The furnace ran for one day when it got chilly in October and then died.  The repair man who came to fix the furnace came up from the basement shaking his head and said “If I were you I would start saving your pennies.”

Here’s the old girl, after 20 years of faithful service:

Since the government energy retrofit grant program is about to expire we decided to bite the bullet and replace the furnace and add air conditioning as well.  A couple of energy audits and some paperwork should get us some grant money from the Federal and Provincial governments.

Here’s the sexy new furnace.  96% efficient, 75,000 Btu’s, dual stage, variable speed DC motor, electrostatic air filter and lifetime warranty on all major components:

The venting for the furnace and hot water tank was also replaced to bring it up to current building code.  The furnace condensate drain was rerouted to the sump hole rather than to the hole in the floor where the previous furnace was drained.

Here is the a/c unit.  We won’t get to use it for a while but it’s nice knowing it’s there.

Now there’s only 1 left – the office door.  There are 3 other doors in the house (basement, downstairs bathroom, pantry) but they’re cheap home centre hollow core doors that will be getting the heave-ho when it’s time.

Here’s the patient on the operating table:

I’m having trouble finding the motivation to start working on it.  I’ve been refinishing doors for so long that I never thought I would see the end, and now that the end is in sight I think I’ll miss the work.

I’m being foolish and should just put on my big boy pants and get on with it.

Ding-dong! The witch is dead!

At long last, after almost exactly five months, the living room and dining room renovation is complete. And none too soon. I’m nearly out of vacation and more critically, patience.

Lets look at some pictures:
At first glance it looks as though all that has happened since the last post is painting but rest assured that there is much more:

• All of the woodwork including baseboard, window and door casing, two interior doors, 1 exterior door and 2 pocket doors were painstakingly repaired, restored and refinished.
• New picture rail was added to both rooms.
• New panel moulding was installed in both rooms.
• All electrical was repaired/replaced and new solid brass face plates were installed.
• A side project of rewiring a significant portion of the first floor was undertaken.
• The living room was wired with two network connections, a satellite connection and a phone jack.
• All communication/satellite services were consolidated into their own cabinet in the basement.
• Every piece of hardware (hinges, screws, locksets, heating grates and door handles) were stripped, cleaned, repaired where needed, and refinished with either clear acrylic or gloss white paint.
• Everything received a coat of primer (many things received two coats) and at least two topcoats.

I the middle of that list The Lovely Christina and I managed a week in Boston and Nantucket (photos here), a weekend in Batavia, a weekend in North Bay and a weekend spent helping a family member renovate their house.

This is the part of post where I make my thank you’s:

• Dad for the countless hours of labour, consulting services and ideas.
• Mom for helping with trim installation, furniture moving and muffins.
• Sorcha and Megan at Uproar Paint and Paper for the advice and friendly service.
• and finally The Lovely Christina for her support and patience with my sometimes over-meticulousness.

Here’s the best picture to come out of this most recent renovation.  The Lovely Christina captured this candid shot while Dad and I were discussing the best way to proceed with whatever we were trying to do.  Note the look on Dad’s face.

“You want to do what?!?”

There are some small projects yet to be completed such as replacing the weather stripping on the windows and finding suitable handles for the dining room side of the pocket doors but those are minor and I can do them when I get my reno-mojo back.

For now I am worn out, tired of renovating and in need of some down time. If you’ll excuse me I’m going for a nap and then maybe some video games.

Things started slow in March and April with wallpaper removal whenever we had some spare time. There were many layers of paper and a layer of dark red paint. The paper was so thick and brittle that it was like peeling cardboard off the walls.

Here you can see some of the layers:

All winter long I sit at a desk while my need to renovate builds and builds. This spring I unleashed my pent-up energy on the living room and dining room ceilings. Dad and I tore down the plaster ceiling in those two rooms to pave the way for some improvements that needed to be made. The ceiling tear-down took 3 days and two truckloads to the dump.

After the plaster dust settled I cut down sheets of 5/8″ plywood and sistered all of the ceiling joists in an effort to stiffen second floor. The second floor wasn’t that springy but I figured I may as well do it since this is the only time I’m going to have full access to the joists. The joists are 2 1/2″ x 10 1/2″ x 30′ long and now have plywood glued and screwed to both sides.

