We've been consulting with ERCA (Essex Region Conservation Authority) about getting some trees planted on our property. They came up with a 2 acre proposal that seems too good to be true.

They'll come in and use their tree-planting robot (ok – tractor) to plant 1075 trees in two areas – the first is a double line of trees along the farm's property line.

The farm is North of our property and the wind and snow that blows in is terrible – the cedars and white spruce trees will form a nice snow fence. That'll be 450 trees in total.

The second area they'll plant is between the field where we want to plant grapes and the campground area. They'll plant 625 hardwood trees in that area. That will effectively screen out the school from this side of the wood lot. They'll plant them in pretty mechanical lines, but we're free to move them around a little if we wish.

We have to make a three year commitment to care for the trees (replace dead ones, mow and plant clover between them) and they pick up about 90% of the cost. Very cool. We'll have over 1000 new trees on our land and be making a whole lot of very nice Oxygen for you to enjoy while you're here.

One of the things that I want to do is to harvest two or three of the White Spruce (my favourite Christmas tree) trees every year and replace it with a little bitty one. That way I can have a fresh Christmas Tree every year for about $5 (the cost of the bitty one). I figure it'll be 7 to 10 years before the first one, but after that every year I get a bigger and bigger tree!

With all of the new beauty and all of the new Oxygen that we're putting in here I know a stroll through the property is Bound to Please!

The bathroom in The Southern Comfort room is coming together now. We have plumbing for the shower in the wall and we've been moving toward getting the shower ready.

It turns out that getting the waste water out of the shower is going to be a whole lot more difficult than getting fresh water in. I'll need to drill through the floorboards to get to the waste pipe. Then I need to mount a trap in the ceiling of the Good Living Room and get the pipes all run where they belong.

Yikes.

The shower came in late last week and it looks Amazing! It's mostly glass and chrome with gorgeous looking taps and shower heads. I can't wait to see it all in place!

One of the things that we've been struggling with is the room is short (7'2") and when you put a 3" base on the shower there isn't a lot of space above my 6'2" frame to put a showerhead.

We were putting up the cement backer board for the tiles on the wet and return walls when we discovered how (what's the opposite of 'plumb'? non-plumb? Unplumb? Crooked? Tipped? Tilted? None of those words seem right…) un-plumb the walls are.

We shimmed out the return wall and the top of the uprights are a full three inches from the wall. Wow.

We had to buy two bags of leveling cement for the floor so that the water will drain through the middle of the shower instead of just flowing over the lip and on to the floor. Wow.

Now, I should take a break here and let you know what I saw while we were insulating the ceiling above the SCR this past weekend. Normally the roof trusses form a triangle (the most stable shape in all of geometry!) The two ceiling beams are attached at the bottom with what forms the ceiling joists. Then drywall is attached to the bottoms of those joists.

Not our house. We have a 10"x10" beam all the way around the outside of our ceiling joists. That's what holds the roof uprights in place. Ten by Ten. Solid wood. Dang. There's about four times as much wood in this house and you would use to build it again today. It's not going anywhere soon. It's just un-plumb. Oh well.

We know that now that the shower wall is plumb that the mornings here are Bound To Please!

The floors are pretty much done in the Southern Comfort Room.

It was a challenge to get that much paint off the floor and the stain and top coat went on really nicely. I did have to strip down to shorts and a t-shirt to keep dust from falling off my clothing on to the floor.

At one point we realized that the oils in my feet were picking up particles and dropping them on to the still very soft floors. We had to get a solution put together quickly to protect the second coat while I was applying the third coat. Turns out Duct Tape is remarkably versatile…

We've mostly finished the wall between the bedroom and the washroom – we're still waiting for the faucet for the shower to finish, but the door is in place and the wet-wall has fresh water in it now. We should be getting the faucet in the mail today or Monday (thanks to our friends at Plympton Plumbing!)

We're also hoping to receive the shower in the mail shortly. That'll be a big job but it should also be the last job.

The bed arrives sometime next week and we're putting the finishing touches on the paint and trim. Whew. We're really, really, really close now! Whohoo!

The plan is to soft-launch the room while we clean up all the rest of the details and hopefully we'll have a website shortly and then we'll start accepting reservations for the friends that we haven't met yet. That'll be exciting!

We have a real mess to clean up in the Good Living Room, but that should be just more drywall, tape, mud and paint. We're getting pretty good at that now…

We know that after all the effort that we've put into making it comfortable here that every night that you spend with us is Bound To Please!