Deck's done...

Other than making a few steps (which I might do tomorrow), the deck is finished!

I put the roof on it today.  Grace and I picked up some smoke tinted panels at Lowes on Wednesday night.  (It was quite an adventure securing those twelve foot panels to the top of the van and then driving home....  Thankfully, it wasn't a windy evening.)  

When we got up this morning it looked like rain.  The weatherman promised buckets full of rain too.   I was all ready to see how many panels I could get up before the rain hit when I noticed that we hadn't bought any fasteners... I had to go to Nooksack Valley Building Center to get screws.  By 8:30, I was up on my ladder and roofing like there was no tomorrow.  I kept thinking, "This will be the last panel before the rain hits..." and then I'd do another panel.   By 11 o'clock I ran out of screws (the project was a little more "screw intensive" than I had figured...)  I went back to NVBC to get screws, found my screws, realized that I didn't have my wallet with me...  stopped at the middle school to leave a note for Grace to go to NVBC in order to pay for the screws... and then, back up my ladder...

By the afternoon, the weather had actually cleared up.  I didn't know how good I had it with the cloudiness and the cool temperatures...  The wind started to pick up a bit and it made handling the panels a little tricky.   I was just starting the last one (which I really couldn't have done by myself) when Grace came home.  We got the last panel up (I actually had to make one more "screw run" to Valley Plumbing - for four screws!) and suddenly, we were done.

And, this is what it looks like:

Funny story:  Norman, who you see in the picture, always insists on being underfoot when we work outside.  Three times, I stepped on him as I came down the ladder.  Once, he was all sprawled out under my ladder when the ladder buckled and fell on him.  As I was hanging from the rafters, trying to figure out how to drop down without hitting the collapsed ladder, Norman looks up at me and proceeds to lay down directly underneath me...  I got down without squashing Norman.

Deck update

We're back!

We finally got a stretch of half decent weather that coincided with a weekend so we could work on the deck.  We weren't really expecting to since the weatherman promised us lousy weather but when we woke up this morning it was gorgeous.  Grace went to Lynden and rented a belt sander and then I sanded... and sanded... and sanded...  
Sanding was pretty horrible.  The picture shows me sanding where I could at least stand up. Once I moved closer to the house I had to crawl around.  Every now and again, I wouldn't pay attention and suddenly the sander would take off on me....

When the sanding portion of the job was done we were ready to apply the stain (which Grace also picked up this morning.)  We were very pleased with the results.  Here's a before and after picture.

Before

After

(note the high security string for keeping Norman off the deck - 

it worked as long as we were there to yell at him...)

Next week we hope to put the roof on and then we hope for just a few nice days so that we can enjoy our deck a bit this year yet...

Deck and gosling update...

Since the pictures uploaded in this order we will deal with matters pertaining to goslings first...

The picture below shows the size of our goslings as of Sunday, July 25... We managed to grab them since they had found a way out of their pasture but neither Woody nor Hovander had (yet). As soon as Paige and I corralled their off-spring the incredibly upset parents were well on their way to breaking down the fence to kill us.

But I digress.... As you can see they have grown quite a bit since the last pictures that I posted. They are in the goose equivalent of their "awkward adolescent years". No feathers, just furry pseudo-feathers. They don't honk, just peep. In the poop department though they seem pretty grown up... The whole family still gets out on a regular basis so our yard and driveway are a mess.

Below you can see our deck progress to date... I am "on vacation" this week and so I have lots of time to devote to the project. Grace, on the other hand, is teaching summer school and so she can only help in the afternoons and evenings. It's going well and we should have the bulk of it done by the end of the weekend. (The picture also shows the window I replaced a few weeks ago...)

Deck progress and goose family update

The new deck is coming right along. We spent our weekend digging holes for footings, setting our footings/deck blocks and then pouring cement for the piers that will support the deck. This is a picture of our progress to date.
On the goose front, things seem to be going well too. Woody and Hovander continue to be stellar, over-protective parents. (I pity any creature that decides to mess with their family...) They got out of their pasture yesterday and I managed to get close enough to take a family portrait. (Hovander's on the left; Woody's on the right; goslings are wedged between mom and dad.)

woody, hovander and the kids...