The two rooms were rewired and due to a quirk of how the house was initially wired for electricity, the kitchen light, downstairs bathroom light, and porch lights had to be rewired as well.

After the wiring was done, the ceilings were insulated with sound and fireproofing insulation to help stop any home theatre noise from penetrating the bedrooms above.

The ceiling strapping was refastened to the joists and furred out to correct the sag that has developed over the last 110 years.

The last thing that Dad and I did before closing up the ceiling was to repair the pocket doors between the living room and dining room. Because of the sag, the doors have been resting on the floor rather than hanging from their track. After painstakingly removing the doors from their hanging hardware we cut 1 1/2″ from the bottom of each door and rehung them. I’m proud to report that they now open and close smoothly – something they can’t have done for at least 50 years.

We rented a drywall lift and skinned the ceiling with 5/8″ plywood to provide a solid nailing surface.

And now for the main attraction! I’ve dreamt of having a tin ceiling for many years and I finally made it happen. On the long weekend in February The Lovely Christina and I drove to Kitchener and placed our order with Brian Greer’s Tin Ceilings. Just before Easter The Lovely Christina made another trip to pick up the tin when it was ready.

It didn’t take long until Dad and I got into our routine – he lined up the panels and help them in place while I hand nailed them to the ceiling. We installed the pattern from the centre out: field panels, medallion panels, filler panels, moulding and then cornice.

Everything except the cornice went relatively quick. The cornice requires that a skeleton be built to provide support for nailing. In the picture below you can see how it was constructed: a rail and a series of 93 blocks painstakingly cut to match the profile of the cornice.

Here’s the finished product, with a protective coat of polyurethane. The dining room:

The living room:

Here’s a quick summary of what’s gone on since I last checked in:

Once all the plaster was stripped from the walls and ceiling I was able to remove the inner layer of tongue and groove planking from the exterior walls. All of the electrical wiring needed to be redone and I also took the opportunity to run 2 coax and 2 cat-6 lines to the bedroom. The next step was custom fitting the insulation into the wall cavities – back when our house was built they hadn’t discovered insulation yet. The stud bays are all different sizes, none of which are recognized by insulation manufacturers which means it took me 2 days to insulate. The photo above shows the bedroom just before I replaced the tongue and groove planking.

Vapour barrier, drywall, baseboards and window and door casing went up next. When we bought the house all the original trim had been stripped from the room. I found a small planing mill near Arnprior that specializes in antique and custom moulding profiles that was able to supply all the casing, baseboard and rosettes. The crown moulding is a combination of 2 standard profiles carried at Home Depot and the panel mouldings (shown in the final photos) are also a Home Depot standard. The photo above shows the bedroom after the drywall primer and first cut-in was done. In the foreground you can see my production line for sanding and priming the trim.

The finished product. The Lovely Christina and I built our own padded and tufted headboards one weekend and picked out the perfect light fixture in Ottawa.

Another angle.

Since an old house has limited storage space we decided to buy the absolute largest dresser that would fit up the stairs. It took me, my dad and my neighbour Jim to haul the dresser up the centre of the front stairs.

Today was the first ever Doors Open event in Pembroke.  The lovely Christina and I spent a good chunk of the day walking around town visiting the different participants.  We saw the fire station, the library, the armouries, city hall, the court house, and the museum at the local electric utility.

Our court house underwent a massive restoration/addition a few years ago and has been winning architectural and preservation awards ever since.  The building is beautiful and the tour was very good.  Here’s a picture of one of Pembroke’s most wanted:After some deliberation I decided to bail her out as long as she agreed to buy me lunch.

The fireman who toured us around the fire station was very nice.  He even let The Lovely Christina into the truck:

This next photo wasn’t part of the event.  Graffiti is bad but it’s hard to be mad when you’re laughing.

After a beautiful wedding day surrounded by all of our best friends and family, an amazing honeymoon in Vegas and a couple of weeks recovery, The Lovely Christina and I decided it was time to renovate something.

The blue bedroom is one of the few remaining rooms in the house that is uninsulated.  The “renovation” that had been done by previous owners is the exact same that was done in our master bedroom.  For this reason we decided that the blue bedroom would be a good trial run for future projects.

Blue bedroom before.

