A rare home schooling post: AP Government & Citizenship

As parents, we make choices for our kids when they are very young with — we hope, we believe — their best interests at heart. I made a decision for Laura shortly after her birth that she recently came to realize was not the right choice for her, and we’ve spent a good deal of time and money, along with a recent “field trip” to the nearest U.S. consulate to renounce U.S citizenship, so that Laura could correct that situation and bring her citizenship in line with her reality.

Laura, who is 18-1/2 and just graduated from high school, was born in Canada and is a Canadian by birth. She has never lived in the U.S. and never had a U.S. passport. But she was also — by accident of birth to a (then) U.S. citizen, who then (sigh) applied for a consular Report of a Birth Abroad — a dual citizen. Laura realized over the past year, after much study (her “curriculum” selections and recommended reading list are below) and reflection, that she is not a dual citizen but a Canadian, and a Canadian only, who has only ever lived in Canada, and who does not believe in divided national loyalties. And she wanted to begin adult life with as few impediments as possible. She had read that renouncing is easiest between the ages of 18 and 18-1/2, because the paperwork requirements are much simpler, so she started the process last year around the time of her birthday, and after submitting all of the required paperwork last November, was given an appointment for last week; that’s a wait of more than six months for the appointment and some locations, like Toronto, have even longer waits. At last week’s appointment, she was told the wait time to receive her official Certificate of Loss of Nationality, which will be dated with last week’s appointment date, will be four to six months. For 2013, there was a 221 percent increase, a record number, of dual American citizens renouncing or relinquishing their American citizenship. In 2015, there were approximately 4,300 expatriations.

The past several years have been basically an Advanced Placement course on U.S. government, politics and law, and citizenship, covering early American history (“no taxation without representation” is apparently a variable concept depending on time and place), constitutional law, patriotism, homeland vs. Homeland, just vs. unjust laws, citizenship-based taxation (U.S. and Eritrea) vs. residence-based taxation (the rest of the world), national sovereignty, personal vs. national privacy and security considerations, and what — or what should — determine citizenship (for example, jus sanguinis, “the right of blood”, or the acquisition of citizenship through parentage; or jus soli, “the right of soil”, or citizenship by virtue of being born in a particular territory. There were also discussions about being Canadian and living in Canada, but having U.S. officials consider everything about you, from your Canadian passport to your Canadian address to your Canadian father, “foreign” or “alien”, when to a Canadian they all mean “home”. It was probably as good a way as any for Laura to figure out what, and where, home is.

This is a very complex issue. I’ll try to write about this as simply as I can, because

1. there’s a lot of information involved, which can be overwhelming and the temptation to avoid it all can be great;
2. there’s a lot of misinformation (accidentally as well as on purpose) which, if you follow it, can make make your/your family’s situation worse rather than better, including those who would equate Americans abroad with tax cheats who need to brought into “compliance“;
3. that misinformation and misunderstanding of the situation confuses many Americans living in the U.S. — including extended family and friends — who don’t understand that there might be very real disadvantages to living overseas with U.S. citizenship; who think Americans abroad concerned about this issue are a bunch of whining complainers and/or tax cheats who don’t want to pay our fair share.

Here’s some background about the situation in general, from the very, very good Isaac Brock Society blog (named for the British major general in the War of 1812 who was responsible for defending Upper Canada against the United States):

The United States is one of two countries in the world that taxes its people no matter where in the world they may reside. The other is Eritrea, which the USA has condemened for terrorism and for its diaspora tax. The majority of US persons who live abroad are not aware of their filing requirements. But recently, the US government has decided to crack down on those who are not in compliance.

But what is more, the US government has begun, since about 2004, to apply with great pressure a long-neglected requirement of 35-year old law called the Bank Secrecy Act. That requirement is FBAR, the foreign bank account report, which the United States government expects annually from those who have accounts outside of the United States which exceed $10,000 in aggregate. The fines for failure to file this form are extortionate, and virtually no US person who lives abroad even knew about FBAR, while most of them, over a certain age, own bank accounts with retirement savings exceeding that amount. The threats of fines and imprisonment has frightened many people who as a result have consulted expensive accountants and tax lawyers to get this mess sorted out, only to face high accounting or legal fees on top of potential fines and back taxes. In 2009 and 2011, the IRS offered voluntary disclosure programs (OVDI). Some who entered into the 2009 OVDI, because of fear of the penatlies, were shocked when the IRS assessed them fines in the tens of thousands, essentially treating them as tax evaders instead of a law abiding citizens in their countries of residence.