On Wednesday we were surprised to find that Hovander, a goose that we've had for almost 15 years, hatched out a couple of goslings. She had been sitting on eggs for a number of weeks. She does this every year. If it's not eggs, its anything remotely roundish that she can find to sit on. Last year we found a gander and put them in a pen together. It certainly wasn't love at first sight - as a matter of fact, it seemed like they hated each other with passions that only geese can evoke... but apparently they got along better than we realized...

Hovander had made her nest in a corner of the barn. There was a pile of straw and some feathers but no food source of any kind. We didn't really know what to do about getting those little ones some food especially since Hovander would hiss like a demon and charge at us with outstretched wings if we came within 10 feet of her goslings.

This morning I went to the barn and she was by the sliding door with her babies. I left the door open and she wandered out. She attacked our overly amorous drake and hissed like mad at Norman but once everyone learned to stay away from the little flock it was OK. Eventually she stood in front of Woody's pen (he's the father) and called to him. He came and stood by the gate and once the coast was somewhat clear, Sara opened the gate, ran for her life and this is what we witnessed....



Woody had never seen his offspring before and we didn't know what to expect. Initially it looks like Woody is just happy to be out of his pasture and is thinking of going out with the boys. But Hovander calls him back and seems to tell him that it's his turn to watch the kids for a while. He watched them as closely as Hovander did and she had a few minutes to go for a swim in the big puddle on the driveway. It was pretty amazing to watch the instinctual parenting skills of those two birds - people could learn a lot from a couple of geese...

Why we took the deck off (needlessly...)

One of the main reasons we decided it was time to do something about our back deck was because we discovered that we had a leak in our main water supply line to the house. The line ran right under the deck and we figured it would be a lot easier to dig it up if the deck weren't in the way. Well, as you know, last week we tore the deck off and so all that remained to be done in terms of preparation for rebuilding the deck was replacing the water line. Jesse had done some major preliminary digging last weekend and yesterday I got down to business.

Right off the bat I made a major discovery. After digging just a little bit more I found out that our problem was not the line itself but a coupling in the line. I figured that it would be a simple matter of splicing a chunk of 3/4 inch water line on to the existing line. Then I found out that the splice I needed to replace was directly under the 4 inch black ABS line that whisked sewage from the suite to wherever that stuff ends up. I went to the hardware store, got the parts I needed and got to work. I had to dig it out a little more in order to get the room I needed to finagle everything in. After digging, I found out that I didn't need the parts that I had picked up. It turns out I needed a "T" since whoever installed the sewage line figured that they would save time and labor by running the supply line to the suite directly under the 4 inch transport line. Back to the hardware store... Then the old "T" broke off in the pipe.... Grrr! Did I mention that I had to do a lot of this in the rain? I did. It took me all day but I got it done.

So in the end, it was pretty much unnecessary for us to tear off the back deck.... Now, of course, we have to do something back there. At least the water feature in the backyard is gone. Our ducks don't like that but we do.

This is how I spent my Friday.

This is what I looked like when I was done.

(You can tell everything worked because I'm smiling...)

progress report...

We had a long day today. Thankfully Jesse and Yuseph helped out. The weather was perfect - too lousy to do anything fun but not lousy enough to keep us from working.... I'm tired and dirty so I'll let the pictures tell the story.
This is the part where I broke a window. I didn't break it with the wrecking bar; I broke it with my shoulder. It's a long story...

This is the part where Jesse almost got crushed by the roof of the deck falling down. Yuseph is propping up his section but something slipped. It's a long story...

OK, this is the part where we almost destroyed the suite. We finally got the roof to fall in the right direction (at first) and then it snagged on something, changed trajectories and grazed the storm door of the suite on its way down. (Thankfully this blog doesn't have a soundtrack...)
It's a long story...

And this is what everything looks like right now. We've made some progress; we've still got Monday.

our next project...

We've taken a month off; we've pretty much cleaned everything up from our bedroom addition project; the Memorial Day weekend is upon us - all signs are indicating that it's time we started on something new.

Here it is:

When I see our deck in pictures it looks worse than in real life - but it does need work. So much work that we're going to tear it off and build a new one. The new one will be lower - no railing - and somewhat smaller. We use the deck a lot and are looking forward to it being even more serviceable. (We will also replace the window back there - it's the last window in the house that needs replacing...)

