Renovation Diary Day 0

Don’t worry. I definitely won’t be doing an update every day. That would drive all of us nuts. Since this is the last week-day we will have the house to ourselves, I thought it would be good to document the current state of chaos.

The porta potty arrived out front this morning and tomorrow site protection takes place. Wednesday the chimney is scheduled to come out because the weather is supposed to be better then than it is tomorrow. This morning we met with the designer to finalize flooring choices and pick paint colours. We still need to choose a front door and house numbers. There may be a few other things but the decisions are mostly made at this point.

Odie's empty cage

Odie went to ‘camp’ yesterday and, by all accounts, he is settling in well with his second flock. He’s over there enough that the animals and the people know him. This will be the longest stretch we have been away from the little critter and we already miss him. For one thing, it is incredibly quiet! For another, we are realizing how often we talk to him or save a tidbit for him when we are preparing food.

There are a number of errands we need to run but we have decided to wait until construction is underway when we will be looking for reasons to leave the house. We have boxes packed to go to the storage locker and one packed to go to GoodWill.

This afternoon I’m going to focus on the last little bit of drawer building in the shop so I can get everything put away. Tomorrow I’ll do laundry. I don’t think site protection will take a whole day and I want to leave the laundry as long as I can so we will start out with a couple of week’s worth of clean clothes. The reno won’t affect the laundry area but it just makes the logistics a bit more complicated.

China cabinet's new home

Maybe we’ll go back to grocery shopping in the evening. While it will be good to get out of the house during the day, I can’t see it working well if we are trying to stock the fridge and put away groceries while the guys are trying to work. All sorts of things to think about. I know lots of people would deal with these things as they came up. I like to have some idea of how to manage the smaller challenges. There will be plenty that I don’t expect and those we will handle as they arise. Stay tuned.

And so it begins

It’s lovely and sunny today with a summer-blue sky. Around noon we had a waste bin delivered outside our house. This is the beginning. For years we’ve talked about renovating the kitchen but we never seemed to have the energy to get things underway. Well, now is the time. Neither we nor the house are getting any younger. For the last few years we’ve been travelling rather than renovating. Whatever we end up doing for a holiday this year, it won’t be very expensive so we might as well spend some money on a reno. The process will be a bit of an adventure in itself and we can look forward to enjoying our new kitchen.

We redid our kitchen in the 80’s or was it the 90’s? It’s looking a little shabby and we’ve been mulling over the idea of switching the positions of the kitchen and the dining room. What finally convinced me to go with that option was that the internet connection in the dining room cuts out every once in a while. We often watch something on a laptop during meals, much in the way my family did when we first got a TV and we sat around, each with our own TV tray, to watch one of the two available television channels. The wifi connection in the kitchen is much stronger than in the dining room. Talk about a first-world problem!

As I mentioned one reason for the undertaking this now is simply the passage of time. For some reason other ‘big’ birthdays haven’t caused me to do more than pause and then keep on pretty much in the way I always have. This year, as my birthday approaches, I occasionally compare the number of years I have lived with the number of years I can reasonably expect to have left. It’s a sobering thought but also a liberating one. Is there a reason to keep this or that? Do I even like it? We have 12 dinner plates. Is it likely that we are ever going to host a dinner for 12?

Getting ready for this renovation has caused me to look at a lot of things I’ve been keeping and decide that it’s time for someone else to enjoy them or it’s time for me to simply dump them. I’ve packaged up 6 dinner plates and 6 of the large bowls that are part of the set. I’ve kept all the bread and butter plates. We use those a lot and are sometimes down to 2 clean ones at the end of the day. That’s not quite as extravagant as it sounds: we have 8 of those rather than 12. Presumably the others got broken along the way.

I take a bit of good-natured flack from friends who think I have way too many books. My background of bookcases on Zoom calls rivals any I have seen from politicians or experts being interviewed. When I began woodworking 17 years ago I subscribed to a number of magazines and read them cover to cover because they were alive with possibilities. I have since cancelled my subscriptions to all of them. They contained more and more stuff that didn’t interest me. I have access to some of them on digital media and now most of what I want I can find through a Google search.

