I have lost count!

Even though I have not been posting regularly, not one single day has gone by that we have not worked on the renovations since my last post in February. Things are moving along, but there was still a mood of discouragement in the air this morning. This is how things looked:

Well, if that's not enough to make even the most hardy of home renovators let out a sigh and shake their head in sympathy, I don't know what is.

The north-west wall is now clad with wood, and just needs to have the Ayr-Foil and Gyproc applied. This is rough-hewn lumber and it is a bit warped, ergo there are a few gaps where the boards join, but it is solid and once the Gyproc is up, I can vouch for the fact the wall will be as straight as an arrow.

All of the inside divisions are gone on this side of the house, and it feels strange to see such a vast expanse of space unencumbered by walls. We are going to change the placement of the walls slightly. Instead of making two equal-sized bedrooms, we are going to make one larger and one smaller by about 2 feet per room, to line up the walls over the beams we have in our living room downstairs.

Eric made plugs to fill the holes he drilled for the lag-bolts that join the new rafters to the old. These were glued into place and then made flush with a chisel.

Here we are putting up the boards. Eric decided to place 1/2" shims behind the boards to give the insulation just that little bit more space to fill, so we have a true R44 insulation rating. We removed the pink surveyor's cord as we worked our way up the wall, and this little ingenious fix proved to be just the right solution to keep the insulation in place as we went along, without getting in the way.

Eric started to replace the wood of the ceiling in the former tool room yesterday, and I am happy to report that by the end of today, the job was complete. I had already removed the knotty pine blight, the insulation foil, the Gyproc and the tar paper last week while Eric finished up the wall, and yesterday, Eric started to replace the boards one by one. Since the pink fibreglass insulation that is in the attic would fall down if we tore down the entire ceiling with one fell swoop, Eric replaced each board one at a time. At the fourth or fifth piece, he found some rot in one of the collars that was not visible when we emptied the attic of sawdust several years ago. In order to make this repair, he needed to take down the boards he had just put up, which drives home a point I made earlier: use screws, and not nails to fasten everything. Had the boards been nailed, they would have been impossible to remove without damage. It took mere minutes to unscrew the boards, and once the collar was jacked and repaired, the boards were screwed back on, and we could resume our work. As an added bonus, the ceiling ended up straight once the repair was done, much to our delight.

Here we have a detail of the wall paper I found in the closet, once I had removed the cardboard (yes, cardboard) that lined the closets. I like finding this kind of detail, and wonder who had put it up and when.

Since the sawmill was not operational when Eric ordered the wood, he took what they had in inventory. This meant having to handle 16 foot long boards. The easiest way we found to deal with them was to put them in bucket of the tractor, and hoist them up to the window in our bedroom. From here we reached them across the window sill, and into the main part of the house we are renovating. Of course, we could have cut them into smaller, more manageable pieces outside, but 16 feet happens to be exactly half of the length of the house, so we made do. It is far quicker to install a 16' long board than two 8' long boards, provided there are two people doing the job.

In the above photo, the former tool room ceiling is finished, the wood pile that had been unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the room yesterday has been cut into kindling and is now warming me as I sit beside the wood stove and ruminate about our progress.

Tomorrow I will continue to destroy the knotty pine in the guest room, and remove the boards in behind. Then Eric can work some more magic by rebuilding the wall with 2x8's, then insulation and wood cladding. We are still arguing about the lighting in the former tool room, which in its new incarnation will be a guest room. Eric wants a light in the centre of the room controlled by a switch for practicality, whereas this idea just gives me the heebie jeebies. Tomorrow we will have a duel with the cordless drill and reciprocating saw, and I will probably end up winning. Hope I don't lose a finger. Or two.

Wish me luck.

Destruction Day is Here!

The dreaded Knotty Pine Purge started today. Armed with a crowbar and hammers, Eric and I went wild upstairs, tearing down the pine tongue-and-groove paneling.

We started in the North-East corner:

In behind the knee wall we have yet more cold space. After ripping off the pine tongue-and-groove board, we found this waiting for us:

Aluminum insulation paper and painted masonite-type cardboard held in place by the most copious amount of finishing nails I have ever seen! Talk about inventive. Can anyone say "firetrap?"

Again, Eric and I shook our heads in wonder. The little wall in the above photo used to house a make-shift closet. There also used to be a bar (yeah, like a bar in a tavern) that extended out from this little wall. We tore it down along time ago. What you don't see is the plumbing for the toilet which is hidden behind the wall, and what you might make out are the pipes for the sink beside the bookcase we probably should have moved today (hindsight being what it is). This is where our future powder room will be. I can hardly wait.

