Drumming

When Emma's not playing, Leo thinks the bass drum is a wonderful kitty house.

Emma's been working hard, and she's finally getting to lessons that sound like music.

Workshop - Days 19-26

I've hit my first big roadblock on building the workshop: the door was not built properly. It's amazing that the door was able to get past quality control and out of the factory. Problems include:

• The installation hardware and instructions are missing.
• The frame isn't square. (The header is 3/16" longer than the sill.)
• The slabs aren't mounted square on the hinges.
• There is weather stripping missing.
• The brick mould was packed before the paint had fully cured and therefore the paint peeled when I separated the pieces.

The company is being good about it and is sending me a new door, but the replacement won't be here until the middle of December. So, for now I have the door just tacked in place to keep the snow and critters out. Until I get the proper door, however, I can't do much on the front of the workshop.

With the roof, the house wrap, and the temporary door in place, the workshop is now water tight and the electrician was able to come in and hook up the panel for me. So now I've got a couple lights and wall plug temporarily hooked up in the workshop. It's so much more convenient than stringing extension cords across the back yard.

While doing the electrical, I ordered the siding. Unfortunately, there were problems with the siding order too. The siding we chose for the house and workshop comes in random lengths, but I really don't want seams in my trim pieces. So I paid a premium to ensure that I only got 8' pieces of trim. Unfortunately, the shipper sent me pieces that were at least 8' long. So, I need four 8' lengths of 2x5 trim, but what I got was a 9', an 11', and a 12' piece. So I got the overall length I want, but not the pieces I need. Again, they were good about getting my the extra pieces of trim so that I wouldn't have seams, but it was another frustrating delay.

Anyhow, once I got my additional trim pieces, I started plugging away at getting the siding up, spending a couple hours each day at it. Unfortunately, I can't put the siding on the front wall until I have the new door installed. I was able, however, to put enough siding on the front wall to allow the aluminium guys to get started. They should be here later this week.

So Much for Peace and Quiet

Workshop - Days 17 and 18

I really want to get the outside of the workshop done before the snow flies, and the roof in particular. Given that I still have to get the boat put away for the winter as well, I decided to bring in the pros to do the shingles.

While they were doing the roof, I put on the house wrap and installed the windows. Next stop: the door and siding.

Workshop - Days 12-16 "It's just like a little house!"

For some reason, when I show a picture of my completely framed workshop, the first thing that I hear is: "it's just like a little house!"

I spent a few more half days getting the framing completed, and then I got stalled by a paperwork mix-up. Originally, the workshop was supposed to be under the same building permit as our house. Late in the renovation, however, I discovered that for some reason the workshop had been dropped from the permit.

The contractor was good and got me a separate building permit for my workshop. Of course, this new permit doesn't have any record of any inspections against it, so when I called in for my framing inspection, I was told that I still had to have my excavation and shoring inspected. Given that the foundation is poured and the workshop built, this could be a wee bit challenging. However our contractor stepped up again and had his engineer come out and do the inspection.

Now I've got a letter from the engineer saying my workshop has a proper foundation and has been properly built, so I can move on to getting the shingles and siding on. All it cost me was a two week delay. (But that wasn't so bad because I had to get the boat ready for haul-out).

Quotes

A couple quotes from Emma this last week:

• Emma and Christine had had a rough morning and had been butting heads a fair bit. When I got Emma to school, her best friend bounced over to see her and suggested that they play house. She'd be the mommy and Emma would be the baby. Emma looks at her and says, "You can't pretend to be my mommy. My mommy is grumpy."  [In my defense, she woke me up in the middle of the night and I was awake for 2 hours. C. ]

• Emma was talking about werewolves, so I asked her what a werewolf is. She replied: "A werewolf is a scary wolf...that freaks people out...and...and...and is aware of things."

Workshop - Days 5-11

The weather has been much more cooperative the last 2 weeks and I've made some good progress. I've taken a few more days off work, and I've spent a couple afternoons building the workshop and then did my real work in the evening after it got dark.

The roof was an interesting challenge. To keep the workshop looking similar to the house, the drawings call for a hip roof. In a hip roof the roof slopes in from all four sides, instead of having two vertical ends. When the framers were working on the addition, I recall the lead complaining about how much he hates hip roofs - now I understand why. I found a website that helps me plan out all the rafters, but it's still a lot of finicky angles and lengths that have to come together just right.