I was prepared to toss the woodworking mags in the recycling but before doing so, I asked at a woodworkers’ Zoom meeting if anyone wanted them. Today the magazines completed the first leg of their journey. The next owner of them lives in Edmonton and will make arrangements to pick the 18 slip cases from a family member here in Calgary. I took another look through them, picked out a few, and I’m left with one slip case. I hope the new owner, a beginning woodworker, will enjoy the possibilities they contain as much as I did.

Even though neither my study nor the shop is up for renovation, more and more frequently I’m asking myself, “What are you keeping this for?” Sometimes it’s because it has fond memories attached to it. Sometimes I really enjoy using the item, and sometimes, whatever it is just makes me smile. I don’t think I’ll ever be a minimalist, but as I get older I’m becoming more discerning about the things that share my space and require time and energy to keep. I expect that when we can move into our new kitchen some of the items that are now in boxes in the basement will make their way out of our house. Stay tuned. I’m sure there will be a number of renovation / ‘downsizing’ stories to follow.

Oh, one more thing, as I finish this up I see there is a snowfall warning for towns to the north of us. Perhaps the first thing to go into the empty bin in front of the house will be a dump of snow.

Easter, origami, and chai tea

Some days just don’t go as you expect them to and sometimes that’s delightful. I expected to attend virtual church this morning which I did and have been doing for over a year. The service was great as it often is.

After church I expected to get into my saw-dusty jeans and t-shirt, don my respirator, and ear defenders, and spend the rest of the day in the shop climbing the ladder and using the compressed air nozzle to blow dust off shelves, window ledges, and light fixtures. Then I expected to get off the ladder, get down on my hands and knees to blow the dust from under benches and tools into the centre of the floor where I could sweep and then vacuum it up. I spent most of the day doing that yesterday and was tired and very dirty by the time I came in. I haven’t made it to the shop yet today. I sat on the couch, watched the snow come down and drank two large cups of chai - with honey. After all, it’s Easter so I might as well celebrate.

Friday morning when we got up the newspaper was on the step along with a bag of chocolate eggs and a note from the girls next door wishing us a happy Easter. We also had a few eggs for them and planned to put them out this morning. Because of the snow we were trying to figure out how to package the eggs nicely and still keep them dry. I thought about origami and googled, ‘origami Easter basket.’ I used to do a lot of origami in my early 20’s and, like so many things, a foundation laid when you are young tends to stick with you. I took out a piece of printer paper and scribbled on one side of it because origami paper is usually coloured on one side and white on the other. I had origami paper the right size but only a few sheets of it and I didn’t want to screw those up right off the bat.

Learning with YouTube videos is great. I stopped the video when I needed to catch up and realized, as the folds came back, that the basket was quite easy. I even learned a new way to fold a box base. There are a few different bases from which a lot of the simpler models progress. The printer paper version turned out well so I graduated to origami paper and made two more small boxes. By that time I was out of small paper so I decided to make a couple of larger boxes and was able to complete those without looking at the video. I had a wonderful time. Origami boxes, of course, are not waterproof so I left it to Richard to figure out the technicalities of that problem. A zip-lock, another bag and eggs and baskets were safe from the elements so Richard could deliver them.

Meanwhile, I went down an origami rabbit-hole looking at some of the models people make. They are amazing and, while I don’t think I’ll get deeply into it, it was a fun way to spend a good chunk of time on a snowy and rather chilly Easter Sunday. Now it’s in the back of my mind to recreate a complete nativity scene in origami for next Christmas. I made one once before and I don’t remember what happened to it. After a few years it probably got crushed and tossed out. Whether or not I actually make one is another question but the idea intrigues me and I did like the small delicate animals that were part of the scene. Ah well, that’s for later.

Now I think it’s time to get into the dusty clothes and get to work. Somehow I don’t mind so much since I’ve spent a lot of the day doing things I enjoy. Happy Easter and if you don’t celebrate Easter eat chocolate anyway!