We'll see how long this takes us. We'd like to be able to use our new deck before the summer's over - time will tell...

Moved in

We're all moved in to our new room! We'll be sleeping there tonight. Over the years, we've slept in the house for about thirty nights and always on a "temporary" basis. It will seem strange not to be living out in the mother-in-law suite anymore but we are looking forward to seeing what it's like to live in the actual house.

On to the next project.

I mentioned a while ago that the electricity to the barn was out. Fixing it had been on hold during the final push to complete our bedroom but now that is done so away we went.

On Friday a friend of mine and I began to dig a trench to get power out to the barn. (I have repaired my original wiring too many times to bother with it again.) The trench is finished (except for the fun "under the driveway" part), so next weekend I will get some wire and some conduit and relight my barn/shop.

This isn't even our next big project. This is just something that was waiting to get done while we finished off the addition. Once we get a few more of these "been waiting" things out of the way, we'll tackle our next big thing...

Finished!

We are officially done the construction portion of our addition project! We passed our occupancy inspection on Wednesday and since then we have been starting the clean-up/moving in phase. To say the we are very pleased with the way things turned out would be an understatement. It took us nearly two years but we are finished!

Here are some pictures of the relatively cleaned up; very partially furnished room.

From the northeast corner-

From the southwest corner (the doorway)-

...and two shots of the bathroom -

so close...

Almost there... I took three days off work while Grace was on spring break. I'll post some pictures and give a detailed update soon.

Fence (July 25, 2009 - March 13, 2010)

Well it only took about eight months but our pasture fence is finally done. It was "mostly done" by the end of August 2009. The one thing that still needed to be done was figure out how we were going fill in the twelve foot gap that was meant for a gate. We had considered several options but never committed to anything. I was going to build one but it would be incredibly heavy. We were going to buy one but it would be incredibly expensive.

In the end we came up with a fairly novel solution. The first eight feet is a removable panel that slides into the end post and it's anchored into a cement deck support on the other. Then the last four feet is a gate. We rarely need a twelve foot opening and when we do we can remove the panel and open the gate. So that's done now.

I've also hung the bathroom door in the addition. I think I'll take it down and try once more since it doesn't really close now... (This is why I decided to work on the gate today...)

Next...

Friday night we went to the Home Show in Lynden. We survived unscathed - thankfully we're too far along in our project now to make any major changes. We did come up with some more ideas for our next project(s) though. We enjoyed it and it was nice to get out after a couple of very productive and busy days.

Saturday found us running around Abbotsford and Bellingham. We were at the Abbotsford Home Depot at 7:30 a.m. because the ceiling fan that we bought at the Port Coquitlam Home Depot on Wednesday night didn't have the installation instructions with it. The fine folks at the Abbotsford HD opened up a box and gave us the directions. We also picked up some more trim and all of our electrical supplies there.

We were back home by 9:30. We unloaded the van and then headed to Bellingham. We went to the Bellingham Auto Auction for a little while. We didn't buy anything but had to leave when it became impossible for us to keep our hands down... Then we went to the ReStore, Home Depot and the Buyer's Market. We came home with a door for the bathroom and a folding door for the closet, also another gallon of white paint for trim (aka "next weekend's projects".) By the time we got home we didn't feel like working in the addition and ended up mowing the lawn for the first time this year.

Bedroom floor (part 2)

Floor's in; looks good - moving on...

Bedroom floor (part 1)

Today we undertook to get a proper floor in our new bedroom. Grace and I both had today and Friday off; she had picked up some laminate flooring last week and so there was nothing left to do but install it. There was actually something fairly important to do prior to installing the flooring. We had to find the subfloor. Witness the picture below. That's not a set up shot. That's several months' accumulation of tools, supplies, etc. which we never really quite cleaned up.
After several hours things looked like this. That's the subfloor. We hadn't seen it for a long time. It had lots of blobs of drywall mud and mounds of concentrated paint all over. After chipping and scraping for a long time we got things to the point where we could lay our flooring down properly.
We actually managed to put the bulk of the floor in today. I don't have any pictures yet but it looks great!

