"We just let a random stranger into our house!"

Last night we went shopping at Costco.

Let me rephrase that slightly. In the unwavering conviction that we didn't want to get burned by the often experienced "Costco Conundrum", we went back to Costco last night, a scant four nights since we had first seen a nice looking bathroom vanity in the aisle at Costco last Friday night. The "Costco Conundrum" is, of course, that experience by which you see something you want at Costco, but can't afford it at that time; some time later, you return to purchase the item, only to find that it is no longer carried.

Mrs. Spit wanted, I think in a fit of madness, to go back on Saturday to pick it up.

Costco.

On a Saturday.

Surely I'm not the only one who sees the folly in this statement. Heck, we make a point of NOT going to Costco on a weekend because it's always a somewhat frenzied hive of activity, with the crush of humanity who has driven into town from afar for the sole purpose of loaded up three carts and a flatbed with supplies for their corner store in Outer Armpit, Alberta - or worse, Beyond Nowhere, Northwest Territories. Would that I was making this up, I'm not.

Reason and sanity prevailed, and we returned with our mostly great little Jetta station wagon to pick up the vanity. This is, almost, the last piece we need before we can do our little bathroom renovation this winter. It would have been the last, but the faucet we bought a few years ago is, I believe, a single unit with supply pipes at 4 inches on centre. The vanity we picked up is made for a faucet with holes 8 inches on centre. Signature Hardware, here we come again. But then, they are an absolutely amazing online retailer that I will continue to frequent as long as I need hardware. Sure, they're not free, but the service? Excellent all around.

After paying for our new acquisition (a box weighing 165 pounds counts as more than a mere purchase, don't you think?) we were asked if we wanted some help loading it. After a short pause, we nodded our heads thankfully. We were directed where to pull up with our car and we were off. When we pulled up to the loading area, there was a questioning look to the Costco employee's face when I started rearranging the car seats. I think it was the "trunk" aka retractable cargo cover behind the back seats. He didn't think that the huge box would fit in the small car - being that we live in the province o'pickup trucks and all. Once that obstacle was surmounted, we were in business.

Tipping the box up and sliding it into the car, with some shuffling around of sundry items, we were loaded and ready to take off for home. Our wagon was mostly full, but it swallowed it. I don't know how people manage with sedans, no cargo capacity! On getting home, it stayed in the car as Mrs. Spit was a touch under the weather.

This evening, Mrs. Spit was to go meet up with her mother for some shopping. And could we unload the wee box? Grudgingly, we got dressed for the weather and proceeded to unload the box. I was trying to get one end of the box arranged so she could lift one side. A bit of a hiccup almost left the box - marked fragile in several places - tumbling to the snow-covered pavement. At that time, a random guy walking down the sidewalk asked us if we wanted a hand. Gladly!

The dogs were quite put out when the saw a stranger walking backwards up our front steps, carrying the rather large box. After Mrs. Spit opened the front door and corralled the dogs, who were barking furiously, away from the front entrance, we got it inside and into the front room. We thanked the stranger, who managed to avoid getting nibbled on by the English Mastiff, and saw him off.

Which is how we ended up, standing in the front entrance, with Mrs. Spit commenting to me in some minor discomfort that "We just let a random stranger into our house!" After consideration that there was nothing visible worth stealing, and that we very obviously had two dogs who would delight in greeting an intruder, the moment of distress passed and we were able to continue with our evening.

I can see a light

Well... the bookshelves are almost done.

The project was conceived when we bought the house three and a half years ago. The plans were copied from "The Home Handyman" and stuck in a drawer for a couple of years. The decision to build the shelves was made on a simple premise. Mrs. Spit didn't want to be 7 months pregnant, up the ladder doing the ceiling treatment.

Here's a shot of the old shelves:
We started the project late last August. I'll never forget that the shelf unit was started when my son was a fetus, and will be completed with him as a memory.

The reno was worked around my job, which took me away from home more often than I would have liked. We had a rather optimistic goal of finishing everything in time for American Thanksgiving last year. This fell apart when my work took me away many nights that we didn't expect or schedule.

Then Gabriel flashed into and out of our lives. It would take months before I had motivation to fire up any tools again. 70% of our main floor was given over to storage of materials and construction of the shelves, and we have lived out of our kitchen and entry hallway through the tumultuous times of the last year.

So here I am, hoping that we can get it all done by THIS year's American Thanksgiving. Not a lot of time left, especially when I list everything left to be done and consider that I have to be out of town, again, this week.

