Is There Light At the End?

Light.  How I miss having light.  Jeremy works almost every evening on the Studio using an extension cord and some work lights.  It really doesn't help having such a long dark winter.  But there is light, at least at the end of the proverbial tunnel.  As all of the electrical is finished and literally waiting for SaskPower to come and tie us into the grid (literally a 5 minute job).  

In the meantime it's time to get serious about drywall and finish all the little bits and pieces that didn't seem important at the time but now are glaringly obvious.  Drywall doesn't do itself and sometimes it pays to bring in some relatives... Like the in-laws.  So with Papa working with Jeremy on finishing up the drywall we started, and Grandma entertaining the kids outside, I got to do some sewing... To my never ending shame I'm sure.  I'll cut this short and show some before and after photos. 

Bathroom - Before

Bathroom - After

Main Room West Wall - Before

Main Room West Wall - Half Way...

Main Room West and North Wall - After

 Everything is really starting to come together in there.  Some times when you drywall a space it seems smaller than before, this space feels exactly opposite.  It's much bigger feeling, mostly because it isn't as full of building materials, and the ladders are put away.  As soon as we get some heat in there it will me my time to shine and the mud and tape derby will begin!

Man of the Day

Drywall Apprentices

On to doors.  This is the back door to the studio, it's approximately 27 inches wide, considering that standard exterior doors are between 32 to 36 inches wide, it's a little door.  This is of course ignoring entirely the fact that it is a couple of planks nailed together with some cross braces (aka: a barn door).

So as we 'finish' the major framing/construction of the Studio there is still more to do....  The new door is stashed away in the shop for now awaiting some form of ambition which after a marathon weekend I don't blame Jeremy for motivational apathy.

There is also a door between the back porch and the North wall (pictured above) that sports this awesome door knob.  Now I'm not really much for sentimentality but this knob is so cool!  Plus it comes with a groovy key.  Does anyone know why the key has been blunted?  Should I take it somewhere and get a new ring attached or just leave it as is?  Anyhow one way or another this door/knob/key are staying in the Studio.

Insulation, Inspection, Inspiration

Jeremy finished up the interior wiring  bowing down to my insistence that I NEEDED my sewing machines and iron on separate circuits so you don't get that whole dimming of the lights every time the iron kicks on.  Anyhow he ran everything and got all the outlets installed with a little help from myself (I held the wire rolls, and drilled some holes ;).  When we realized that the electrical code had been re-written (75 pages) in Saskatchewan.  It is now required to have tamper proof outlets in both new construction and renovations. 

            Old Style                         Tamper Poof

Personally I'm a little miffed that we had to buy all new outlets.  Especially since I really don't see a need for them.  But the best part was my husbands swearing, to say he was a little miffed is the biggest understatement of our year.  It was truly creative and inspiring the way he combined words to create concepts that I've never heard of (which is impressive since I worked in a sawmill once).  Anyhow the juices must have been flowing because next came insulating around the wiring while we waited for the inspector.  So Jeremy cut strips of poly and suspended the insulation on the vaulted ceiling this way.  

Now we can just put up the poly when the inspection is over and avoid unnecessary seams. 

It can be endlessly frustrating working on old houses.  One of those things is the jigsaw puzzle that is insulating the walls.  Jeremy and I can usually work well together, but I'm not gonna lie, this ended up being a particularly difficult job for the husband wife duo.  Nothing a poorly thrown hammer can't fix... That and stalking off in a towering rage because SOMEONE (me) didn't put the 'pretty' side out when I put the insulation in the wall... I thought it was the pretty side... Nothing a 10 AM beer won't fix.

More insulation photos :) 

Despite the insulation being patch worked into the walls it's really not making a ton of difference with the temperature inside the building.  When it's -30 odd degrees outside there just isn't a fix for that, although Jeremy swears by a dollop of Carolans in the coffee.

It's really starting to look like a building now.

The inspector arrived and passed Jeremy's wiring with flying colours (I knew I picked him for a reason).  Obviously this is after changing out the old style outlets.  So now we can close up the walls and maybe get some heat in there!   Unfortunately we have been waiting on an electrician to hook up the panel and tie us into the grid... for 3 weeks... until I made a very serendipitous connection with a woman who happens to have an electrician husband who does residential wiring.  He (Shawn) came over three days later and got a start on the Studio.  So in a flurry of activity Jeremy and our friend Kirby went to town on installing the vapor barrier.  Jeremy came home with a load the other day that brought tears to my eyes... Drywall.  Work continues and is coming along more everyday, Jeremy and Kirby have been working like crazy, and the count down is on til our first guests arrive in February. 

 

Video of some of the Progress

Ceilings the joys and tribulations.

It has been well over a month since any progress was posted to this blog but we have not been idle. So now we are just puttering about in the snow, in between shopping trips and new jobs (I've started some causal jobs around town).  

