The de Jonge complex comprises of a half acre apartment zoned property replete with three dwellings that front the street and with three separate garages directly in the rear of each dwelling. The center home houses the de Jonge family.The dwelling on the left serves as a workshop on its ground floor, with the second story converted into a sleeping quarters for students and or guests.

The dwelling on the right is currently rented to an old de Jonge friend and his garage has been converted into a second workshop. The garage behind the de Jonge house has been renovated to a living quarters for students while the last garage is now a parts and wood storage facility. In any event I was to call home the living quarters above the left side workshop for the duration of my stay in Oshawa..I was here to construct a Classical latticed braced guitar under the guidance and tutelege of Sergei de Jonge in a month long hands on workshop.

As Sergei tells it; when his houses and lot were purchased the doors and windows of the dwellings were boarded up .When Sergei actually entered the homes ,much to his surprise he found that scavengers had stripped the house of any thing of value to include interior piping and wiring. So needless to say it had been and still is an uphill battle to get the premises in a liveable and serviceable state. However in the Indian Summer of 1999..three years from its purchase date the structures, while not yet finished, were totally serviceable for an instructional program on Classical guitar Making. Point of fact..when we arrived at the de Jonges , Sergei was in the midst of installing a heater for the workshop and finishing a bedframe for the upstairs unit so we would all have a place to sleep.The rule here is the Canadian version of : "No Worry Be Happy ". What needs to be done....somehow gets done.

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