I had some help this weekend from my brother. He’s a hard worker. We cleaned out the remaining cellulose from the kitchen crawlspace and the pink insulation that was between the floor joists.
Cleaned up crawlspace. Nice to find it has concrete floor.A dozen bags of cellulose for the dump.
There were few signs of wildlife in the cellulose, but the pink insulation was riddled with mouseways, poop, and the odd skeleton. Ew.
My brother helped get the super-glued plywood off the kitchen floor, so now just a strip under the sink and dishwasher, and then the whole kitchen floor is down to original fir. Part of the kitchen addition has a different hardwood and the other part has yet to be revealed. I’m suspecting the same fir as the original kitchen floor.
The kitchen addition has a 2″ slope toward the back door. My brother determined that the addition hasn’t shifted since it was jacked and supported in the late 1990s, so We’re going to correct this by removing the flooring, building a level/shimmed subfloor, and putting in fir to match the rest of the kitchen. “We” means my brother, with me helping out when I can.
In the meantime, while waiting for the roof trusses and building to resume, I’ve been refinishing windows I took from my grandmother’s abandoned farmhouse. After being told I couldn’t use old windows in a new build, I discovered I could and have pushed for them. The builder is now happy to use them, and I’m happy to be using something of real value and to save myself the $12,000 new Loewen windows would have cost.
Five sets of double hung windows, two storm window frames, one bay window set, and two smaller ‘bathroom’ windows.
So, now the job of refinishing them. They’re in quite good condition – only the outside sills are greyed and need sanding. Otherwise, with a good wash, replacement of putty, and cleaned glass they could be installed right away. But, they are painted white on the inside and I want natural wood. So, I have to also strip the paint. Turns out it is likely milk paint and is proving difficult to remove.
Beautiful upper sash with intact glass.
I’m following John Leeke’s method and have ordered his book “Save America’s Windows”. I can’t get some of the materials he recommended
in Canada, so I’ve ordered Allback linseed putty and will use boiled linseed oil and turpentine to ‘condition’ the more exposed parts of the frames.
I’m removing the old, concrete-like putty with a Speedheater.
I can see this is going to take many hours of work. But I’ll enjoy it, knowing I saved these windows and will have them to add true character to my modern addition.
No new posts, because not much is going on. At the beginning of August we had the issue of the less than 6′ basement. The Builder went to the engineer to get permission to dig down between the footings, so that we could have a 7′ basement. The engineer took a look at the original drawings and realized what absolute garbage they were: inaccurate, not compliant with building code, and missing essential information. Of course, this is the same drawing that the Builder approved last fall, the one we signed the contract on, the one the City approved for permits, and the one the engineer provided a stamp for, at least in regard to the basement.
I don’t know how the drawing was approved by so many people and yet now they are only noticing its significant deficiencies.
So, we’ve undertaken a new drawing.
Three weeks later we still had no new drawing.
In the meantime, the Builder attempted to move forward where he could: He’s built the main floor, the main floor walls, the main floor ceiling, and has built the upstairs walls but not erected them, because he wants to wait for the roof trusses to attach them to. Makes sense.
One ironic aspect is that once the main floor was on, it was clear that the basement was in fact 7′, even without any further digging down. Someone try and explain to me how the Builder could not have calculated that before pushing the panic button a month ago!
I’d have pulled my hair out that we’d entered this twilight waiting zone for no reason but one of the things the engineer noted from the original drawing is that the roof trusses as designed were garbage, as was the staircase. So, some kind of new truss is being designed and then we’ll have to wait for the build on that.
Another main issue is the staircase. The original design had the stairs turning into the new space, which would allow for a large foyer on one level foyer. What I have right now is a tiny space with a step that causes me and others to stumble. The engineer noted that the turn in the stairs was not accurately reflected in the drawing and did not comply with building code. Further, when the turn is accurately reflected in the space, it cuts the space in half, making it unusable and unattractive – something a homeowner would not want.
