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...

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.

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.

Gah!

Just found out today that Hot Springs

played yesterday in Halifax. Of course I would find out this morning while checking out their music out online randomly. They have been on my work playlist for a long time now.

Why always one day too late?!?!

This is what I get for reading stupid Steinbeck instead of The Coast!

Thought it was about time to post on non-house related topics. I’m starting to turn into one of those single-topic people. At least it’s not about my dahr-ling kids…

(one day, one day)

On top of being a procrastinator, I can thank my genes for having an addictive personality. This manifests itself as doing unproductive things for ungodly amounts of time without being able to stop myself (I have consciously stayed away from more harmful vices than TV and internet for obvious reasons). I realized pretty quickly in undergrad that we couldn’t have cable, because I would just watch endless hours of TV and not get any work done. So that went by the wayside in second year (yay! one less bill). And the most disturbing thing was that I didn’t miss it after it was gone. Lately, a similar thing has happened with the TV entirely. Whereas normally I would catch maybe an hour of TV in the evenings, the house has kept us so busy that we have a wonky schedule and are not even home most evenings. When we are at home, I’ll pick up my latest book. So in the last three weeks, I’ve read three novels – first was The Kite Runner, recommended to me by a friend (heart wrenching – I’m not even sure I could see the movie at this point) the second was Spadework by Canadian author Timothy Findley (meh. Loved the first novel I’d read by him called Headhunter, but then Not Wanted on the Voyage disturbed me and this third one elicited no reaction at all) and now I’m reading The Bean Trees by the go-to gal Barbara Kingslover. God I love her. Whereas Timothy Findley is all over the place, Kingslover churns out these amazing character-driven novels that seep through with strong themes that I can resonate with – independent capable females, the splendor and frailty of nature, the dubiousness of religious fervor. What I would do to meet her, have lunch, chat awhile. Of course, it would have to be organically grown and locally harvested food. I started off with the Poisonwood Bible (a beautifully worn copy received as a gift from a generous soul), picked up Prodigal Summer for two dollars at a Thrift Store, and borrowed The Bean Trees from the local library. I want to run out and read all the books immediately, one after another. But my practical side is shouting “Wait!! Keep them safe for now, and after a bout of two or three uninspiring novels in a row written by others – whip them out! They’ll be twice as good!”

And for music. The soundtrack of my life of late has consisted of whispering mid-Westerners with banjos. In particular, Iron & Wine has been on heavy rotation. Instead of picking up the entire album, the songs have come piecemeal over iTunes as I find (and fall in love) with new ones. The played live in Barcelona, Spain on my birthday, which is a kicker because I am going to Barcelona in the near future, but the dates don’t match up. The closest to East Coast Canada they are playing is Chicago, which they play often. Not near enough, unfortunately.
Artist number two is Sufjan Stevens, whose ambitious project is to create an album for every state (while also recording other, non-state inspired albums). My favorite album is Illinois, but since that one was thirty dollars at the record store and Seven Swans was only twenty, I got the latter. It sees heavy play at home, especially the first half (which has my favorite song of the moment called “That dress looks nice on you”). Interesting enough, both Stevens and Iron & Wine have biblical undertones in at least some of their music. I’m not sure what that means, but it does remind me of something that happened this morning:
Today in lab meeting, Dr.Ford Doolittle gave a semi-philosophical science talk that dealt with creationism and its place (invited or not) in evolutionary science. What our role is when dealing with intelligent design arguments, as scientists. Overall, it was an excellent presentation. If my mp3 player/recorder had battery left, I may have recorded the talk because he’s, like, eminent. In the presentation, he brought up bacterial flagella, which is used often in intelligent design argument as an example of irreducible complexity. And mid-presentation, I was reminded of a dream I had, about a month ago, where I was arguing against irreducible complexity in the bacterial flagella. That’s right, apparently my special brand of geekiness spills over into unconscious-land. I was fighting the good fight in my dreams, baby!

Chilly weekends = chills from a head cold

The view from the apartment on Monday, after the snow last Sunday

Last weekend was a quiet one around the house - no major updates just small things that needed to get finished. These included putting the two basement windows in, installing the sliding patio door & the front door and cleaning the house of wood scraps/construction waste. The kitchen cabinet person came by for measurements. We were supposed to start shingling the roof as well - all the materials were on hand and the elaborate staging was in put in place. But then it started to snow, which hampered the shingling. This is the last step that needs to be complete prior to out second draw for our mortgage, which means we can't get money until it is done. The options were to take three weekends and do it ourselves (weather permitting) or hire someone to do it for us for $1000 in a few days. We went with the latter, and they are almost all done. The plumber was in this past week and has pretty much finished the rough in too. As soon as the roof is 100% complete, we will contact our mortgage person for an inspection.


One piece bathtub, with robin's egg blue finish


Just kidding. Blue protective film, which will be removed to reveal white finish, from the other side


Playing in the snow at the house last weekend. My mother-in-law and I made a big box out of scrap plywood to hold excess wood (headed for the fireplace, one day soon). We put Tyvek on the bottom of it so it would slide easily on the snow. It turned into a sled when I jumped inside and my husband gave me a push.