In any case, the structure of the roof is complete and I just have to get it sheathed. I'm hoping to be ready for the framing inspection within a week.

Building my Workshop

After all the work making the house pretty for everyone, I thought it was time to start a project for me. Then I remembered the list of things Christine wants built once I have a workshop, and realized that it's not really for me. ;-)

Really, I just want to have the outside done before the snow flies, and the year is disappearing fast. When Home Depot had a sale that let me get the wood for 10% off, it was too much to ignore.

My original plan was to take last week off work and see how much I could get done, but Mother Nature had other ideas. I did some good building on Monday and Tuesday, and then the weather turned to yucky to work outside. So I did some more on the weekend, and I'll take a few days off next week.

Emma passed Ultra 2!

It only took 5 attempts and a lot of work. This one was EARNED. We had left over birthday ice cream cake to celebrate!

I don't know if I have the heart to go through Ultra 3. :)

SK Graduation

Well, if it's true that all you need to learn, you learn in kindergarden, then this is it. Emma is done school. 
But don't tell her that because she is sooo looking forward to grade one. She's even practicing being a big kid and doing things like washing her own hair. 

SK Graduation

We were given this photo as a surprise at her graduation ceremony. The best part for the kids was the ice cream.

Another first

It becomes a vicious circle, you buy velcro shoes to be independent at school but then there is no need  or little opportunity to learn to tie shoes.

At nearly six, Emma needs to figure it out. So, I made a deal with her. She learns to tie her shoelaces and I will get her a pair of TwinkleToes running shoes for school in the fall. Also, I wasn't replacing her pair with the broken velcro that were becoming the bane of her existence.There was tons of motivation. :)

It also helped that the pair of sneakers I bought her to practice tying were pink.

It took her 2 days... one weekend. We bought them Friday afternoon, practiced over the weekend and she wore them to daycare on Monday.

She is very proud of herself.

and now back to regular programming...

Doug has done an admirable job of blogging the renovations but the time has come to start with the Emma updates again. Let's begin with what you have missed over the winter and ... gasp... over the first half of the summer. (Where has the time gone!?!!)

The renovations... not much happening other than Doug beavering away at painting and installing the trim. It is a long tedious job with many steps but the final effect is gorgeous. We picked a very simple trim (plain mdf with slightly rounded edges) that not only continues our choice of clean lines, but it was a fraction of the price of pre-made trim. At this stage of the game, inexpensive is good.

I'm still trying to figure out what finish to put on the stairs. I think I've tried 10 different stains so far. Thought I had it, did the treads then realized that, no, I did not have it. Now I'm sanding it all off and starting again. I *think* I have it now... and if it isn't I give up.

We are also starting to think on what tile for the front entry and the backsplash. Emma has been a trooper coming tile shopping with us. Or should that be a royal trooper -- she often wears her princess dress for these trips.

I'll post more over the next while. Keep tuning in.

Renovation - Weeks 31 and 32

Things are starting to slow down now. The crews are pretty much done and the rest is up to Christine and I. (It's amazing how much time a job sucks up when you'd rather be finishing up the house.) The blog updates are likely going to slow down as well since I'll only be posting when there's something interesting to say.

A few important changes though over the last couple weeks. The big news is that the kitchen counter was installed, and that allowed us to get the gas and plumbing hooked up, so we finally have a real kitchen again. The gas hookup also means that we can use the BBQ again - YAY!

Ever since the foundation was poured for Christine's craft room, we've always had a water leak under the wall. (It was the fault of the project manager giving bad instructions to the concrete crew.) The builder has made it right by cutting a trench along the base of the wall so that water runs away from the wall rather than into the house. It was a miserable, dusty job, and I'm very glad that I didn't have to do it.

And since there's no longer water coming into the craft room every time it rains, we were finally able to get the vinyl flooring installed. To install the flooring, the crew removed the stairs into the craft room. Since it will be easier to paint the stairs and to install the trim under the stairs while they're out, we're once again using a ladder to get into the craft room. This means that the craft room will likely be the first room completely finished since we need to get the stairs re-installed so the house can pass its final inspection.