So, back to the drawing board on the stairs. Now we’re brainstorming ideas on how to get the step up out of the space. I might have to suffer with the tiny foyer area, but I will not accept a step up. That has to go. The new drawing is supposed to provide some ideas for what would work. Brainstorming will of course cost me lots of money and no doubt delays. Sigh.
Wait wait wait. Unbelievable. I’m beginning to see it will be Christmas 2017 before this is done. We’ll be freezing our butts in an incomplete house until then. A full year after it was first agreed to be finished.
Finally, on September 14, 2017, the drawing came through from the new draftsperson and the next day the builder poured the basement floor. He came and polished it the day after that and hasn’t been back since. Yesterday it rained, inside my house and out. Again, water pooling in my basement, on my basement stairs, and on the upstairs landing, which is hardwood. I am not a happy camper.
The builder says we are now waiting for the roof trusses to be done. I’m flabbergasted and amazed that this could not have been in process while we waited for weeks on the basement floor. I simply don’t understand how every step of this renovation could not have been lined up in advance. Why would a builder wait until one step is done before making arrangements for the next???
I’ve talked to a couple of people who’ve had renovations. Some go smoothly enough. Nothing’s perfect, but no real glitches. But many also go sideways like mine. I think this is an industry that needs a journalist’s spotlight and better regulatory control. There should be an ombudsman for this type of situation. I’m sure many people are just like me; have saved or borrowed a specific amount of money, have a maximum amount they can afford to devote to a change to their house, and then are held over a barrel by the builders and end up paying far more than they ever agreed to or even contemplated just to get the work done, and then not even getting what was promised. If that happened once in every thousand builds, you might say that’s a reasonable chance. But, I think it goes on much more often than that.
I don’t expect to find altogether too many cool things during renovations, since the house has been remuddled so many times over the last 100 years. But I have found a couple of things of note, and I’ll post photos of whatever I find here.
The recent moving of the furnace in the basement and sprayfoam/drywall (spring 2019) didn’t reveal much new by way of cool things, except a pair of bifocal eye glasses and a steak knife. These were located up in the furnace ducting area, where some previous owner had installed a false ceiling between two cold air returns. There were also small panes of glass there, like you might find taken from picture frames.
Long lost bifocals.Steak knifeNote found in the stairs -April 20, 1940, “Your’n truly, Frank”
I would love to know the relationship between Gladys and Frank. Was it a brother to a sister? My records show that in 1940 the house was occupied by Joseph Roderick Roy. He died in 1957. I’ll do some research to see if Frank and Gladys are children of Mr. Roy.
Razor package, found behind a baseboardCoal from basementIron cylinder with notches. Found in kitchen crawlspace.Tin can embedded in concrete. Found in kitchen crawlspace.Bunny colouring pages. Found in kitchen crawlspace.Broken bottle bottom. Found in kitchen crawlspace.Newer adjustable crescent wrench. Found in kitchen crawlspace.
When we were punching through the wall through to the addition upstairs, I cleaned out the cold air return. Found a number of interesting things (and could see more down the far end of the cold air return, that I’ll be able to get at once I start work on the far room).
Rowntree Smarties – circa 1960?“Romance” novel.Published in Canada in 1949Christmas card – To Grant from Bob D
Will have to do some research on who Grant was.
Handmade Christmas cardFrom GrantEmpty packet of PlayersLinoleum scraps
Three weeks after asking the builder to provide the 7′ basement he promised, he is still waiting for a new drawing from the engineer. I don’t understand the processes involved here, but for whatever reason the original drawing (acknowledged as crappy, done by a ‘designer’) would not do if we are digging down a foot, so the engineer had to do an entirely new drawing. It may have had something to do with the vague references on the old drawing regarding roof trusses and basement entry way.
In any event, the engineer is now on week two of completing the new drawing and the builder is still waiting to dig down. Properly, he won’t do it until the engineer formally approves the change.