Before 

There was a front porch to the house separated from the main room by a wall, which obviously Jeremy used his hugely man-ish muscles to demo.  The drywall had to come down too, chances were that there was going to be sawdust in the walls here just like the rest of the house.  This assumption was correct.  After I finished the demo/cleanup of the front porch Jeremy drafted a new ceiling to give the room a little more illusion of space.

He did a great job and I can't wait to put some books and a comfy reading chair there.  There are three windows in this little space, it's so nice to take advantage of that light streaming into the rest of the room.  

Jeremy and our friend Kirby removed some of the ceiling joists in the main room allowing us to vault the ceiling in the main room as well.  Jeremy installed the studs on either side of the chimney for drywall to go up.  

The Studio today... a mess of possibility.

Today (the day I wrote this post [Christmas Eve]) Jeremy and I were climbing about the Studio with a plumb-bob made of Christmas ribbon.  We are preparing to build up the rafters a little deeper to allow us to insulate with proper R20 insulation and create an echo ceiling of the one seen in the front porch.  Unfortunately, we have come to a grinding halt on insulation until after the holiday season because we need to get the electrical inspector in before we can cover up the wires.  There really is more than enough to do since the Studio needs
all new plumbing and yet another cleanup job.  Winter has really hit us hard here in Saskatchewan as the temperature is dropping below -25C on a daily basis. I hear that it usually warms up fairly quickly after Christmas here but who really knows in Canada... Well it's time to set out the presents, as I think the kids are finally asleep.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We have been working on The Studio as much as time permits.  Jeremy has been wrapping up year- end at work and the snow has been flying for a while now (Halloween in a blizzard isn't much fun... for parents).  Slowly but surely we have finally come to a plan, a course of action, of what needs to be done next!  More demo...  There was obnoxious amounts of old cardboard, wood boards, curtains  and garbage sitting on these rafters... oh, and the dust! I will be picking black boogers out of my nose for a week (I was wearing a dust mask).  The nice thing about this little house is that everything is straight and dry (well, it looks like it's straight to me, but Jeremy thinks otherwise).  We took the scrap wood and cut us up some more Saskatchewan fire wood for next summer. 

Jordan and Payton are getting proficient at pulling nails.  

Jeremy and I have stood in The Studio for hours discussing how I want to use the space.  I have been thinking about it so much that I'm now having nightmares about making some sort of critical mistake... which ultimately is ridiculous, considering all I need is a big open space with lots of outlets and one big wall for designing.  We have decided on a full bathroom (shower only), and a smallish bedroom (queen size bed and small TV).  Also, we will plumb in for a sink in one of the large rooms in case I get into dying fabric.  The heating was a hard decision, you can see in the photo with the kids a register in the floor.  There is a more than adequate gas furnace in the crawl space, but the gas to the house is not hooked up.  When the previous owner tore out the wood chip insulation they failed to cover the registers and thus they are packed with debris.  We decided to go with electric baseboards or some other sort of electric heat...with such a small space, it'll still be relatively economical.

Under some of the flooring we found some newspapers from the 40's.  I haven't had a chance to really take a good look, but in the help wanted section I did find an ad from my home town of Prince George, BC.  A sawmill in Prince George was offering to pay $0.89 an hour for general labour!

"The Studio"

The Studio

Our new and improved yard

We have been living in Eatonia for about a month.  When we originally looked at our current home, we couldn't help but notice the cute little house 30ft to the right.  The house next door seemed vacant, so we took a little peek through the windows and saw that someone had the interior torn down to the studs.  Later that day, we bought our house and have been keeping our eye on the neighboring house ever since.  Being the pro-active go-getter that I am (LOL), I took a wander down the street to the town office one day and asked who owned that little house.  The lady in the office couldn't give me the name, but said that she would pass on the message.  I figured this was a good start... so I continued to flap my big mouth, asking about the house all around town until there came a knock on my door at 8pm one evening.  There stood a pretty young woman and her boyfriend asking if we were the people making inquiries about her house.  We went and took a look at the house with them by flashlight (as there is no power hooked up) and made an offer...which she accepted almost immediately. She picked up her tools, we signed a single piece of paper, and now we own not one, but two "from the ground up" houses in Eatonia.   The house comes with a pile of new 2x4's and some pink insulation that had already been gathered for the renovations. Our yard has gained a nice chunk of grass, a fire pit, and a garden.  Our plans for the house are fairly well established... since we have been hoping to get our hands on it from Day One.  Basically, the house will become a quilting studio for me, complete with a spare room and bathroom for out-of-town guests...(Jeremy's just counting the days until my mountains of quilting supplies are no longer occupying the majority of his newly aquired garage).  Some of the  floor plan details are unclear, but it's all coming together nicely.  Since we only took possession of it a couple days ago, I think I may be feeling a little optimistic, as my plans seem to be getting a little extravagant for 600 square feet.  Well, the jokes could just keep coming but instead, I took a "before clean-up" and "after clean up" video.  Enjoy

Presenting "The Studio".