Here's the short list of things yet to do in the dining room:

• wood filler for minor gaps, nail holes on book case
• sand shelves, including leveling between shelves and trim strips I attached this morning
• build something to install grate for heating duct on bottom shelf
• install quarter-round through whole room
• buy and install crown moulding
• tint ceiling
• prime and paint walls and bookshelf
• install electrical cover plates on new outlets in shelf
• install trim over windows
• paint trim
• install dimmer switch for lights with cover plate
• install lights
• come up with better system to mount electrical outlet on wall instead of surface mounting to baseboard (tacky as hell)
• cleanup

Yeah, it's a huge list. But at least there is nothing more to build for the bookshelves themselves. The rest of the room... oh boy... but the bookshelves are ready for filling, sanding, and painting.

Renos in this olde house often lead to many many more sub-projects before the job is done. Nothing is straight, or level in the house.
The job list in the dining room to date has included the following:

• clear old bookshelves off
• move books to huge pile in living room
• give away old Billy bookshelves to co-worker
• take down dining room table
• move other furniture out of dining room
• take down overhead light
• tear down tile ceiling
• tear down plaster and lathe ceiling
• strip plaster from one wall - leaving lathe behind
• clean-up awful mess of 90+ year old plaster
• have a moment when we see what looks like olde knob and tube wiring in the ceiling
  
• rewire overhead light with new connection box to center of room
• install insulation in bay window ceiling
• install gyprock ceiling
• install gyprock floor sheets on two walls
• tape, mud, and sand gyprock
• apply textured surface to ceiling
• cut out section of laminate floor for bookshelf location
• install lower and upper bookshelf frames.
• adjust lower frame for change in floor slope halfway across dining room
• install vertical framing
• install two new outlets for Mrs. Spit's computer drawer (change plans for shelves)
• install vertical shelf supports, including dado cuts
• install shelf horizontal pieces
  
• figure out how computer drawer is to work - thank you Lee Valley!!!
• build drawer pull out
• install facing timber on top, sides, and bottom of shelf unit
• build shelf columns
• build face trim and install
• install quarter round on columns
• install trim at top of columns
• decide that the list of what's left is a lot smaller than the list of what has already been done

Inter-spaced throughout have been numerous trips to Rona, Home Depot, and Lee Valley for appropriate tools, hardware, and lumber. Then return trips for more lumber when the lumber that WAS purchased warped after it sat in the living room for too long before being turned into something useful.

Here's where everything stands as of tonight. For reference, the ceiling is roughly 9'-0" above the floor. Shelves range from 8" to 16" tall, and each shelf is roughly 38" wide. The whole unit is 11'-6" wide from the lathe next to the furnace chimney to the wall separating the dining room from the living room.

I really hope that the light I see is the end of the tunnel, and not an on-coming work light!!!

Spending money on the house - indirectly

Just went and spent $400 at the woodworking show...

Let's see... what loot did we get? Yes, I brought Mrs. Spit with - or rather, she volunteered to come with me and pay for everything

- 1/2" shaft, 22 1/2 degree chamfer router bit - boring, $12
- tile cutter thingie - VersaTool Pro - $40 - first thing I've ever seen to let you EASILY cut curves in floor tile, glass, porcelain... very handy come time for home renos in the bathroom and kitchen (in a year or three)
- 6 small CordPro units - $70 - to make my mess of cords much neater
- Cut'n'Crown moulding jig - $180 - to ease the crown moulding install in the dining room, hallway, kitchen... etc etc...
- Freud glue-line ripping blade - $75 - to make clean cuts without the need for a jointer
some scroll-saw cut Christmas ornaments - $12 - make the tree pretty

And yeah, except for the tile thingie and ornaments, every item will be used in the next couple of weeks! The built-in bookshelves have an end in sight!

*appended comments*

I forgot to mention. Two of the items were purchased after listening to the "pitch" by guys who knew their product. Both the Cut'n'Crown and the VersaTool Pro were purchased after I was sold on them by their pitchemen. Except that I was sold on them a year ago at the last show I attended!

I did stay far far far away from the Sham-Wow though! Saw some people with several under their arms. I think some people will be getting an... interesting Christmas gift in two months!

The never ending reno...

I have an awesome wife. She is supportive, loving, and lately... loooong suffering. Emphasis on the long (several months) and suffering (hasn't had a dining room or living room for months).

We got rid of our perfectly functional, but no functional enough Ikea Billy shelves several months ago. What was supposed to be a quick project... errm... quick and EASY is what the magazine seemed to promise actually... turned out to be not quick, and not nearly as easy. Of course, part of that stems from the fact that doing renos in this olde house is never easy. There's not a straight wall in the place, and nothing seems to work out as originally envisioned.