For many US expats, renunciation now seems like a really good idea. Why not? Many haven’t lived in the US for years and now they have few ties there except perhaps some family members. So they want to renounce their citizenship only to find that the laws regarding expatriation are confusing and that the exit tax requirements are at best complicated and invasive, and at worst, extortionate and utterly in violation of their right to expatriate.

The media coverage of this issue has been uneven. There have a been a few balanced stories, but most of the time, the media has merely publicized the purposes of the US government; this is especially true of US media sources. The Canadian media has generally done a much better job of grabbing the attention of the world about the abuses of the US government. That being said, even the Canadian media sometimes falls into the IRS trap of projecting fear in order to force compliance. Overall, we regret when the media offers only condemnation and fear without telling the story from the side of the victims or informing them of their rights and alternatives.

US persons abroad also face US border guards who are starting to put pressure on all those who have a US place of birth to travel only on a US passport, even if the person has not been a US person for decades–an arbitrary change of policy making those who relinquished citizenship into would-be loyal taxpayers to a profligate government that has to borrow 40 cents on every dollar its spends.

As with a number of bureaucratic decisions, there is a lot of noise about the intent to target “big fish” and tax cheats, and much of the recent legislation including FATCA seems intended as retribution for the decision by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin but the reality is that it’s mostly little fish, with bank accounts and mortgages, and “foreign” spouses and children, who are getting caught in the net.

From Nancy L. Greene’s 2009 article, “Expatriation, Expatriates, and Expats: The American Transformation of a Concept”,

Expatriation was initially a form of nation-building. For the United States to justify its break from Britain, it had, among other things, to legitimate the notion of leaving one’s country of birth. Expatriation was thus seen as a form of inclusion in America, with former British subjects in mind. Like citizenship itself, expatriation was both a theoretical/rhetorical and a practical/legal issue for the early state. The Declaration of Independence, which complained that King George III had impeded the peopling of the colonies (“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither”), was a declaration of the right of emigration. In the ensuing decades, in order to consolidate American independence and citizenship, expatriation from Britain had to be deemed a legal, indeed natural, right for both the state and the individual. The United States had to counter both politically and philosophically the competing British claim that birth- right or perpetual allegiance bound those born under the crown everlastingly to it. This essentially feudal notion, most forcefully expounded by the famous jurist Sir Edward Coke in 1608, regarded expatriation as a moral travesty and a legal im- possibility. It would take several decades for the new nation to impose its view that expatriation was in turn a natural right. The right of exit was the necessary corollary to a right of entry, and a Lockean notion of free will underwrote the definition of the new American citizen. …

The United States may have been founded on a notion of the right to leave, leading Albert O. Hirschman [the German-born economist and author of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty] to speak of a “national love affair with exit,” but attitudes about leave-takers depend on who is doing the exiting, from where, to where, and when.

* * * * * * * * *

A recommended reading list for dual citizens of all ages:

“The Negative Implications of U.S. Citizenship on Those Starting Out in Life”

“My Thoughts on U.S. Citizenship for Young People”

“Letter of a Canadian Businessman to his Dual U.S./Canada Citizen Son on the Occasion of his High School Graduation” (and all comments at the Isaac Brock Society blog are always well worth reading)

Isaac Brock Society blog, and particularly helpful posts from the Isaac Brock Society blog (don’t miss the conversations going on in the comments, which are always helpful):

“Introduction to FATCA for Canadians”

“How to Renounce/Relinquish” (FYI children born dual must renounce, not relinquish)

Introductory Material on: Citizenship-Based Taxation (vs. Residence-Based Taxation), FATCA; A Synopsis of John Richardson’s Info Session (see below for more); A History of Isaac Brock Society

IBS’s consulate report directory and CLN delivery time chart (aka “What to Expect, at the Consulate, When You’re Expatriating”); “currently 240 pages of first-hand accounts of renunciation/relinquishment appointments, arranged by consulate location, along with further information and links to the required Dept of State forms and the Dept of State manuals used by the consulates in processing CLN applications, with an appendix containing a chart of CLN delivery time as reported by consulate location.”

