Day 291 - Election Day in Canada

Did you remember to vote today?

These were some of the better ads in this year's campaign.





This was the scene when I arrived at the house. The sun was setting, and there was a whisp of fog settling in over the lake.

Peaceful. Serene. We are looking forward to a bit of that!

Today, Sean and Patrick primed the master bath and the closets, which Dave and Chris installed a couple more window build-outs.

Dave estimated he would have all the build-outs installed in 2 or 3 days. I don't think that is in the cards... Even though the crew knocked off work early today so they could go and vote, not even half of the build-outs are installed. And this would have been the end of day 2.

Day 290 - Vinegar

As the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

I am going to try to make a long story short, but suffice it to say that we absolutely do not recommend Carleton Insulation. The owner of the company, whose name I won't write but will refer to as TD, seemed very nice and all that when he was doing his sales pitch. Even though he was expensive, he had been working with Charles for over 20 years, and we thought that was a good indication he was trustworthy and would do a good job.

The first insulation (batting) was done on Dec 15th and the blown-in insulation was done Dec 23rd (later than promised). Charles called TD on Thursday (Jan 19th) to say he had a cheque for him, but couldn't get it him to him for a day or two. TD seemed to have a meltdown, even though it was just barely over 30 days for the first bill and under 30 days for the 2nd bill, and called us threatening to lien our house. What a jerk! Incredibile that our first contact with TD after having the insulation installed was to use heavy-handed threats.

It's pretty clear that TD has ignored the old saying, that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

I wrote TD a cheque to get the jerk out of our lives forever. Then he has the chutzpah to go the bank to try to get the cheque certified. I had told him it was a line of credit cheque, so please deposit it right away, so he tried to get it certified. Well you can't certify a cheque on a LOC. He was so rude and abrasive at the bank that they called me afterwards about it.

I find it incredible that someone would throw away a relationship of 20 years over a small amount of money.

Nobody can take away your good name except yourself. Like TD did.

I hope it was worth it to him.

Day 289 - Getting stuck is no fun!

We had a heavy snowfall today. We left home around 10am to go out to the house to empty the dehumidifiers. The roads and weather weren't too bad around home, but as we got closer to our new place, the roads and the weather got worse. This photo was taken on Jiulia Lake Private, the road down to our house. The road hadn't been plowed yet, our plow contractor was just starting. As we were driving down the road, we would hit a snow drift and - poof! - a cloud of snow would blow over the hood. We only got stuck three times, which shows its a good thing to carry a small shovel in the trunk. The trees were very pretty, however, with all the snow on them!

We had originally planned to rent a panel van to take the fragile items out to the land. We were very glad that we did not do that!

Packing up. Boxes everywhere. Freda has done most of the packing.

Day 288 - Dust!

Dust. It's pervasive. It's everywhere. The drywallers sand between each coat of plaster, and the dust is exceedingly fine.

I purchased a new filter for the shopvac from Lee Valley that is supposed to trap the fine drywall dust. I believe the filter is actually made from Goretex or a similar material.

The crew was busy this week fabricating the build-outs for the windows. Here they are all lined up like soldiers in the basement, ready to be installed.



Here are Dave and Chris preparing to install the build-out for the big window in the master bedroom. Every window has a few complications so it is not as simple as just jamming the jamb extension into the slot and fastening it in place.


This is the finished product, with the build-out for the window jamb extension in the master bath. That's Patrick outside, taking advantage of the +6C (a new record temp for Jan 20th) to apply some caulking above the window, to make absolutely sure that no water gets in.

Day 286 - Good Things and Bad Things

Well, we have had a few Good Things happen:
- Ottawa Hydro said they will pay $100 towards the cost of the blower test. Yay!!! That's all we're ever going get from anybody for building an energy efficient house.
- We found a place to live! It's clearly obvious from the photos that there's no way on God's Green Earth that we will be able to move in at the end of January. Fortunately some neighbours are letting us rent their small cottage. It really is small, about 350 sq ft!