So now that I've gotten back into the flow of things and am getting some good headway, a fly has landed in the ointment. Work. Yes, that necessary evil has stuck its head into the house and shaken like a mastiff flinging drool - messing up the works.

So, I get a mandatory break of a couple of days while I go tend to some work concerns. Oh joy. No... really... I love driving to go look at a culvert hours away!

Thank goodness for Sirius radio. It has saved my sanity more times that I care to count. In the past few years since I bought the unit, I've had it many places where the only radio reception is old... really olde country music that is piped out onto the ether for the creaky farmer set. You know... older than the dirt that they're tilling? I've also been places where the only phone service is a satellite phone. All along I've been listening to news, music, comedy with nary a care in the world for such petty things as reception.

So, while my dear love has to put up with the terrorist canines, I'm going to be watching blacktop disappear in the rear-view mirror. When I'm not walking through Lord only knows what kind of culverts that they want me to go look at.

Yeah... I'd rather be putting paid to this reno project than taking time for my job. But, reality bites.

Another weekend, another set of home renos

My back!

I'm bloody sore from moving a bunch of dirt and paving stones yesterday. See, I have this area of my house where, if it rains, the basement gets wet. When we moved into this house, it had a GOD-AWEFULL deck. It was covered in roll-on roofing, and was functionally useless as a place to entertain, BBQ, do anything. Plus, it frickin' hurt to walk on barefoot. Who doesn't want to be able to walk into their back yard barefoot?

So we tore it down and a new deck was built. By me. Not quite done yet either. I still have to put railings on the stairs, put up lattice around the perimeter to keep the little dog (not the Mastiff) and the cat from out underneath where they like to hang out and get incredibly dirty. That's a summer project. After tearing it down, we found out why the old deck was put where it was. When it rains in that corner, water goes into the basement. Not really cool. Probably related to our brick foundation walls in a 96 year old house.


So yesterday, we hauled in a bunch of dirt and built up the little area that was left in the corner that wasn't occupied by the tiered flower garden and lattice fence that we put in last year and this spring. Had to slope it away from the house. Then I put down heavy duty poly sheeting, construction adhesive'd it to the brick foundation, and covered the lot with six bags of traction sand. You know, the bags that you put in the back of the rear-wheel drive pickup so that you get some purchase in winter? Where was I. Yes, to cover the sand, I placed a whack of paving stones that we had salvaged from under the grass in the back yard. Yes, under. So neglected was our backyard before we got here, that the grass was allowed to completely cover a paved path from the house to the garage.

So, after all of this work on hands and knees, or with a shovel, or simply porting around heavy stones. I am sore. Added to this a cold that I caught from a co-worker with whom I spent 4 days cooped up in my work truck, and Sunday morning isn't alright for fighting. More sitting around and doing nothing. Except, this isn't in the plans. We have plans to roto-till the garden, etc etc etc... because, thanks to the loss of Gabriel, we're boycotting Mother's Day! We're having friends over for a sirloin roast done on the rotisserie. Oye... I need to go to work to get some rest from work!!!

The Never-Ending Story

If this were a real story, the subtitle would be "Or how Not to do home renos"

Back in September, we had a plan. The plan was to take our four Ikea Billy shelves out of the dining room and build the built-in-shelves that I had found in an old copy of Family Handyman. I didn't have the funds for oak, so the next best bet of painting the finished product is what we would do.

After I gave the Billy shelves to a co-worker, I went to our local Rona and purchased a whack of lumber for the construction. Trooping this into the house was an adventure, but I didn't want it out in the weather.

The first order of business was to take down the ceiling. This was supposed to work just like the adjacent living room ceiling. We had these ugly acoustic tile across the ceiling. We removed them, patched a few nail holes in the ceiling plaster from the nailing strips, and were off to the races - no big deal. Well, the dining room had the same ceiling - so same process, right? (The finished living room ceiling is pictured below. Mrs. Spit's handiwork!)

Not exactly. We pulled down the tiles, to discover that the plaster was missing from about 1/3 of the ceiling area. When I started pulling down the nailing strips, a whack of further plaster let go and went crashing to the floor.


Since the whole ceiling was not going to be a one evening job, we evaluated. We pondered. We decided to pull the whole plaster and lathe ceiling down and put up drywall. So, after putting up poly, to somewhat contain what was certainly going to be a mess, at the entrances, I started on demolition mode. Wow, what a mess!!!

This was also when we discovered that there was no insulation above the bay window in the dining room. It was installed well after the original house was built, and they apparently ran out of money and didn't install any insulation. No wonder it was so cold on the floor in that area when winter rolls across the prairies!!! This was one of many subprojects. The picture shows just before I closed in the drywall over the insulation.


