There is so much going on all of a sudden it is hard to keep track and the weeks are a bit of a blur. It is impossible to keep up with the blog because there are calls to respond to, emails to send, boxes to be packed, wa wa wa…..
The biggest news is that we are not homeless. Bruce lined us up with his across the street neighbours (we are the across the alley neighbours) because he remembered that they had a vacant suite. We checked it out and while it is a little more than the one at the other side of the ‘hood, it is within sight of our house, is pretty new, and has a bit more space. This will be our first basement suite. When Sarah was in Oklahoma and we decided to move in together when she got back, her rules included “NO BASEMENT SUITES”. The family is really nice and friendly and isn’t renting the suite because they still have a young child who they worry is noisy. The house is older than ours and there is no soundproofing. I guess the good thing is that this is only for 6 months and with our schedules that time will fly past with Sarah in Ontario, me possibly having a work trip to Asia, 2 weddings, and hike.
With a place to live lined up, things really started to happen and Dean the Builder was here a few times with various trades. We had the house lifters, Nickel Brothers here with the excavation/demolition guys who will be taking out our foundation. They confirmed that as long as they can drive all over Sarah’s garden they will be able to work from the back of the house. The plan for digging the footings is to actually dig into the basement with a small machine. It needs more clearance than we have so it will dig down next to the foundation then come through the wall. Should be fun! The holes for the jenga blocks the house goes up on are 4ft by 4ft and have be dug down 3 feet which is a heck of a lot to shift by hand.
The plumber was here and took a quick look but didn’t have much to ask. The electrician had lots of questions. Turns out that our electrical service is coming off the wires mid-span which is something that they don’t like doing anymore. We will need to install a new permanent hydro pole in the garden. We were going to be paying for a temporary pole anyway so this isn’t too much of a problem. Since we will have all of the machines here we will bring the hydro in underground and once everything is done, we can use the pole for a laundry line.
We also lined up the hazmat inspection. I am a bit worried about this because i have not taken the popcorn off the ceiling of the addition and as we are demolishing that, we could have an issue. We know that there is asbestos tape on the ducts and are looking forward to having that gone. He comes next week.
Ric came over to help on Saturday and the plan was to take down the drywall we put up between the joists. This didn’t go as planned. Basically, after reading up on soundproofing, i salvaged the drywall i was taking off the walls in the basement, cut it into 14″ strips and glued it up between the joists with Green Glue acoustic compound. Turns out that because we are moving the load bearing wall in the basement we need to put up new joists, paired up to the ones that are there. This can’t be resting on 2 layers of drywall and some green glue. Dang. The plan was to take out the screws we attached it all with, peel it off, trim it and put it back up. Nope. Not gonna happen. The Green Glue is basically caulking and that stuff is not coming down.
RIc and i switched plans and started on the tree jails. When doing construction close to trees you need to protect their roots from heavy machinery with a 4′ high fence. The distance from the trunk depends on the diameter of the trunk so we got busy with my salvaged lumber making posts and hammering them into the garden. I was going to say “at regular intervals” but that would be a lie. Because the trunks are about 2 cm from the start of a new category i didn’t want to take any chances so we went with the larger dimensions and extended it by about 10 cm. This also helps protect a few additional plants. We also had protect the boulevard trees just on the edge of the property. We didn’t get the job done but we made a good start and all the posts are in. We are just a few 2×4’s short.
My sister Mary and her fiance ( i love saying that) stopped by as well and we put them to work stripping shingles from the front porch. It was a busy place and ended with a great indian dinner with the the girls and Mela.
While doing this of course i was trying to figure out what the f# i was going to do about the ceiling. It kept me awake that night. On sunday after hitting the dump i went to home depot and picked up a Dremel multi-tool and some blades and i guess i am going to have to cut it all down. This is going to suck. The one bright spots is that at $9.98 for a 2×4, Ric and i used over $400 worth of salvaged wood.
Small victory.
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