What did you do with your long weekend? I crawled around on my knees and took down our chimney in the attic.
Two labourers (or apprentices) and a mason from Lindjberg Chimney and Masonry Service showed up at 9 am Monday morning as planned. There was rain in the forecast so i was a bit stressed but they wasted no time. Sarah was doing an online story time and i was between meetings so we did a quick meet and greet and they got to work. They were able to get their scaffolding over the fence so it was in our yard and the neighbours yard and it went up fast. Before too long the mason was at work on the roof, one guy was loading buckets and lowering them with a pulley system to the guy on the ground who loaded them into the back of the truck. By lunch the chimney was gone. They took a break and then came back and patched the hole. The chimney is a couple of feet from where i work so when they were filling in the hole in the roof the hammering was startling to say the least. Hard to tell if the shingles are an exact match but you can’t really tell where the chimney was. It was a big relief to have it done and when the skies opened that night with a rare thunderstorm i was glad it was done.
On Friday i crawled in to take a look at what i was going to be dealing with. It was super awkward because there are all sorts of nails sticking through the roof between the joists. The masons had used the flashing from the chimney to create a cap and had caulked it in place. They hadn’t talked about it and i should have told them not to bother because the first thing i did was peel it off. I did a couple of test taps with a hammer and cold chisel and was surprised but pleased to find out how easily they came off. I didn’t want to get too far into the job so after playing a bit i had a relaxing evening in the front yard with friends.
Sarah actually had the entire weekend off so we took it pretty easy and went to the farmers market in the morning and made plans to ride out and see some friends in the afternoon. As soon as we got back from the market i got suited up and went back into the attic and got rolling on the job. I have a really hard time relaxing when i know that i have a big chore hanging over my head. Well, maybe i just have a hard time relaxing. Depends who you ask. With hard work like this i have to take it easy because i don’t have a lot of upper body strength. Sure i can cycle 100 km in a day with a loaded bike but i don’t pump iron or anything. I try and work in short bursts so i don’t end up incapacitated or with a migraine the next day. The work was tedious and hot because the weather was nice. Luckily i was working on the west side of the house so it wasn’t too bad yet.
The masons had stuffed insulation in the flue so that bricks and mortar wouldn’t fall in so i pushed that down then hammered away at the bricks. This is the first time i have done anything like this so i didn’t really know what to expect but i had thought that the mortar would have a firmer grip on the bricks. I am glad we are taking the chimney down because it sure doesn’t seem very strong. The work was really time consuming because i had to load 4 or 5 bricks into a bucket then back down the decking i had put over the joists to get to the door of the attic, twist awkwardly and load them into bigger buckets, then crawl back and grab another load and do it over again. Each big bucket holds 2 loads of a small bucket and bits of mortar so it took about 6 return crawling trips to get a load together. Once i had a load of bricks i had to get out of the attic, brush off then take the buckets one at a time down the narrow, not to code, stairs, out the back door, down more stairs of questionable soundness (deferred maintenance) and dump them on the driveway. I did 3 loads before stopping for lunch, showering and heading for a little 25 km return bike ride out to Ward and Allison in Burnaby.
Ward is a university roommate of Sarah’s so at this point they have known each other over 35 years. Heck, he has been a friend-in-law of mine now for almost 30 years. Strangely i still think of Allison as Ward’s new girlfriend because they have only been together for about 25 years. Allison is another recovering Albertan and we share a love of Edmonton band Jr. Gone Wild who we both saw many times in younger days. We don’t see them much because, well, we are adults and do adult things and don’t just spend endless hours down at the bar looking for mates, but it is always great to see them. Friends that you have had for this long are irreplaceable and easy to spend time with, picking up where you left off last visit. Sarah had ulterior motives though and has her eye on their yard as a place to store plants while we are building. They agreed easily and Ward has even offered to drop off his trailer when we need it so we can load it up and he can haul them back. (I didn’t know they had a trailer. We don’t have a hitch but suddenly i am thinking i might get one to save on a dumpster rental or two… I need to price that out.) There still is all the digging we have to do but they have enough space for a fair number of the plants that we would like to save.
When we got back, me being me, crawled back into the attic to do a few more loads of bricks. As the chimney got lower i had a bit more room but it was still itchy, and hot. Hotter now that the sun had come around but i was motivated and it was going well so that kept me hammering away.
Sunday i took the morning off for a coffee walk since the weather was dry. We connected with a librarian classmate of Sarah’s and her husband. Sarah and her both have puzzle habits so we did a swap on the street corner and went to sit in a park. While waiting for coffee a classmate of the offspring’s came over to say hi to me and have a quick catch up. We see him and a few other of the offspring’s friends when she comes home and it is always great to hear what they are up to. When we saw him last summer he was just finishing uni with no idea what he was going to do and it was great to hear that he has a job he likes in a field he enjoys. Despite having seen him recently i don’t know if i would have recognized him in the mask and all and so i was quite touched that he took the time and then came out and talked with Sarah and i some more before visiting with his friends.
When we got back from coffee it was time to really get to work. I had scheduled 2 weekends to get the job done but it was going well and i realized that i could likely get it all done in just 2 days. It was a heck of a lot of work and i almost quit but pushed through to get it done. All the trips up and down the stairs and in and out of the attic was really making a mess and i just wanted it done. While i had started with knocking off the mortar and carefully stacking the bricks i just started dumping them in a pile to deal with later. While we had planned to salvage the bricks for making paths, they are not red bricks and are just ugly grey fire bricks. We will likely just sell them. What i hadn’t thought of was all the damn mortar which is going to be shoveled into our garbage can a couple of shovel fulls every load for the rest of the summer. Is that allowed?
Holiday Monday was a write off. I was shattered from overdoing it the previous day and all i really did was vacuum and tidy up. It was a pretty great weekend though.
Leave a Reply