The House as of July 31, 2004 - It feels like home again!

It was so nice to come back home to mum & dad's new house. Now that they're fully moved in, it feels really comfortable. The house is amazing...I jokingly tell people that I grew up in a "shack" compared to the new house. :-)

Here's a video tour....

It's been built with mum & dad's retirement years in mind, complete with extra-wide doorways for wheelchairs, higher biffies, the drive-in garage & driveway, and with their main living area on 1 level.

The "basement"...hardly a basement at all. 10ft ceilings because they had to raise the house up for the drive-in garage. It's a fully self-contained apartment with 2 bedrooms, full kitchen and bath. Awesome.

Lower bedroom #1. Your standard bedroom, with a closet.

Lower bedroom #2, with a great view of the lake. Reminds me of my old room...I had a similar view in the old house.

The lower bath - nice stand-up shower stall.

The great room - 360 degree view, starting from the view of the front door. This room is unbelievable. The views are spectacular. The reason they didn't do the triangular windows above the front view windows was to keep the view as similar as possible to the old house. Plus, all you would see is sky, and all it would do is heat up the house in the evening sun.
The TV inset into the fireplace will be covered with a sliding panel that will have a painting on it, to hide the TV when it's not in use. (Nice idea from Aunty Louise & Uncle Jerry in Portland, OR).

Panoramic view from the front corner of the deck. They kept the deck partially covered and partially uncovered, just like in the old house. They also kept glass panels under the railings like the old deck. The covered part of the deck has a skylight in it to keep it bright (the old house's covered deck was quite dark).
Mum is already harvesting tomatoes from the tomato plants on the deck!

Panorama from the back of the side deck. Notice the terracing that's been done down the slope. The green rectangular thing is the self-contained mini Bardon-Flow septic system.
It uses bacteria to clean the sewage and generates clean water which gets pumped up to a field under the upper lawn where it evaporates. No more sewage-suckers The lawn is really cool....nice non-rectangular shapes. Mum was very busy planting her gardens around the edges. I helped dig.
Also notice the rock wall by the driveway-side lawn. Again, nice curves on the wall.

The sunroom / mum's studio. This is the best room in the house. So much light! It's a great place to eat breakfast. Of course,in the summer you eat it out on the deck though.

Dad's busy building a stairway beside deck that goes down beside the terraces to connect the lawn with the stairway that goes down to the dock.

Click here to go backwards in the "rebuilding timeline" >>

The "Skookum" Dock Table

My parents had bought a big (huge) patio umbrella at a garage sale to provide some shade down at the dock. But without a proper table or stand for the umbrella, it was pretty much useless.
So, my dad & I built a table for down-at-the-dock to hold this massive umbrella.

We made the table out of scrap lumber left over from the build - 2x4's, 2x6's, and some 4x4's for the legs. This is one "skookum" table. It weighs about 200 lbs, and takes two people to move it. The umbrella will snap off before this table moves! The table even has a 2nd shelf for stuff. It took 2 days elapsed to build it.

Me being silly with some drills.

The table, installed with the umbrella. The umbrella just slides into a hole that we punched into the middle of the table.

Here's some video of me and dad finishing the assembly of the table:

Barbecue at Sam & Jason's

Sam & Jason are going to buy Samantha's parents house up on Black mountain. They had a little barbecue while I was in town. Great burgers!!

Apparently, my brother also inherited the gene for being silly!


Enjoying an awesome summer barbecue dinner!

The sunset view from Sam & Jay's deck.