Hey y’all - how ya makin’ out? Hope things are swell. Thanks again for following along - as promised, we’re still here and still trucking along. Realized over the last few weeks that I maybe should have looked at my schedule after I posted the intro blog to see when I could find some time to write the next one - I also had to do some family research in the meantime so I can kinda blame it on that - bear with me a bit.

Before we get rolling on this one, just wanted to take a line to say how much I appreciate everyone that sent words of encouragement, excitement, questions and comments my way. Excited that y’all are seemingly as excited as I am for this project and hope to live up to your expectations on it. With that said,

Annnnnnd before we get heavy into the new, I wanted to take some time to focus on the old - how the Douglas family came to be on this land, where it grew from and how we got to it.

First off - many thanks to my aunt Karyn for sending over some documents and clearing up a few things as well as some other family members for filling in some pieces.

This piece of land we’re building on was part of an original plot of land owned by the Douglas family going way back to the early 1800’s - my great great grandfather split it off from a larger plot.

As mentioned above, my aunt Karyn had sent over some info including this family tree - gives a good idea of how this area came to be and how it changed hands over the years. When I received this in the mail, I realized that this is the first time I’ve ever seen this laid out this way. Pretty cool to see.

The Douglas Family Tree featuring cucumber paper weights.

The plot that we’re building on was basically created in the 1830’s when the original homestead was built. And we have some old film pics of that!

Middle left is the old homestead with the barn to the back left of that, bottom pic is the old barn after the house had come down and the top right is the old one-room schoolhouse that is now our neighbours house.

The will from my great great grandfather also gives some background on this place - and we have a copy of that from way back!

Old school will. I’m sure y’all can figure out what it all means.

One very cool thing is that the original homestead’s island sandstone foundation is still on the property - after almost 200 years. It currently borders the almost-centre of the lot and is filled with overgrown alders - you can see a bit of it in the winter when they’re bare but in the Summer this area explodes with green. Check that out:

sandstone foundation + lots of alders. so many alders.

In those pics above is the original one room schoolhouse that was across the road. My father and aunts attended there. Another cool thing is that that building still stands and was recently renovated into our neighbors home. Lots of history on these two corner lots!

Fast forward to the early 00’s and my parents start to work on clearing the land to put down a family cottage. It had been left to grow over for years - I remember some hot summer days helping them cut brush, shovel rocks, and move dirt to help get that pad in place.

The building that they moved onto the property was actually a legendary Charlottetown location - formerly housing Don Diego’s Tacos & Grandpas Cookies next to the Leon’s building on St Peter’s Road (shout out to any of yall that remember the $0.99 tacos there). After that it was a gun shop and a cobbler.

We spent lots of Summer weekends at this spot and usually ended up having Thanksgiving dinners out there - after that, we’d winterize it and bid farewell til the next spring when we could get access to it again.

Sophie cameo - she loved to root around under the patio and turn her usual off-white color to a slightly more off-white.

After our parents passed, my brother took the property over as I had thought I was going to buy or build elsewhere on the island.

The road behind us.

When we sold our house in Charlottetown in early 2021, we moved out to the cottage thinking we’d be there for 4-6 months while we found somewhere else to live. During that time, we fell even more in love with the area - so we bought it from my brother. At first, we considered renovating the former taco shack on posts but like a lot of renovations, this would have taken us down a path of destruction down to the studs and a difficult place to put a foundation, literally and figuratively. After chatting with some trades friends, we decided to go for it. Some huge pros for us were the fact that the property already had a well, already had septic and already had electrical - not to mention it was already cleared and mostly landscaped how we wanted it. Huge head start.

That decision was made in January of 2022. It is now October of 2023. Things have progressed very well but really only in the last 3 months. We’ll get into the contractor/permitting/construction mortgage side of things a little later on!

As always, thanks for reading and I promise the next one won’t be so far in the future. To make up for that, here’s a bunch of shots from the property - lots of great flowers, a bit of an apple orchard, and a little sneak peek of what we’ll be talking about next.

Cheers,

Al

First, some history.

Here’s the plan(s).

We’re building a house.