Renovation Diary Day 10

This is where the chimney used to be

Blocks that made up the chimney

Although it has been 10 days since the guys took out the chimney, they haven’t been able to work here every day. That’s mainly due to availability of materials. There’s a backlog on many construction materials right now and there’s no point in tearing the kitchen apart when building the boxes for the cabinets will take a few more weeks. In the meantime, we’re existing quite comfortably. A bunch of stuff has gone to the storage locker and we made another trip to Goodwill. Only once have I looked for something that’s in the storage locker and I did without it rather than make the trip. When it comes time to demolish the kitchen I don’t think it will take us very long to pack up what we are currently using and move it downstairs for the duration.

The work has been mainly outside for the last week. Once the chimney was out there wasn’t a lot that they could do in here so attention turned to the deck. We will have to wait on the decking boards until the end of the month but the structure is coming along very nicely. We should be able to lay down some plywood and actually sit out on the deck by the end of the week.

This deck isn't going anywhere!

Tall posts to attach a hammock

In order to bring the deck right up to the side of the steps, they guys had to take out a volunteer Nanking cherry. With the bush out of there the local house sparrows have a much straighter flight path. They go ripping past the front window a few inches from the glass. I, of course, find great amusement in this.

Not much else to report but here are some photos of the progress so far. Stay tuned.

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!

Taking stock: a year into Covid 19

Happy spring! We’ve had some great weather. One day last week when we went to go for a walk the temperature outside was 20 and the temperature in the house was 20. Yesterday the last of the snow disappeared from the front yard and I was planning on getting my bike ready to ride to a couple of appointments later on in the week. Then it snowed. I shouldn’t be surprised. This is Calgary and it is March, usually our snowiest month. Somehow, though, I thought we might have gotten away with something this year. Ah well.

I have a sense that this post is going to bounce all over the place so fasten your seatbelts or abandon ship whichever you prefer. It’s been a year since we started wearing masks as a means of slowing the spread of Covid 19. We are still wearing them and I have some pretty nice ones thanks to a friend who is more enthusiastic about sewing than I am. I now keep some medical masks in a plastic bag in each of the vehicles in case I forget to bring one of the cloth ones. I don’t wash the cloth ones all that often but I’ve developed a system of putting a used mask in a mesh bag and hanging it up for a couple of days before I use it again. I seldom need a mask two or three days in a row so I have enough to rotate through them. Now when I go out I check for my wallet, keys, phone and mask.

Another big change this spring from last spring is the advent of Covid vaccines. We had none last year and now we have 4 approved by Health Canada. I know a number of people who have had their first jab. I get mine this week. When I was a kid Christmas Day was the high point of the year and I used to count down the time to Christmas by the number of sleeps. Now I’m counting down the days to the Covid shot with only slightly less enthusiasm. After I have received the shot I think I’ll have my own personal dance party and I don’t care how crazy I look. I’m getting to an age where I figure that I can be called eccentric rather than just crazy.

Since we’ve been home a lot in the last year we’ve been looking at all kinds of things around the house that have been mildly annoying. The more we look at them the more annoying they’ve become so we’re about to embark on another renovation. I think this will be #5 in this house and it will probably be the last one, although never say never. Our kitchen isn’t very convenient so we’re going to swap the kitchen and dining room locations. We’re also going to have the old cement chimney removed. It’s not doing anything useful anymore and the guys who did the renovation of the basement 9 years ago, said it would be easier to take out the chimney when we renovated the main floor. I’m sure there will be days when we wish we have never thought of this but once it’s done we will enjoy it.

Where is the doors go?

Both Richard and I have had a go at the kitchen cupboards and today we took a rather large load of kitchen paraphernalia to GoodWill. Among the things that left the house was a thermos coffee jug that we got as a wedding present. It works really well to keep drinks hot but I’ve probably used it fewer than a dozen times in 35 years. Time for it to find a new home. Also in the box was a brown Betty teapot that I bought at a thrift store as a prop for a musical theatre trio we did a few years ago. People tell me that Brown Bettys are coveted and some folks swear that you can’t make a decent cup of tea unless you have one. This one is in great shape, no cracks and no drips when you pour the tea. Again I might have used it twice so I hope it will delight someone who has a true appreciation for such things.

The kitchen will end up being smaller than the one we have now so there is some incentive to take a good look at what to keep and what to send on. Even after Covid I don’t think we’ll be having any dinner parties for 12 people so we’re focusing on the stuff we use every day or the stuff we like that we use occasionally. We got rid of both of our china platters. I doubt we’ll be cooking turkey for a whole gang. We have a number of lovely cutting boards. ( I have to say they’re lovely because I made them.) If we are in a situation where we need to lay out cold cuts we can use one of those. Also we have a huge round platter that Richard turned out of purple heart and we’re not giving that away.

In this particular purge we are far less concerned about what might happen and much more concerned about how we live our daily lives. Stock the kitchen based on what we know we use and then improvise when other situations arise.

Chaos in progress

I’m going through a similar purge in the shop. I’ve finally decided how I like to work and I’m getting rid of tools and wood that doesn’t support that way of working. I’ve found new homes for some power tools and found new positions for others that make them easier to use. I’ve already started the demolition of the kitchen by taking off most of the cupboard doors and cutting them up to make drawers for the shop. Things that have been piled on top of each other for years now have drawers to live in. I’ll continue to work my way around the shop trying to find homes for things. When I get back to where I started, most of what doesn’t have a home will go out. I’m already tossing scrap that I was tempted to keep. I’m always looking for bits for one thing or another but I simply don’t have room to keep it all so I’ll work on improvising when I can’t find exactly the right piece. I’m also focusing on using up all the sheet goods I have even if they aren’t ideal for a specific job. It’s a slow process but I’m making progress. I’m not saying anything about the state of my study. That can wait until I get another attack of tidiness. Stay tuned. I’m sure there will be some good reno stories coming.