We have no clue from what era this paneling (if you can call it that) dates. We imagine it was installed at the turn of the century, during a post-fire renovation. Historically, we know there was a fire in our house that burnt part of the roof at the turn of the century, so this paneling might date from the renovations of that period.

One thing about renovating an old house: you have to keep an open mind so when you find the unexpected, so nothing comes as much of a shock. We were expecting some type of plaster board, so finding the cardboard, complete with tiny finishing nails every 2 inches or so, was an almost happy turn of events. Disposal will be so much easier.

Once this cardboard was removed, we tore off a layer of tar paper, and we were at our next-to-last layer: 1" horizontal pine boards, nailed onto 4"x4" posts. We kept this layer intact, but it too will come down, just not today. Once these original pine boards are removed, Eric is building out the exterior wall with 4"x8" posts, insulating with 12" of Roxul fiber glass, re-installing the pine boards, adding a layer of Ayr-Foil, and finishing with 5/8" Gyproc. At least, that is the plan. What this means is that we will be living in a construction zone for the next few months.


You can see the sawdust that settled down between the layers of tar paper and board from the attic where it served as insulation. There wasn't just a bit of it, there was a lot of it:

Thankfully we own a ShopVac.

At the end of the day, we managed to remove about 1/2 of the paneling. We still have to finish this wall, hopefully tomorrow, and forge on along the wall as it continues into the spare room beyond. The entire space, complete with 2 bedrooms, measures about 26' x 30', so we have a bit of work ahead for ourselves. The partitions between the rooms will return to their relative places, and we still need to figure out where exactly the powder room walls will go.

The windows upstairs where replaced in 2001 with high-efficiency Argon-filled panes. The plumbing in Kitec was also done then. All electrical wiring was replaced with BX cables after we removed the sawdust in the attic. Telephone wiring and cable (despite the fact we're not hooked up) is also complete. Basically, all we are dealing with now is the removal of the layers of cladding, rebuilding and re-insulating the walls. I make it sound so easy, don't I?

We've been through this downstairs, so we know what to expect, save for any bizarre structural surprises.

The good news is the paneling is untreated, and makes the best kindling imaginable. I think we'll have a life-time supply by the time we're done renovating.

Knotty Pine Purgatory

This is not a suspicion of mine. I have long since known that hell is paved not with good intentions, but with knotty pine. However, one proverbial quality of hell was absent on the morning of December 8th, and that would be heat:

Yes. That reads 45°F. That’s 8.5°C, but just as cold whether in F or C. And please note, this is not the great outdoors, but a room in our very own Knotty Pine Purgatory. This was a little experiment I conducted as the outside temperature plummeted to -20°C with a wind-chill prohibitively howling at around -29. (At those temps, you’re frost-bitten in about 20 minutes, Celsius or Fahrenheit, who cares, what matters is that you have multiple coatings of thermonuclear polar fleece on every square inch of your body.) To conduct this little experiment, however, all I needed to do was close the door to the guest room for the night and watch the temperature drop.

Well, it was 45°F in our guest room that morning, the much heralded and much loved room that all our guests comment on. It also proves my point, that if I had “too much wool” or “too many clothes” the room would have better insulation and wouldn’t be this cold, but once again, I am digressing.

It is glaringly obvious that we need to renovate our upstairs, and the day that we will start the tear-down is fast approaching. We have a deadline of next May to have the work completed, or we forfeit the rebate we will receive under the EcoEnergy Retrofit Program sponsored by our federal government. We pay enough taxes, so it would be nice if some of it actually went back into our pockets, and not out the window like our heat.

You see the vacuum-cleaner in the above photo? It NEVER gets put away - I think if it did, we'd suffocate on dog and cat hair. And the Rubbermaid bins? They are for my wool collection that is currently housed in the guest room and needs to be moved out at all costs. And the post made of 2 x 4's? It serves no purpose, and there are 2 of them. I can just picture the space we are going to gain when these come down!

Guests think our upstairs looks "so cozy", (I think they're being polite, after all cozy is just a euphemism for unbelievable mess)...they love the knotty-pine look (so do I, but I don’t want to live in it), and think it feels just like Grandma’s house. On some points, they are right. Knotty pine is nice when you’ve rented a ski chalet in Vermont, and it is cozy when it’s insulated, but there is exactly no insulation behind the pine whatsoever. That this house has been standing 150 years and no one has thought about this detail concerns me a bit. Although we replaced the windows with high-efficiency argon-filled thermal panes, the walls are bare: from the inside, we have knotty pine, some furring strips, and great spaces of nothing but space. Cold Space.

