New Home

Hey everyone,

Well we successfully completed the move to the new house and have been settling it.   It was a very rough move and I definitely learned my lesson.   Last year we moved and hired a guy and things went very smoothly.  This year as we were only moving a 1/2 km I figured "hey I can do this".   After 4 days of lugging stuff over and up and down stairs during one of the hottest summers I can remember, I was dead!   Lesson learned, the money spent last year was well worth it and the only way I'll ever do it again.  ;-)    Thanks to all those who helped with the big stuff on the Saturday to help us complete the move.

The new place is fantastic.   Still a few small reno's going on and while we were moving in they were up to their ears in the reno's, they ended up being a few days behind so I had to dodge them throughout the move.

No indoor photos, given that blogs are very public, but I did send some photos off to those of you who are close enough.  But here is an outdoor look;

The front.  The garage is being used by the owner but I have full access.   The house looks older, and it is, but the inside has been completely renovated and has tons of room.  I call it "the tardis" cause it's bigger on the inside.

The backside of the house.   The deck is rather small and I have a modified ramp for Jackson, although he is still scared of the deck.  He jumped off the first few days we were here and hurt his leg and limped around for a few days, so he's a bit gun sky.  We have been hinting to the owners that a larger deck would make the house more attractive ;-)

The view from the back deck.  There is no one behind us, on the other side of the garage is a neighbour that we have yet to see and to the left is a pile of heavy machinery that is being used to develop a bunch of roads for a new subdivision at some point.  When they are done, a soccer field is supposed to go in beside us and be fenced by the city.   Time will tell.   The little part behind the garage is ours and we can store the boats and stuff in there.

We definitely find this house much more comfortable then the last and it has character.   Although we liked the last house it just never had that character I've been used to after living at the farm.   Just another house that had been put up along with hundreds of others.   This one is 90+ years old on the front with a modern open concept on the back.  The basement still has logs holding up the main house and tons of old wiring and plumbing that appears to go nowhere.  It's pretty cool and scary all at the same time.  Tons of windows and natural light, and breezes on all 4 sides thanks to the array of windows.    Even the basement is pretty cool and my hamshack setup is pretty decent.  Gas furnace, fireplace, water heater and stove tops it all off and the old place has central A/C.   Even has a huge water softener/treatment system.

We had quite the horror story with Bell and Rogers.   There was no sign of a phone cable going to the house or into the house.  They finally found the cut phone cable and ran it up to the house and I later wired a phone line into the house but while we were running the underground cable we hit on rock.  After some digging we discovered it was interlocking brick.  Some more digging discovered a completely overgrown walk way.  Like I said, character.

The recovered walkway.

Speaking of ham shack, I did managed to get the HF vertical back up in the air yesterday.  Tried it out this morning chatting with Bermuda without difficulty, so now I just have to bury all the radials and coax - argh!   and then I'll be on to putting the 6 meter quad back up in the air.

The backyard and the old, beatup, 22 year old vertical back in the air. Little worried about how the metal roof on the garage is going to effect things to the north but we'll see.

The 6 meter quad awaiting the tower to go up (in the left of the picture laying on the lawn).

Jen has been on vacation since the move, lucky girl, but I just started my 2 weeks off - yippee.  Nothing major planned, hope to get a day trip into Kingston, check out some lock stations on the Rideau, some paddling (canoe and kayak), some photography, catch a move or two, visit with friends over in Gatineau and just plan chill out for a few weeks.   Jen's daughter, Erin, is off to Disney later today and will be gone for the next 10 days or so.  So just the 2 of us, the cats and Jackson man!

So fingers crossed lots of photos in the next 2 weeks and more blog items that talk about interesting stuff besides moves and antennas. :-)   Hope everyone is having a great weekend!