The Craftiest Workshop

First of all, I should state that the title of this post is literal not emotional. We are, in fact, moving again. We are moving out the apartment we have been renting in Grande Prairie and buying an acreage property in the area. We will still keep our house in Fort McMurray for now.

Today we take possession of a 15 acre property a 20 minute drive outside of Grande Prairie. We started looking at properties in August and had finalized this purchase by the end of September. Ironically, although it was the longest house hunting adventure that we experienced in our nine moves, we ended up looking at less properties than we would have in a week long house hunting trip. Sometimes, when you find the right property, it doesn’t matter what you have seen before or see after, it is just the right one.

We always label the houses we see by what is inside or outside that makes it unique so we can remember them. We had the “art” house that had lots of beautiful wall art and wooden furniture. The “cat” house that had two cats and smelled like cat urine. The “slanted” house where the main beam had raised the main floor so you ended up leaning left or right as you walked down the main hallway. The “play” house where they had a built in climbing wall, ball pit and tunnels for the kids in the basement; it also had a nanny wing with separate staircase. The house we ended up choosing was the “ladder” house as it has a tall blue rolling utility ladder in the basement. We even get to keep the ladder!

When I worked in childcare, we had one of these ladders. I spent a lot of time on the same type of ladder. I was one of the tallest people and one of the few that could reach the ceiling when I was on the ladder. We hung decorations from the ceiling with every changing holiday or season. The ladder was the easy choice for me to identify the house. The other feature of the house we could have used was the barn door that leads into master bedroom walk-in closet. I really love barn doors!!

There is barn wood featured above the dual sided fireplace that they used it to hang things on. The stove exhaust is also framed in it.

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We are excited to have the outdoor space to store wood, use loud power tools and enjoy our own piece of nature. We hope to eventually start a business of some kind involving wood; processing (bandsaw milling or log splitting), making furniture, wood burning or even possibly having classes of some sort.

We want to plant fruit trees and create a large garden space with greenhouses.

We will have a three car garage with high ceilings as well as another small workshop a ways away from the house. Behind and beside the workshop there are already structures built to store wood.

There is a fire pit area already created which I am very excited about. It has been on my “want” list since our very first house purchase but we have never had one.

We have had many people wonder why we want to try acreage living. They mention things like dealing with well and septic, having to cut so much grass or plow snow. We only see the potential at this point and a chance to do things we have been only dreaming about.