John Richardson’s Citizenship Solutions blog; Mr. Richardson, an American, is a Toronto lawyer who gives frequent, very good information sessions entitled “Information sessions: Solving the problems of U.S. citizenship”. And John himself is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful. He also writes for the Isaac Brock Society blog.

A new blog, The Dualist, an early 20-something born in the U.S. who left there at the age of 13 to live permanently in the UK, now dealing with

the options facing me – a UK citizen living, working and paying taxes in the United Kingdom – when I had just discovered that I am subject to US tax rules which say that no matter where I live, I should be annually filing federal income tax returns to the USA’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and reporting detailed information about all of my UK bank accounts to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. These rules apply to me because I am an American as well as a British citizen. The US government considers me to be a US taxpayer not unlike an American living within the States, even if I haven’t lived in the US since I was a child, rarely visit, make no income in the US and have no assets there. The fact that I hadn’t been filing meant I was considered as a delinquent non-filer under US tax policy.

In outlining the different options I had for addressing this newly-discovered ‘delinquent non-filer’ status, I showed that even though I was a young person from a normal background just starting out in adult life, there were no easy solutions or certain outcomes. Briefly, the main options were to stay outside the system, enter the system and try to live compliantly, or enter the system with the intention of renouncing my US citizenship in the future.

American international tax lawyer Phil Hodgen’s blog posts about expatriation, including a recent 10-part series by an Irish-American 17-year-old who renounced as a minor, aka “The Expatriation Chronicles of an Accidental American”

San Francisco tax lawyer Robert Wood’s articles at Forbes, such as this one, this one, and this one

The difference between renouncing and relinquishing explained, at IBS and at Citizenship Solutions blog; children born dual can only renounce, not relinquish

One needs to be be very, very careful about the “help” one seeks with this issue because there are many predatory and ignorant accountants and lawyers whose help will net you only large bills and more rather than fewer headaches. There are good, knowledgeable, helpful people and resources available, often free or inexpensive, and this list includes a number of them. Read widely and ask questions before you make any decisions.

And, on the lighter side:

Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Where to Invade Next (2015)

Canadian Bacon, Michael Moore’s fictional precursor to his latest, starring the late, great, Canadian John Candy

Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans, available on YouTube

 

* The fee for renouncing or for relinquishing is currently US $2,350, payable in cash or by credit card (which must be in the renunciant’s name). In September 2014, the U.S. State Department hiked the renunciation fee by 422 percent, from U.S. $450 to U.S. $2,350. The fee to relinquish in recent years went from 0 to $450 to, last year, $2,350. The current fee is more than 20 times the average of other high-income countries, and the U.S. government has collected about U.S. $12.6 million in fees since the Autumn 2014 fee hike.

Moving (the blog)

According to WordPress, I’m at 97 percent capacity here, which means that even with my lacklustre blogging in the past few years, I’ll be outgrowing my blog home before too long.

I can’t see spending any money on to add on to this particular blog URL, not when there are expensive appliances and light fixtures I’d rather buy, so I’m going to start migrating over to (farm school) Farm House, which will be mostly house related, to continue documenting our house-building process. But school only as it relates to the school of life…

I’ll be moving all the house-related posts from here over there as time allows (i.e. when I’m not hunting for plumbing and electrical fixtures).

Motion sensor adapter

This post is mostly a reminder to myself, and hopefully assistance to anyone else looking for the mechanism to convert a regular exterior/outdoor light fixture to a motion sensing fixture.

Rona carries the Heath-Zenith adapter sensor, model #HZ-5210-GR, for $34.95.

I’m considering adding the adapter to a Rona fixture, the “Martes” lantern by Globe, $40.99 (though it was under $40 a few weeks ago when I bought seven of them). I do like the look and the price point, though I’m not crazy about oil-rubbed bronze as a finish — I’d prefer black, but apparently that’s too boring, so ORB seems to be everywhere. I’m hoping when the lights are up they’ll read black, maybe with the help of some Rustoleum spray paint if not in reality.