On our end of things,I've completed the flooring on the main floor of the house. All that's left to do now is the bedrooms, but we have to repaint our bedroom first. Since we're having a party in a couple weeks, I'll be pushing hard to get the floor done.

Renovation - Week 30

This was a pretty quiet week for the crews as they just did some touch up work on the kitchen. The exciting bit was having the guy come in to make templates for our counter tops. Hopefully the kitchen will be finished in a week or so!

While the guys were away, we got busy. I laid some more flooring and we finally got the den painted. So the only big painting that's left is to redo the bedroom since Christine really doesn't like the colour we chose.

Unfortunately, the kitchen crew pointed out that we were about to run into a problem. Before the walls were drywalled, we decided to relocate the pot filler more to the center of the stove, and to bring it up a bit to allow for some taller pots. What we hadn't realized was that the pot filler rises about 6" from the point where the pipe comes out of the wall. As things sat, we could either install the pot filler or the range hood, but not both.

So there was only one thing to do - open up the wall and move the rough-in for the pot filler down 4". Since we'd moved the rough-in, I decided to do the fix myself - it turned out to be surprisingly easy. (In any case, the look on Emma's face when I asked her to help me put "mud" on the walls made it all worthwhile.)

Renovation - Week 29

The big tasks for this week were to get the fascia and eavestroughing up and to start the kitchen install.

With the aluminum work done, the outside of the house is pretty much done. All that's left is the little details and the cleanup.

Getting the kitchen installed is one of the last big jobs the outside parties have to do for us. Unfortunately, it's still going to be a couple weeks until the kitchen is usable because we still have to get the counter made and the gas fittings hooked up for the stove.

I got a little more of the floor laid, but that's pretty much stalled at the moment because the den and our bedroom need painting. (Christine really doesn't like the colour we used in the bedroom.)

Renovation - Week 28

The guys spent the week doing clean up and little jobs - things are finally wrapping up.

As for me, I started laying the flooring. We finally made a decision and went with laying the floor straight. (Given some of the challenges I've hit, I would have hit some real problems with laying the floor on the diagonal.) It's not going quite as quickly as I had hoped, but it is looking good!

Renovation - Week 27

The guys are cleaning up the outside of the house. They put the railing on the front stairs and they've started to put up the siding.

Inside, the stairs for the craft room have been installed.

The flooring has been acclimatized, so hopefully I can get it installed next week. The first job is to turn the sheet of bamboo into nosings for around the stairs. What I wasn't expecting is that the smell of the dust from cutting bamboo reminds me of riding in the combine with Grandpa. (It does kind of make sense - in both cases the dust is from dried grass.)

Renovation - Week 26

Not much happened on the outside of the house this week because it was too busy snowing! The middle of April and it's snowing - that's just not right!

Inside the house, our bamboo flooring arrived. Right now we have to open up all the boxes and let them sit around for a week so they can acclimatize to the house. While we're waiting for that to happen, we've got two important jobs:

1. I need to take the 4x10 sheet of bamboo plywood and create the nosings for around the top of the stairs. That won't be too tough, but then we have to stain and varnish the plywood so that it looks good with the floor.
2. We have to decide how we're going to install the floor. We're debating between:
• On the diagonal - there's a natural diagonal in the house from the top of the stair to the hallway and we can lay the flooring to match. It's a good look, and not something you see every day.
• Lengthwise - this makes the space seem bigger, but its much more traditional. However Christine would really like to get some curves into the house, so it would allow us to do something interesting with the tile at the front entry way.

To help us decide which way to lay the floor out, I quickly pieced some of the flooring together. Unfortunately, both looked good, and we didn't have an obvious winner.

Renovation - Week 25

This week saw the guys finish off our back deck and get the network cables hooked up in the house.

While they did that, we got most of the place painted (just two closets and the den to go) and I hooked up the network hub in the basement.

Next week, the flooring arrives - all 2.5 tons of it! (When we heard how heavy the load of flooring is, we decided to splurge and pay the delivery guys to bring it into the house.)

Renovation - Week 24

Happy Easter from the rebuilt house. We moved in on Thursday. The place is a mess but it's home!

We've spent the week painting. Most of the living space will be variations of grey and green. It's a very peaceful colour combination, and really brings the outside in.

