Renovation Diary Day 22

Subtitle: Aren’t old houses great? At least they always hold surprises when you get into their bones. First of all, there was a real rat’s nest of wires and pipes in the vicinity of the main plumbing stack. It was a bit of a challenge for our workers to sort that one out. There are now holes in the floor of the upper bathroom and a hole in the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom

old boards, new plywood

One of the plumbers thought he could smell gas even after he had installed the new plumbing and checked everything out. He kept searching and then asked Richard if it was okay to cut a hole in the ceiling because he was pretty sure there was a very, very, tiny leak. He couldn’t locate it precisely and couldn’t get a wrench into the space. He said when he saw a particular type of fitting he became immediately suspicious. Apparently the fitting is designed for outdoor rather than indoor use and it had started to break down. That sounds odd to me because I would think that something rated for outdoor use would last longer than something designed for indoor use. He said he saw a similar situation in another house where the owner was plagued by headaches. He finally found a small leak. The chances of us blowing ourselves up were very slim unless we happened to have a source of ignition at the precise point of the leak. We are still here; the leak is fixed; and I’m extremely grateful that this guy went after the problem and got it fixed. So, that’s plumbing, onto electrical and insulation.

Some of the wiring, now that it’s exposed, needs to be brought up to code so the electricians are taking care of that. There isn’t enough insulation in some of the walls and the guys are still deciding on the best way to remedy that. The last I heard was that they are thinking of taking off the drywall on the garage side of the wall and spraying foam into the cavities. That way they won’t have to tape and prep the drywall and it will probably not be much more expensive than having someone go in from the house side and put extra insulation batts into the recesses. That would take a lot of time and be quite fiddly.

The neat version

The floors in the bathroom and the kitchen are back down to the original sub-flooring and, there again, there were a few surprises. The subfloor is made up of boards laid on the diagonal. Some of the boards don’t quite meet so Chris, the guy who is doing most of the demo and fixing, has spent the last couple of days using plywood to patch and secure the ends that aren’t connected to each other. The floor feels much more solid now.

Another little gotcha happened a couple of days ago. We bought a new fridge about two years ago. Our old one quit completely. We like this new one but it’s deeper than a standard counter so the designer urged us to get a different one that would be counter-depth and fit better into the smaller space that will become the new kitchen. We agreed and thought it would be the perfect chance to replace the downstairs fridge which came over from Mum’s house and is at least 25 years old. One problem: the new fridge doesn’t fit down the stairs, at least, not without major structural changes to the basement and we’re absolutely not going there! We will have to sell that fridge and either buy a new smaller one to replace Mum’s, or keep using Mum’s until it quits. Right now we are using the Mum’s fridge as our main one. The other one is out in the garage, just in case. It certainly is cramping our style having just gotten used to the nice big, freezer on the bottom, fridge that came out of the kitchen.

We have two sources of water at the moment: the downstairs bathroom basin and the shop sink. We’ve been doing our dishes in the camping dishpan in the shop sink. That works pretty well and we’ve certainly added to our daily step count.

washing dishes in the shop

We have no lights in the dining room or the kitchen so we leave a light on in the stairway to the basement so we can see where we’re going once it gets dark. That works well enough and the last person up from the basement turns off the light.

We have been having a number of chats with neighbours, some of whom we’ve barely spoken to before. Richard got chatting to a the guys who own a house across the alley and down a bit. They told him that there were skunks at the north end of our block and that they didn’t usually come as far south as our place. We have smelled skunk on occasion so I guess we’ll have to keep an eye out so as not to startle the little critters if they are out and about at the same time we are. That certainly ups the wildlife count in central-urban Calgary. We have had hares in the neighbourhood for years but the skunks are a relatively new phenomenon. There are also the mice we’ve been dealing with lately but we haven’t seen any of those since just before the reno began.

We are in a mild state of chaos, not having figured out quite yet how to get our meals in the downstairs space. Luckily we put a lot of meals in the freezer so we’ve been using the microwave extensively as well as checking out some new places for take-out.

It will be great when the reno is finished but, in the meantime, we can’t complain. The guys working here are all very pleasant, hard-working, and conscientious about doing a good job. As for us? We’re going with the idea that this is all one big adventure. That concept may wear a bit thin as the time goes on; however, right now, we’re okay with this adventure. Stay tuned.

New bath tub