On the Bad Things front:
- the weather was really bad today. It started last night with freezing rain and turned to rain this morning. The road into Jiulia Lake was incredibly icy even before today's weather -- I hit a bump on Monday afternoon and started sliding sideways down the road. Today's rain made the road 10 times worse. The crew and drywallers left around lunch time and it took over an hour as a combined effort to get everyone out.
- Surprisingly, the garage doors have not arrived yet.
- Freda and I feel like we've been taken advantage of by some people. That is very disappointing.

The movers come next Saturday to take our belongings to our new house. We plan to store them there until we can move in, which we expect to be the 3rd week of February.

This weekend Freda and I are renting a van to take some fragile things over to the house.

Day 284 - humidity

The house is quite humid because of all the drywall mud that has been applied over the past two weeks. The solarium windows almost appear frosted because of all of the condensation.



Chris is ripping a sheet of MDF into strips for the build outs. Dave is having a confab with Sean and Patrick. Sorry this photo is fuzzy.

MDF is fabricated from sawdust and glue, so it makes follows that it is very dusty when it is cut. That's why Chris is very wisely wearing a mask.


One of the build-out (jamb extensions) in a basement window. This is made from 3/4" thick MDF, and was primed once. It looks pretty slick, doesn't it?!?!




Charles is repairing an alarm wire that had the insulation exposed on two of the conductors. The boarders had covered over the security wire and then it was pulled out, which caused the insulation problem.

Day 283 - CC306 emerges

It was a painting weekend - CC306 made its appearance. CC-306 is the Ben Moore colour code (name: Cable Knit) that for our trim. The doors look pretty good in it, don't they?

Today I sanded the primed doors, and painted both sides of the 1 3/4" thick doors, and one side of most of the 1 3/8" doors. I don't think I really like the paint - it is so thick it takes a long time to spread it around. Note that it is a Ben Moore colour, and not Ben Moore paint.

Upstairs, every window was dripping with condensation - a result of the drywall mud drying. I opened a couple of windows a crack to let in some cold (relatively dry) air.

It's pretty obvious that I will be collecting on the bet with Dave. I am thinking about possibly revising the wager - maybe increasing the stakes for Dave. Will see if he goes for it.

Looking ahead for this week:
- buildouts of the window jamb extensions starts
- garage doors arrive (to be confirmed)
- drywall mudding completed (I hope)

Next weekend Freda and I are renting a panel van to move some fragile stuff to the house.

Day 282 - a busy day

This is a photo of the arch from the great room looking towards the kitchen. The entire house has received the 2nd coat of mud.

The problem now is for it to dry. Renee brought in two huge fans (from furnaces) to blow the air around to help things dry.



Bob, the alarm installer, came to correct the prewiring installation, which was not done properly.

Dave the foreman had asked where the wires were going to go since there were just sticking out of the woood by the drywall, and the crew is preparing to install the build-outs, or jamb extensions. We are using MDF for this as it paints nicely as costs 1/2 to 1/4 of other options.

I went to the house today to prime and paint the doors. The two missing doors and the replacement for the damaged door were delivered on Friday. When I was arranging the doors so I could work on them, I discoverd that one of the doors was a demo door - it had curved panels on one side and rectangular panels on the other!

I spread the doors out so I could work on them, but first I had to prepare the doors. This meant a light sanding with a sanding block on the edges of the door and the flat parts of the door, then a light sanding with steel wool or 220 (fine) sandpaper. Finally, a brushdown and priming. This prep took about 7-8 minutes per door, then priming the doors took another 5-6 minutes/door. I did one side of all the doors, and then prepped and primed the 2nd side of the 1 3/4" thick doors. Note the maple french doors on the right -- these are for the foyer.

Dave has set up a workshop in the basement in order to speed up production of the trim work. The miter saw (center - blue with red blade) has supporting tables on left and right. (My coat and lunch bag are at the end of the table.) Behind that, there is a table saw with an outfeed table to support ripping the 4x8 sheets of MDF.

Jan 23rd - election day

Text: Every time someone votes Conservative, Steven Harper kills a kitten.

Okay, now the Liberal attack ads have gone too far.

Remember: vote early, vote often.

Day 281: Painting pains

First, I forgot to mention that John has ordered the replacement sealed unit for the office window. See post from Jan 2nd for a photo and the story. Thank you John.

