we made the offer to buy it).  It was the only photo I took when we walked down to check it out from our rental (about 6ish houses away) after a real estate agent told us to look and see if we'd be interested since he knew the owner planned to sell.

The bluff has eroded back about 10' since this photo was taken :(

Odds n Ends

We have run short of big huge projects (thank goodness) to post about. We've been going about doing all the little things here and there that by themselves just don't seem post worthy. So here's a little compilation of some recent goings on at the Cottage. We've finally given up trying to find more paneling to use to finish the wall in the living room. We dry walled and painted it a cream color to compliment the color of the white washed wood. Originally we did try a blue-green but, as mr eclectic put it, it felt kind of like being in a fish bowl, especially at night. It kind of hovered over you from behind with its presence. That lasted a day. When we pulled down the damaged paneling, we found they had panelled over the old exterior shingles:

I'll have to post an after pic later, I don't seem to have one yet! We've been garage saling! We recently went to a garage/rummage sale at a lakeside camp. And we came home with some neat stuff. I *HAD* to get a Ovenex muffin tin. It was .10 so even though it may never come clean enough to use, I will find something to do with. I love the Ovenex pattern. We also got a bird bath for $8 and a pressure cooker for $10 (those might come up later). But the big "haul" was two signs at $5 each. The "welcome" sign is hand painted on an antique slate roof tile (the other is probably a cheap mass produced one but it fit so well we got it anyway). Welcome sign in the laundry room (still have to finish the trim):

Live at the lake sign over the front door (kind of cabiny instead of cottagey but we like it anyway!):

And we have finally finished burning for the season it seems. What a long and ugly winter that was! We found some deficiencies in our weatherization to say the least, some we've corrected and others will be a more long term project. It's hard to say for sure, but it seems we've used about 14 FACE cords of wood (or about 4 1/2 full cords). That's a lot, but not bad considering it's almost all soft wood and included some junky stuff like willow and box elder and, of course, we're heating what was built as a summer cottage. Now we need to sweep the stack and clean the stove out so it's ready for fall. Since somewhere along the way I developed an irrational and yet paralyzing fear of climbing onto the roof, mr eclectic will pull the cap and brush the stack.

Salvage addiction, refinished furniture follow up

I have a problem.  I am a junk addict.  Mostly salvage, especially old doors.  I CANNOT drive by an old door being thrown away, it will come home with me.  Unfortunately, we don't really have a need for 30 old doors.  :(  We recently sold most of my stash to people that needed to replace junky cheapo doors with ones more period correct to their homes.  I miss them and have found myself pinning salvage more and more, lol.  I just felt the need to fess up since I am watching the Rehab Addict marathon.  I think Nicole Curtis is my long lost sister, at least when it comes to salvage!

Now, about some of the refinished furniture I've posted about before.  The most recent piece, the side table was sold as I anticipated.  We just had no place for it.

However, the little yellow turned blue table and chairs are still here.

Here's the table in it's permanent home

The train case is used for storage.  The typewriter is an old Alpina, and it does work!

The chairs are in the dining room Christmas photo, but here are a few close ups

Shutters

We finished this project a while back but I've only now gotten around to taking a photo!  One is missing a slat, but we weren't sure how to reproduce it so we decided it added character :D .  Obviously there is some painting that needs to be finished, but here are the closets I dreamed up and Mr Eclectic built complete with the shutters I painted:

Christmas is coming to the Cottage!

We spent a little time dragging out some of the decorations this week.  The big tree isn't up in the living room yet, but we decorated the dining room and the LAUNDRY ROOM! Yup, the laundry room is (sort of) done.  We still need to do trim work, but the floor (BRICK!!), drywall, wallpaper and beadboard are all up.  Our old tree from our Old House found a home in a corner in there for the holidays, next to a vintage Poloron cooler that doubles as storage.

Here is the dining room decorated for Christmas, 2013:

And the laundry room!

We weren't sure how the brick would perform as a floor in a laundry/mud room.  The dog comes in and out through the room, and we use it as a main door as well.  We found it works perfect!  It looks fantastic and if it gets muddy, you just let it dry then sweep it up or vacuum it.

Curb Find Redo

Found this at the curb so we brought it home to refresh it.  It doesn't really fit in here, so we'll probably sell it.  But it was a fun project!

It was missing one of the drawer pulls and the finish was worn.

Here we go!  I forgot to take pics before I started filling the holes where the original pulls were.

The garden, 2013

Here we are, year #3 (really #2).  Crazy weather-lots of rain and now HOT HOT HOT!

Here are the photos of "before"(year #1), last year (year #2) and this year(year#3)-all about the same time of the year-mid July.

The stone border is still there, but we hadn't trimmed when I took this photo.  Oops.