Blue bedroom emptied out.

As far as I can figure the most recent “renovation” in this room was done by the people who bought the house to turn it into apartments. Additional electrical outlets were added, the ceiling was strapped and acoustical tiles were stapled up, one of three exterior walls was (poorly) insulated, all original trim was removed, and the walls were covered in cheap sheets of paneling. It was the quickest way to get the room into a rentable condition.

As you can see the the paint scheme was interesting: opposite walls are painted black and beige, all original trim was painted gloss black and all the window trim was painted gloss red. What would possess a person to do that to a room? Why would you want to torture your eyes like that?

The electrical additions in this room were installed in chiseled-out channels in the plaster and then covered with paneling. Yet another surprise in this house buried underneath a quick fix.

Obligatory action shot!

The plaster  underneath the paneling was compromised by the previous cover-up job and so it had to be removed.  The Lovely Christina was a big help – it turns out that she quite enjoys demolition.

All winter and spring I’ve been liberating empty paper boxes from the office in anticipation of this job.  I’ve found that lining the wall with empty boxes to catch the falling plaster is a very efficient way to clean up the mess.  You can see how dusty the room is.

‘Till next time.

When I bought the house the front gable end and the 3rd floor window above the driveway were in rough shape.

Last year I rented some scaffolding and set it up in front of the house in an attempt to repaint the 3rd floor gable end.  It turns out that I’m not comfortable that high up on shaky scaffolding.  It was also too far a reach to be able to scrape, prime and paint properly.  The scaffolding went back and I moved on to other projects.

This spring I called the professional painters and finally got the job taken care of.  A Genie Lift was delivered first thing in the morning and the painter showed up shortly after.  The job was done in a day and was professionally completed.

Front gable end:

Window above the driveway:

In the above picture you can see the top of my head as I lay out some thinset to complete the third quadrant of the tile floor.

The buildup of the finished floor is as follows:
1) 2″ tongue and groove pine (subfloor/original finished floor).
2) 3/8″ plywood glued and screwed in a 6″ grid (with additional screws in problematic areas).
3) Thinset.
4) Schluter ditra uncoupling membrane.
5) Flat-fill with thinset.
6) Tile.

The tile came in 12″ x 12″ sheets but because of the pattern we wanted almost every sheet had to be custom cut. It took us a full week with exacto knives, cutting mats, and a reference pattern to cut all the tiles and assemble them in place on the floor. As a result there are only six full, uncut sheets in the entire floor – they are in the middle of the border.

The tiles were then transferred and reassembled in a staging area on the dining room floor so that the base for the tiles (plywood, ditra) could be prepared. Each partial sheet of tile was marked with registration marks to avoid any problems when I installed the tile. As I laid down small patches of thinset Dad would hand me the partial sheets for those areas. It was a very slow and time-consuming process but I think the results justify the headache.

With some advice from our local flooring store the initial installation was only a portion of the floor to form a cross. This cross was painstakingly laid out and with the help of lasers was aligned perfectly with the three bordering walls, the foot of the staircase, the cold air return duct, the front door, and the prime meridian. Once the cross had been installed and had set Dad and I proceeded to fill in the four quadrants.

The tile/pattern we settled on after much discussion (arguing) is a classic 1″ ceramic hexagonal tile with a flower and dot border in the main area and a dot border in the closet. We’ve seen similar patterns in old homes for years and figured it would be fitting for our old home.

We chose a dark gray grout to avoid dirty grout lines. My fingers were stained for about a week afterward.

Only half of the floor in this room was tiled. The remainder will (one day) have hardwood installed. As an interim measure we chose a laminate floor from the Christmas cash-and-carry sale at the local flooring store. The nice thing about the laminate is that it will un-install very easily when the time comes.

Here is the finished product, with shoe moulding installed and painted and laminate floor in place. You can see part of the refinished staircase on the left side of the picture. This is one of the smallest, least-used rooms in the house but it has had the most time spent on it. It has been more than 5 years altogether. I’m looking forward to putting my energy into another room for a change.

Here is a view of the new flooring from the top of the staircase. In this photo you can see the refinished heating and return grates. The grates/grilles were spray painted gloss black while the interior of the ducts were painted matte black.

…just in time for Christmas.