The delay in the drywall completion has thrown the whole schedule for a loop. The drywall still has to be completed, will likely take a week at the rate it is going (so that will be a total of 4 weeks, not the two weeks promised!).

We had lined up the flooring for Wed Jan 18th installation start - that will probably have to be delayed until at least January 30th, if not later. The cabinets were scheduled for production the week of January 30th. We were trying to get that moved earlier, but clearly it now has to be delayed, probably a week, perhaps more. Since nobody has a clue about the schedule, we don't know what to tell these suppliers. It will probably end up causing us a delay.

The problem we have is painters.

Charles had a quote from a Ben Moore painter early December. When I called him to ask for the requote (exclude priming the basement and garage) he told me he hadn't heard anything about the job so assumed he didn't get it and was busy until the end of January. When I spoke with him, I thought we would need the painting done in January, but said I we would like to hire him and would check into the schedule in case it would work out. I wasn't able to get in touch with him this week. This afternoon he called to say he had been at a job in Cornwall and had taken another job and was busy for at least two more weeks. Aargh!

The other painting quotes were from (a) a couple of guys who we turned down - the job was too big for them and (b) a painter we have used before who is almost twice as expensive as the other guy.

It was +8C today, so when I got home from work today Freda and I took all the deck furniture and put it in the garage (before it freezes solid to the deck), as well as the wheelbarrow, and the barbecue. I also took the Christmas lights down and only broke 3 or 4 bulbs. Whoops!

I am in a bear of a mood today. I only have two more things to say today:
(a) if you ever think of building a house, shoot yourself in the foot - it's much less painful. And if that's not too bad, keep shooting yourself in different places until it hurts too much.
(b) I think I'm going to take up heavy drinking. And none of that beer or wine stuff - that's for pansies. Just the hard stuff. The stuff that makes you choke and gag and sputter.

Day 280: 2nd pass started

The drywaller's crew has started mudding the 2nd pass of the house. Then there will be the pervasive dust when sanding, and then a 3rd pass with the mud.

The crew has built a workshop downstairs for doing the trim. Charles picked up 15 sheets of 3/4" MDF - that will keep the crew busy for a day or two.

The tub base for the ensuite has been built, and is ready for the tub. Virtually all teh trim has been primed, and most has been sanded with steel wool (#0000).

Day 279: Depression & Elation

We are alternately depressed & elated with our house. Sometimes depressed with the apparent slowness of the pace (and the co$t!!). And sometimes elated with how beautiful this building is going to be when it is all done.

Today's progress:
- garage drywall boarded
- first pass of taping completed in entire house
- Dave's experiment with joining MDF for the buildouts (jamb extensions) looked very nice. That will save a lot of $$ in material.

Day 278: Bad assumptions

We left the deck furniture out because we thought we would be able to put it in the garage in early December. Clearly not a good assumption.

Schdule:
- trim: 3-5 wks (overlaps with drywall)
- paint: 1 wk
- flooring: 1 wk
- cabinets: 1/2 wk
= final painting: 1 wk
Total: 7 - 9 wks - end of February

Day 277: First and last

There is a time for everything. And this relates to building a house.

The drywall completion is the activity that is currently pushing the schedule. The drywall taping and mudding must be completed before the trim out can start. And the trimming must be virtually completed before the painting can start. I spoke to two painters this evening, and they both said it would take a week to paint the house. I am meeting another painter at the house tomorrow after work.

Doesn't seem likely that the floor installation can start next Wednesday. Which possibly means that the cabinetry not arriving until Jan 30th is not pushing the schedule either.

Day 276: S t r e s s . . . . .............

Stress is in the air. It is unavoidable. It is palpable. The movers are coming on Saturday January 28th to take our possessions to our new house. We would like to be able to be able to live there after our move date, but that may not be possible.

The crew is working hard to do whatever they can to make this happen, but we are being held up by the drywallers. This will put major pressure on the painters.

Yesterday, Freda and I picked up the rest of the interior door hardware (hinges, handles, knobs, ball catches, door stops, sliding door hardware, etc) from Preston Hardware - all in satin nickel. Freda also picked up some paint sample pots from Ben Moore of the leading paint colour contenders.

