Spring Shape Up   

Each year the opening-up list gets longer as good intentions melt like ice in a summer drink. This season, start planning early for those jobs you've been putting off. Make this the year you're finally going to…

Lop that limb

If this is the year you've decided to deal with that wayward branch threatening the cottage roof, May is the month to make your cut. It's best to prune trees, including evergreens, before they “break bud” (the vegetative buds that give rise to new shoots and leaves), and after sap season, which, for most of cottage country, runs from early March to mid-April, explains Tom Noland, a tree biochemist with the Ontario Forest Research Institute in Sault Ste Marie.
Otherwise, he says, the sticky, weeping tree wound will invite fungi and bacteria to move in, especially with “big bleeders” like maple and birch trees. If it's been a very wet spring, which fuels the growth of fungal spores, he advises you forgo pruning large branches (more than 10–15 cm in diameter) until drier weather or risk exposing your tree to trunk rot.

Above all, be gentle wielding that chainsaw. If you want better sightlines to the lake, don't lop branches holus-bolus off your bushy view-blocker; instead, create “windows” in the tree. Start at the bottom, on one side, and cut a “hole” in the foliage a few feet high by removing three or four branches. Move to the other side of the tree, climb up seven or eight feet, and repeat. Depending how tall your tree is, you could continue creating windows every few feet, while preserving its crown. You'll be able to see the water better, but those on the water won't be able to spy you. —Cathy Collins

Pass out without passing out

Tired of running back and forth from the deck to the nearest door when you need the ketchup, another cold drink, sunscreen, your book, or other essentials from inside the cottage? If your screens are the kind that are held in place with hooks and eyes, here's an easy renovation to turn your window into a takeout counter.

First, determine which side of the screen you want to be hinged (remember that it will always open outwards). Remove the hooks and eyes from that side. To keep the screen from becoming hinge-bound or scuffing on the bottom, fit it loosely into the window opening before you install the hinges. Then slide two putty knives or other thin spacers between the sill and the bottom of the window to maintain a narrow gap while you mark the placement of the hinges, which should be about a quarter of the way from the top and bottom of the screen. Put a handle on each side of the screen for easy opening and closing and, voilà , you're done. You can latch the screen closed by doing up the remaining hooks and eyes. — Penny Caldwell

Be a shutterbug

Avoid the last-minute rush to replace missing shutter hardware during close-up next fall by repairing damaged shutters as soon as you take them off in the spring. Stock up on replacement parts such as hooks, eyes, and latches before you open up, and reinstall them before the shutters get stowed away and forgotten. If animals have chewed around the edge of the shutters, this is also a good time to repair or replace damaged wood. —P.C.

Deal with that damn jamb

Last spring, you pulled on the handle and the door grabbed its frame, twisting and complaining. It opened with a shudder and a squawk and got better by itself when the air turned hot and dry. Now, it's sticking again. Here's the diagnosis:

First, check the sill with a level or square to see if the frame has shifted. The door might be fine and the sticking caused by spring heaving at the cottage underpinnings, a more serious problem that won't be solved by fixing the door.

Second, check the gap between door and frame on the hinge side. If the gap is wider at the top than at the bottom, and if that gap narrows when you lift the door by its handle, then the top hinge is working loose. Back out the screws, plug the holes tightly with matchsticks and glue, and re-set the screws. If the holes are really chewed up, use longer screws to reach into the frame or reposition the hinge higher on the door.

Third, the hinge-side gap is straight but, when you lift the handle, the door comes free from where it's binding – at the bottom. The door joints may be loose and sagging. The easy fix doesn't work if there's glass involved, but with a plain screen door you can span the lower half diagonally with a turnbuckle and pull it back into square.

Fourth, the sill, the hinge, and the joinery prove solid, but a high spot on the door is binding. With the door closed and you on the outside, mark the bind (where the door touches the frame) with a pencil. The problem is almost always on the outer stile, the long vertical piece that extends top to bottom. Remove the door, set it on its hinge side, and brace it between your legs while shaving off the high spots. What you shave with depends on exactly where the high spot lies. If it's on the long edge of the stile, plane the marked section. If it's at the top or bottom of the door, you'll have to cut across the grain at the end of the stile; use a rasp, sander, or circular saw to trim to your mark.

