Monday, March 31, 2008
Lunch money better spent
There was a book sale today in the lobby. I went for my 8:30 tea and caught them just as they were opening for business, three women fliting about the single table arranging and rearranging the books. Snagged a hard cover version of Canuck Douglas Coupland's book "JPod" as well as softcovers of "Sense & Sensibility" (I've never read a single Austen book), Gregory Macguire's "Wicked" (the awesome cover art - shared by the broadway musical poster- is of a green witch), and Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" (to replace the version I've misplaced...). All for 5 bucks. Whoot. I love book sales. Even when they're helping to contribute funds for the Dean's Council "Social Fund". Gimme a break ladies. Every time I go by the Dean's Council room, the overwhelming stench of leather reminds me of a high end furniture store. Maybe they should supplement their "social fund" by selling off the extravagant (and likely overpriced) leather furniture and rough it using vinyl & fabric chairs like the rest of us.
Burn Out
Three months. That’s how long I take to burn out on a project (the house, in this case). I might’ve lasted longer if not for the blasted vapour barrier. The 6 mm sheets of plastic, that wrap the entire house in an unbroken bubble of un-weatherness, broke me. It was supposed to take one week, maybe two weekends…but that was four weeks ago. So so so long ago. It went deceptively fast at first, when my mom was here helping. The great sheets of plastic covered entire square walls quickly. But the closets, corners, ceilings and (especially) the finicky first floor ceiling where the open web joists provided foot upon foot of detailed taping and caulking were too much. When we build another house, I won’t be doing the vapour barrier. No siree.
So now we are at the end of month three of construction. We both work full time jobs, come home at night, eat supper and then head back out to the house for three hours of work (a couple nights a week). When we don’t go directly to the house, we run around paying people/ordering supplies/checking out sales. Weekends we wake up at 7 am and stay until supper time. By Easter weekend, we were desperate for a break so we said Screw It and left for New Brunswick to spend the weekend with our extended families. It was great.
Nothing has really changed at the house, so there are not cool pictures to add.Well, the basement floor was finally poured so we have been framing /insulating that. Pictures to come later.
Last Thursday a shipment of stuff for the house arrived from the States. Included were bath accessories for upstairs and down (towel rack, TP holder, etc.), faucets for kitchen/both baths/shower, all interior door handles & one hefty exterior door handle. I was adamant about getting oil rubbed bronze finishes for door handles/faucets/lighting fixtures but our budget was tight. I did find a spot online that would ship for a reasonable fee their collection of oil-rubbed bronze items. Their gimmick is that by buying all from the same place, the oil-rubbed bronze finishes will be uniform (they can vary quite a bit, even in stores). So they arrived on Thursday and I’m unhappy with some items (the lav faucets, shower faucets and exterior door handle don’t match the rest & are ugly matte black). Must now either decide to 1) keep the ugly finishes or 2) spend more money to return the items and get new ones (also from the store since they sell another similar shade called “antique copper” which may be closer to what I’m looking for and still 1/3 the price of anything we could find around here). Don’t know, need to call Mississippi tonight. The carbon footprint of this stuff off the net will effectively negate any green purchases we’ve made so far. Boo for that.
Drywall is being delivered tomorrow morning. Since it took so fracking long to do the vapour barrier, we’ve abandoned our plans to put up the drywall ourselves. It is the outermost layer visible to us/guests, so we felt okay justifying the expense. Also, I don’t think I had the mental reserve to attack the drywall ourselves. That much detail + too little experience = near breakdown. Worth 3000$ I’d say. Not to mention that fact that the people we have hired will take 2x five day weeks to complete the house so I can’t even begin to guess how long it would have taken us. Way worth it.
The end is near. Drywall, paint, floor, cabinets, plumbing – We’re in!
So now we are at the end of month three of construction. We both work full time jobs, come home at night, eat supper and then head back out to the house for three hours of work (a couple nights a week). When we don’t go directly to the house, we run around paying people/ordering supplies/checking out sales. Weekends we wake up at 7 am and stay until supper time. By Easter weekend, we were desperate for a break so we said Screw It and left for New Brunswick to spend the weekend with our extended families. It was great.