Last week I took down what was the coal room. It had been used more recently as a cold storage room. I took off the door, the shelving, and part of the wall. This is where the door to the new basement is going to be.
Coal and cold storage roomShelving in coal/cold storage room
View into corner of coal/cold storage room where gas meter is usually located
Coal from the wall where the shelving came down
The builder started framing the main floor and today broke through the basement wall. Very cool.
Where the doorway to the new basement will be
Also good news is that the builder has hired back the project manager that he had lined up for the previous fall. This man is much better at explaining what is going on and I have a bit of confidence now that the builder actually intends to move the project forward. Since the project manager arrived on the scene, work appears to be getting done and the work site itself is cleaner and more professional.
Pouring of concrete into the ICF (insulated concrete forms) started yesterday around 8am. The builder showed up alone. He had paid his helper the day prior, which resulted in a classic post-payday “sick day” for him. Luckily for the builder, one of the concrete supply guys offered to help.
I know the builder expected the job to take only a few hours, because he booked a second-opinion plumber to come at 10am. But it took until 3pm to finish pouring the walls, and what a mess they made! I have no idea if this is normal, but since my plan had been to leave the ICF wall as is/uncovered in the basement (particularly if all I’m getting is a crawlspace), I will now have an ugly mess for a wall. They also kicked the walls everywhere to ‘tap’ the concrete down to the bottom. The kicking left indents on the styrofoam wall. I don’t know anything about ICF, but I’m pretty sure that kicking the wall wasn’t the inventor’s planned means to get the concrete to the bottom. A Fine Homebuilder post indicates that multiple helpers, tamping rods, and a vibrating attachment on a drill are what are used to settle the concrete properly in the form. In that post, their forms were filled in 2 hours. Mine took 7 hours and was only three walls. http://www.finehomebuilding.com/2016/07/12/placing-concrete-icf-foundation
Concrete that missed its mark
Anyway, at 3pm, the builder disappeared without a word. Since I had been waiting all day at the house to let the second-opinion plumber in for a tour, I was quite annoyed that this tour didn’t happen and that the builder left without telling me he was done for the day. And, since this is a long weekend, I won’t see or hear from him until next Tuesday and am left hanging on the important question of whether this can be a full basement or not. Am I allowed to swear on a blog?
Yesterday my builder told me that my new 7′ ICF basement is actually going to be just under 6′ high.
I don’t think something under 6′ constitutes a basement, but rather a crawlspace. Certainly with me being almost 6′ tall, I won’t be able to walk freely down there, and my son, who at 13 is 6’2″ tall and continues to grow, will have to crawl. It’s shorter than my current basement. It’s a crawlspace.
How is this not something the builder could have assessed at the time we discussed basements a year ago?? He knew the current building code, he knew my present basement height, so how could he have promised me a 7′ basement?? He’s trying to pin it on the designer.
I’ve asked him to go back to the engineer to see whether we can dig down a foot between the footings, which would give us about 10 feet in the middle where we can walk and maybe play ping pong.
Also, the said builder has not worked a full day yet. Every day there is some reason to leave early.
I don’t seem to be able to focus on a project until it’s done, and instead start new things on a whim. The whim I entertained recently was working on the kitchen crawlspace and removing some of the cellulose.
I promise it will look really nice when it’s done!
Granted it was a very hot and humid day and I was in full sun, but after a couple of hours of work I only had a few bags of cellulose removed and have many many more to go. I gave up.
Two hours of work and that’s all I have to show for it?!
Two interesting discoveries in the crawlspace: First, as noted in another post, the space had been supported by a significant beam in 1999 (after seeing the beams I dug out the receipt, kindly saved for me by the previous owner).
Support beam
Second, aside from mice and spiders, something nested in there. At least I think it’s something other than a mouse, as I don’t know that mice make nests like this.
Man, this kitchen floor will not give up the ghost easily. I’ve struggled with removing 8 layers of previous flooring, layer by layer, including the last layer of plywood that often had to be removed splinter by splinter. Honest to goodness I counted 22 nails along one 24″ edge. See my previous post on this topic for further laughs.
