Nurtured by Love

Category: Home improvements

  • Post-asbestos progress

    Post-asbestos progress

    First the roof came off. Then it poured rain all weekend. Of course.

    There were tarps up, but they leaked. It could have been worse. We lost a light fixture. Some old drywall got wet in a few places and will eventually need to be replaced. The bathroom mats were sopping. The house survived.

    It set us back about three weeks and cost a lot of money, but the asbestos is gone, and the renovation is moving ahead again.

    The new roof went up. And the old part of the roof got two skylights and a new skin of dark grey shingles. The addition has dramatically changed the overall appearance of the house. It’s not longer a squat 1940s gable-and-shed-roofed block. Now the roofline appears more interesting and broken up from all angles.

    As the crew throws up partition walls and roughs in for fixtures, we’re starting to get a sense of how the interior will feel. The airy height of the staircase and hallway is great. We’ll probably be tucking a reading/study area in against the wall, which will eventually have a row of four small windows under the eaves on the right.

    We’re now at the point of ordering tile and flooring, which is exciting. It will be another couple of weeks before it goes down, but reaching this point was enough to inspire me to start assembling the IKEA cabinetry.

    The stairs themselves feel immense. They used to be narrow, enclosed and more ladder-like, with lean-back-and-duck head clearance and irregularly-sized treads. Now they are completely to code, which makes them about 50% longer and a dream to climb. They also have natural light from the skylight, and are open to the living room for the bottom five steps which also gives them a sense of spaciousness. Getting upstairs no longer feels like a trip to a maltreated servant’s garret.

    The bathroom is harder to appreciate properly at this point without the fixtures, cabinets or window. It seems much bigger than it will be eventually.

  • HazMat Adventures

    HazMat Adventures

    img_3241Our Nelson place is the eyesore on the block. We bought it because of that. It was affordable and well situated, and that created the possibility of bringing it up to neighbourhood standards and eventually reselling it for a price more in keeping with the rest of the strong housing market.

    The house has four bedrooms that would make it a great choice for a family with children attending any of the very nearby schools, but it has only one bathroom, off the kitchen. That’s not exactly the way 21st-century homes allocate their square footage. More typical would be two or three bathrooms for a four-bedroom house.

    img_3234So we decided on a two-phase home improvement project. For the first phase we would increase the height of part of the upper story to allow for the installation of a full second bathroom. We would then turn the upper story into a master bedroom suite. This photo shows the south end of the upper floor as it was when we moved in. There is a dangerous steep staircase which pops up into a long dark space with limited headroom. Behind the camera is a bedroom defined by the same sorts of ancient walls and ceiling: uninsulated, smelly and with an “attic” aesthetic.

    We got a great local architect, very experienced with building codes, local construction and local architecture to draw us up some plans. This end will have the roof elevated on the left side of the photo, and that’s where the bathroom will go. The stairs will be replaced and the remainder of the space will be gutted, insulated and re-drywalled with the addition of skylights and extra windows.

    It took all summer to get a building permit. The city apparently considers the addition of headroom to equate the addition of floor space. The floor space is actually the same, of course. “Oh, but you’re increasing your finished floor space,” they said. No actually we’re not; it has been finished (panelled, carpeted) for decades. “Oh, but you’re increasing your usable finished floor space,” they countered. Okay, whatever; you can’t fight city hall, right? An engineer had to be involved. A major expense. But she worked quickly and efficiently, and finally it all came together. The contractor showed up at the end of September and got to work.

    img_3269The gutting of the space proceeded really quickly. Footings were poured in the basement. New beams and supports were retrofitted into the basement and main floor to support the new portion of the roof. New joists went into the upper floor to support the tub. Fortunately old vermiculite and cellulose found in the knee wall tested negative for asbestos. Things were very exciting for a while.

    But then WorkSafeBC showed up with information for our contractor about a new policy on hazardous materials testing for all homes built prior to 1990. This involved much more extensive testing of any materials being disturbed. Work had to stop until a certified person completed a full site review. Another big unanticipated expense.