Nothing has really changed at the house, so there are not cool pictures to add.Well, the basement floor was finally poured so we have been framing /insulating that. Pictures to come later.
Last Thursday a shipment of stuff for the house arrived from the States. Included were bath accessories for upstairs and down (towel rack, TP holder, etc.), faucets for kitchen/both baths/shower, all interior door handles & one hefty exterior door handle. I was adamant about getting oil rubbed bronze finishes for door handles/faucets/lighting fixtures but our budget was tight. I did find a spot online that would ship for a reasonable fee their collection of oil-rubbed bronze items. Their gimmick is that by buying all from the same place, the oil-rubbed bronze finishes will be uniform (they can vary quite a bit, even in stores). So they arrived on Thursday and I’m unhappy with some items (the lav faucets, shower faucets and exterior door handle don’t match the rest & are ugly matte black). Must now either decide to 1) keep the ugly finishes or 2) spend more money to return the items and get new ones (also from the store since they sell another similar shade called “antique copper” which may be closer to what I’m looking for and still 1/3 the price of anything we could find around here). Don’t know, need to call Mississippi tonight. The carbon footprint of this stuff off the net will effectively negate any green purchases we’ve made so far. Boo for that.
Drywall is being delivered tomorrow morning. Since it took so fracking long to do the vapour barrier, we’ve abandoned our plans to put up the drywall ourselves. It is the outermost layer visible to us/guests, so we felt okay justifying the expense. Also, I don’t think I had the mental reserve to attack the drywall ourselves. That much detail + too little experience = near breakdown. Worth 3000$ I’d say. Not to mention that fact that the people we have hired will take 2x five day weeks to complete the house so I can’t even begin to guess how long it would have taken us. Way worth it.
The end is near. Drywall, paint, floor, cabinets, plumbing – We’re in!
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Pink and Gray - the New Black
Lately (the past two weeks) it is lovely, sunny and sometimes cold during the week. But then bam! the weekend comes and it's sheets of rain or shitloads of snow. But you don't really know it's coming because the weather stations have no clue. No. Clue.
On Tuesday I checked the weather for Friday. The weather channel was predicting 3 degrees celsius. Environment Canada was calling for minus 3 degrees. A span of six degrees for the same day and the same town. WTF? Might as well toss a coin. Last week one website was calling for -1 on Saturday the other for +6. That's a huge difference. Frozen fingers while putting up siding without gloves vs. toasty fingers putting up siding. I've gotten to the point where I don't even look now. Prepare for everything by bringing lots of extra clothing, and do the work no matter what the weather is like. Gotta be done.
Last weekend my mom came up as well as my husband's parents. We started the insulation and got most of it complete on Saturday. On Sunday we continued the insulation and started the vapour barrier. My husband, mom & boyfriend and I all took Monday off, so we continued to work inside the house as well as on the siding outside.
Pink insulation. Gets in your eyes and lungs. Little sticky shards of glass, which we protected ourselves against using masks and goggles. Not only was it terribly stiffling, but since it was cold in the house our goggles would fog up constantly.
Vapour barrier and tuck tape, stuck to the corners with acoustical sealant. Black sticky glue that never dries ever.
Last night we returned to the house to put insulating foam board in the basement. The pink foam will go under the poured concrete floor, helping to insulate against heat loss.
Yesterday forecasters were predicting 2-4 cm of snow overnight. You know how much actually fell? About 10 cm at the house. I took the pictures below half way through the night when it hadn't even stopped snowing yet. I was talking to a woman in the department who lives out by Peggy's Cove. Her son measured the snow on their deck this morning at 21 cm. Bloody big difference between shoveling 2 cm of snow and 20 cm of snow...
On Tuesday I checked the weather for Friday. The weather channel was predicting 3 degrees celsius. Environment Canada was calling for minus 3 degrees. A span of six degrees for the same day and the same town. WTF? Might as well toss a coin. Last week one website was calling for -1 on Saturday the other for +6. That's a huge difference. Frozen fingers while putting up siding without gloves vs. toasty fingers putting up siding. I've gotten to the point where I don't even look now. Prepare for everything by bringing lots of extra clothing, and do the work no matter what the weather is like. Gotta be done.