This weekend was a little better. I got the flooring beneath one side of the lower cabinets off without much difficulty, because it only had three layers of flooring, and then the cabinet re-installed easily, albeit an inch and a half lower than before. I also cleaned my extremely dirty stove and put it back into place. Nothing like cooking grease caked with renovation dust. It was satisfying to get it cleaned up.
Base for west wall cabinets.Bare floor under west cabinet
I didn’t tackle under the other side of the cupboards because that side has the plumbing – sink, water filter, and dishwasher. Since whenever I touch something I wreck it and the whole cabinet system would be dropped an inch and a half, I decided I didn’t want to be in the position of calling a for-real-plumber on the weekend.
It’s unfortunate, because that side has the major mouse activity – a superhighway. I’d really love to seal that off, but because of the plumbing that will have to wait until I think the situation through and psych myself up to do it. Maybe next weekend.
Exit ramp for mouse superhighway. Carcasses of many accident victims located under cabinet.
Several interesting discoveries in the kitchen! What I thought was a single porch turned into a kitchen ‘bump out’ was something else. Not sure yet what, but the pieces of that puzzle are coming together.
The kitchen ‘bump out’ is made up of two structures. The newly revealed floor shows that a structural wall (long since removed) divided the two spaces north to south. The east space has painted narrow plank hardwood installed perpendicular to the kitchen flooring, which runs north to south.
East side narrow plank hardwood, perpendicular to Doug fir kitchen floor
The west space has original siding on the outside but on the inside the floor has a sheet of plywood overtop an opening to the crawlspace below. I wasn’t able to get that plywood off yet because it glued down with industrial strength adhesive, so don’t know if the crawlspace extends under the east space as well. I haven’t bothered climbing under the space, because it’s filled with cellulose, spiders, and mice. See my next post for more on that topic. Anyway, finding out whether the crawl space extends under both sides of the ‘bump out’ will help solve the puzzle, once I figure out how to get the plywood off without wrecking it.
So, my guess now as to the origins of the space is that the east side was always porch, and the west side was built as an addition to the kitchen in the 1960s. The reason I say the ’60s is because there is a wood threshold that fills in the space where the exterior wall was removed and that piece of wood has a stencil on it that says “Western Cabinet Ltd.”.
Western Cabinet stencil
With a tiny bit of internet research in between prying off layers of floor, I saw that this was a company that was in business in the ’60s.
I wasn’t able to track down when it ceased business, so a trip the library will be required. Complicating this theory is that the second to last linoleum (yellow-y) was only installed in the east space, while the west space had a sheet of plywood.
Strip of yellowed 1980s linoleum between hardwood and sheet of plywood
Both spaces were not covered with linoleum until the last owner put it in the late 1990s. But for now I’m going with a kitchen remodel in the ’60s that took out the exterior wall of the house and the east wall of the porch and added the east space, resulting in over 60 new square feet in the kitchen, and of course brand new cabinets. The work wasn’t permitted, as I’ve checked on those. Anyway, this scenario explains the different roof configurations between the east and west space. The west space (the former porch) is sloped, while the east space is not.
The 1960s cabinets are gone. What I have now is 1990s oak in Shaker style. Nice enough but the carpenter routered the inner edges, eliminating the clean edge of a simple Shaker, and also the hardware is polished brass. Not my fave, although I’ve seen in a few magazines that polished brass is making a comeback.
Beveled Shaker with brass knobs
The major difficulty for me in the long run will be the sunshine ceiling. The cabinets were built to that 7 foot height, instead of to the 8 foot ceiling, so they won’t be tall enough and will look awkward when I take the sunshine out. Also, the electrician who installed the lovely fluorescent fixtures in the sunshine ceiling simply stapled the wiring to the popcorn ceiling. So, lots of work when it comes time to take the sunshine out.
