Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Hardy House!Another year is almost at end and 2012 has been a good year at Hardy House. I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I hope it finds you happy and healthy and that you are full of hope.

This is a picture of the old barn at Hardy House and also the sections of fence we put up last year by the shed. We hope to landscape the area in back of the fence to be a nice patio area with an outdoor fireplace. In time, in time...

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!
It has begun! We had a lovely Thanksgiving and now we are starting to get ready for Christmas at Hardy House. Yesterday we purchased our tree from Urtz's Evergreens. Their tree farm is about five minutes from us. It is so convenient and a perk of living in the country, I guess.

The other thing we try to do at Christmas is put a wreath on our old barn. A number of years ago, Dave and I built a (approximately) 6 foot diameter wreath from thin plywood (I think it's 1/2"). To that we lay pine boughs around it. These we cut from an overgrown arborvitae near the house. Once the boughs are laid on it we wind green twine around it to secure the boughs. Then we put a bow on it and hang it on the barn. We don't have the light for it hooked up yet but we do shine a light on it in the evening. I'll try to get a picture of that once we get the light hooked up. I hope you enjoy it.

Yes!

We knocked out the temporary shower and I couldn't be happier. Do we have more work to do to repair the wall, the floor, etc? You bet. But we also now have a nice, new, workable bathroom. And, I can't tell you what a luxury it is to have a beautiful bathroom once again. It also opened up the front of the house to the back of the house. I'm a lucky girl. Here are some pics of us dismantling the shower. Exciting, eh?

Hurricane Sandy
Hardy House has stood the test, as expected. Hurricane Sandy hit us with sustained winds of about 40 MPH and gusts to about 60-65 MPH and the house never even shook--not at all. Everything is intact and we are blessed. We are only about 20-25 minutes south of Lake Ontario. They were getting 15-20 foot waves last night. A lot of people don't realize how big the waves can get on the Great Lakes. We hope that others along the eastern seaboard have come through this unscathed. 

Downstairs Bath

Check it out! The tile work has been done. Some caulking, some of the fixtures still need some installation and tweaking but it's basically done. The vanity, mirror and lights are installed and artwork hung. Again, caulking still needs completing but it will happen shortly. Curtains will be delivered shortly and we will get the shower curtain rod installed and a few other things need to be installed yet, but it's coming along and it's usable. Yipee!

As a reminder from previous posts, we bought an antique oak dresser and modified it to be a vanity. We bought a piece of stock oak and routed it, etc., then stained it for a back splash. We mounted it to the vanity with steel plates. We purchased the antique oak mirror at an auction never thinking we would put the two together but realized they were perfectly paired. To install the mirror we used a slotted angle at the top which is not visible and then the bottom of the mirror we used chair braces in an antique bronze finish which connected the mirror to the back splash. The lights were from Renovator's Supply that we purchased quite a while ago. It was good to get them from storage and get them installed. I'll add more pictures once the bath is all done. Let me know what you think!

The tiling in the upstairs bath has been completed, too, but I don't have the pic up yet. We are getting there folks.

Will the Bathrooms Ever Be Done? Yup!

We had planned to tile both bathrooms this last weekend but if you've been following along, you know nothing ever goes according to plan. However, that being said, we did get all the cement board up in both bathrooms so we CAN do the tiling - probably next weekend.

Downstairs Shower

Upstairs Shower

Earlier in the week we attempted to install the cement board on the angled ceiling in the upstairs bathroom. Even after cutting more and more off, it still didn't fit right, got jammed and we ended up damaging the drywall. It is actually worse than in the pictures. It will get replaced at some point but it's not a showstopper--thank goodness.

The following picture shows how we inserted a base on the floor of the shower so that if something fell on it it wouldn't damage the shower floor. We will keep it there through tiling. Another thing I want to communicate to you is that for the cement board in the downstairs bath, we did NOT countersink the screws. Because of that the screw heads are elevated so the tiles won't be flat. We need to go back and sink the screws. We made sure we did it upstairs. Now we just need to tape, etc. and we'll be ready for tile. I can't wait.

A little pick-me-up

Earlier in the summer my son helped us out by doing some landscaping for us. We didn't have much of a budget but we only had to buy the plants, he did the labor for free. What a great kid. He is in the process of mulching around all our trees and maybe next year we will plant hosta gardens around some of the larger trees. To mulch everything we needed about 10 yards of mulch. We planted hostas, hydrangeas - regular and tree form and also an oak leaf hydrangea, some petunias and I think that was it. My son also pulled a very large, overgrown arborvitae on the corner of the house and pulled up all the weeds and out-of-control ground cover. Here's how it looked after he finished.

Someday in the future we hope to replace the front porch with a wooden porch and steps and a nice railing and columns. I would also like to make it a little bigger. The siding and shutter colors probably will also change. What colors do you think Hardy House should be? Keep in mind there is a big red barn off to the right of the house.

Tell me what you think.