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Buying locally to renovate the farmette


It's a rainy day at the farmette. Hope it stays that way all day. My poor veggie garden and flower beds need it. As do the farmers fields in the wider area. Since most days have been sunny and bright, the farmette has been subjected to a bit of a face-lift. Two weeks ago, the lovely people at Premier Windows and Doors in Walkerton replaced 12 windows, and they did fantastic job very quickly. At a much lower price than others, I might add. Starting on the Monday, John and his crew worked incredibly hard and quickly to make our old (more than 150 year old) girl more energy efficient and air-tight. Now, miraculously, we can also open all the Canadian-made windows (the brand is KV Custom Windows and Doors out of Concord, Ontario).

The difference, for us, is astounding. And for the cats, well, it's the pyjamas!

They've taken full advantage of lolling in the ample window sills in the sunshine, sniffing the air and feeling the warm summer breeze over their furry butts.

The former fenestrations were original to the house....with actual bubbles in the glass! Most of them were painted shut, which is what nearly everyone in the old days did.

In addition, a previous owner installed storms to better protect the fragile glass in the windows. While that was a good stop-gap, it really was time to make the change.

Well, they all came out on Monday, June 11th and were replaced with these lovely double-hungs that we can clean (maybe once a year if we're lucky) from the inside!!!! Everything done, dusted and cleaned up by Wednesday at noon. Fantastic.

This week, we had Kelli Kinsman from Priceville paint our living room.

She's another meticulous, considerate gem who really knows her stuff.

She's also our cat-sitter, so that's a bonus.

It's been six years since we moved to the farmette. Hard to believe, but the wall colour of most of our house has been bugging me since day one.

It was a really dated forest green colour that was okay in about 1980, but totally needed a freshen up. Not to mention all the cracks and chips from years of pounding nails for pictures into the lathe and plaster.

For the new look, we chose the Caribou Lichen colour from the National Parks collection of Beauti-tone paints. It's a soothing soft green that's about five shades lighter than the old one. I was really afraid it was going to look like that horrible sea foam colour that seemed to be the rage for bridesmaids of the 1970s. But, luckily, it turned out much better, with a strong grey element, and we're very pleased with the result.

Kelli took less than a week all by herself to do all the (substantial) trim work and the walls. Very affordable, too. I'd recommend her to anyone living in the vicinity.

We also had Bruton's Decorating of Hanover come in and measure up the windows for blinds...but they are coming in a week or so.

Today, it's putting the living room back together day, so I had better get to it. Until next week.


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