After I accepted that the plywood floor was not coming off today, I got out my belt sander and had a go at the fir. Quite exciting! It will look very nice when it’s sanded. My plan is to shellac and wax it. The idea of re-waxing my floor once a year makes me feel good. Connects me to my mother and grandmother. A feel-good day.
This is a real fun renovation so far. Friday was spent with the plumbers in and out of the house the whole day, as the gas line was moved to a temporary location. Every time they entered the house knock knock, can we come in? I must have said six times that they ought to just come and go without asking me first. But I had well-mannered plumbers who insisted on knocking. I was exhausted from getting up to open the door for them. That was my EDO and they were not gone until after 6pm.
Then, at 7am on Saturday morning the excavator showed up with two helpers, ding dong on the doorbell, could I move my car and advising they would be done by noon. Half an hour later, ding dong on the doorbell, where should we put the fence parts that have fallen down as a result of the excavating. Then they did a couple of loads out and then ding dong on the doorbell, the excavator wanted me to pay him directly for the excavation work and wanted a cheque today, even though the work was only about 1/3 done and he couldn’t cash it anywhere because it’s Saturday and there’d be a 5 day hold on the funds because it’s a personal cheque. I suggested I could get him cash on Monday if he’s in a real hurry, and he says no, cheque today please. I was baffled, but he was sure that’s what he wanted.
Since I have a contract with the builder that includes excavation of the basement, I was a little taken aback by the excavator’s request for payment from me. Then he says he wants me to leave the cheque blank. “Blank!” I say incredulously. “I’m not giving you a blank cheque!”. He meant just to leave the payee line blank. He explained he didn’t want to deposit it into his bank account and he would put his wife’s name on the cheque, whom I’m sure he told me he had divorced some time ago. I was concerned about his motivation for doing this and people who know me would know why I was concerned, but I was baffled by it all and felt powerless to say no.
Instead, we had a chat and he explained that the builder owes him money from previous work and he wants to get paid this time. I’m all on board for being paid for work done, so I called the builder to tell him I’d be giving the excavator a cheque today and that it would come off the cost of the contract with him. I didn’t really care how the excavator dealt with his money, as long as I had proof of payment.
The builder was annoyed, and explained that the excavator wanted the cheque today because he’d go off to MoneyMart and cash it immediately. How awful. It’s unfortunate, but if that’s the way he wants to do it, then that’s his business. Anyway, it was Saturday and the builder was out with his family, but he stopped in and gave a cheque to the excavator. I was happy the excavator got paid, sad that he’d give MoneyMart part of his hard-earned cash, mad that I’d been used by the excavator to force the builder’s hand for payment, and annoyed with the builder because he made it seem like such a big deal that he had to stop in on a Saturday for five minutes when I had been dealing with the ding dong excavator all day. Distasteful all around .
Then the excavator had vehicle trouble that ate up the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon, and ding dong on the doorbell to advise of that. Later in the afternoon he returned with a ding dong on the doorbell, to say excavation would resume with just himself digging, loading the dirt into a truck, and then driving the truck to unload the dirt. Very slow process.
Then, I went out and when I got back at about 5pm I saw the excavator’s half ton being towed away, the Bobcat parked in my driveway, and nobody returned for the rest of the day.
Sunday morning at 7am, ding dong on the doorbell, would I move my car from out front. The excavator had arrived by himself again to finish the job. He’d be done by noon he said. He was earnest. At 7pm, after a brief but heavy rainshower that turned the clay in the excavated hole into a slippery mess, ding dong on the doorbell, he wouldn’t be done today. But since he had slipped on the messy clay when he went in to check on how slippery it was and got himself covered in mud, could he use my garden hose to wash up.
And there I was, handing paper towel to the excavator at the end of another long day of comedy with the promise that it will all resume again tomorrow morning at 7am with a ding dong at the doorbell.
5 feet down and the wall looks ok. Whew!Bobcat parked for the day. My son in the background playing barefoot in the wet clay.