Last weekend my mom came up as well as my husband's parents. We started the insulation and got most of it complete on Saturday. On Sunday we continued the insulation and started the vapour barrier. My husband, mom & boyfriend and I all took Monday off, so we continued to work inside the house as well as on the siding outside.
Pink insulation. Gets in your eyes and lungs. Little sticky shards of glass, which we protected ourselves against using masks and goggles. Not only was it terribly stiffling, but since it was cold in the house our goggles would fog up constantly.
Vapour barrier and tuck tape, stuck to the corners with acoustical sealant. Black sticky glue that never dries ever.
Last night we returned to the house to put insulating foam board in the basement. The pink foam will go under the poured concrete floor, helping to insulate against heat loss.
Yesterday forecasters were predicting 2-4 cm of snow overnight. You know how much actually fell? About 10 cm at the house. I took the pictures below half way through the night when it hadn't even stopped snowing yet. I was talking to a woman in the department who lives out by Peggy's Cove. Her son measured the snow on their deck this morning at 21 cm. Bloody big difference between shoveling 2 cm of snow and 20 cm of snow...
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Stripping for money, Stripping for fun
Last week when the electricians were finished the floor was littered with excess electrical wire. Inside the little stringy nuggets of plastic? Feet and feet of copper wire. For those of you who don't trade commodities on a daily basis: that shit is worth alot of money these days. Actually, around here people are so poor they will strip the copper from key mechanical/electrical units in schoolhouses and the like to sell the copper for a hefty (albeit karmically-jinxed) profit. Which of course makes it one of the leading stories on the nightly faux-news (shout out Bruce Frisko). So last weekend, on our "weekend off", I gathered up all the plastic-covered wires and spent a soothing few hours stripping the plastic to expose the copper with the intent of bringing it to the scrap metal place. What a beautiful metal! If it weren't so bloody expensive, I would definitely litter my house with sculptures of the stuff.
The empty, empty husks went in the trash-box:
And I wound the copper around my fingers & flung 'em in this cardboard box to bring home:
Pretty, non?
Between our bouts of "movie marathon-ing", we became engrossed. Copper is so beautiful! We started off by twisting it around pens and pencils to make super tight spirals that looked like springs. But once the pair of needle-nosed pliers were introduced, it evolved quickly. Our creations:
Mine was a semi-3D hummingbird and flower. It was exceedingly difficult to get good pictures, but there are a couple below. One from below looking up, one from the side looking down, and one straight on.
Different angle/different light:
His was a more straight forward (and definitely 3D) CopperPiggy.
Unfortunately, they're still headed to the scrap metal heap, but at least some metal worker will get a kick out of them. Rest in peace, CopperPiggy.
The empty, empty husks went in the trash-box:
And I wound the copper around my fingers & flung 'em in this cardboard box to bring home:
Pretty, non?
Between our bouts of "movie marathon-ing", we became engrossed. Copper is so beautiful! We started off by twisting it around pens and pencils to make super tight spirals that looked like springs. But once the pair of needle-nosed pliers were introduced, it evolved quickly. Our creations:
Mine was a semi-3D hummingbird and flower. It was exceedingly difficult to get good pictures, but there are a couple below. One from below looking up, one from the side looking down, and one straight on.
Different angle/different light:
His was a more straight forward (and definitely 3D) CopperPiggy.
Unfortunately, they're still headed to the scrap metal heap, but at least some metal worker will get a kick out of them. Rest in peace, CopperPiggy.
Minor catastrophes
Last week the electricians came to rough-in the house. Our plumber, who also does HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) came around a second time to install the air ducts and the heat-recovery unit.
Washer & Dryer hook-up, downstairs bath
Purty wires
Telephone/internet/cable hook-up
More purty wires
Ventilation ducts and pot lights in kitchen
We had hoped to be in a position to insulate last weekend, but the inspectors for the electrical (run by a provincial, not municipal, office) have a decidedly less flexible schedule than the municipal office, so we couldn’t get an appointment until Tuesday of this week. Last weekend, we took a break. The in-laws stayed home, and we relaxed the way good nerds do: we watched Lord of the Rings trilogy while scarfing nachos & white wine on the couch.
So the electrical inspection went well on Tuesday. Everything passed – good to go.