Catastrophe averted
On Friday, I started the task of priming the mouldings that were delivered in the morning - Charles helped me prime the first batch of casing on Friday afternoon. I did more painting yesterday. Today, before starting painting, I moved all the primed trip to the top shelf of the drying rack (see photo from Friday Jan 6th). When I had finished doing that, I noticed that one of the 1x4 used for the side supports was starting to separate - it was a bit punky so didn't have a lot of strength. Uh-oh! If that support failed, then there would be a big mess of casing on the floor!!!! I slid the casing to the edges of the 3rd shelf to ease the pressure on the punky piece of wood and then attached a piece of a steel stud to reinforce the shelf. Whew! Catastrophe averted! (Well, maybe catastrophe is a bit of an overstatement.)

Today, Carl (a neighbour) helped me prime all the casing, bullnose and window stool that was delivered on Friday. I also prepared the sample boards for Freda to see a larger area in the various colours.

What is left to prime? The door casing, baseboards, doorstop, baseblocks, and panel moulding.

Day 275 - some slight progress

Renee started installing the bead today. He first used contact cement to fasten the plastic bead (corner pieces and flexible bead above the arches), and then fastened the bullnose bead to the other places. You can see one of the beads on the corner at the right of the photo, right beside Rene's elbow. Between the two of the drywallers, we got about 7 1/2 hours of work done today - too slow for our liking actually, but not too much we can do about it unfortunately.


Here is Dave installing the Duraroc (cement board) in the ensuite shower. Dave first installed a rubber membrane on the floor. It's a thick (30 ml) rubber sheet that is laid out over the floor and up the walls. The Duraroc is then put over the membrane.

This will ensure all the water from the shower goes down the drain, instead of into the structure of the house.

Chris and Sean built this platform outside the door from the laundry room to the garage. There will be another railing on the raised platform, as well as steps. Chris was working on the stairs - they can be tricky as I well know (from the 4 flights of stairs I worked on last year).

Day 274 - Drywall and trim

Yesterday, I asked "Where are the tapers and the mudders??" Well, today the owner of the drywall company showed up and we talked about the various deficiencies (mostly alarm wires boarded over). Rene said (at 11:30) the taper was on his way. He eventually showed up just after 1pm and was on his way after just over 3 hours. The house will take forever to complete at that rate. I asked Rene to bring in others to help ... we will see tomorrow.

Matt from Bytown Mouldings delivered the mouldings today.

Here Charles is seeing how the mouldings will look by the patio door in the solarium. There is a base block at the bottom of the trim by the doors.



Patrick is laying out a 14' section of baseboard along the wall to see how level it is.

The floor is, as Charles says, "dead nuts level".




We wanted a trim material that would give us a good crisp edge on the mouldings, and would be durable. MDF doesn't give a crisp edge, and pine has too much sap (is always bleeding through). We needed paint-grade material, since we are painting the trim, so asked for yellow poplar or basswood. John told me they would be using American Yellow Poplar. The colour variation of the wood is amazing - ranging from black to pink to yellow to white. It is not all perfect, however, so we hope that it doesn't impact the usable material.

This is the paint station and drying rack that I set up with Patrick's assistance. I set the trim across the little scaffold (foreground) and the T-bar on the vertical 2x4 (middle of picture) for painting. Once painted, it is moved to the drying rack.

Day 273 - Drywall woes, and flooring disappointments/surprises

Drywallers

Where are the tapers and the mudders?? Nobody showed up again today, and nobody can get in touch with the boss.

On the drywall front, I added up all the square footage from the drywall delivery slip to get a total of 18,460 sq ft (including the cement board). Charles and the crew cleared out the large piles of drywall debris and took 3 more loads to the dump. I think the total weight of drywall debris is around 2500 lbs so far, which puts the waste at about 8%, by weight. There are still more pieces of drywall in the house that will need to go out at some point in the future, which will probably bring the waste to ~10%.

Interior framing

This is Dave, taking a break after framing the fireplace, and suffering from the slings and arrows of misfortune, or perhaps it was just a drive-by fruiting by Captain Vector.



Interior Doors

The interior doors arrived this morning. Two were missing (located at the shop) and one was damaged. Robert, the driver, took the damaged one away. The missing two will be delivered next Thursday.

