Less Obvious Progress

Good day, everyone. Last week I shared a whole series of photos and a map, trying to show you what was going on with the house.

No such luck this week. To the untrained eye, all the photos would look the same. That isn’t to say nothing changed. On the contrary. It’s just that what changed wasn’t all that flashy.

For example, the roofer was here. He deleted 3 old plumbing vents, installed 3 new plumbing vents in different places, and also installed 3 vents for HVAC stuff (the bathroom fan and the ERV discussed last week). He also fixed a couple of bubbles in our upper roof and patched the hole in the upper roof curb/parapet created to attach the Emily knob to the house.

Digression:

The “Emily knob” is the thing that the wires coming from the pole actually attach to physically. It takes the weight and strain of the cables, but isn’t the electrical connection itself. It looks something like this:

It’s shown in this diagram from BC Hydro, our power company, but they haven’t labelled it for some odd reason.

And here’s a photo I originally shared last week showing our new service connection. You can just barely see the Emily knob near the top of the picture. Nothing’s connected to it yet.

In years past, Emily knobs were just attached to the house with a lag bolt. Now code requires they be bolted through significant wood, with a nut and washer on the back side to keep them from pulling out. That’s because the wires coming from the pole to the house have also gotten thicker and heavier with time as well.

We’re still waiting for the switch to the new service connection. That was scheduled by February 11th, but it didn’t happen. And given the weather, that’s a good thing. It was cold. The coming week has all our temperatures above freezing, even at night. Going without power for a few hours is much easier when that is the case. Fingers crossed that the switch happens this week.

Moving back inside, the plumber has done more plumbing rough-in work. The hot water supply has moved to the new pipe, but we’re still on the old cold water supply. And he managed to finish roughing in all the fixtures. We’re getting close to a plumbing inspection, I think.

The electrician did more rough-in work as well, but that is even less obvious than the plumber’s work. The difference is a few more boxes nailed to the studs and another hundred or so metres of wire in various places.

And of course our general contractor did work as well. More blocking for towel bars and the like, plus moving some vents for the HRV around, and generally improving things. There was also more demolition, as we removed the sheetrock from one more exterior wall so we can improve the insulation in it. They also pulled all the old radiators off the walls and got the sheetrock out from behind them where needed.

Our own work was all in the information discovery and decision-making areas. We’ve been pushing on the baseboard radiator situation, and I spoke with the local representative for Jaga (pronounced “yaga”), who makes the radiators we are interested in. With luck we’ll have some initial pricing later today and discover if we’re fine or I need to sell a kidney to pay for these things. In the meantime, I’ve created a spreadsheet full of BTU per hour ratings for different models and a general plan for which ones we will get. Again, assuming they aren’t a zillion dollars per foot, we’ll be able to make decisions this weekend, which will allow the contractor and the electrician to do the next steps.

We’ve also been struggling with the decision about the medicine cabinet in the new bathroom. Space is at a premium, so we’d been considering one with built-in lighting, but those are expensive and might be unreliable. At the moment we are leaning towards a standard (unlighted) cabinet and a light of some kind above it. That decision will be made before the weekend is over.

Finally, we think we’ve selected the floor and cabinet finishes:

The upper left label — Pindar Floors Everett — is for the flooring, and it’s attached the sample. Moving to the right, you see the cabinet door finishes: some will be rift sawn oak and others white. Both are laminates. We’re going to avoid actual wood doors because we want slab doors, and in regular wood, those will warp in our wet climate. There is a new generation of laminates that feel and look reasonable, so we’re going with that material. Below those, you see the backsplash and countertop choices Anne has made. Both are quartz.

We’ve done other stuff, of course, but those are the highlights.

Tinkerbelle’s status remains good. Her vet appointment last Friday showed good numbers, but rather than taking her off the prednisone entirely as I expected, the vet decided to halve the dosage again. Now she’s getting one-quarter of a tablet every other day. Three weeks from today she’s got an appointment to check her bloodwork yet again, and assuming she continues to do well, I expect we’ll stop the prednisone entirely at that point.

Beyond that, I thought I would share this lovely image of what my weekends look like:

How long has it been since you last used a laundromat? I hadn’t used one in forever, but it’s been 13 weeks in a row now, and I’ll be there again soon, possibly tomorrow.

Anyway, I wish you all the best. Cheers!