Now You, Too, Can Stay in the Little Blue House!

Fall Colours at the LBH

We have some big news to share with you... you heard it here first!

We will be opening the Little Blue House (LBH) to guests starting in June. Our tiny Gold Rush home will be available to rent through Airbnb from June until September. We were hesitant to do this at first, but it is too lovely not to share.

Plus, we think that the revenue we generate through some seasonal rentals will help us to finish the restoration of the LBH. So, that is a good thing.

And, we are quite sure that guests will take care of our 122-year old cottage, and that they will love it as much as we do.

Please share this news far and wide, and we would appreciate it if you share a link to our listing on Airbnb with any of your friends and family who may be planning a getaway to beautiful Atlin, BC!

Here is a link to our listing:

Stay in the Little Blue House!

The LBH in September, 2019

Chilly Little House

It was -17 degrees Celsius outside (not that cold considering the time of year) but the temperature inside the house was -10! We have a thermometer inside the entrance of the LBH, and we always laugh at it because it's still in the packaging, hanging on a small nail near our coats. It says, "extra-easy reading," ha ha.

The LBH was frozen solid when I arrived... I think the house looks smaller when there's snow on the ground. I was thankful not to see evidence of any mice this time (unlike last time). Our mouse traps were empty. Just peanut butter, no mice.

I had to wear my parka and toque for the first several hours, despite turning all of the heaters on and lighting a fire in the antique cook stove. See and hear the stove in the video below, despite being over 120 years old! It's the kind of wood stove that needs frequent tending, but it's justified. :)

It took about 24 hours for the house to warm up to 13 degrees, so that is about a degree an hour from -10...

Atlin Lake on Monday, with a cloudy view of First Island (did I mention the creative naming of the islands near Atlin? First, second, third, etc.) The lake hasn't frozen yet, and it usually freezes in January! There's wildlife wanting to get across, and now they are stuck. I looked for packs of wolves, knowing they're around, but I didn't see any...

As Promised, New Photos of the Master Bedroom!

Here are some photos of the master bedroom, and although it is still not finished, at least the floor is done! It looks really beautiful, and I think that once we remove the linoleum in the parlour (adjoining the bedroom) and restore the fir flooring underneath, it will tie in nicely.

It's so hard to be patient...

Photo from last year: see the sub-floor painted grey?

Rick's work, partway through the job, in Nov 2018

Our youngest child, Violet, posing with the new floor!

Violet, age 8, helped me move the massive wardrobe & furniture...

Such an improvement...

:)

Wow, I've Really Neglected My Blog!

Hi (sheepishly)... Looks like it's been a while since I have written anything at all. Launching a few businesses and raising children probably has something to do with that, but then it sounds like I am making excuses!

The Little Blue House (or LBH if you've read my old posts) is doing just fine. We have had our renovations largely on-hold for the past 2 years, due to costs. That is how it goes with an old house, right? We threw a lot of money and time at our LBH, and we prevented the house from falling down. She was on a downward trajectory, for sure, listing to starboard, sinking, and home to many types of rodents.

We did recently complete a small improvement, however! We purchased some used walnut flooring from a local builder. A client of his had pulled it up, after he became bored with it... Lucky us! We waited for a couple of years to install the flooring in the master bedroom. In the intervening time, some type of large rodent took up residence in the pallet where the walnut flooring was stored. This may have occurred when the pallet of flooring was outdoors at the home of its previous owner.

In any case, when our trusty carpenter Rick opened up the pallet, the stench was quite unbearable. Much of the flooring was destroyed by the urine and feces of this animal (martin, mink, weasel, ermine??). Yuck.

He cleaned the flooring (narrow, tongue-and-groove type) and installed it over the sub-floor of the master bedroom. He put the sub-floor in after a total excavation of that room several years ago. We'd simply painted the sub-floor so we could use it while we waited and saved our pennies!

Here's a series of shots that show the original master bedroom, in what was once a 2-room cabin hauled from the gold-mining ghost town of Discovery, about 7 km away...

2013

Mousy Madness in 2013, tearing down the interior wallpaper...

Laid Bare

2013 excavation, part of which was carried out from inside the bedroom!

LBH on cribbing to dry out as foundation work is done

My next post will have the recent photos of the master bedroom, so you can see the improvement. Baby steps... We still haven't finished the ceiling, walls, or trim in that room... Not to mention finishing the parlour or even starting on the kitchen!

Thank you for tuning back in to my neglected blog!