Finally, try the door. When the fit is perfect, seal any trimming around the edges with shellac, varnish, or primer and paint. Otherwise, the raw wood will soak up humidity, swell, and jam the door shut again next spring. —Charles Long

Become lord of the ring

It is possibly the perfect cottage game – beguilingly simple, addictive, and sometimes so frustrating you'll pull hair out in clumps. All “Ring on a String” requires is a length of string fastened to the ceiling, with a big metal ring, like a dock ring without the mounting plate, affixed to the other end. A hook, maybe an oversized cup hook or a bent nail, is attached to a wall at chest height. The idea is to swing the ring in a wide arc so it lands on the hook. Simple, right? Sure, but once you think you've gotten the hang of it, maybe catching three or four throws in a row, all facility will leave you and you will be unable to stop until you've bested your score or begun to cry.

Some technical tips: Choose a space with high ceilings that's wide enough for the ring to travel a full arc – open-ceilinged, screened porches fit the bill. For string, use something that doesn't stretch too much, like Dacron fishing line. Placement of the catching hook is crucial. Pulled taut from its ceiling connection, the ring should hit the hook dead-on.

Finally, style doesn't count. Use a hard fling, a soft toss, an ascending arc, or a drop-from-above dive bomb. You will eventually get into the rhythm and hit the hook. From there, all is lost, and it is quite possible that you will play late into the night until someone points out that you are looking a little crazy around the eyes. Time for bed. —David Zimmer

Show off those shoes

If your desire to pitch shoes is bigger than the flat space on your hilly cottage property, don't despair. With a little ingenuity, you can transform your limited level location into a hideaway horseshoe court in time for some summer flinging. Simply measure off the pits with 40 feet between posts, and dig holes large enough to accommodate a 6" sonotube, 18 inches deep. Fill the sonotube with concrete, stopping four inches shy of the existing grade. Set a one-foot length of 1" (inside diameter) galvanized pipe, threaded end up, into the poured concrete, pushing it in as far as possible, but making sure the threads remain clear of the surface. (Duct tape the bottom end of the pipe first to ensure that the concrete mix doesn't fill it up.) This pipe will serve as a sleeve for the removable post that your horseshoes should be ringing off all summer long. Once the concrete has set, slide a three-foot length of 1" iron bar into the sleeve, cutting it off 14–15 inches above the pit's final grade. That'll keep your pit posts at official height, silencing the excuses of errant shoe-tossers. Cut away the excess sonotube and use a shovel to loosen up the top six inches of earth surrounding the post in a rectangle measuring six feet (in the direction the shoes are thrown) by three feet across, making sure to adequately cover the concrete with loose soil. The iron post can be removed whenever you need to use the area for another purpose, like parking your car or stringing up the volleyball net. Pull out the bar, screw a 1" cap on the end of the sleeve, and bury it until the next time you hear a ringer calling your name. -—Pat Lynch

Replant your concrete pad

Any concrete pad – like a step or deck support – can shift if water sits beneath it through the freeze/thaw cycle. Such pads normally sit on a 15–20 cm base of crushed stone. The stone allows drainage and, unlike soil, doesn't subside if properly compacted. When you see signs of shifting or subsidence in the spring, prop up the deck (or whatever) and pull the pad aside. Dig a small test hole beside the base to see how deep the crushed stone extends.

If the base is inadequate, excavate an area twice the size of the pad and 20 cm deep. Fill it with clean crushed rock, tamping every five-centimetre layer with a plate compactor, sledge, or even the butt of a heavy timber. Level the top layer, compact it, and add one to two centimetres of stone dust or coarse sand. Then re-set the pad by wriggling or tapping it into the stone dust.

If your test hole fills with standing water from the saturated ground, then the spring heaves will recur unless the area is drained. For a single pad of minor importance, just top up the base and re-set the pad for another year. But where the pads bear structural supports – under the deck or even the cottage – cut a ditch alongside the affected pads. The bottom of the ditch should be at least as deep as the crushed stone under the pads, and should be sloped away from the cottage; if the building is in the way, go around it, not under it. If you don't like the look of a ditch, lay perforated pipe along the bottom and cover it with crushed stone, filter cloth, and soil. —Charles Long

Give creosote the brush off

A chimney inspection is de rigueur before the first spring fire. Even if you cleaned it last fall, birds and other critters were waiting to move in as soon as you were out of sight.