 

 

 

Stairs

All the permanent staircases are in now in the house. No more temporary stairs, or ladders, or scaffolding!

Here’s the main floor staircase,

Calving continues but we’re on the downhill slide, with 23 or so cows left to go, and about 75 calves bouncing around. The mud (you can see a bit in the lower right corner) which was everywhere and deep has started to dry up, especially after several unpleasantly windy days. Today we enjoyed a high of 15 degrees Celsius (59 F), an increase of 14 degrees since yesterday!

We need some new bulls for the cows this summer — they get too old and too related — so Tom and the boys went to a bull sale the other weekend, where they bought three bulls (two two-year-olds for this summer, and a one-year-old for next summer), and then the kids went to another sale yesterday, buying two bulls. The boys also went to another sale where they bought some heifers. The local college in town has a student-managed farm and so, it seems, do we.

And we dug another dugout, to help water the shelter belt trees and new garden,

Spring progress

All the framing, inside and outside, is done. The permanent stairs are done for the basement, in the house and from the garage. The permanent staircase from the main floor to the second floor will be completed in a few days; we’re planning to pick up the ready-made maple volute next week. The temporary staircase from the house has now moved over to the garage apartment, which will give the electrician, who just started, and the plumber (currently taking estimates), easy access. Tom will start calling drywallers fairly soon, so they can start as soon as the wiring and plumbing are finished.

I’ve started ordering light fixtures and towel warmers and have a list of things to order — more light fixtures, a corner bathtub, plumbing fixtures. One thing everyone remembered from last year’s trip to France was towel warmers, so I did some research. While Runtal is the market leader, they’re out of our budget, but I read good things about Warmly Yours and was able to order their Infinity model online from Costco.ca without a membership. A bit of a splurge, but a modest one and also practical in our climate.

On a trip to the city at the beginning of the month, we stopped at Ikea, since they were having their bathroom sale, to pick up to vanities with sink tops for the workshop bathroom (very tiny) and garage bathroom (much larger, and with a shower so anyone muddy from gardening or chores can clean up). Once we get them set up, we’ll be able to decide if we want them for the apartment and the rest of the house. The price is definitely right, especially with the sale (there’s another one in July, I believe); the quality is good; and I like the drawers and all the storage. We picked the 48″ Godmorgon/Odensvik with four drawers, in walnut, for the garage; and the 20-1/8″ Tyngen.

In between, we’ve been welcoming babies, and dealing with mud, snow, ice, mud, snow, ice, slush, snow, and more mud. Spring seemed closer one month ago than it did last weekend. But the days are slowly getting warmer and longer, which is delightful.

Earlier this month, on a very grey day,

The garage entrance to the house, with the garage bathroom at right (behind the landing),

Garage doors are coming soon. In the meantime, orange tarps make for a drier, warmer place to work and give a sunny glow. Making the basement stairs for the garage entrance,

Moving them to the permanent location,

In place,

The view from the basement entrance and the cold room,

The basement stairs inside the house,

The view from the basement,

Electricity in the workshop!

More stairs. Temporary ones now in place to the apartment. Goodbye, ladder!

Working on the main staircase in the house,

The view from the second floor,

 

Deck for the apartment/suite

The roof trusses are up on apartment, and work has begun on the deck. When the deck is completed, then the stairs to get to the apartment can go in.

We escaped last month for most of a week to the mountains. All of the kids skied for two days at Sunshine, and the next two days the boys skied at Lake Louise while Laura did some birding. We had great weather, around 0 Celsius and much more snow than at home. The weather got even milder after we returned, and we lost most of what snow we had. Laura is off to Germany at the beginning of March for four weeks, not something we were expecting until recently!

Next up, bids for plumbing and HVAC.

Extending the trusses

To keep the same roofline as the main house, Tom and crew extended the chord of the garage trusses; this also means adding a post and beam underneath to carry the extended chords.

Speaking of beams, in the workshop Tom was able to make use of a “recycled” laminated beam he rescued from the old hardware store before it was demolished; the beam is the horizontal, shiny one below,

On the far right, underneath that laminated beam is a metal I-beam, rescued from the old supermarket before it was demolished this past fall, that Tom turned into a support beam.

