The summer kitchen was where the Ukrainian guys who welded the barn together (including our Max) stayed in spring 2010, then Max stayed there until the milker ladies came with the herd of cows that September and stayed to milk them, and we moved them in that afternoon. The little house got it's own satellite TV when we got the new "pay satellite system"- that one has the "free channels", and an upgraded gas furnace, replacement windows and an additional radiator in the bathroom, but not much has changed since we put the bunkbeds in back then.
There was an entryway along one end, where the outside door opens up, and the furnace is located, with the bathroom at the far end, or you can go into the kitchen, which had a door into the tiny bedroom. It was so small that a full-size bed would take up a good deal of the room, so Garry and Victor decided to knock that wall down last week Tuesday when they cleaned everything out of the house- and carried most of it (cabinets and everything inside) up the stairs into the attic of this house!
Since then Garry and "the boys" have finished the demolition phase, clearing the wall rubble and removing the flooring from the new "great room"- it's about 3.4 meters by 5.6 meters- (almost 11 x 18 in feet) and this morning they made cement and poured a new floor in there.
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| Maxim B moved sand with the wheelbarrow |
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| over to Andrey who was mixing cement near the house |
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| work in progress- I didn't go out after lunch for a 2nd photo |
As you can see, the old stove? fireplace? was in the far corner and got knocked down in the demo as it was falling apart, the one in Yana's house below looks better.
Garry is using metal profile on the floor to level the cement, if you are wondering what's happening in the photo. Our Max did that in his house when he renovated it. The big white pipes on the wall under the windows are the heating pipes that the hot water runs through, it is heated by the same system as the big house, with the gas furnace over there in the entryway.
I'll let you know when it is ready for you to come visit! I think Victor may get more business for his Mennonite tours when people can have their own little house when they come to Ukraine to find where their ancestors lived.
If you are wondering why the milker ladies moved out...
Last spring Yana talked to Garry about a house (really half a house, during Soviet times, old Mennonite houses were split into duplexes to make more housing- they were too big for one family) a little ways down the street. He agreed to help her buy it, and she took possession of it in October, and after a little work, she moved in with her mother this fall. For a while this summer, there was talk that her mother Genia was going to retire to their home village when she turned 55 (and could collect pension) but that did not happen after all. So they moved out of the malinky dome sometime in November. Here's a little tour of there new place before they moved in, back in October, when they were starting to clean it up, they are doing all the work on it themselves, there is no bathroom over there, just an outhouse, like many of the houses in the village, but they are very excited about having their own house, garden, and outbuildings.
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| the house even came with a dog |
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| old stove, furnace? |
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| The kitchen is the first room you walk into |
This a a pretty normal old village house if you are wondering. It does have a small attached "barn" you go through a small door at the back of the house, I am not sure what they will do with that ... it is unusual but there were many attached barns on some of the old Mennonite houses, not many of them are left.
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| through the little door |
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| and its a barn room... maybe chickens? |
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