Oh dear. Sorry about that title. I must be tired. Actually, to tell the truth I am. I spent a big chunk of the weekend at the house pitching in on labour so that the professionals can do what they do best. It was family day on Monday so it was only 4 days of work for the builders.
The suite is fully framed now and the wonky wall up through the middle has been rebuilt so everything is ready for the electrician to get rolling. The exterior walls are all in for our utility room, our side of the firewall and the service wall we added for plumbing and wiring. All that is left is getting the bathroom framed which should be wrapped up Monday. The kitchen has been cleared out and is ready for the crew to get rolling.
I did a bunch of stuff and was over at the house on Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday. Saturday was hovering around freezing which wasn’t a lot of fun. I took out the wall we wanted to move. Dean’s crew already put in the new one so i got to work off some of my stress with a crowbar and sledge hammer. I am glad to have this out of the way and the first thing i did was measure the distance to the north wall of the bedroom. We now have 9’4″ which will allow about a two foot wide passage around the end of the bed (as long as they don’t expect the recommended 30″ on the north side). I think there is only about 4″ at the very end of the bed that will be narrow but this is way better than the narrow 1 foot it was going to be. This was worth the effort.
My other task from Dean was taking down the plaster lathe in the living room where the chimney was. We had hoped to keep it but it didn’t survive the lift and since they are going to be filling the gap on the other side with a new wall, it was time for it to go. It will be ugly in the living room for a while but oh well.
I also did a bunch of basic cleaning and salvage. I took out a few electrical boxes i had left in place and salvaged a beautiful piece of baseboard that had been on the wall under our kitchen cupboards. It is 1″x8″ old growth fir about 12′ long and will come in handy i am sure. I am thinking we might wait to replace all the baseboard upstairs and go looking for more vintage wood. But then again we will likely just paint is, so maybe not.
By next weekend the new load bearing wall will be in place so I took out the frame for the door to upstairs and salvaged the old ironing board that was built into the east wall while it was still possible. I also found more baseboard that had been hidden by a set of doors that were leaning against that wall. I finished all that work by giving the entire kitchen a good sweep and a vacuum because it had been left in pretty rough shape after my demolition. I am trying to prevent all the grit from the plaster getting tracked onto the floors worse than it already is.
My final chore was to tidy up the butchery done by the hazmat crew last spring as we are getting close to replacing the subfloor. It wasn’t originally on my radar but i realized that we are getting close to the end of the carpentry and a new subfloor has to go down pretty soon. Maybe this week even. I have been dreading this as i don’t want to mess it up. My big fear has been that i would trim it and it would still be garbage and like a teen trimming their bangs i would just end up creeping into the remaining floor 1/4″ at a time trying to even it up. Luckily it went pretty well and i managed to get through all 4 doorways. As usual, it took me much longer than expected and after spending 2 hrs kneeling and using the Dremel my back was sore, legs stiff, and hand numb. But that is done.
We also had a couple of meetings with subtrades. The flooring guy came by to make a plan for the marmoleum and that was fun. We got all the details and are set to place the order! It might go in before the drywall but oh well. The other visit was with the mechanical folks who are looking after our ducts and such. We are not completing the suite right now so they are just going to do enough to get our furnace up and running and any vents through the exterior walls so we can get the insulation inspected when the time comes. One of the things we realized is that we didn’t think about the furnace room properly. We were going to have the furnace in the north east corner but that puts it a long way from the rest of the house. The farther away, the less efficient and the more expensive for ducting. Needless to say, with all of our budget issues, we are pivoting and moving the furnace. This has a whole cascading effect with a bunch of our other choices including some that are literally cast in concrete. Maybe next year we will move the furnace again. Who knows. We still would prefer a heat pump but budget reality is well and truly setting in so that will have to come later.
I am starting to really get stressed about the roofer and the windows. The roofing keeps getting pushed back and now with framing and a floor, the water that does get in in a real problem. We had a huge dump of snow and i was going to clear the deck but the under the snow it had all turned to ice and water was dripping through into the furnace room. The other stress is that we went with a cheap window company because of our budget and delivery timelines and despite telling us that they would be ready January 20th.. they still aren’t here. We didn’t go with another company that we preferred that was only a few hundred dollars more expensive but they said we couldn’t have the windows until mid Feb. Live and learn. Dean is stressing out too and calling them every couple of days. Last we heard a couple of the units got broken so they had to remake them. Not sure if we believe that.
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