Workshop and apartment/suite progress

The weather warmed up for Christmas and the crew had some good, productive days in in between holidays.

The workshop, at the end of the garage and underneath the granny suite; some of the windows and the walk-in door are in. I’ve been researching overhead doors.

In the workshop; the orange area will be the wall between workshop and garage.

In the suite, the two windows at left are in the bedroom, and the two at right in the living room,

The angled garage,

Inside the garage, looking at the door into the house (up the stairs), and the back door,

From the back, with a view of some of the sheathing on the garage roof,

The apartment “door”,

Inside the apartment; the kitchen will be to the right of the front door, and the laundry/storage room and bathroom to the left,

Eat-in kitchen at left, living room at right,

Happy New Year

Belated greetings of the seasons, and wishes for a happy and healthy new year, from our house to yours.

Perversely, Christmas vacation has meant even more time to work on the house. The photo above, taken by the 15-year-old with his drone and the fish-eye lens, was taken a few weeks ago before the trusses went up. There are also fewer piles laying about the yard — all the piles of trusses are gone now, and the last of the pile of plywood is gone since they started sheathing the roof (shingling to begin shortly, hurray). I asked for some overhead shots to help me start think about landscaping, because I need to plan for “rooms” and winter interest (aka evergreens and interesting branches), and that means trees and shrubs, what varieties and where to put them.

Wishing you a happy and healthy 2016!

Garage progress

Tom and crew took a break from our house building project in September to work for paying clients. They finished up two weeks ago and came back here to start working on the garage. They’d been building the garage walls with the boys on weekends, and weekdays that ended a bit earlier, and two weeks ago started standing them up. The garage will have three overhead doors, and room to park several pickup trucks as well as house most if not all of our seven deep freezes. At the end of the garage is a workshop, where Tom will move most of the tools that are in the shop, and then the shop can house (as it was meant to) various tractors and machinery. We’re putting a “granny suite” over the workshop to maximize the space, either for Tom’s mother, if she’d like, one of the kids, or a renter. And possibly for us in our dotage! The boys are incredibly motivated to see more progress soon, and are working long days to get it done.

Last weekend Tom and the boys put in the two big laminated wood beams, for the overhead doors and for the floor joists (for the granny suite), and a steel post to support the beam for the joists. And now the trusses have started going up. I haven’t taken many pictures since the sky has been gray and gloomy, and because it would get dark before I could manage to get out of the house. Hurray for the coming winter solstice.

The garage in the centre and the workshop at right,

The granny suite will go above the workshop,

The boys putting up the garage trusses,

The workshop,

The view from the garage toward the workshop,

Last month on a trip to the city, Tom and I stopped in at an appliance store that carries BlueStar ranges, to decide if that’s what we want for the kitchen. Definitely gas, preferably with at least six burners, and we like the idea that BlueStars are built for durability, with few bells and whistles other than electronic ignition to need attention. Out here in the country, we need something dependable that won’t need much service. And the the cast iron grates above the burners make a single, uninterrupted surface, so you can easily slide even a large, full canning or soup pot.

If we’re probably going to splurge with a BlueStar, we need to save in other areas, such as curtains, especially with all those windows. I’ve all but decided on Ikea Aina linen curtains, and I bought myself an early Christmas present — a Singer 4411 heavy duty sewing machine with metal frame and stainless steel bedplate, when it was on deep discount at Amazon.ca. I’m planning to add trim fabric along the curtain edges, once I teach myself how to use a sewing machine.

In other news, Tom had another successful PSA test, and the next test is now nine, rather than six, months away. A huge relief and not something either of take for granted. Laura is registered for an online organic agriculture course at the University of Sasketchewan starting in the new year; she said at lunch today that she just had an email advising that the syllabus and other information will be sent out next week. She’s also interested in graphic design so we’ll be looking around for some online courses in that subject as well. We’re planning a high school graduation party for summer, and with any luck will be able to have it outdoors at the new house.

