Our Home!

One of the Blogs that I Follow has recently had a discussion on what makes a home ….. home. When looking for a new home, how does one know that “this is the one!”

That Post made me realize that all you “guys” that are Following Ray and I have no idea where we live, apart from Oakville and, with the exception of a couple of Toronto based Followers presumably cannot put that into any perspective.

2013 05 08dThis is our home and, if you look closely, you will see Ray guarding the front entrance!

Oakville is about a 30 mins drive from Hamilton to our West, and about a 45 mins drive from Toronto to our East. Travelling in either direction presents a vista (?) of houses, houses, businesses, houses, houses etc. Not a farm field to be seen.

The appeal of our neighborhood (apart from proximity to Lake Ontario) is simply its age with the resulting proliferation of mature trees and, in fact, we have a huge soft maple in our back garden which is a hiding place for squirrels ………….. and Ray knows it! We are about as rural as you can get given our location!

The cottage itself was apparently a standard economical design in 1920, and many were built to provide homes for the military personnel returning from WWI. Our particular cottage did have the covered front porch added later, but that was well before I (and later Carol, and later Ray) arrived here!

When I bought it in 1996, it was “priced right” for my circumstances at that time and needed considerable work but, being a wood framed structure and me being very comfortable working with wood  (thanks Dad for showing me what was possible a very long time ago*, and also for my school carpentry classes!) the time and money put into it was well worth the end result.

So there you have it ……………… our home!

*See “Dear Diary – Page 16” – June 25, 2015

36 thoughts on “Our Home!”

  4. I think you are fortunate to live in this charming older home. If I had seen this house and needed to buy one then I too would have grabbed it. I can tell that your home is loved by all the beautiful flowers and that beautiful tree. I would give my eye teeth to have a front porch such as yours. I had ours enclosed but was not present when the carpenter installed dark tinted windows. I had no contract with the Mexican carpenter so I had to take what I had not wanted. My house is an old house too but only from the late 1940’s. Your house is charming. Mine is not. But I have roof over my head that is paid for so I’m thankful. 🙂

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  10. A sweet and lovely bungalow, very similar to many in my neighborhood. So charming with quite the garden. And that ‘watchdog’ is a real sweetheart. If memory serves me well, Hamilton has been the home from which many, many hockey greats hail. Thanks ever so for exporting that awesome sport and for sharing a photo of your ‘hood.

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  12. Thanks so much for sharing home. I love those white painted American houses wiith the porch. We dont really have front porches around where we live near Sydney. What is equally sacred though is the back deck often set up with Bbq.
    By the way, i have one border collie lap dog keeping me warm as we hit 9 degrees celsius here. our homes are not built for winter and get quite cold. i think he is waiting to hit me for some leftover pizza for services rendered.
    To use an Australian expression….he,s dreaming! xx rowena

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      • Yes, although most days are possibly even more enjoyable than the height of Summer, the nights are chilly and our houses not built for them.
        We have a cooking competition running on TV at the moment called “Masterchef” and there challenge last week was to do an American style slow BBQ and they had a chef out from Kansas to show take them through. Is that how you BBQ there? We don’t have a lot of BBQs here, although that could well be set to change now we’ve been working on the house and are starting to invite people over again.
        The Aussie bloke takes his BBQ very serious and it’s definitely part of his manhood and more sacred than the shed to those who are really into it in a big way. That said, my experience of way too many Aussie BBQs is incinerated snags. the charcoal seems to be a key ingredient.
        Our local hardware store runs BBQs as fundraisers and we’ve been down there a few times and been involved. That’s been a bit of fun and a great fundraiser. Can’t burn the snags down there. Got to make the sale. xx Rowena

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        • I have no idea what an “American style” bbq is! Most people here (Canada) have gas bbq’s which offer control over temperature but, having seen a gas bbq spring a gas leak, I stay with charcoal. As for “manhoods’? I find it all rather silly and don’t care who washes the dishes; makes the beds; gets the beer, or bbq’s! Equality of the sexes should start at home! 🙂

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