If your chimney has a clean-out door or a removable elbow near the vertical section, you can inspect it from below. Just reach in with a mirror and angle it until you see a patch of sky at the top, lighting the insides of the flue.

If you can't see up the chimney, you'll have to climb on the roof and look down. Again, take the mirror and angle it to re-direct sunlight down the flue. It's far more effective than a flashlight.

You're looking for three things: obstructions, structural damage, and soot or creosote deposits. If you see fallen bricks, broken tiles, or split metal linings, call in a pro to repair the chimney. Nests and creosote call for a little DIY with brush and rods.

You'll need a steel brush for a masonry flue and a softer plastic brush for metal linings. The brush should be of a size and shape to fit the liner snugly. And you'll need enough extension rods to reach from the roof to the clean-out. A proper set of brush and rods costs about the same as a single visit from a chimney sweep. The cheap alternative, pulling a straw-stuffed feedbag up and down the flue with a rope, requires somebody below pulling on the dirty end, in which case flowers and apologies might also cost more than the brush and rods.

Soot is loose and dusty and most of it will have already fallen. You're also likely to encounter creosote, which is formed by condensation when hot exhausts hit the colder section of the chimney.

Creosote looks like tar when it first condenses and it can be runny enough to leak through stovepipe joints. But when it cools, it hardens into a shiny, black, highly flammable coating. Subsequent heating can puff it up into a crisp waffle that flakes away and falls to the clean-out, or it can set off a chimney fire. Crisp, shiny, or gooey, if you see more than three millimetres in the chimney, it's time to sweep.

Close the clean-out, if there is one, or cover the fireplace with duct tape and plastic. Then, get back on the roof and push the brush in from the top, attaching the extension rods as you go. If you hit an obstruction such as a lodged nest, try to pull it up rather than pushing it down, which may cause it to jam.

When you're done, clean up the mess below and light that first spring fire without further worry. — C.L.

Bring your lane up to grade

Raking gravel back into potholes and road ravines works only until the next big storm washes down the lane. Before you patch, have a good look at erosion's path and use it to map out more enduring solutions.

Where water has carved its track along the lane, in a wheel rut, for example, it needs an easier exit at the sides. Snowplows sometimes cause this problem by scraping up gravel with the snow and depositing berms at either side, turning the roadway into a wide shallow ditch. The proper fix is to grade those side ridges back to the centre, into a slightly raised crown. You might be able to rake the scrapings back into a crown right after the thaw, when they're still fresh and loose. Or, add spring regrading to the plowing contract.

It's trickier when the natural runoff has to cross the lane on its way downhill. When you find that tell-tale cut across the road, petering out in a puddle of silt on the downhill side, you'll have to provide a less destructive crossing. With lots of fellow travellers and a road budget, you might consider a culvert here. If you're on your own and don't have a snowplow to worry about, a surface sluice is a simpler proposition.

Start with the channel that nature carved. With a pick or mattock, square the bottom and sides into a straight cut 15 cm wide and at least that deep. Make a U-shaped gutter of 2 x 4s for sides, and a 2 x 6 bottom. Screw six-inch steel mending plates across the top at 60 cm intervals; without these top braces traffic will soon collapse the sluice. If you have any clay or cement around, mix up a wet batch and line the cut with it before you settle the sluice into place. Otherwise, loose fill around the outside of the sluice will soon wash away.

Finally, dig a catch basin at the uphill end of the sluice. This can be as simple as a wide spot in the ditch or bathtub-sized depression, lined with rocks to protect the sides. It provides a place for the run-off to slow down, pool, and drop its sediment before draining away through the sluice.

Be sure to clean out the leaves from both the catch basin and the sluice in the fall so it will be ready for spring runoff. —Charles Long

Want to comment on this checklist or tell us about an opening up adventure at your cottage? Send an e-mail to letters@cottagelife.com.

Published in the March 2002 issue of Cottage Life (sold out).

Copyright © 2002 by Cottage Life. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any article, photograph, or artwork, for other than personal use, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher is strictly forbidden.