Laura has had a busy month as president of the naturalist society. She organized two book signings in town, at the library and Main Street Hardware, for new book, Backyard Bird Feeding: An Alberta Guide by Myrna Pearman; as the biologist and manager of the Ellis Bird Farm near Lacombe for almost 30 years, Dr. Pearman is at the forefront of bird conservation in the province and Laura had a wonderful time working with and getting to know her. And this past weekend she co-ordinated the local Christmas Bird Count and led the Christmas Bird Count for Kids (CBC4Kids), both of which went well, with a record number of bird species sighted for the area. Not a surprise, as we’ve been enjoying lots of Snowy Owls and Redpolls so far this winter; we have a flock of about 30-40 Redpolls which are enjoying the feeders, especially the 36″ Droll Yankee feeder, which looks rather like a Christmas tree with bird ornaments, complete with one Redpoll at the very top, waiting for its turn at one of the ports.

 

Windows and doors

The guys have been popping windows in as if they’re Lego pieces. Between Friday and today, they have all the windows in downstairs, and all but four windows in upstairs. And the front door, and garden/patio door to the back porch, are in since lunchtime today.

The front door, with a transom above and lights on either side; unfortunately, the transom glass is cracked though it will be an easy fix. PS Ignore the bike…

The garden door, between the dining room and back porch. We’re planning to have the kitchen counter extend beyond the wall to the right of the door, to make an area where we can set dishes etc. going between the kitchen and porch.

Porch

This past week they built the front porch roof and shingled it, and finished the roofs (building and shingling) on the dining room and adjacent back porch. In fact, they’ve already moved to installing windows, but I didn’t get any pictures of the windows in today since I was busy fetching a child from camp and getting stung by wasps.

It really does seem to be taking shape, and after so many years of seeing the house only on paper, it’s all very exciting.

Windows arriving for installation,

The back of the house, with the porch on the left and dining room on the right,

Laying out the kitchen, via GardenWeb

Some reminders.

From Marcolo at GardenWeb,

Ice. Water. Stone. Fire.

Remember it.

That’s the recipe for every home-cooked meal ever made. Every one. Of course I’m not talking about baloney sandwiches or nuked chicken fingers. I mean, meals you actually cook. I don’t care if you’re making hamburgers, spag bol, shumai, boiled dinner, mac & cheese, or fish puking up its own tail (Ever see that? It’s called en colere, it’s completely gross yet strangely cool)–you’re following the same four-word recipe.

ICE. This is your fridge or freezer. Your pantry. Your stolen shopping cart full of cat food. The un-insulated back porch where your grandmother stores that stuff she uses to make that stuff you like. Wherever you store your uncooked food–that’s Ice. It all starts here.

WATER. You start a cooked meal by taking food out of Ice and bringing it to Water. Water is the sink you use to prep. There, you wash the food. Maybe you mix it with water. At minimum, you rinse your hands and utensils. At least, if you want to stay alive, you do. There was a woman here a couple of years ago who insisted she never used water to prep. She doesn’t post anymore, because dysentery.

STONE. Then you bring the food to Stone. As in, you know, granite, soapstone, marble. Or wood. Or formica, or whatever else your prep surface might be. You chop, you julienne, you trim, you pull little wriggling things out of your broccoli and show them to your annoying niece until she screams and leaves you the hell alone in the kitchen finally. Whatever. While you are doing this, you frequently bop back and forth between Stone and Water, as you clean your hands or rinse the wrigglers off your knife. The NKBA says this bit of Stone should be a minimum of 36″ wide by 24″ deep. But you really want bigger.

FIRE. Next it’s on to Fire–your range, oven, cooktop, whatever. Obvious. This is where the magic happens. You sear a steak, bake a pie, or watch a soufflé rise to fluffy heaven until your damn niece comes storming back into the kitchen slamming doors. Anyway.

So, are you doing a layout? Memorize this recipe first. Because this is the primary order you will be working in your new kitchen. Set it up so you don’t have to backtrack fifty times a day every time you cook. Also, do not make yourself dodge people getting glasses out of the dishwasher, or rinsing off whatever the hell they got on their hands which, P.S., they already wiped all over your upholstery. Make sure you have clear, unobstructed lines between Ice, Water, Stone and Fire.

What? No, that doesn’t mean they all need to line up in a row. They’re usually in a triangle of some sort, though not always.

This is why we may recommend a prep sink for you. It’s not because we get a commission on them, although we frikking well deserve one at this point. It’s because in your particular layout, your main sink is not located where it needs to be. It may cross paths with other kitchen invaders. Or it simply fails to follow the order Ice-Water-Stone-Fire in a really glaring and inefficient way.

