The end of a personal era

I had an unusual childhood in that I never moved. No, not even once. Most of my friends moved at least a couple of times before they reached adulthood and moved out on their own. I moved out in my early 20’s to take a job in Banff and then I moved back home when I decided to return to university.

My parents were very generous in that way. Mum told me she thought she could feed three of us about as cheaply as she could feed the two of them, so lived there without paying room and board while I went back to get my degree in education. I had enough saved to pay for my tuition and books, to run my car and have some spending money. When I finished university and got a teaching job, my dad was sick and I stayed home. This time I split the costs of the household with Mum and helped her pay for some improvements to the house. When Dad died, I continued to live with Mum. We got along well and I was happy to look after the cats when she wanted to travel.

When Richard and I married and I moved into his house, I continued to feed the cats and look after Mum’s house when she travelled. In addition to talking to her on the phone almost every day, I visited her often, usually on Friday afternoons after work. I’d call her and say, “Put the kettle on. I’m coming over.” We would chat and drink a pot of tea before I left to have supper with Richard. Sometimes, I’d call him and the three of us would go to Mother’s Pizza for supper. It was a comfortable routine and I was in her house at least once a week unless I was away on holidays.

She stayed in the house for 19 years until she decided that it was time for her to move to a place where she would no longer be responsible for the upkeep of a house and yard. Over the years we had found good people to take care of the yard and had made modifications to the house to make it easier for her to live in it as she aged. Having always said that we could take her out of the house feet first, she decided on her own that the scenario had changed.

I remember driving her back to the house from the visit to the assisted living facility where she had just signed the papers. As we drove along the familiar Sarcee Trail she said, “Well, I hope I’ve made the right decision. If I haven’t I have no one but myself to blame.” I don’t think she was sorry, at least she never said so to me.

Of course that decision to move was followed by the cleaning out of the house. Richard was a huge help. He was available during the day at that point and if Mum fussed about something, he picked up the phone and dealt with the issue. He helped her sort through belongings to decide what she would keep and what would go. She was pretty unsentimental. She spent twenty-five years clearing up after Dad who was a bit of a packrat. I don’t think he crossed the line to hoarder but he certainly saved things because they might be useful later. Mum was determined not to leave that kind of chaos for me to clean up.

Mum hired a realtor and the day the sign went up, the guy from next door came to the house with an offer to purchase. Mum pointed him to the realtor and, in a matter of hours, the house was sold. I remember the realtor telling me he had chatted with the buyer, telling him he hoped the house was not going to be knocked down; it had good bones, and years more life in it. Over the next few months, we hired a company to move and disperse the rest of the stuff Mum left in the house. I remember walking through the house after the last load went out, leaving the keys, and writing a note to the new owner telling him how good the house had been to us and expressing the hope that it would be good to him as well.

After that, we watched as the house got another renovation to accommodate 4 suites. Whenever I drove by I saw the house numbers that I had painted on a piece of acrylic beside one of the doors. I also kept track of the spruce tree I planted when I was in grade 3. It was taller than the rest of the ones that still survived in the neighbourhood. Even when I didn’t drive down the actual street the house was on, I knew where to look for the tree as I passed the intersection.

A few years ago there was a ‘For Sale’ sign on Mum’s house and the one next door. We looked up the price and it was over one million dollars for both properties. The sign came down. The houses remained. Earlier this spring I saw a sign on the house next door. I didn’t actually see whether it sold or not but I never saw a sign on Mum’s house.

Because of the reno, we have been out of town a few times while the painter has been working. After our last trip, I drove by the familiar intersection on my way home and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a construction fence. Immediately, I drove round the block and parked. There was nothing left. Both houses were gone. All the concrete was gone. My tree was gone. I had always hoped that I would have enough warning before the house was demolished so I could, somehow, salvage some of that spruce tree. The scenario had changed.

I always knew that would eventually be the fate of the house. There are now only two of the original bungalows in that block on that side of the street. I knew that the guy who bought it tried to purchase all the land from the house next door to the corner of the block on the other side of Mum’s house. Nobody wants to purchase that much land to keep 1950’s bungalows on it. Although Mum sold, owners on the other side of her didn’t, so the new owner of Mum’s house ended up with only the two properties side by side.

Once I get over being sad about the demolition, it will be interesting to see what kind of a structure replaces it. I’m betting that land will house eight units or more. Densification is the name of the game in these old, inner city, neighbourhoods. I was fortunate to grow up in a single-family dwelling with a big yard, on a relatively quiet street. I am fortunate now to live in a single-family dwelling with a smaller yard and a workshop. Now that Mum’s house, for it will always be ‘Mum’s house,’ is gone I will not have to watch it become scruffy or decay. It is frozen in time, frozen in my memory for as long as that memory continues to work. Time moves on.

Improvising the minutia

The renovation is getting closer to being finished each day. We are, of course, excited about the finished product and are getting a little impatient for it to be done. That said, it’s more anticipation than grumpiness because we have no complaints about the way the work has gone. The folks who are working on the job are all great, friendly, eager to answer our questions, and thoughtful. The quality of the work itself is impeccable. Each person who has worked on this has taken the same care they would take if this were their own house. We can’t ask for more than that!

As I headed to the shop today to do a pile of dishes, having gotten lazy and not done the ones from yesterday, I got the thinking about the accommodations we have made that are now just part of the routine. We collect the dishes in a dish pan downstairs where we prepare and eat most of our meals. We carry them up the stairs and into the shop where the out-feed table for my table saw becomes an auxiliary counter for the clean dishes. Since it’s raw plywood, we put down a tray with an absorbent dish mat inside it and onto the mat we put a dish drainer. I also lay a dish towel down on one side of the out-feed table to catch the drips because the table is wider than the tray. We take the tray downstairs and set it on a cabinet that has been displaced so that the main water shut-off to the house is readily available.

