Inching Along
Hmmm. I wonder if it should be “centimetering along” up here? Or even “centitmetreing”? I have no idea.
Anyway…
There is actually some news this time, which is good, I guess. Though that depends on how you view the news in question.
On the dog: Tinkerbelle is still an unknown. The next vet appointment is this afternoon, so you’ll have to wait another week to learn more. (Or you can send me an email and ask for an update before then.) Friday vet appointments always happen after these posts are published, which means they aren’t ideal for getting Tinkerbelle related news out in a timely manner. Sorry.
The house is a different story. Here we actually have an update:
- None of the drywall samples tested contained asbestos. And the mortar in the chimney was clear as well. So that’s good.
- Sadly, the vinyl tiles and the mastic holding them down to the old slab foundation do have asbestos in them. Those will require remediation. And they go underneath the wood floor too, which makes the job larger and more complicated. We were going to replace the wood floor in any case — it’s in bad shape and the removal of the fireplace and hearth changes things regardless — but now the remediation people have to remove the wood to get at the vinyl.
- To make matters worse, multiple ceramic tile samples have lead in the glazing, which means removing those requires special handling as well. As a rule, once they find lead in a couple of tile samples, they simply stop testing the rest and tell you to have the remediation team remove all the tile. They will be in there anyway, and they have all the specialized gear to do it, so it makes sense, I guess.
We still need to remove the drywall from the fireplace and the cinderblock wall. We know we still need to test for asbestos in the cinderblock mortar, and possibly in whatever old fireplace treatment is under the sheetrock. I may cut that open this weekend to get that figured out and perhaps accelerate the testing. If we find anything interesting I will share photos next week.
Talking with our contractor, they remain on schedule for a mid-November start. Possibly the third week rather than the second, but they are winding up their current project, so that’s good.
They’re going to schedule a walk through with the hazard abatement people to get a quote in the coming days. That’s the next step.
The contractor thinks we’ll have to be out of the house for 2–4 days while the abatement gets done, and the cost will be… a fair bit. Not nightmarish, horror story level, but still high. We have to wait for the quote to know more.
While Anne continues to do the packing, I’ve been painting her temporary office space. The bedroom that was my studio will become her office during the renovation, and we decided we had time to paint the dingy white in there with our preferred (much brighter) white. That required some minor drywall dent and hole fixes, as well as two coats of primer in the closet to cover the hideous forest green (almost black) colour that it had been painted before. At the moment I hope the top coat is done everywhere and all that remains to paint is the trim, which should get done this weekend. Fingers crossed.
Oh, and there’s been no change in the shipping container contents in the last week. It’s rained nearly all the time, and when it hasn’t been raining we’ve been busy with other things. But Anne’s packing means that when we finally get a gap in the rain and a lack of other commitments, it will be possible to get a lot of stuff out there in a hurry. Or so we hope.
And for those following Canadian politics, the election here in BC took a slightly surprising turn when the NDP unexpectedly flipped a seat in Surrey as part of the final count. At the moment they have 47 seats — the minimum required to form a majority government. There are a few judicially required recounts still happening, but those aren’t expected to change the results. In addition, there are issues about how the Speaker will be selected, since selecting a Speaker from their own party would remove their majority status. That might result in interesting legal questions at some point, but if a Conservative takes the Speakership, those won’t come up. It’s all very complicated, particularly to those who’ve grown up in the American political system. But the NDP is in the process of putting together a government after having been asked to do so by the lieutenant-governor.
The monthly email went out this morning. For those curious enough to want to read it for some reason, you can find it here. It’s very specific to our neighbourhood, but if you’ve been wondering what the heck I spend so much time on, there you go. The December issue is already in process, though it’s so early I am not really worried about it yet.
I have my usual pile of tasks to get done on Friday still ahead of me, so I will end this now. Next week there should be some Tinkerbelle related news, so come on back!
Cheers!