    Because this policy is new and sweeping, the system and the people serving it are swamped. It took a while to get a certified guy in to collect the samples, and even longer to get the results of the tests back from the lab. “Same day turnaround” turned out to mean “different week turnaround.”

    The first results looked great: the flooring and vermiculite upstairs were completely clear of asbestos. But then the last few tests came back showing problems. The greenish stuff stuck to the chimney, some of the vinyl flooring that was a couple of layers deep on the old stairs and all of the drywall joint compound were found to contain asbestos.

    So that is where we’re stuck now. It means another wait. Now there’s a HazMat removal company that has to review the tests, look at the site, quote a price and do the removal. Presumably they’ll be wearing full-body hazmat suits and swanky respirators and will terrify our neighbours … and maybe we’ll have to vacate for the duration, I don’t know.

    This new WorkSafe policy didn’t kick in until the summer, well after when we had expected to have the renovation underway, but while we were still held up by the building permit and Land Title glitches. No one knew that we would soon be faced with a huge additional cost. When we did find out we were at the point of no return, with our upper story gutted and partly open to the elements. So I guess we just have to eat the cost, and put up with the delays. Fortunately so far the construction crew has been excellent at containing the mess and keeping the parts of the house we have to live in clean and habitable.

    img_3289A little bit of new siding will be going up as we complete the modifications upstairs, so we figured it would make sense to consider the second stage of our remodelling, which will be exterior upgrades. We had fun imagining all sorts of Nelson-esque colour schemes, surveying the neighbourhood and looking for houses we really liked the look of. We settled on blue, with cream trim and purple-red accents. I painted one side of the garage in the last snatches of fall sunshine and warmth to make sure we were going to be happy with it. I think we are. It sure beats the peeling 1970s white and barn-red.

    This part, at least, has been straightforward and enjoyable.

     

  • Upgrading the trail

    Upgrading the trail

    I began working on a connecting trail from our property to the linear park below almost three years ago. I hacked in a goat-path of sorts: narrow and full of switchbacks. It changed my life, in that it made one of my favourite running trails a mere 3-minute scrabble from my door.

    Yeller McLeod, my birthday present to myself. He's a combination of tamper, rake and hoe.
    Yeller McLeod, my birthday present to myself. He’s a combination of a tamper, rake and hoe.

    But it wasn’t a great trail, technically speaking. Parts had a grade of more than 15%, it was narrow, there were a couple of places that were subject to erosion and the tight switchbacks meant that you couldn’t ride a mountain bike on it.

    Last summer I did an IMBA trail-building workshop and learned more about how to lay out ride-able, sustainable trails. Armed with this knowledge and my new McLeod rake, I set out to improve my trail. I laid out a new route at the top, eliminating three of the most problematic tight turns. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks working on that portion, about 75 metres in length.

    Now I’m dealing with one of the three remaining switchbacks that can’t be edited out. Ideally it should be a loopy turn with a loop diameter of about 25 feet. The problem, of course, is how one creates a relatively level 7-metre-wide platter of earth on the side of a mountain with a grade of 30-40 degrees, made of clay, roots and rock, with nothing more than a mattock and my trusty fire rake. I’m figuring high-speed flowy bike turns will have to be compromised in the name of preserving my sanity. I’m shooting for a 4-metre radius, something that will require  and even that is going to require a herculean effort. I think I’ll be able to snake my way through that at lower speed without falling over. I’m about a quarter of the way through my first such turn, and have spent probably 10 hours at it. So … yeah … this trail may end up being a lifetime’s work.

    Still, I am having fun riding my bike up and down the piddly first 150 metres.

  • Front Room

    Front Room

    Old plaster-and-lath and gaping fir flooring in the front room.
    Old plaster-and-lath, upside-down receptacle and gaping fir flooring in the front room.