If we have more dishes than will fit into the dish pan, I have a piece of board from the old kitchen cabinets that I use to cover my sharpening stones on the right hand side of the sink and the extra dishes can sit there while they wait their turn to be washed. It all works pretty well and it will take us a while to get used to using the new dishwasher when it comes. In all of this I’m reminded of the people in Canada who don’t have access to clean water and for whom the system we have might be a luxury.

I have grumbled a bit about the set-up we have for hand washing in the bathroom although it does work quite well. About once a day one of us dumps the water from hand washing into the shower drain, rinses out the plastic tote, and takes the detergent container up to the shop to refill it with clean water. The push button on the detergent container is very convenient for washing hands. I don’t remember where I read that camping tip, but I’ve been grateful for it for the last month. We can use regular towels and our washer and dryer work which is another bonus.

Lighting is another thing we take for granted: flip the switch and you get light. At the moment there are very few switches, or lights, on the main floor. The bedroom and studies haven’t been altered so we still have lights there. There are also lights in the garage, on the outside of the garage, and in the entrance from the garage. There is one plug-in lamp in the living room and there are no lights in the kitchen or the dining room. No light in the hallway or the front steps either. We’ve had to think ahead a little when we’ve been going for walks at twilight. Leave a light on in the living room. Make sure the flashlights on our key rings are working so we can see to unlock the door.

That’s not much of an issue at the moment because the front steps have been demolished so we are using the garage as the entrance to the house and we have a very bright, motion-detecting light that shines on the cement pad. I have taken to leaving a pocket flashlight in the shop for whoever shuts off the lights for the night. That way we can turn off the landing light and see to get through to the bedroom.

During the presence of the recent heat dome we were without screens on the windows. We put a bed sheet up over the window in the bedroom and left the light off as much as possible. It was a bit more difficult when I wanted to work in my study after dark. I tried to work with the window open just a crack and only one task light on. The moths seemed to be able to get in anyway and I did end up swatting a few mosquitos. The screens we always took for granted are now a fresh delight every evening when we need to cool the house down.

In some ways, making our way through this reno has been a bit like camping: things are simplified. We don’t worry about the things that can be done later. We have food, water, a sturdy roof over our heads, and a reasonable level of convenience. I know that eventually all the changes we have made to the house will become part of the background to everyday living, but maybe it’s not a bad thing to have routines disrupted every once in a while so we can be reminded of how fortunate we are to live far beyond the necessities of life.

Renovation Day ... I have no idea!

The reno continues and we are happy with the results, although as we get farther and farther into it and can see glimpses of what the finished product will look like, it gets harder to be patient.

There have been regular bumps along the way and the supply issues caused by Covid 19. Each day the build moves in the right direction and that is what matters when combined with the first-rate workmanship of all the trades who have been here so far.

We have enough deck boards now so that we can sit out on the deck as I did yesterday morning. It’s not quite as pleasant as listening to the red-winged blackbirds that frequented the campground we stayed in this week, but it’s not half bad for being in the middle of the city. The house shades the deck in the morning and the Manitoba maple tree shades most of the deck in the afternoon and evening.

Now that we’ve been doing this since April, we know where more of our stuff is and so spend less time looking for things. We haven’t had a mirror in the one working bathroom for the last few weeks and when I see myself in a mirror I think,”Huh, so that’s what I look like.” We do have a full length mirror in the bedroom but I don’t often look at that one in my day-to-day comings and goings.

We have the dishwashing system working well and it will be a treat when we again have a dishwasher. The thing I will be most glad to retire is the jug-and-plastic bin set up for washing our hands in the bathroom. Somehow walking upstairs and into the shop to wash hands is just too much of an annoyance, hence the jug and bin. The shower works so when the bin gets full we empty the water down the shower drain. We fill up the jug about once a day. The washing machine and dryer still work although they share their space with the set of shelves that have been temporarily displaced from the bathroom. There’s a certain obstacle-course quality to laundry days.

With the heat we have been eating a lot of salads so haven’t needed to cook much. The Instant Pot does a great job of hard boiled eggs. Every once in a while we buy a dozen, hard cook them and use them in salads and sandwiches. We have three working fridges if you count the one on the van so we can certainly keep things cold.

We were out of the house last week so painting could happen. The cabinet fronts aren’t here yet so we’ll have another round of painting when they arrive. The floor is done and we love it! We have new windows but no screens. It’s been so hot we’ve needed to have the windows open and the fan going at night and. Knock wood, we haven’t had too much of a problem with tiny winged creatures getting into the house.

The rest of the boards for the deck are somewhere in transit and we’re hoping they will be here next week. I think the new front door should be here fairly soon as well and that means that the front of the house can be finished. We will still have to have a security screen door made since the new door is wider than the old one. All the appliances are at the dealer’s so there won’t be any holdups there when the time comes to install them.

We’ve been able to visit Odie a number of times. He is always glad to see Richard and, in his own quirky way, glad enough to see me once he has fawned over Richard for a while. This is the longest time he has ever been away from us.. Soon it will be time to pull out all the pieces of his cage, drag them to the front lawn and clean them all up with the hose, then hope we can figure out how the cage goes back together again.

Having said we haven’t had much trouble with bugs I just dispatched a very quick little white bug motoring up the handle of my tea spoon.

I think that’s enough of a ramble for the moment. Concrete work is still to come as is the installation of cabinet doors, counter tops, appliances, lights, switches and faucets. It’s coming together and we can see now that the new configuration will work very well for us. Patience, patience.




Stay tuned.