Bathroom

It seems like the bulk of our time is going to be dedicated to completing the bathroom. This weekend was no exception. On Friday morning, the bathroom looked like this:

You can't tell on the "before" picture but there's no paneling on the walls. I also made a pony wall to support the side of the tub. I also finished the crown molding and Grace painted it and the window trim. I had to wire in the outlet for the tub and the timer too. Here are the "after" pictures.

Grace picked up flooring for the main room today. She and I are both off on Thursday and Friday, so we should have the floor in by next weekend!

Bathroom floor

As we inch ever so slowly toward the completion of this project we hit another milestone today. We put down flooring in the bathroom. I had prepped the subfloor yesterday (chipped off spilled blobs of drywall mud and paint, sanded, scrubbed it clean) and early this morning I put a coat of primer on it. By noon we were laying tiles and by two o'clock the floor was in. Next comes the wainscoting on the lower walls and then the fixtures.

Before

After

Trimming windows

I started trimming windows on Friday morning. I suffered a setback when I discovered that the manufacturers of the tape measure I was using were unfamiliar with the imperial system of measurement. (Apparently they had never heard of the metric system either.) Once I figured out how to convert drevnergysies into inches I was on my way. Unfortunately I had already cut up quite a bit of trim by that time. The sum total of my efforts for Friday - one window trimmed up and a lot of kindling for the wood stove.

Today went better. I found a real, American-made tape measure and got the rest of them trimmed up in no time at all.

I remember when we renovated our living room many years ago that it seemed like we were getting nowhere until we trimmed the windows and suddenly it looked as if we were almost finished. And then it was only a short six months or so before we were done... We should be able to do better with the addition. Time will tell.

Trim, Tub surround

My Friday was spent installing trim in the addition. I got started in the morning and Grace helped me finish it up when she got home from work in the afternoon. After dinner we headed to Home Depot for supplies for Saturday's project. When we got back from Home Depot I caulked until midnight so that it would be ready for touch-up paint next week. We are very pleased with the way it turned out and are looking forward to trimming up the windows soon.
The reason for the above mentioned trip to Home Depot was to purchase materials for the tub surround. It's expensive stuff. We almost made a very costly mistake during installation but we figured out a way in which a three dollar piece of trim will hide a potentially hundred dollar blunder. The surround turned out great too. It still needs to be caulked and trimmed but it's starting to come together.

Painting

We painted today. Grace had been applying primer and painting the ceiling white over the course of the week, but today we painted the bedroom walls. It's only the first coat but it looks good. (Best part - it only took about an hour and now we can't do anything else in there for the rest of the weekend!)

One important thing that we learned was that high quality paint significantly reduces the quantity of paint that you need. We bought five gallons of paint and we finished the closet and bedroom walls with only one gallon (and the first coat takes more paint than the second.) So if anyone out there needs two, possibly three, gallons of Behr paint for cheap let us know. It's a neat color (the picture doesn't really do it justice). It's called "Toasted Almond" which, of course, tells no one anything about what color it actually is but that's what it's called. We thought that since we love both toast and almonds that this color would be great.

Texturing

The texturing of the bedroom and closet is finished! In spite of what the pictures seem to imply, the bulk of it was done by someone else. A friend from work came over yesterday and textured the whole closet and the bedroom walls, but then we ran out of texture (and we came dangerously close to running out of beer since another friend from work came over too...). We finished off the ceiling this morning and it looks great. The look we went for was a favorite of ours, the ever popular "however it came out" and we nailed it!

The bathroom wasn't quite ready so we hope to finish that early next week.

Here's a picture of Grace scraping the last of the mud into the hopper. We mixed just enough to do the ceiling.

And here's one of me spraying the stuff on to the ceiling.
Kind of a cool process...

Sanding

I spent the day sanding drywall. Every square inch of me has a layer of drywall dust on it. My arms are about ready to fall off. (We used quick-set, super hardening mud on the ceiling - very durable, very difficult to sand...). Grace will put a final finish coat on tomorrow, then one more "quick sanding" and then we hope to texture next Friday.

Daniel McGinn

Daniel McGinn is the author of a disturbingly entertaining book about all things relating to real estate. He's a journalist for Newsweek. The book isn't particularly scholarly but it's not fiction either. If you watch more than two real estate shows on HGTV per week, or if you have ever gone to a real estate open house with absolutely no intention of buying, or if you compulsively grab the free real estate listing books at the grocery store - you should read this book.