We purchased 1 3/4" thick solid core doors for the bedrooms and bathrooms (to keep noise out), and 1 3/8" thick doors for the closets, etc. Since the doors to rooms are 36" wide, the thicker doors are quite heavy, something between 60-70 lbs each.

Flooring

After yesterday's bad news about the flooring, we paid another visit to Burlco in Merrickville. Mike and Judith helped us work through various options. This is the replacement wood flooring that Freda eventually settled on. It is a stained beech engineered product, and is a floating installation instead of glue-down.

Mark really wanted an exotic wood that is quite hard, but that seems to be difficult to achieve in the engineered product. Beech is basically as hard as red oak (1300 on the Janka scale, vs. 1290 for red oak). Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of choices if you want a true brown, but Mike and Judy helped us find one that would suit the cabinetry and fireplace surround.

This is Freda and Judith having a laugh and trying not to like they are posing while looking at various colour selections from the Ben Moore 2006 colour trends brochure.

Disappointment!!

Mike called us today to say that the flooring we had wanted - Asian Mahogany - is no longer warranteed for installation over radiant heat. This is a major bummer as we had expected the installation to start in a week or two. Now we have to rush and pick something else out....

Day 272 - Drywall boarding completed

Wednesday January 4th, 2006

Soffit/fascia completed

These are the lads from Bytown Roofing who did the soffit & fascia. From L-R: Larry Jr, Steve, Larry (owner), and Rick (wearing his invisible suit). I took this photo after they fiinished loading their equipment on their trucks.

Completed preparing garage for drywall

This morning, the crew completed preparing garage for drywall - this means finishing the installation of the strapping and 6ml poly. This is Chris, preparing to install some blocking at the edge of the wall.


This is the other part of the garage with the finished poly. You can't see the floor in this photo so my work to clean up the garage is not visible.




Boarding completed

Meanwhile, the drywall boarders completed the installation of the cement board around the bathtubs and showers (sorry no photo of that). They will come back on a warmer day to complete the garage, since there is no heat in there.

This is the arch looking into the great room. Note the pile of debris in the middle of the room.

This is the view from the great room into the kitchen, with its much larger pile of debris. Paul (boarder boss) said they didn't waste much - only 5% waste. The piles seems like more than that to me, so I did some figuring. There was 20,000 sq ft of drywall delivered. 5% of that is 1,000 sq ft, which is 25 4'x10' sheets. I guess 5% could be about right - we'll see by the weight of what gets taken to the dump.

I googled the weight of drywall: 1 sq ft of 1/2" drywall weighs 1.7 lbs. So 1000 sq ft should be 1700 lbs. This means the 20,000 sq ft of drywall added 34,000 lbs (less the waste) to the house.

The interesting question now is: where are the tapers and mudders to finish the drywall?

Site cleanup

This morning, I went around the house again picking up the sharp offcuts from the soffit/fasica team (so Tawny won't cut her paws on them). Then I cleaned up a bunch of plastic garbage that was blowing around the front of the house. Then I cleaned up the garage. This afternoon - it was more of the same, but this time indoors with all the drywall. Here Sean and Charles are securing the first load of drywall being taken to the dump. This was 700 lbs of drywall debirs, and was the first significant contribution to the landfill from our construction project.

This load was 700 lbs which means there is only 1000 lbs to go - otherwise the 5% waste estimate will be low.

Tomorrow: interior doors are supposed to arrive. We received 5-10cm of snow today, and freezing rain started around 9pm.

Day 271 - Technology used to be heavier...

Yesterday, Freda and I had a good laugh. We were bringing some boxes up from the basement, and Freda picked up a box with an old vcr in it, and expressed surprise at the weight of it, and then commented "Technology used to be heavier"! We both laughed so hard at this that tears came to our eyes.

Drywall - At the house today, the drywall boarders completed the interior of the house, including the stair well, hallway, laundry room, arches, basically everywhere except for the bathrooms. Tomorrow they will install the cement board around the bath tub in the main bath area, the shower in the master ensuite, and the "dog" shower area in the laundry room. After that, they expect to complete the boarding in the garage (ceiling and three walls).