We aren’t exactly sure how long the knotty pine has been up, but one thing is for sure: whoever did the job was a “weekend warrior” when it came to home renovation.

In some places, the boards don’t even join, the doors have such major gaps, I can literally stick my hand under one door, and generally, just the fact there is no insulation warrants a major renovation.

So this winter, we are going to tear down all the pine, get right down to the outside exterior wall that is comprised of 1) horizontal pine (Eastern True Fir or Hemlock) , 3” thick by 12” high joined by tongue-and-groove, clad on the inside with 1½” thick vertical boards, some up to 14” wide. Due to water infiltration, years, mice and rot, some of these boards will have to be replaced, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Eric is going to put up 2”x6” studs and insulate with 6” Roxul Flexibatt (fireproof) to give us a R22 rating, the same as the insulation in the roof (after we removed the sawdust and re-insulated!) We will probably use the Ayr-Foil barrier again, because we are convinced that it makes a huge difference in heating and cooling based on its use downstairs, even if it is a bitch to install. (I am sure some of these R&D types have never held a hammer before, but again, I am digressing…)

Right now we are having trouble getting the insulation; it seems Roxul is behind in deliveries, and with the up-coming holiday and maintenance shutdowns, who knows when we will be able to get what we need. None of our home-renovation big-box stores that carry this product have it in stock, nor are they able to tell us if they even have some ordered. Bullsh!t is all I can say; I've been on both sides of that coin, and I know when to cry foul. We even wanted to PRE-PAY 40 bags' worth - that's a $1200 order - but no one seems to be capable of taking an order like that. Cash and carry is nice when the product is in stock...but really...40 bags is nearly a truck-load and no one can place an order? Wow. And have you ever tried to contact any one at Home Depot? Talk about the royal run-around. When you finally do get someone on the phone, don't expect any semblance of precise information, just be thankful you actually managed to get through to a live human being. Eric ended up going to the store with a friend's pick-up and trailer to get 10 bags that were "in stock" (ha ha), only to be told that, "Oops, we are so sorry, it seems we don't have any at all!". Gee, thanks for the heads-up! Grrrr...don't get me started. Seems no one wants to be accountable for anything, anymore.

So keep tuned. All I want is Gyproc, all over…then we’ll talk about paint, paneling and what-not. Some insulation, a sink and toilet, and of course, a bit more closet space.

The Stairway from Hell

Our old staircase was a blight in an otherwise wonderful living room. Let’s face it, we were ashamed. People would invariably come into our house, and their crest-fallen face would hone in on our staircase, and they’d exclaim, “Ugh, what are you going to do with THAT?”

They were right of course, the old staircase was an eyesore:



Everyone’s first question: why don’t you just repaint it? Then the next question was equally impractical: why don’t you re-build it?

Nearly every baluster was broken, the steps had been sanded into oblivion, the stringers had separated where the stair turned 90º, and initially, in our optimistic view to restore things to order and out of sheer respect for “the old way”, we thought we’d rebuild it exactly as it was.

And then we thought things over. We couldn’t fit a king-sized bed upstairs, (which we needed, of course, to accommodate the DOG sleeping with us), a sofa barely fits upstairs, and basically, the over-all dimensions were kind of Lilliputian in scale. People were smaller 150 years ago. We’re no giants, but really…the stair need super-sizing to bring it up to par.

In the general scheme of our renovation, the staircase was the absolute LAST thing we wanted to do. We still need to renovate the upstairs, (we’re living in uninsulated knotty pine purgatory), and this would mean lots of trips up and down with what we’ve torn out, plus all the building material we need to bring up. Doing this with a pristine staircase is just too impractical. But when we happened on a hand-worker who was able to make a staircase to our exacting specifications, we deviated from our schedule and gave the green light. Big Mistake. Actually, we wanted him to repair our barn, but since it was November and winter was nipping at our heels, we thought it best to put the plans for the barn off until spring. Being suckers, when he told us stairs were his specialty and the fact he was desperate for work, we gave the go-ahead.

It was the end of November, and we were assured the whole fiasco would last about 2 to 3 weeks. Perfect, just in time for Christmas, I thought. I already had visions of pine garlands decking our fine new stair, our new pride and joy being shown off to Christmas revelers.