The Porch

The LBH had a tiny front porch at one time, which must have been added when the buildings were dragged 7 km from the then-ghost town of Discovery. The house was made up of 2 of those Gold Rush era cabins, which were joined together in the middle. We think that this was done in 1917, as the linoleum floor has an underlay of Vancouver Daily Sun newspapers dated 1917 - full coverage of WWI... Interesting stuff!

We have one old photo of the LBH, from the BC Archives. In the picture, a man, woman and baby are sitting on the front steps - of the porch - in black and white, with quite a tree-less landscape in the background. (Atlin had recently burned down, the last of 3 major fires that devastated the town in the early 1900s. Discovery, abandoned, provided many buildings for Atlin - the ultimate feat of recycling.)

When we bought the house 5 years ago, there was an even smaller porch than the one pictured in the old photo, and it was leaning in towards the house, rotting. It wasn't difficult to pull it off. During our renovations, we've schemed and wondered about what we should do about a porch. We wanted to honour the history of the house, but we also did not want front stairs that end up directly in the street.

Here are some photos to show what has been going on. The porch is nearly complete! Our trusty carpenter just has to install the stairs and the access door to the crawl space, along with the remaining skirting on the exterior foundation. It's coming along nicely. Because much of the lumber is pressure-treated, we must wait at least a year before painting the porch. Luckily, our recycled cedar spindles were previously painted red, which is handy because it makes the porch look great in the meantime.

LBH circa 2012, when we bought it!

Spring 2015, after foundation re-done

August 2017, deck in progress

Aug 2017, stairs to be added on the right

Our youngest child resting her head on new railing!

Hello? Are you still there?

Hello... First, please accept my apologies for not blogging... We've been just enjoying our Little Blue House, in all of its unfinished glory. Since last summer, when we painted the exterior, we really haven't done too much with the wee Gold Rush house.

Well, except kill about 4 mice (that we know of)... We were rodent-free for 2 years or so, and somehow, the pesky little vermin have been sneaking into the house, probably through the addition, which is about 25 years old. When we picked up the front (old) part of the house up and then placed it on a new foundation, the seam where it joined the addition was most definitely subject to some wrenching. Someone told me once that a mouse only needs a space the size of a nickel to squeeze into an area.

Now we have several mouse traps, and my husband spray-foamed the hell out of a few cracks in our floor (that accessed the crawl space). He also crawled around in the dark and spidery crawl space, on all fours, to inspect everything down there... He emerged with a case of the heebie-jeebies. Then it was beer o'clock for sure.

In other news, I recently finished the last bit o' painting - the bay window, which is undoubtedly our favourite feature of the house. I will attempt now to include a photo (and I sound like I'm making excuses when I say that is one of the reasons I haven't blogged in recent months... my Blogger app stopped working on my iPhone, and that is how I have been speaking to you for a long time now)! So I am actually logged into a big computer - an actual computer! - and I am writing.

Thanks, Tom, for gently nudging me back to writing here... Don't forget about me! This story isn't over yet, people!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the Little Blue House! I have been rather quiet lately... The house is doing great, with work more or less paused until the Spring Thaw! We have found it to be rather an expensive enterprise, restoring a Gold Rush era former brothel. Surprising! Hehe.

That said, I am looking to earn some more money to help pay for it, so it doesn't all fall on my husband's shoulders. More on that in a later post.

For now, we would like to wish our readers a Happy Halloween!

Not a Halloween picture, but creepy enough for today!

An Invigorating Tonic

This really doesn't have anything to do with the LBH, at least not directly. I am tired, however, from all of these renovations.

If I had been building the house in the late 1800s, perhaps a well-intentioned advert such as this one may have caught my eye?

I stumbled upon the image in the British Museum's free online gallery at Flickr, which is a delightful treasure trove...

Just say no to depressed vitality!

The Trim is Finished!

Satisfying feeling, knowing that we've finished painting before the cold temperatures hit. That's happening now, as last night we had our first frost. 

The body & trim are finished! My only regret is that we didn't get to the bay window. It will have to wait until late spring. 

It looks pretty good, I think! Our carpenter added a nice step to our side door, which makes things easier. Less dirt tracked into the house, too. I'll paint the step next year after the pressure-treated lumber has had time to cure. 

The next project is a balcony for our front door. We are hoping that will be competed this fall.

Summertime

We enjoy these snippets of family time in between coats of paint...

Here's our littlest one heading for her LBH!