One thing that had slipped my mind was getting the telephone and internet hooked up. Bell was able to send someone on Thursday, but the builders had lost the end of the line somewhere under the new concrete. So we had to get an "underground guy" to come out to find the line and bring it into the house. Astoundingly, Bell crews work on good Friday, and they got the line set up quickly. Of course, then we had to wait for the inside hookup, but they had someone here at 9 am on Easter Sunday! So now we're reconnected with the outside world.

While we were busy moving in, the crews were busy making the place liveable - finishing up the electrical, plumbing and heating, and providing a temporary railing so that no-one takes an accidental tumble down the new stairway. They also got started on our new deck.

Renovation - Week 23

Things are getting close to done!

The electrician was in and we have power everywhere. So now we're can work after dark!

The HVAC guys are getting the heating hooked up. The manifold for distributing the hot water is a totally cool bit of piping! What kills me is that the HVAC guys do all this plumbing and electrical work setting up the system, but they're not allowed to hook it up to the water or electricity because they're not plumbers or electricians. Gotta love unions!

The walls are primed and we're starting to paint. We decided to save ourselves a bunch of tough work and had the pros do the ceiling, but we'll do the walls. So far we've done our bedrooms. Emma wants a room with pink, purple, blue and white. We've settled on a pink ceiling with purples walls. The trim and doors will be white and we'll get a bunch of blue vinyl dots that she can stick wherever she likes.

For now we're only doing the pink and purple. We took her paint shopping, and much to our relief, she chose very light shades of pink and purple. Then we painted.... The frickin' room glows because the colour is so intense. It oozes into the hallway and tints everything you look at. Oh well, it is the room of a five year old, and she loves it.

As for next week - we move in! The house won't be ready, but we'll have power, heat, water and a roof over our heads. So it's a pretty good place to start.

Renovation - Week 22

This week saw most of the interior work get finished upstairs - they mudded the drywall and insulated the attic. All that's left is to finish up the mudding and then the painting can begin. (We've got our colours chosen and can't wait to begin.)

Downstairs they started doing the additional electrical work that is needed and prepared the mechanical room for hot water heater and boiler. The unit they're installing is a combi system - it has both on-demand hot water heating for the taps as well as a tanked boiler for the radiant heat flooring.

On the outside, they've applied the Tyvek house wrap. This will keep the rain from penetrating into the house until they get the siding up.

Renovation - Week 21

(Yeah, I know I'm a week late.)

The big change this week was getting the drywall up. We can can finally get a good feeling for the space, and we like it!

The builder fixed my oopsie with the radiant heat pipe from last week and re-pressurized the system. He also had the HVAC crew point out where I should be putting in any floor screws (that would have been good to know last week). So, armed with this new information, I successfully installed the subfloor. Even better, the system is still holding pressure!

Renovation - Week 20

Visible progress again this week. First the vapour barrier went up for the attic. It's amazing how much warmer a thin piece of plastic can make a house. After that, the spray foamers came in and insulated the walls and floors - with the temperature warming up outside, the house is almost cozy.

Of course, where would we be without drama? As I started to lay the plywood into the addition, the 6th screw I drove didn't bite into anything. Thinking I missed the joist, I backed the screw out. Now I'm hearing hissing air - that's not a good sound. They had pressure tested the water and radiant heat system earlier in the week so, given where the screw went in, I likely punctured a tube for the radiant heat. The builder doesn't seem too concerned and, as he said, at least the pipes were full of pressurized air and not water. All I know is that now I really want to get the plywood down before they hook up the water!

Renovation - Week 19

Finally - some progress has been made! The framing concerns have been addressed and we've passed all our inspections. (Our builder is rather grumpy though - the second inspector is much more experienced than the original inspector and says that the extra work was not needed. That means we've lost a week of build time and our builder had to lay out a pile of cash for no good reason.)

On the weekend I started laying a new subfloor over the old floor boards. This is an additional layer of 1/2" plywood over the entire floor to smooth out the rough spots and provide a better surface for the bamboo flooring.

Renovation - Week 18

Not much happened this week. The company owner is up to speed on our project and started to get the inspections done. The electrical has been passed, but we have a framing issue - it turns out that the helical pilings were not placed in the right position so the outside wall of the addition isn't properly supported. Fortunately, it can be fixed - all that's needed is to reinforce the joists that support the posts on either side of the large window.

