Thanks to the borderline drought conditions this spring up at the cottage, I think I only saw about 5 mosquitoes all weekend.  That’s the silver lining to a dark cloud that were swarms of deer and black flies that made us and the dog miserable whenever we were outside.  Mind you, the gorgeous weather made even that sufferable.

We spent a surprising amount of time outside given that we could pick up World Cup on CBC with our meagre aerial on the TV.  Fortunately, between the bugs, the games and the short amount of time we were there, I had plenty of excuses not to do any work around the house, so that’ll have to wait until our vacation later in July.

Another highlight of the weekend was celebrating my dad’s 65th birthday and Father’s Day with awesome steaks, corn on the cob and birthday cake.  You don’t need much more to have a great weekend.

And now, I need to settle in for a busy, busy week.

As you’re reading this, I’m no doubt driving on many of Ontario’s two-lane highways that lead northeast to the greatness that is the Ottawa Valley.  Sadly, I won’t be staying at the cottage as I’ve already put in a few hours of hard work cleaning it for its winter hibernation, but I need to do a bit more work finishing up the work I started earlier this fall on the foundation, and I want to get it done before the old gal is buried under a few feet of snow.

My car is weighed down by tools and winter work gear, as well as a few things lying around the house that aren’t ready to be thrown out yet, so they are destined to be banished to the cottage until future generations of my progeny decide they are finally ready for a final resting place in a dump somewhere.  Waste not, want not.

I’ll be heading back home on Friday, and in the meantime, I’ve left a few blog posts to keep you entertained.  I did this mostly out of guilt for leaving this poor blog abandoned for a week the last time I was up there.

Enjoy!

Yeah, so by now you’re sick of hearing about how sick I am, so instead I’ll tell you about how I cheated death on my way to the bathroom last week.

It was after dark, but there was plenty of ambient light from the moon and the lights in the house so I headed to the outhouse without a flashlight.  Just behind the house, a couple of deer were making a late dinner of the leftovers on the ground from an apple tree.  I didn’t want to disturb them, so I tried to be as quiet as possible as I headed down the path to the outhouse.

Just as I got to the door, I noticed a dark lump on the ground near an old rotten stump about 10 feet away.  I figured a tree had fallen earlier in the evening and went to open the door when the lump made a ‘harumph’ sound and got up on its hind legs.  It was a bear and it scratched its chest, harumphed again and then dropped back to all fours while turning away from me to trundle off into the woods.

It’s pretty uncommon for a bear up there to get rough with person unless it’s a mother who is protecting her cub, so these ‘friendly’ bear encounters are actually quite common, although that’s the closest I’ve ever been to a live one and it’s not something I care to repeat anytime soon.

I’m back from the cottage, and I’m absolutely beat.  With help from my dad, I managed to get the shed foundation nearly finished and all the work needing concrete is done, so frost can now come without any worries about finishing it up before winter.  All that’s left is some work with wood and she’ll be ready for another 60 years of abuse from the elements.

I realized this weekend that I could very easily live in pioneer times except for one thing.  I can live without running water, and I can easily get by with just candlelight but I cannot handle the constant fetching of firewood from the shed to fill the woodbox.  That’s just too much work for this old, weary body.

Being up there alone meant that all the little tasks of running an old house fell squarely on my two shoulders, which included putting up the storm windows for winter and hauling water from the well and wood from the shed.  All of that was on top of the work that I actually went there to do.  Needless to say, I’m pretty ragged today, but it’s a good kind of ragged.  My hands are raw and my muscles are sore, but all of it is just a testament to the hard work I put into a house I love.

Now I’m back for my first week of getting the next few months sorted out.   More to come!

If you’re reading this and you aren’t on your way to your cottage, then you probably aren’t me.  I was really tempted to say “… then you probably aren’t funemployed” which is a pretty great word aside from my general hatred of words that were once two words and are now just one (see my archives on ‘staycation‘).  Hmm, so it appears I’ve digressed.

Anyways, what I was trying to get at is that I’m at the cottage.  If you’re reading that here, on the internet, well, that means you aren’t there with me, so you’re probably pretty jealous.  Life’s tough that way.  You have two choices here; you can drive up and hang out with me or you can leave angry comments (or fun comments, I guess) for me to read when I get back on Sunday.

The ball is in your court, internet people.  The ball is in your court.

An ice-cold tempered steel ring encased in a brick of equal strength and secured by a tumbler-based locking mechanism; what could be more secure, right?  I’ve long put faith in the security of a good ol’ fashioned padlock, having once witnessed a high school janitor spend 45 minutes trying to cut one off a locker with a very hefty looking pair of bolt cutters, so when the 6 year-old Master branded lock on our cottage shed seized its locking mechanism, I wasn’t looking forward to having to remove it.

*Click on any photo to see it larger in a new window

The finest in security?