Once all of the ceiling was on the floor, the world looked rather grey in the dining room. I had not only discovered that there was no insulation above the windows, but that there was what looked like knob and tube wiring to the fixture in the ceiling. Not good. Call to the friendly electrician we know to describe what we have. Phew... we don't need to rewire the HOUSE!!! Simple wiring that I can deal with. I did put in a proper connection box so that everything is according to Hoyle as far as I could make it.

The next thing to be discovered was that there was a soft section of plaster on one of the walls. Some poking and proding resulted in an area of wall that needed patching as well. Hmm... I know, let's look into pulling down the plaster and lathe wall! And then... we see that the wall insulation is not 3M Pink insulation, but rather, wood shavings. Thanks, but I'm leaving the lathe UP so that I don't have a much bigger mess to clean, more insulation to buy... etc.

Next we found an old newspaper up in the rafters of the second floor. Dated from the late 1920s. Yes, this was when the water was installed for the bathroom upstairs. The bathroom that was once a bedroom! I can't imagine a two-holer in Edmonton in the winter. The newspaper touted a new invention - Bombardier's new snowmobile! Pretty cool, too bad that some mice got to it years ago and ate out the center of the paper, leaving only a wide fringe...

So now it's time to get into the drywalling mode of things. Installing a drywall ceiling when you have a 5'-8" guy and a 9'-0" ceiling is interesting. A trip to the local Rona had me a truck full of drywall and a handy panel lifter. Would have been a touch more difficult without the lifter, that's for sure! So, here I go, learning another home-handyman skill, drywall installation. Note to self - leave any major drywalling to the PROS!!! I had to overlay the wall where the shelves are going with two sheets of drywall, as Mr. and Mrs. Idiot (previous owners) had ripped out a built-in buffet counter in the dining room, and patched the hole by placing a strip of drywall on that wall. So I had to build out the plaster wall to match it. Then there's the whole wall I stripped of plaster, and of course, the ceiling.

Mrs. Spit did her excellent ceiling treatment once I got the taping and mudding finished. Once it is coloured, it will look great. She's still waiting for me to finish the shelves... STILL waiting.

Off to Rona again to buy all of the lumber I need for the job. Bring it home, take over the living room further with a pile of dimensional lumber and plywood. Living in our little kitchen is soo much fun.

I got some of the frame constructed and installed, top and bottom. And then December happened. Funny how losing your infant son hits the brakes in a big way.

December rolled into March without a whole lot of anything being done. This led to much of the dimensional lumber taking on all sorts of new shapes! Warping, twisting, cupping... how much fun it is to watch money get blown to ill effect.

So I went out and bought more lumber. Thank goodness for my work truck!!! After more time, I got off my cheeks and have gotten the timber frame installed.

Of course, why keep on the original design?!? Mrs. Spit had an idea to modify the plans a bit and create a place where we could use the home laptop, including wanting power and an outlet to plug in phones etc...

Into this fell, literally, the bathroom tub. Or at least the taps on the tub. So now we have to replace the taps on the clawfoot tub. For the tale of Woe, reference Mrs. Spit's erudite description.

I've managed to find some hardware from Lee Valley - cue Wayne and Garth "We're not worthy... we're not worthy..." that will allow me to make this flip-out shelf. This was today, and wow... there's a lot of work to go. I want to finish and get the larger part of the main floor of my house back!!! As does Mrs. Spit and the fur-children...

I hate the house-flipper who screwed up my house

I've been in my house for over three years now. It appears that about 13 years ago, someone bought this house, did a lot of work on it, and sold it in short order - i.e. flipping it.

How do I know 13 years? Because the furnace was 13 years old when it died. Someone bought the cheapest furnace they could, and installed it knowing that the next buyer would go "Oh! New furnace - won't have to worry about that for a long time." When I bought 3 years ago, I thought that having a furnace only 10 years old wasn't so bad, as they are supposed to last 20 years or more.

Sure they are, when they are sized correctly for the house! This furnace gave up and threw in the towel because not only was it cheap, it was undersized for the house. This lead to it working far too hard, far too long, and finally it gave up in disgust.

Now the hot water heater is starting to act up. I'm guessing that it too was installed at the same time, with the same point of view. Maximum profit from minimum investment. Works great for whoever made the money, but as the stooge who is the second person to own the house after that flip, I'm pissed off that someone else's parsimony is going to cost ME money to bring it up to an operating level that is worth more than an ant farting in the desert.