So now we have to wait for the floor to be reinforced and then we need the framing to be reinspected. After that, the HVAC can be inspected (the permit has finally been reissued), and the natural gas can be roughed in for the stove and barbecue. With all the delays, we're now expected to get into the house to start painting by mid-March.

While all the big work has been mostly stalled, a couple smaller projects got completed. We finally have the right 16' window installed. I have also spent the last couple weekends screwing down all the floorboards (~2200 screws!) to address all the loose and squeaky spots.

Still no pictures since nothing has changed in how the house looks.

Renovation - Week 17

Unfortunately, we're still stalled. Our project manager had to resign suddenly for family reasons. Now the owner of the company has to come up to speed on where our build is at, make arrangements for the inspections and all that stuff. We're hoping that the inspections happened late in the week, but we haven't heard anything.

So nothing happened on the house last week, and there are no new pictures. Hopefully we'll be making progress again next week.

Renovation - Week 16

This week saw the electrical work completed upstairs. There's still some work to be done in the basement, and the city has to come and switch the power to the new panel.

Unfortunately, now we're stalled. The next thing we need is the framing and mechanicals inspection. The city has managed to loose our HVAC permit, however, so now we have to wait for them to re-issue the permit before the inspections can be done. Hopefully things will get rolling again next week.

Renovation - Week 15

This week saw a little bit of interior framing done and most of the plumbing.

The plumbing is getting a bit messy because in order to meet code, we have to have a floor drain in the mechanicals room. So this means they have to break up the floor and add in a drain. Of course, you can't just "add a drain" - you have to take out a big chunk of the old waste stack and rebuild it to incorporate the new drain. That's all been done - all that's left is to pour the concrete and then they can install the new boiler and complete the plumbing.

Renovation - Week 14

3 and a half months of renovation, and the end is in sight!

It's time for the mechanicals to go in now. First to go in is the HVAC, We'll have a hybrid system when we're done with both radiant (in-floor) heat as well as forced air. All the new areas, as well as the bedrooms will get in-floor heating. So things should be nice and cozy next winter.

We're also still having fun with the back window. While the big fat pillar is gone, there is now a skinny pillar in its place. However, the builder now completely understands what we had been lead to expect and is making it right (again). Unfortunately, this means we have to get an entirely new window system installed and that won't happen for at least a couple weeks. Fortunately, the new window isn't coming out of our budget, and nothing will have to be delayed while we wait for new window.

We're still on track to be able to start painting in the first week of February, so we're working hard on getting the finishings planned. We've chosen the flooring and the kitchen is being planned. Now we have to choose a counter top and figure out what colour to paint everything.

Renovation - Week 13

Skylights can be a pain in the butt. They let in all sorts of great light, but if they aren't installed properly, or are installed in the wrong location, they are a big source of roof leaks. As it turns out, our designer just stuck in skylights where she thought they'd look good, but didn't consider whether the location was actually practical. Fortunately, the framers know they're business and were very candid about the situation - if we'd insisted, they would have installed the skylights as shown in the plan, but given the low pitch of our roof and the number of valleys in it, we would be at high risk for leaks. So, after discussing things over with them, we've gone from 3 skylights down to 1 conventional skylight and a tubular skylight.

The skylight was installed this week, and the roofers installed the roof part of the tubular skylight. (The tubular skylight was a late add-on, so I did the rest of the install over the weekend. It goes into the bathroom since the bathroom no longer has a window.)

The framers also built the cover over the front entry. It also looks like they got a bit too enthusiastic gathering up their equipment because two of my ladders, a work bench, and two saw horses went AWOL. No real worries, our general contractor says they'll be replaced one way or another.

So we're definitely into the end game. All that's left for the outside is eaves trough, siding, and the back deck. On the inside, they're starting HVAC, plumbing, and electical. Once that's done, it's insulation and drywall and then we get the house back. Assuming no delays, our contractor expects us to be in painting by the first week of February!

Renovation - Week 12

As busy as the guys were last week, they were not this week. All that happened this week was completing the sheeting on the roof of the addition.

Hopefully there will be more to tell next week.