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.

Finding the extra-ordinary in the ordinary

This is a different sort of post. This Sunday our church is starting a theme that will take a number of Sundays to explore: The Extra-Ordinary and the Ordinary. As an ex-English teacher I'm all over that kind of thing so I volunteered to be the first one of the congregation so say something about it. This is what I will say. I hope some of you will also think about the requests I have at the end. Don't worry; it won't cost you anything and nobody will know if you do consider them or not.

The last year and a half has been extra ordinary for many reasons and because of that I have been forced to spend more time considering ordinary events, events that, in other circumstances, I would likely have passed over without much thought. By spending a bit more time on the small and ordinary, I have found extraordinary joy.

As most of you know, I was a high school teacher. I have no siblings and I have had very little to do with young children. We live in an older neighbourhood which is now seeing young families move in. Three children of elementary junior high age live across the alley. Two children, one in kindergarten and one in early elementary, live next door.

The girl across the alley loves to draw and paint and the compact greenhouse that backs on the alley bears the slogan ‘grow tall little plant.’ She has painted colourful flowers all over the front of the green house. Whenever I see it, I smile.

She is also interested in our parrot. One day Richard received a text from her mother saying that there was something for me outside our garage door. When I went to look, I found a clay model, a couple of inches tall of Odie complete with the correct colours of his head, breast and back feathers. This ‘quiet version’ (the real version is quite noisy) of Odie now sits on shelves above my desk.

During the early days of the pandemic when children were out of school for the first time, this same artist painted Odie on her patio door. As the seasons changed so did Odie’s attire. At first, he was just plain Odie, then as Christmas approached Odie showed up one day with a Santa hat on and a string of Christmas lights near his foot. I’m wondering if Odie will sport a cowboy hat this summer and wait eagerly to see whatever version of Odie appears. If he has served his purpose as a window decoration, and is replaced by something else, that’s okay too.

On our anniversary last summer, we looked out the door to see the words ‘Happy Anniversary’ on the sidewalk in front of our house in brightly coloured chalk.  It was the work of the girls next door, with some help from their mom.

The other day when I was in the house and Richard was outside, the younger of the two girls picked a blossom from their tree, walked over to him, handed him the blossom and announced it was for me. When he finished his conversation, he came in the house and delivered the present. I set it on the desk beside me where it briefly scented the air. 

Perhaps these are the ordinary things children do but I am only now discovering them, and to me they are extraordinarily lovely.

So today, I have two requests of you:

First, this week take time to look closely at ordinary things so you may find in them extra-ordinary things

Second, note each time you find something extra-ordinary. There will be time in upcoming services for you to share your experiences so we can all enjoy them with you.

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

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!