I tried lubricating the locking mechanism and even picking the lock (which I have no idea how to do, and just stuck pointy things inside in the hopes it would pop open), but the key would just go into the keyhole and do nothing.  While I asked around for a pair of strong bolt cutters, I decided to head to the internet to see what my fancy-dancy Dremel could do (a great Christmas gift from my beau-parents.  MERCI!).  It turns out, it could do a lot.

From what I read, and saw in a YouTube video, the claims of what a simple Dremel could do with a cutting wheel and some safety equipment (absolutely necessary, more on this below) seemed too good to be true.  Still, it was worth a try.

The hero of the day

I loaded up my Dremel XPR 400 with a cutting wheel (one I had used a few times before to cut some nail heads and to buzz through some aluminum framing for a screen) and looked skeptically at the gauge of the lock steel and the seemingly flimsy cutting wheel.

Safety first, kids

Everything I’d read online suggested that cutting through steel would produce A LOT of steel sparks that could do some pretty nasty stuff to eyes and other delicate bits, so I opted on the side of caution (especially given my ability to harm myself in even the simplest of activities) and it paid off in spades.  The first aid kit, which was handy, was not needed.

Halfway home

I’d planned to take my time and cut in stages, but once the wheel was spinning, it was like a hot knife through butter.  It took a matter of seconds to get halfway through, where my already weakend cutting wheel (from previous projects.  Tip: if you’re cutting steel, don’t chince out on the $0.20 and use a fresh one) turned to wheel dust, most of which bounced off my facemask.  Safety wins again!

A fresh wheel to finish the job

I took a few seconds to reload a fresh cutting wheel and was on my way to finishing the job.

Success!

And boy, did I finish it.  In a matter of seconds and a flurry of sparks, the Dremel cut through the lock like it was twine.

Quick and clean

In retrospect, it would have been easier to get off the hasp had I cut in a straightaway rather than in the curve, but I thought I would need more room to navigate with the wheel and that it would be easier to manouver in what I expected to a long cutting project.  In reality, from setup to cleanup took less than 10 minutes, including taking photos, getting all my safety gear on and changing cutting wheels.  If I’d used a fresh wheel and not taken pics, it could’ve taken as little as three minutes.

Busted

This was a great lesson in how absolutely insecure a padlock can be for anyone who really wants to get past it and has ready access to an electrical outlet.  Although I now have a new skill should I ever consider switching to a life of crime, I think I’ll just file this knowledge away in the “What to do when the shed lock seizes again” category and in the “Awesome things to do with my Dremel” category.

If you need a padlock removed (legally), just let me know.  I’m dying to do it again, this time with video!

Phew.  I took the ‘labour’ part of Labour Day Weekend a little too literally and spent WAY too much time mixing bags of concrete by hand and playing jigsaw puzzles with cinder blocks in what is starting to look more and more like a proper foundation for my shed.  It’ll all be worth it when the shed doesn’t collapse under the weight of winter snows this year, but there’s still more work to be done and I’d better hurry if I want to get any new cement in before it gets too cold to have it set properly.

So, if anyone out there is interested in a free cottage weekend and getting to fiddle around with concrete and power tools, let me know.  Consider this a chance to learn some new construction skills in an environment where mistakes you can learn from  are not only expected, but kind of looked forward to.

After the padlock on the shed seized earlier this season, I had to come up with a way to get it fixed.  Well, this weekend I managed to take care of it and I was surprised at how easy it was.  I’ll write more on this later (with photos!) but suffice it to say that I now have WAY less faith in even the best steel padlocks.

With a big thanks to Tom and my dad, our cottage shed is now much less saggy than it was before and it’s on its way to being even less saggy.  It was a lot of hard work, but the old building got its first facelift in at least 60 years and she’s looking great.  (Photos to come)

Thanks to my new 8 tonne hydraulic bottle jack (which is no bigger than a 2L pop bottle) was able to lift entire front of the building with little effort by just using one hand.  Technology is awesome.

We’ve dug out the front foundation where it was collapsing and jacked up the interior rafters which are now being held by a huge crossbeam and a jackpost.  We poured concrete footings in holes dug to the bedrock and my next job will be to build up from the footings to the foundation and install permanent jackposts to take the load of the shed.  That’s the easy part after all the hoising and jacking we did on Saturday.

While the men folk were getting muddy and sweaty, the ladies weren’t just lazing around.  Danielle and her mom cleaned and painted our dining a room a beautiful new shade of (aptly-named) Cottage Yellow.  When my mom saw it, her jaw nearly dropped.  It’s almost the exact same colour my great-grandmother had painted that room when they first moved in back in the ’50s.  As the good book says, there’s nothing new under the sun.

Thanks again to the in-laws for all their hard work, great food and awesome company.  I think my next trip up there deserves to be a restful and contemplative one after the the last three weekends.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses this weekend as we came home to find out that our garbage pickup is on indefinite hold after the announcement of a city worker strike here in Toronto.  I fonly remember the last one, where garbage piles in Chinatown lead to a huge rat infestation and a terrible smell in the entire downtown core.  At least we’re in the throes of our first heatwave of 2009.