We also scheduled our municipal inspection of plumbing/mechanical/framing for yesterday. That went not so well. We arrived last night (in disgusting sleeting rain) to find two reports: one for plumbing, the other for framing. The inspection report for the plumbing had only one minor suggestion (to support a pipe). It’ll take ten minutes and one piece of two foot strapping.
The framing inspection had half a page of text, listing all the things that would be needed before we could insulate. While most could conceivably be completed with one day of diligent work, there was one glaring problem. Our windows (plural) in the bedrooms (plural) did not meet egress. This is carpenter-speak for bad news. The inspector figured our windows were not up to code, being too small for the size of the rooms and not a suitable exit vehicle for emergencies like fire. The fix?? All new windows in the bedrooms, at a cost of several thousand (not to mention three weeks lag time). Of course, we were bummed, so we went to a sit-down restaurant and drowned our sorrows in greasy garlic goodness, and then walked around the mall (the food cheered him up, the shopping me). And last night, when we got home, my husband meticulously checked over our measurements, comparing them to his national code book. I was sleepy with food, dozing/reading in bed when he finally came to bed mumbling that as far as he could tell, we DID meet code. Me: “So we’ll see tomor…Zzzz….”.
This morning husband called the inspector. Nonchalantly, dude quips something like “Oh, well, when I came back to the office and double checked my numbers I found that you are within code.” WTF?!? We were freaking out over nothing. Thanks, bastard. You owe me forty bucks for dinner at a pizza joint, and if you could take back the 1800 calories that would be nice too. Kthanx.
So all looks bright and sunny again. I’m taking off from work tomorrow so that I can help get the place ready for insulating. My mum is coming down! My mum is coming down!
Which reminds me that I will also be spending lots of time cleaning up the pit we call our apartment. Ohmygodgivemestrength. Egads.
Washer & Dryer hook-up, downstairs bath
Purty wires
Telephone/internet/cable hook-up
More purty wires
Ventilation ducts and pot lights in kitchen
We had hoped to be in a position to insulate last weekend, but the inspectors for the electrical (run by a provincial, not municipal, office) have a decidedly less flexible schedule than the municipal office, so we couldn’t get an appointment until Tuesday of this week. Last weekend, we took a break. The in-laws stayed home, and we relaxed the way good nerds do: we watched Lord of the Rings trilogy while scarfing nachos & white wine on the couch.
So the electrical inspection went well on Tuesday. Everything passed – good to go.
We also scheduled our municipal inspection of plumbing/mechanical/framing for yesterday. That went not so well. We arrived last night (in disgusting sleeting rain) to find two reports: one for plumbing, the other for framing. The inspection report for the plumbing had only one minor suggestion (to support a pipe). It’ll take ten minutes and one piece of two foot strapping.
The framing inspection had half a page of text, listing all the things that would be needed before we could insulate. While most could conceivably be completed with one day of diligent work, there was one glaring problem. Our windows (plural) in the bedrooms (plural) did not meet egress. This is carpenter-speak for bad news. The inspector figured our windows were not up to code, being too small for the size of the rooms and not a suitable exit vehicle for emergencies like fire. The fix?? All new windows in the bedrooms, at a cost of several thousand (not to mention three weeks lag time). Of course, we were bummed, so we went to a sit-down restaurant and drowned our sorrows in greasy garlic goodness, and then walked around the mall (the food cheered him up, the shopping me). And last night, when we got home, my husband meticulously checked over our measurements, comparing them to his national code book. I was sleepy with food, dozing/reading in bed when he finally came to bed mumbling that as far as he could tell, we DID meet code. Me: “So we’ll see tomor…Zzzz….”.
This morning husband called the inspector. Nonchalantly, dude quips something like “Oh, well, when I came back to the office and double checked my numbers I found that you are within code.” WTF?!? We were freaking out over nothing. Thanks, bastard. You owe me forty bucks for dinner at a pizza joint, and if you could take back the 1800 calories that would be nice too. Kthanx.
So all looks bright and sunny again. I’m taking off from work tomorrow so that I can help get the place ready for insulating. My mum is coming down! My mum is coming down!
Which reminds me that I will also be spending lots of time cleaning up the pit we call our apartment. Ohmygodgivemestrength. Egads.
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