And from NKBA,

3. Distance Between Work Centers: In a kitchen with three work centers*, the sum of the distances between them should total no more than 26 feet. No leg of the work triangle should measure less than 4 feet nor more than 9 feet. When the kitchen includes additional work centers, each additional distance should measure no less than 4 feet nor more than 9 feet. No work triangle leg should intersect an island or peninsula by more than 12 inches.
* The distances between the three primary work centers (cooking, cleanup/prep and refrigeration) form a work triangle.

4. Separating Work Centers: A full-height, full-depth, tall obstacle [i.e., a pantry cabinet or refrigerator] should not separate two primary work centers.

5. Work Triangle Traffic: No major traffic patterns should cross through the work triangle.

6. Work Aisle: The width of a work aisle should be at least 42″ for one cook and at least 48″ for multiple cooks.

 

Thinking kitchen

We had to drive Laura to the city last Monday to meet the bus for the big 4H camping trip to the Northwest Territories, and took advantage of our time in Edmonton to check out the new Ikea Sektion kitchen cabinetry. We also stopped off at the KitchenCraft showroom, near Ikea, just to see what they have to offer. There were some door/drawer fronts in the old Akurum kitchen line we liked, but the new Sektion ones are rather underwhelming.

After going to Ikea and the other showroom, we’re still leaning toward Ikea, for value, quality, and the chance to be more hands-on with installation and things like countertop selection. There are only two Ikea door/drawer styles I could live with — Bodbyn off-white and Edserum (which Ikea calls “wood effect brown”) — and I wouldn’t be 100 percent happy with either. Bodbyn, in particular, which I like best of the two, looks very, very plastic-y, unpleasantly so. If this is going to be the only kitchen from scratch I get in this lifetime, I’d like to be crazy in love with the way it looks.

I’ve read a lot, particularly at GardenWeb, about Scherr‘s custom door and drawer fronts for Ikea cabinetry, but shipping from the US plus the exchange rate (which seems to be falling almost daily) don’t work in our favour. So I was very happy to Google my way to Allstyle Cabinet Doors in Mississauga, Ontario. They offer doors and drawer fronts in solid wood or MDF, with a variety of stain and paint finishes, including custom.

We’re also going to have in the new dining room what we have in the current dining room, base cabinets along the wall, and to have high-quality drawer fronts would be ideal.

Just for kicks, also based on good GardenWeb advice, we’ll give the plans to some of the smaller, independent cabinet shops in the city for quotes.

Ikea cabinets, possibly without custom door/drawer fronts, are probably our likely choices for part of the pantry (one wall will be floor-to-ceiling shelving), the bathroom vanities, and the laundry room.

Shingles

The house is almost all shingled after this week. They’re finishing up the tower, and then the only bit left is the dining room and back porch, which still need their roofs.

Son #1 isn’t in these photos because he had taken off for town for a haircut in preparation for this weekend’s 4H Provincial Judging, for which he qualified back in March. And on Monday morning he’s off for his first counselling gig, working with juniors at the same 4H summer camp by the lake he enjoyed for six years. Laura is off on Monday as well, for her 4H agricultural tour/camping trip to the Northwest Territories, for which I had to buy bear spray (gulp…) yesterday. She’s also helping out at Provincial Judging, as a 4H Ambassador (there are 20 or so in the province). The youngest is off to camp the week after next, and then we have three weddings in three weeks.

Our “Twilight Gray” asphalt shingles,

The back porch at left and dining room at right. The back porch will be our summer outdoor eating area, and the porch might be enlarged in the future. I’m envisioning cedar trellises along the columns for Valiant grapes, which grow well on the prairies; provided I can keep the pesky leafhoppers away.

Sheathing and house wrap

Tom and crew took some time off last week so that our family could work at the fair, but they made good progress this week, finishing up the sheathing  — the plywood sheets on which the shingles will be attached. — and start the house wrap. My job this week is picking out the shingle colour.

The house seen from the pasture to the east,

Our bedroom with the tower sitting area, now with ceiling,

The roof

A productive few days — the trusses went up yesterday, and today the gable ends and tower roof, with a start on the sheathing too.