My in-laws have been visiting and helping every weekend for almost two months. My mother has offered her help as well, but feels she is better suited to indoor work like insulating and drywall (although I'm sure she would kick ass at anything we asked her to do). So...I want to get her/my uncle/other family members up here to help March 1st weekend to drywall. Many, many things must occur before this can happen. Namely, the electrician must come in (which he will only do when the home is roof tight) and finish his rough-in in time for a municipal inspection. It will be a tight squeeze. But if it happens - we'll be rocking, time-line wise. Although we closed on the lot in mid-October, we really only started building the first week of January, so it hasn't even been two months yet.


Roofing

And despite battling a head cold, I was out helping install vinyl siding on the house. Not my personal fav as a siding option, but cedar shingles are time-consuming and expensive so we'll save those for our "real house" and not the one we plan on selling. It was nice to do something that gave observable progress. After last weekend, we needed a psychological boost and siding was the way to go, even though it really didn't need to be done now.


Installing vinyl siding on the back (I'm on the very left)


Vinyl siding from the front,with basement windows


A picture of the two walls of vinyl siding that I measured, cut, and installed all by myself!

The weather was mostly cold, but sunny (except for the last hour on Sunday). The wind was chilly, maybe - 15 Celsius and I had to warm up in the car every 45 minutes which was relatively often compared to colder days when I could stay out for longer. I blame my illness - it makes sense to me that my body would be hoarding blood for sick internal organs and view my limbs as expendable. Fucking freezing though, my feet felt like frozen stones the whole weekend, and would hurt when I would thaw them out in the car (picture included of our set-up; a plug-in portable heater sitting in the front-seat of the van. Hmmm...toasty).

Toe-defroster

And the neatest part of the weekend: our neighbours went skating on the pond behind out house. Yay!

Skating neighbour.


Check it out (narration provided by yours truly, nasally from the head cold no less...enjoy!):

Forgot the best one

Don't know how I missed this one!

The casualty

Boo:(

Pictures

Building mini-roof in livingroom in the rain

Different angle

Our casement windows from Piercey's - no grills.

The frou-frou front door insert. It was the last one , so it was a discount buy. Not my favorite glass insert, but not bad.


Looking in from the front door, into the future laundry room/guest bath.

Standing in the laundry room/guest bath

Bay in dining "room" (more like a nook, really)

Standing in the bay, looking out to the future kitchen (currently storing the windows) and the entry area

From bay to stairwell/livingroom area

Plywood stairwell

Looking up from stairwell landing to second floor

Looking down from stairwell into dining nook (note the two inches of water we had to sweep away on Saturday...)

Bedroom #1 with lake view

Close up of lake in backyard

"Hall" - Master bedroom on left, bedroom #1 at the end, bedroom #2 on the right

Upstairs family bath

Master bedroom view from stairs (with unfinished chimney)

Master bedroom

Master bedroom window - looks out onto the industrial park (and, hopefully one day in Spring, a big tree!)

Tyvek on the back of the house

A house, not yet a home

I took a bijillion pictures of the house this weekend in anticipation of putting them up here but lo and behold the camera USB cord has gone missing so I'll have to root around more carefully. Hopefully pictures will be up by tomorrow. But the verbal low-down is as so: The house looks like a house now- there are four walls the entire length, with a roof clad in plywood (shingles are not done yet). The windows are in (well, mostly - see below). There is a make-shift stairwell made of plywood which is a darn good approximation of real stairs and are much nicer to ascend/descend than a rickety ladder. Many of the interior walls are up, with closets for the bedrooms. The interior door is sitting in the "livingroom", waiting for the drywall to be delivered after the tradesman have done their thing. The bathtub (a 1 piece acrylic unit) hasn't been brought in yet, nor the sliding doors. Since we drive a tiny mouse of a car ('99 Tercel) we need to borrow a work truck to get these items to the site. As you can imagine, it is much nicer to work on the house now that the walls are up and roof is on. There are, of course, two hundred small jobs to get finished (along with one big one-the roof shingles) but hopefully we can do those together in the evenings with a few bright work bulbs and some rocking tunes (and maybe, a small space heater!).
The windows arrived on Friday, three and a half weeks after we ordered them. On Sunday, I wanted to help out by placing all the windows in their appropriate rooms, next to the cut-outs in which they were to be placed. The large fixed window (4' x 4') belonging to the bay window in the dining room was dragged over to the opening, as well as the two smaller side casement windows. We stopped for a bit to do another job, and didn't bring the windows upstairs to the bedrooms. Glad we didn't. The large 4x4' window got pushed over by a gust of wind, knocked the two smaller windows down too, and they all landed in a giant heap in the middle of the floor. It was cold on Saturday, maybe -2 Celsius, so the plastic window frame pretty much shattered on the larger window. Astoundingly, the smaller two windows were intact (one had a slight dent in the frame of the screen) and the actual glass section of the large fixed window was not broken. I was told afterwards that experienced carpenters know better than to set the windows up against the opening, but I am not an experienced carpenter. I am thankful that the damage was so little (it appears that we may be able to get the plastic frame redone, but use the same window so it won't be the $400+ to replace the whole window). And the fact that it was the windows crashing to the ground rather than the way more worrisome husband or father-in-law that I immediately thought about upon hearing the sound was a relief. At the time, they were working on the second floor and some of their precarious moves give me pause for concern. Broken windows=fixable with a couple hundred dollars and a few more days. Broken people=not so much.