Improvements

July 1st, 2012

August 2nd, 2016

Making a little progress! 🙂

We're Nearly Done the Front

The front of the LBH is almost finished (painting the exterior that is). You can see that there's still tape around the door, as I've got another coat of our fitting "Aspen Bark" to add. Also, the trim on the L-shaped nook is only primed. It won't be staying that Too Bright White you see there. And, bay window trim & soffits haven't even been sanded yet... Whew!

She is coming along nicely though. Tomorrow, we are going to work on the south wall where the overhead electrical wire comes into the house. BC Hydro is going to disconnect the power for the day, so we don't have to worry about electrocution. That's a relief. :)

Check out the soffits!

Painting Pics!

Here are some more photos of the painting going on at the LBH. I'd say we are about 80% done!

Here is what we were up against, quite literally...

We used a product called Lead Out by Blue Bear (formerly Franmar). This is great stuff that when properly applied to lead paint, reacts to convert it to non-hazardous lead sulphide. I'd recommend it to anyone. It was expensive, especially to a Yukoner, but cheaper than going crazy like those poor Romans...

After applying the stripper, we wrapped the house in plastic to let it blister in the sun, as the Violent Femmes would say...

Then we unwrapped one wall at a time, and scraped the paint off. The coved part of the siding was tricky, so my husband suggested spoons. A couple of old ones did the trick. Our arms felt noodle-like the following day. 

Me!

Almost finished scraping the last wall...

While I started priming and painting the north wall, my husband set to work with the orbital sander and sanding blocks fashioned to fit in the coved siding. Before priming:

After priming:

After painting the north wall (left side of house) and large front wall:

Jeff and Riley, our Irish Terrier!

That's where we are at now. Our trusty carpenter has just added several new pieces of primed siding and some trim (much of the old corner trim was rotten where it was contacting the earth).

Next, we will paint those bits and the remaining walls, trim, soffits, etc.

I am keen to get this project finished!

New Blue!

We are getting close to being finished with painting. If you've ever painted a house, you will understand that the work is all in the preparation. It's especially so when you have 118 years of lead paint removal to deal with!

We have completed the north wall, minus a few pieces of new siding that will be installed (removed due to rot when the foundation was redone). We also completed the main front wall of the house. I will post more pics in the coming week. It was precarious work. 

The two walls in the corner "L" are primed and ready for the new blue. The south wall, which was the most weather damaged, has been sanded. We still haven't done any trim or soffits...

How does it look so far?

Pb

Booooooooooooooo.

I Painted the Addition...

Perhaps you saw my last post with the photo... Well, painting is underway at the LBH! I spent 3 straight days painting last week, in between rain showers. I really had just one delay, and the weather was fine for painting.

Here's the fresh first coat on the north wall of the addition! The only annoyance during this time was the mosquitos trying to attack me, of course because I was a sitting duck.

I call this section the Two Hour Wall. It's nearly 27 feet long, with a couple of windows and a big water tank in the way. (I guess I'll have to wait until we drain the water in the fall to get to that pesky bit.)

This is the side entrance, on  the weathered south side of the LBH. It's the door that we use all of the time. It was tricky simply because of the door, awning and window. At this point I was feeling very pleased with myself, and the colour was drying into a gorgeous blue (thank you, Benjamin Moore)! Then it occurred to me that this was only the first coat. A great first day, however!

On the second day, I completed the north wall...

And I completed the Two Hour Wall...

And then I finished the second coat on this part of the south side...

It does look kind of weird, with both the old and new, and not to mention the awkward upper bit of the addition that I left unpainted! My husband and I agreed that we'd tackle that part together when we paint the original LBH in July. Since I was working alone, it might have been a little sketchy on the big ladder way up there. We are going to borrow some scaffolding for the next part of the job. You can really see how weathered this side of the house is. I have my flakes of old paint in a sandwich bag, and the lead testing kit I ordered finally came in, so I am going to get it tomorrow. I am pretty sure that old paint will have some nasty lead in it.

I was able to paint most of the trim on the addition, too, with the notable exception of the awning. We are considering a tricolour scheme there, to mirror the panels under the bay window.

Unfortunately, our contractor is ill, so we are anticipating a delay in the installation of the lower pieces of coved siding and new corner/trim boards around the front (old) part of the house. Until they're installed, I don't know if we should go ahead and paint! We will think on it some more, but you know how it is when you've already arranged for time off in your schedule to complete a task... I'll bet we end up just going ahead with it! We can add a few more pieces of siding afterwards, right?