By Popular Demand

The Beautifully Coloured House


It was a painting party this past weekend. The drywallers were finished a week and a half ago, then one week ago today the primer guys were in and out within 24 hours. Such a thing was possible only because of the fan-fucking-tastic weather lately. I think we had nary a rain cloud for ten whole days, so the drywall hanging/mudding/painting went really well.


(Product placement not intentional)

(I spent the weekend before last on my hands and knees for two days vaccuming the drywall dust off the floor with the shop vac. I like to work in a grid pattern, visible below. So anal it swings back to awesome.)



We spent every night last week at the store, contemplating paint colours and finishes and paint brands (Pricey Benjamin Moore? Affordable Glidden? Middle-of-the-road Behr? Does it really matter?) . By Wednesday we were at each others throats, completely at odds on what we each expected the house to feel like once decorated.


A very poor depiction of the colour scheme, next to a sample of our oak spice hardwood and beige limestone. Everything is blurry and washed out.


By Thursday we had made amends, purchased $300 worth of paint (Glidden, for the record. We walked into Home Depot and they were having a 30% off sale so that decided it), and unloaded it into the house in anticipation of Friday. A girlfriend and I started the ball rolling with the downstairs ceiling on Friday afternoon.

We left mid afternoon to check out some countertops and cabinet stains on the other side of town. On the way out the door we looked back on our progress & I'm not gonna lie, it was a bleak situation...the paint on the ceiling was splotchy and the coverage was so faint we figured we would need at least three shitty coats of paint everywhere. I was feeling extra guilty because I was convinced my choice of the cheap paint was to blame, and all the poor suckers we had roped into helping us were going to pay the price in blood, sweat, and self-doubt. But it turns out this was was only true for the ceiling paint. All the wall colours went on beautifully. Check out the assortment:



"Caramel" for the living room (far right), "Burlap" for the master bedroom (far left), "Tawny Port" for the downstairs bathroom (top) and "Smokey Blue" for the upstairs bathroom (bottom).


(That is my husband, doing a little late-night-paint scraping. The pictures herein are all taken at night without the colour-distorting flash so they are fuzzy and tend to be yellow-hued due to the worklight in the background. Sorries all around.)




Here are some pictures of the place wrapped in colour and adorned by the high efficiency fireplace (installed Saturday, only three days late!). I think we'll do a slate surround, which will hide the open area above & around the insert.

The front entry and stairwell are the same colour (yellow beige called "artists studio"), which is lighter than the caramel colour in the living room & dining room & kitchen. In the photo by the stairs, the contrast is more noticeable where they meet at the corner. The fireplace is currently painted the caramel colour, but we have plans to build a mantel piece of wood and slate.
Entry:

Artist's Studio on left, Caramel on right

"Topaz" RSF fireplace


The bedroom is a browner, darker colour called burlap (which is deceivingly yellow in this picture). Soon, when I remember to take pictures during the day, I'll post pictures of the colours in the sunlight. The upstairs family bath is a grey blue colour, also difficult to capture. This is actually the second incarnation, as the first colour looked like this in the can but turned out to be navy blue once it dried. I'm so happy we got a second can of paint in a lighter, greyer colour for that room.



Both spare bedrooms were painted a neutral (boring) off-white colour but in the skinny room (the future office), we did paint a single accent wall the deep wine colour, which is also showcased in the jewel of the house - the downstairs bathroom:







With my mom and uncle helping all weekend, and various friends/co-workers helping on Saturday we managed to get the whole house done (2 coats except for the blasted ceiling downstairs, which required three). I'm amazed and so grateful for their help. Next up: Laying hardwood floors. Notice in the pictures we've already started to acclimate the boxes of oak to the temperature in the house. Maybe this weekend??

Shite

My internet just crashed and I lost all my text.

Here are the pictures, I'll rewrite tomorrow. Hrumpf.


Drywall in Kitchen


Drywall near stairs


Fireplace


Portico


Basement


Birdies


Mr.Snowman


"Spring" on the East Coast. At least he looks happy.


My cute cat, who will one day covet birdies and want to eat them.

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!

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!