A little tidied up.

Venis Saskasus

We are the proud owners of an out of control Mountain Ash tree.   Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of the tree before we cut it back, but before the trimming the overhead wire in this photo was completely obscured by the tree and the branches were almost brushing the ground. At first, the kids were upset that we were cutting all their climbing branches, but I think we left more than enough for them to continue testing their resilience to sudden impacts with the ground.

With some of the debris, we built the kids a lean-to.  This kept them happily dragging branches across the yard to their construction project (unwittingly saving Mom and Dad the chore of cleaning up themselves). Once they had 'renovated' their new 'home' everything was fine.

 The lovely foliage around the front of the house was in desperate need of some attention too.  The weather was fine for an October afternoon so Jeremy and I decided that we would spend a little energy making that evergreen ground plant of unknown genus disappear.  It very quickly became apparent that this seemingly innocent plant is actually a man-eating death vine that was probably here before the house.  After a couple of hours digging in what can only be called some kind of alien soil... we weren't even touching the surface of what awaited us.  We had shovels, clippers, and yes, eventually power tools; and still we were defeated by "Venis Saskasus" the most tenacious plant on the prairies.  I wish I could tell you that we triumphed over the evergreen brush with never-ending roots and massive colonies of all manner of creepy-crawlies... alas the truck was full.

We have also been working on the attic for the last couple weeks.  The entrance into the attic is a hair-raising accent into the unknown.  If, for some unfortunate reason, a person were to fall; they wouldn't just land nine feet lower than the top of the ladder, but would continue to plummet into the wide open maw of the entrance into the crawlspace... Fortunately, both Jeremy and I are very agile... well I am anyways.  Once in the attic, a person would be met with a nice wide open space just itching for a set of real stairs, and a couple of sound-proof kids' rooms. 

Jeremy and I removed this pile of wood and various random things from the attic in preparation of clean-up and drafting a floor plan.   Some of the things we found were, a table top, an outdoor lawn faucet, a dozen single pane windows and a huge exhaust fan that must have been up there as they built the house.  There is no way Jeremy and I can get that thing out in one piece, not through the hatch of terror or out the mini-me window... so it remains until Jeremy cuts a hole in the floor for the awesome staircase I'm going to make him build for me. 

We pulled the nails and made us a nice pile of Saskatchewan firewood for backyard campfires... "real" firewood is a little hard to come by in the flatlands.

What Lies Beneath

Well, the most important thing to do to our new house was to make it livable.  This basically required a bathtub full of bleach, and stack upon stack of sponges.  I actually thought the walls and fixtures were different colours... Ewwww.  Anyhow, the carpet was obviously the biggest source of the smell, so the day before we moved in, Jeremy and I tore it all out.

So, whenever you buy a house this old (somewhere between 75-85 years) you can be optimistic that there will be some happy surprises along with a lot of "WTF?" moments.  Today was a happy surprise day, for under the carpet we discovered this.

 The hardwood is pretty awesome; and with the living room carpet out, the smell in the house at this point was beginning to reach a tolerable level. Luckily, Jeremy and I both had colds and couldn't smell much... but we could still pick up the unique odor that permeated the entire house, a smell borne of decades of cigarette smoke, non-existent building maintenance, and (cannot emphasize this enough) poor, poor housekeeping practices... it was everywhere!




I wish we (Jeremy) could have just pulled the staples out of the floor and that would be it... a big shout out to Kirby for helping out by the way!  Unfortunately, remember those "WTF?" moments I was talking about? Well, we are still scratching our heads over this one. Somebody, somewhere, knows why this plywood patch is dropped in the middle of the hardwood floors...  It's only a foot square, and we have ideas of how to fix it, but it's sad.  At this point, we were losing daylight so we had to move into the bedrooms and see what lie there under those wicked awesome orange carpets...

WTF?

"This isn't as bad as it looks"... That's what we told ourselves too.  Some weird floral linoleum that looked like it was printed on a giant computer printer...the flower prints were all pixellated, we'd never seen anything like it before... The first bedroom was relatively straight forward, the lino came up in large chunks and required a minimal amount of scraping to get the glue off (6 hours worth).  It took me 4 days to scrape the lino off the other bedroom floor, it must have been a high-traffic room as the lino was pounded down right into the wood beneath it.  As you can see, it was well worth the effort because the hardwood continued from the living room right into both bedrooms (and the wannabe closet that separates them).  By the way...this stuff smelled just as bad as the carpet, but it was worse because we had to kneel in it for almost a week trying to remove the remnants.

With only one of the two bedrooms suitable for habitation during this days-long floor scraping
chore, the kids got the room and we were relegated to camping out on the living room floor surrounded by  boxes of unpacked stuff. The picture's cluttered, and there's some dude laying in the middle of the room... but you can see how nicely those floors cleaned up with just a good washing (and we had thought that we'd be moving in onto plywood floors after we lifted those carpets)...guess things could have been worse!