Reading the paper

This morning I did something I don’t remember doing before: I read the newspaper. When I was growing up my parents read the paper after dinner because the delivery was made in the late afternoon. I don’t remember being interested even in the cartoons or the ‘funny papers’ as my dad called them.

In high school I looked at the paper as much as I needed to for the current events component of Social Studies but I didn’t see a reason to keep up the habit. The only use we’ve had in our house for newspapers is as a liner for the bottom of Odie’s cage. We’ve asked friends to pass on their papers rather than recycling them and they have been very generous about this.

Recently Richard commented that both of us were stopping, newspaper in hand, to read one or more articles before consigning them to the birdcage. He decided to try a subscription and the first paper arrived on Saturday. Of course there’s a huge difference from the papers I remember as a kid. They were huge thick things every day of the week and I was surprised at how slim Saturday’s paper was.

It has been fairly easy to remember to check the mailbox when I get up. The first morning I didn’t think of it and didn’t find the paper until late afternoon. Today I made a cup of tea and sat down at the table with the paper. Normally I’d be looking at my cell phone for news and updates or I’d be watching the latest videos YouTube had flagged for me. I found the paper surprisingly calming. I could read a bit of the article and then abandon it, flip to a new section, read most of a section that interested me and skip the stuff I already knew about from online news reports. Of course, I can do these things online but somehow it's different.

My reaction surprised me. I’m pretty much of a digital gal when it comes to reading material. My preferred form of book is audio. If there’s something I really want and can’t get on audio, I’ll try digital and if that isn’t available and I really, really want it I’ll buy a physical book. I still have way too many books and I struggle constantly to get the number down.

Luckily with the newspaper, I don’t have that problem. Odie always requires papers and I use them in the shop when I’m gluing things up or putting finish on projects. In some ways, it will be nice to have a constant supply delivered to the house. We’ll see how many pages are left over at the end of a week. And, it’s also interesting to read bits of local news that don’t necessarily hit my electronic feeds. Don’t hold your breath though. I don’t think I’ll be going back to physical books anytime soon.

Animal companions

I'm thinking about dogs today. I’ve never had a dog and don’t know much about them although I like to read about them. Yesterday as we were returning from a walk we met friends, also out walking,  who had  their new dog, a Wheaten terrier, with them. He knows his name and is an enthusiastic greeter of people. He is barely more than a puppy and he is quickly learning the ways of living with his humans.

This morning I received an email that saddened me about another friend's dog whose life ended yesterday. He was devoted to his family and came to them as an older fellow. In the email his human fondly remembered how he used to catch mice and bring them as an offering and how he basked in the sun. Her sorrow took me on a journey of all of the animals who have, in one way or another, shared my life for a brief time.

There are the many cats from my first cat who came from my uncle’s farm when I was five or six. My parents carried a dead mouse back home in a paper bag and when we were home they gave me to bag and the mouse to offer to the kitten to make her feel at home. She took the mouse gently, crawled under my parents' bed and ate it. Not a whisker remained. I never thought to wonder at the time who had dispatched the mouse. That cat lived to be 15 and was known to chase dogs three times her size out of the yard and down the street. There were the turtles who grew as big dinner plates. The cat used to sit on top of the aquarium which my dad had fitted with a mesh top and watch the turtles when they were the size of quarters.

There was the kitten I rescued from a tree on a night well below freezing who, ever after, disliked me and only would only consent to sit with me while Mum was travelling and I was the only source of food and comfort. Even then, it took over a week for her to grudgingly jump up in Mum’s chair beside me and share the warmth. She was hit by a car years later and survived into relative old age navigating quite nicely on three legs unencumbered by the withered right-front leg.

There was the white part-Persian with a grease-streak down his back who came to live on my porch in Banff and the big black cat who stood aside at my parent's back door and let a small black and white kitten come into the house and eat out of his dish. There were other cats who weren’t with us all that long. There was only one we took to an animal shelter. Once we took in 4 kittens for a friend until she could find homes for them.

There are the cats now who live with friends and who greet me when I visit. One likes to play fetch and sometimes brings me a toy to toss down the hall for her. Occasionally she will ask for a belly rub. There is her buddy, a black and white tuxedo boy who rubs against my legs and purrs. There was the big orange tabby who lived with other friends who used to jump up on my lap, sprawl out on his back and who sometimes became so enthralled with the petting I gave him that he forgot himself and fell off.

Then there are the birds: the cockatiel: Richard’s first real pet, the blue and white budgie, the two green and yellow budgies, and the quaker who bonded with me. Now there is Odie. While most cat and dog owners will outlive their pets, there’s a good chance that Odie will outlive both of us. Whether it’s because they chew shoes, poop in the kitchen, or bite the hand that feeds them, pets add complexity to everyday life. In spite of that, many of us will choose again and again to share our lives with critters. So today, I’m grateful for all furry, feathery, hairy, finny, and scaly friends who make our lives just a little bit brighter. When they die they are constants in our memories and in a world where humans have been recently forced apart from each other, the animals keep us company, make us laugh, and elicit kindness.