The taper has almost completed the basement. He complained to me that the screws weren't driven in far enough but couldn't find an example. I mentioned this to Paul, the foreman of the boarding crew, and we went over most of the basement and could only find one screw that was a problem. Hmmm... makes the complaint seem unfounded.

Soffit and fascia - The crew who is doing the soffit and fascia completed that installation today. It looks really nice - the corners are mitered nicely and it looks pretty neat. Tomorrow they will install the Tyvek house wrap on the gable ends and then load up all their equipment. I went around the house on Sunday and picked up the sharp offcuts so Tawny won't cut her feet. I need to do that again.

Garage - Today the crew worked on installing the vapour barrier and strapping in the garage, except for Patrick who was sick today. It was a little tricky manouvering the scaffolding around the piles of drywall in the garage, but it was good to see the more of the garage floor, as the piles of 1x4 strapping disappeared as it was installed. The crew was on the scaffolding installing the strapping and I was on the ground cutting the strapping and handing the pieces up to them to install.

Propane - The propane tanks were refilled today. Haven't got the bill for the first delivery yet, so Freda and I are thinking that they mailed it to our new address, and Canada Post won't give deliver our mail to the mailbox there for some bizarre bureaucratic reason. Freda is going to call them tomorrow to find out what the deal is.

Finishing materials - The interior doors will be delivered on Thursday. We had expected the milling of the trim (made from yellow poplar, not pine or MDF) to be delivered by now also, but it probably won't be completed until the end of this week or early next week.

Moving - Freda booked the movers for Saturday January 28th. We plan on delivering all the stuff to the house. We may need to store our things in the garage temporarily, but the crew is working hard to get as much completed as possible. It won't be totally finished, but we are hoping the master bedroom and ensuite will be totally completed.

Photos - Too busy for photos today, sorry. I will take some tomorrow morning and also perhaps some in the afternoon before it gets too dark.

Day 270 - Drywall and soffit progress

Monday January 2nd, 2006

Rick, installing the soffit outside the solarium. The crew has almost completed installing the soffit and fascia. It was nice that it was milder today (high -4C) so they were able to make good progress. There is probably only one day of work left in the soffits and fascia. They will run out of materials so Larry picked up some more J-trim and fascia for them so they can complete the installation.

The drywall boarders were hard at it today upstairs, doing part of the stairwell and the hallway. There is still more work to do - amazing how much there is.

Meanwhile, the finish work has started. This is Chris, taping the drywall seams in the basement. He was able to complete about half of the basement. The basement gets taped only, and the main level gets the full finishing treatment.

There is always something unexpected...

This is the transom window in the office. For some reason, it cracked sometime between Dec 23 and Dec 28th. Nobody was working in the room at the time so it seems to me that it must have been a manufacturing defect.

Meanwhile, this weekend Freda and I sorted out the details for the closets. We also did a lot of packing today before heading out to the house to meet Joseph, to get a painting quote. I walked around the house and picked up the aluminum offcuts from the soffit and fascia installation so Tawny won't get her feet cut on the sharp scraps.

Tomorrow is back to work again... for Freda. I have taken the week off and will head out to the house again to work with the crew. One thing on the list for Tuesday is loadup up Charles' truck with drywall debris to take to the dump.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody! Freda and I went over to some friends to ring in the new year, but I was so tired that I started dozing off around 10pm so we came home and I had no problem falling asleep right away. This was probably the first time that I wasn't awake at midnight on January 1st since I was about 8 or something!!

January 1st, 2006

This is Freda checking out the paint colours in the great room. Unfortunately, the colours didn't look right today, maybe the light made everything look too orangey. Freda has started looking at her vast selection of paint colours once again.

Our driveway was so icy that we couldn't drive up it. We anticipated that so I spread some sand out on the drive. Hopefully that will help things.

Drywall flames. One of the boarders showed their creativity with a scrap of drywall.

We have been able to get the humidity in the house down so now we can have the trim and the interior doors delivered. That should be this week.



Note all the sound insulation around the bathtub/shower area. This will help keep any showering noise from waking up people in the adjacent bedrooms.

Here you can see the plywood cover that Dave built to protect the tub during construction. The drywall installers have temporarily stored their step ladders on top of it here in the main bathroom.