All the News That’s Fit to Print
Or something.
Hello, my lovely readers! And welcome to yet another update from the weirdo in Vancouver.
It’s been an interesting week in the renovation.
Monday, as you might recall, was a holiday. Up here in BC, it was Family Day, and down in the USA, it was President’s Day. Oddly, I know at least one US bank was open on President’s Day, but I have no idea why. I thought it was a federal holiday, and banks close on all of those, right?
But I digress.
Tuesday and Wednesday saw continued work by the electrician, the plumber, and our general contractor. Nothing I can share a photo of. Or rather, no photo would show anything obvious. We are at that stage where a lot of things happen, but the progress isn’t obvious unless you have a lot of background.
Thursday, however, was a big day. We had new lines pulled from the pole to the house and switched the exterior power service to the new main panel. The new line was pulled by a crew from the power company, and they were gone in about half an hour. It turns out everything we’d done to prepare for them was perfect, and it all just worked.
On the inside, things went well too. Our electrician moved the existing circuits from the old panel to the new one in about two hours. At that point we were back online, and everything worked just like it should. Only Tinkerbelle was bothered. She went out twice to get a drink and both times found her water supply wasn’t running. That offended her deeply.
Some of you might recall that Tink doesn’t drink from a bowl. Water is a strange thing, and when in a bowl, it might attack! In order, her preferred sources of water are:
1) Puddles filled by recent rain. There may be mud in them or not; it doesn’t matter. These are the best.
2) Snow. Eat it when you can because it doesn’t stick around.
3) Running water from something like the water feature in the backyard. We have to assume other running water would be equally acceptable, but we haven't empirically tested that.
4) Water from a bowl. This is to be avoided at all costs. Only drink from a bowl of any kind if it is a matter of life and death.
Anyway, eventually Tink got her drink, and everyone was happy.
Getting back to the reno, the switch to the new panel appears to have given the electrician the OK to start connecting things more completely, rather than just pulling wires and having them hanging out of the walls. As I type this, he is wiring up one of the sub-panels and says the plan is to actually power up some outlets in the kitchen so we can use them instead of the temporary ones that are in the way of some other work that needs to get done.
In other news, we made the final decision about the medicine cabinet and lighting in the new bathroom and ordered those. The medicine cabinet will take eight weeks to arrive, and the mirrored side panels will take six months. Thankfully, the side panels can be installed with the cabinet on the wall.
Also taking eight weeks to arrive are the new radiators, which will be ordered today. They are stupidly expensive, but they should work a lot better than the classic, ugly, 1950's style baseboard radiators. We hated those things, and they are going away. The new ones are a bit bigger but much more effective. Of course, by the time they arrive, we won’t need them until at least October. Such is life.
Not to worry, though. That eight-week delivery time merely means other things can get done. We’ve been told it will take two full weeks to get the drywall done, for example. And there’s flooring, kitchen cabinet installation, tiling, and on and on. There is no shortage of work to do.
Oh, and here’s the latest oddity that we have to deal with:
That lovely bit of weirdness is from the 1994 renovation. In the process of doing that, they changed the exterior appearance of the house, and this cubby is one of the results. It’s about 2' x 4' x 8', give or take, and it’s entirely hollow. The photo above was taken by holding my phone through a hole cut from the interior of the house into the cubby. On the left, you can see the old exterior wall, painted white. The photo is taken looking up, and you can see the underside of the original roof (also painted white), a beam, and even an old downspout hole. The rest is a kludge of scrap lumber and plywood to box it in. The ceiling at the top is now the floor of the primary bedroom that was added during the 1994 renovation.
The problem is that they didn’t insulate in here. Of course that wasn’t required in 1994, but it is now. We have to figure out how to add insulation inside that cubby, along the old exterior wall, to avoid having to fur out the entire wall on the inside.
And that, in a nutshell, is the story of this renovation. We’re constantly fighting or fixing things that were done to some earlier (and now inadequate) standard or were done so poorly they need to be completely redone anyway.
There is an argument that could have been made for tearing the entire thing down and starting over, but we’re well past the point of no return, so we get to live with our decisions.
It will all work out.
Eventually.
I keep telling myself that. It turns out that I need a regular reminder that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, because without those reminders, it’s possible to get very tired of the situation.
Anyway, that’s all there is to share this week. I know, I know. There aren’t enough photos. But again, all the pictures look the same. They’re just rooms full of 2x4s. It’s impossible to understand them without a lot of context, and putting that into a post like this is a challenge.
At some point things will start to make more sense in photos, but we’re just not there yet.
Before I go, here’s today’s bit of weird Canadian humour, brought on by events happening south of the 49th parallel. I have no clue why it’s not showing a thumbnail image. Possibly because this is a short rather than a regular video. I hope it works. I have no way to test it here. Sorry.
Cheers!