Le chapeau, or, living geometry

What the boys did for their summer vacation: help build the roof for the tower. I don’t think they’ll complain as much about there being no real life, practical applications for the math they’re learning.

I’ve started researching steel roofing because it will take about two weeks to arrive. About 10-15 years ago, when we first needed to reshingle our current house, I said no to steel roofing because it looked too commercial and industrial. Now the industrial look has grown on me, as well as the desire to spare my husband and kids the need to reshingle a two-story house with tower sooner rather than later . It’s a Goldilocks process, with black and dark brown too dark and hot, gray too cool-toned, white and ivory too light. So we’ve been weighing the lighter browns, which should go with what will ideally be a mossy green siding.

The “gap” or hole you can see toward the top, under the peak, is to allow for a handhold in

 

Preparing to raise high the roof beams

Tom and crew, with the help of the telehandler, last week hoisted the trusses to the second story in preparation for their erection, which should be this week. All of the interior walls are complete now on the second floor too, and it’s amazing to finally be able to see the rooms. This particular house has been our dream for the past 15 years, first waiting for the money and then the time, to begin; and I first started a “dream house” binder in my late teens, 35 years ago, and even brought it to university.

In other goings on, it’s been unusually hot and dry, which seems to be the case in Canada from BC through Saskatchewan. Temperatures are in the 30s (86-95 F), the air is hazy with smoke from the forest fires in three provinces, and we’re dealing with a drought as bad as the one that forced us to sell all of the cattle in 2002. Where our hay fields yielded 103 alfalfa hay bales last summer for the first cut, this year the grand total is nine. And we have 200 head of cattle to feed. The boys are hoping to cut the ditches along some of the nearby highways, and we’ve bought some secondhand irrigation equipment which might help us get a second cut in the fall.

We’re milking two cows who lost their calves (one a stillbirth, and the other at two months old, suddenly and heartbreakingly from pneumonia), and every other day I turn the raw milk into butter, cottage cheese (which is basically a case of letting a large soup pot full of skimmed milk with one cup of cultured buttermilk sit in the warm — thanks to the pilot light — oven of our 1950s O’Keefe & Merritt range), mozzarella (using Ricki Carroll’s 30-minute recipe), and sour cream/creme fraiche. Edited to add  I forgot to mention that my copy of David Asher’s The Art of Natural Cheesemaking arrived yesterday and I’m looking forward to reading it and trying some of the recipes. The book is subtitled, “Using Traditional, Non-Industrial Methods and Raw Ingredients to Make the World’s Best Cheeses”, which means there’s no need for packaged starters, synthetic rennets, or chemical additives. In fact, the point of the book is to encourage readers to “take back” their cheese, from the

dozens of different strains of packaged mesophilic and thermophilic starter cultures, freeze-dried fungal spores, microbial and genetically modified rennets, calcium chloride, chemical sanitizers, and harsh nitric and phosphoric acids; also, that most important ingredient (which is actually an anti-ingredient), pasteurization. None of these, however, is a necessity for making good cheese!

Asher offers a fast mozzarella recipe with lemon juice rather than citric acid, as well as a more flavourful “Slow Mozzarella” recipe, which takes 8-12 hours. More on the book here at the website of publisher Chelsea Green, including Chapter 1, “A Natural Cheesemaking Manifesto”.

Back to building, with some photos of the trusses atop the second story exterior walls,

Wall week

The crew began the week building walls for the second story.

The telehandler is invaluable for getting the lumber up there,

Before the walls were erected,

One of the completed walls,

Shop class,

The rough window assemblies to make up the tower,

And up they go,

The telehandler is even more useful for lifting/standing up walls; this is the back of the house, with the dining room nearest the telehandler,

The dining room from the other side,

The 16-year-old running the telehandler,

Finally on to the fourth side,

The 14-year-old securing the temporary brace (until the interior walls go up),

The white painted piece of lumber is salvage, when the grandstand at the fairgrounds was replaced years ago,

Moving the top plate/cap plate assembly out of the tower to erect the wall pieces,

I got distracted by a tiger swallowtail on the lilacs,

Putting the top plate/cap plate in place,

Removing the GoPro from the GoPro pole,

A productive afternoon!