Alas, nothing ever goes to plan, and from experience, we know that every best time estimate can be doubled, if not tripled in length of time until completion. But, this time we reckoned, we were dealing with a pro, a master craftsman, an enthusiastic worker who came to us like manna from heaven.

We ordered oak for the steps, used our reclaimed Eastern fir for the stringers, and ordered 30 custom-turned balusters made of ash. Our worker became more and more sporadic, and weeks turned into months…

But alas, when we went into the workshop, we were mollified. The steps were wonderful, the design of the stringers was curvaceous and elegant, the balusters veritable works of art. We could hardly wait for the installation.

At the beginning of March, the day to tear down the old stair and re-build the wall was finally here. Eric and the stair-builder demolished the old stairs, tore out the bead-board that was our inside finishing, and proceeded to remove the pine boards that form the guts of our very uninsulated outside wall. Essentially (and this is where I laugh when people suggest “it just needs some paint”), the inside walls of our house are comprised of pine boards, about 1” thick, nailed vertically onto the main structure of the house with hand-forged nails.



After 150 years or so, the wood has shrunken so much you can literally pull the square nails out without effort. I didn’t mention insulation, did I? That’s because there is no insulation! Eric painstakingly removed all the old pine boards, replaced those that were rotten, placing one layer of heavy-duty tar-paper behind them.



He then re-installed the boards with screws and washers, and build a 2”x3” stud wall that was insulated with Roxul Flexibatt and covered with a vapour barrier called Ayr-Foil:



On top of this came the fire-code Gyproc, and we now have us a finished wall.

The only thing missing is the stair.

In the meanwhile, our two tough boy cats, Bobby (below) and Howard, high-tailed it outside, and spent their time looking longingly into the house through a variety of windows, in the hopes the stairs have magically rebuilt themselves.



Our ancient cat Schatzie is pushing 20, and she spent the entire time sleeping within 20 feet of power tools and wrecking bars, completely oblivious to the commotions around her. We spend a total of 3 nights climbing the ladder to sleep upstairs, and the old hag was the only cat who climbed the ladder. Mind you, the moment she discovered the stair was missing, it was as though a little light bulb went off above her head. It was as though she was saying, “damn, where’d the stair go? How am I gonna get my treats?” When I showed her the ladder, up she went. The old girl is fearless. (Her mother’s not, so I promptly slung her over my shoulder and carried her back down, where she spent the next 2 days sleeping on the sofa, opening an eye from time to time to watch the show.)

When the bottom stringer was placed against the wall, we could envision the stair as almost complete:



But we have a problem, and it’s starting to dawn on Mr. Stair-builder: he messed up a measurement. His calculations were bang-on; he should have had 19.85 cm between each step:



It seems when he started to build the stringers, he measured 18.85 cm between each step (remember Norm Abram’s advice: measure twice, cut once?). Now, you’re saying, 1 cm, that’s like…a fraction of an inch, right? And you’re right of course, but when you multiply 1 centimetre over 14 steps, you’re off by 14 centimetres.

So, our new stair is on blocks, and we’re not, um…very pleased. In fact, we’re near tears:



We’re scratching our heads, trying valiantly to find a solution, but alas, there’s no salvaging the hard work. There’s not enough room to properly add a step or build a landing. The run of the stair is totally wrong. Not only that, the 4th stair up is 10 cm higher than it should be because of the measuring error, meaning anyone over 6' needs to duck under the beam. One of our friends put it best: you’ll break a hip when you’re older. And, of course, she’s totally right.

Naturally, being the lyrical deviant I am, Pat Benatar's song "Heartbreaker" came to mind, sung with the following lyrics:

You're a hip-breaker, time-waster,
money-taker, don't you mess around with me,
OH NO NO NO...

Despite the best of intentions, not everything turns out like you’ve planned. Some things you have to live with and other things just need to be re-done.

But we’re not finished yet! We’ve been VERY patient over the past few months, dealing with a moody yet methodical worker. Eric was willing to absorb the cost of the wood: we’d need new stringers and new oak posts, as well as the banister. The actual steps could be re-used and so could the balusters, however, everything else needed to be re-built. We were willing to house our worker (hell, I was already feeding him 3 squares a day and doing his laundry), until the staircase was re-built, alas, his head-space "wasn’t there" and he was "too disappointed" to tackle the project again.

So. We have a beautiful staircase. It’s just built for the wrong house.