    Oh look. I did some things. The front bedroom was uninhabitable when we took possession of the Nelson house. Over the summer Noah, Sophie and friends stripped and then repainted the two gyproc walls, but the ceiling was flaky acoustic tile and two of the walls were this stuff: plaster and lath with a bit of vermiculite behind it, being held together by many layers of paint, wallpaper and press-board panelling. At the suggestion of our building inspector we chose not to investigate asbestos status but simply to leave everything intact and seal it off. The safest way, really. So I cleaned loose plaster away, shimmed the places where it was gone completely and got the walls passably flat.

    New drywall, and electrical receptacle now right-side-up
    New drywall, and electrical receptacle now right-side-up

    Then I drywalled over it. The ceiling required ten-foot sheets. Chuck and I did those together with a single step-ladder and, among other things, a baseball bat. Not too many corners (or arms or toes) got damaged.

    I actually kind of like taping and mudding drywall. Not that I’d want to do that for a living, but a single room is a gratifying project. I’ve done it before, but it had been years. I got better at it as I went. In the end I didn’t get obsessive and do a full skim coat, since the two walls that had been done by a previous owner weren’t perfect either. But I got a pretty decent finish in the end.

    Walls painted, hickory flooring and moldings done.
    Walls painted, hickory flooring and moldings done.

    From there it was on to painting. I went with what was marketed as a sort of chic tan-grey but turned out to be not that far off the colour of raw drywall, but whatever. Neutral, so that redecorating won’t require repainting, since we’re not really sure what this room will be for over the medium-term, and may not own the house for all that long anyway.

    Then the flooring went in. That was really fun. I had picked up enough surplus engineered hickory via the regional buy & sell website for a nice price. I floated it over an underlayment, gluing the tongue-and-groove together, staggering the joints. It took me about 5 hours, and this was where the room really began to pop for me. Adding the mouldings was a time-consuming final step but brought everything up to the next level.

    Looking the other way, mountain dusk in the distance.
    Looking the other way, mountain dusk in the distance.

    Sophie liked the room enough to move into it, vacating the larger, slightly more private room on the other side of the house. Which prompted Fiona to move across into the now-empty “blue room” that had been Sophie’s.  All of which is good because it means that the room she was in, which Noah repainted during the summer, is now empty and can get a bunch of finishing details done. Then I can move into that, meaning the entire upstairs will be empty and we can start looking towards a major renovation up there in the spring. The plan for upstairs is to add a dormer with a bathroom in it, and turn the rest into a master bedroom. The extra bathroom is definitely needed in a house with four bedrooms. Last weekend during the choral festival we had Sophie’s friend plus four billets staying with us. The eight of us had enough space, but sharing one bathroom eight ways was nuts. The girls were great about it but … yeah, it was crazy.

  • House progress

    I really love our Nelson house. When we bought it I was sold on it as an investment, a fixer-upper, but I think I’m falling in love now. It has a really nice feel to the living space. It’s open and light and airy during the day, and yet at night it feels cosy and welcoming: the best of both worlds! I love the absence of clutter and the simplicity of the space. I know it’s probably just a matter of time, but I’m determined to do whatever I can to keep the junk from accumulating. (Maybe it will help that Chuck doesn’t actually live there!)

    Now that we’re establishing a fall routine of back and forth-ing, I’m love having repair and renovation projects I can pick away at when I’m there, rather than just feeling like I’m killing time during the girls’ activities. This week I did a fair bit of outdoor work, dealt with a couple of filthy floors and completed the stripping of a white bookcase in preparation for repainting it black. I’ve also been researching historical colour schemes for the exterior. The big project for next week will hopefully be drywalling the front bedroom. I’ve been making extensive use of Kijiji (our version of Craigslist) and have scored some lovely hand-scraped hickory to re-do the flooring in there too. Sophie is hosting three choir festival billets the first weekend of November, so I hope to have that room finished by then!

    • Finished converting my 1989 black Stumpjumper into a mountain city cruiser