The Woody Housing Project

So every year The Lovely Christina and I go to the Christmas tree farm just outside town where we pick out a tree from the ones that have been pre-cut and placed in the barn. And every year we say how we should ride the wagon into the woods and cut our own.

This year when we pulled into the farm the wagon was waiting so without thinking we jumped on and were taken to the “Middle Field” and dropped off.

“There’s a nice tree.”
Shake shake shake.
“Nope, it’s a little bare on one side.”

“There’s a nice tree over there.”
Shake shake shake,
“Nope, it’s not quite right.”

This continued for about a half hour at which point we found ourselves at the far corner of the “East Field” up to our waists in snow looking at the perfect tree.

Another twenty minutes passed as I cut down the tree with a rusty saw.

Then I had to drag the 10 foot tree the half mile back to the wagon pickup point. I’m an accountant and I sit at a desk all day which it turns out is poor preparation for dragging a very large tree through the bush in waist deep snow. But I persevered, with encouragement from The Lovely Christina, and we finally got it loaded in the truck about a half hour before sunset.

I had to call Dad in to help wrastle the tree into the house and into position and here is the result:

Next year I think we’ll either choose one of the pre-cut ones or pick one a lot closer to the wagon – it’s two weeks later and I’m still a little out of breath from the ordeal.

I couldn’t put it off any longer so I arranged to have a new roof put on the back part of the house and porch. It had deteriorated to the point where every time it rained the back deck would be sprinkled with quarter-sized pieces of shingle.

Ideally I would have liked to do the roof myself (because it’s my nature) but I decided to leave it to the pros because the roof is high enough, steep enough and complicated enough that it would have most likely ended in disaster.

Now there’s one less thing keeping me awake at night.

I’ll have the rest of the roof done as money permits.

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. Now that we’ve recovered lets review some of the stats:

Thanksgiving Dinner

• Participants in Thanksgiving dinner: 15
• Pounds of turkey consumed: 22
• Bones we had to break to get the turkey into the roast pan: 3
• Loaves of bread The Lovely Christina stuffed up the back-end of the turkey: 2 (ouch)
• Pounds of potatoes peeled: 10
• Pounds of butter in the mashed potatoes: 1 (we’re all gonna die)
• Dishes served: 17
• Pies decimated: 5
• Turkey-induced nightmares reported: 4
• Turkey-induced nightmares involving ninjas reported: 1
• Casualties resulting from turkey-induced nightmares involving ninjas: 1

Turkey-Hangover Brunch

• Participants in turkey-hangover brunch: 9 (6 casualties from the evening before)
• Pounds of bacon: 3
• Eggs broken: 28
• Pounds of hash browns: 3
• Loaves of toast: 1
• Loaves of French toast: 1
• Hours of intensive napping required to recover: 5

Thank you to everyone who came, everyone who travelled from far away to be here, everyone who brought a dish, and everyone who took leftovers. Sadly some people couldn’t make it; we missed them but we’ll see them soon.

Gobble gobble.

When I moved in, there were two bricks on the corner by the back porch that were in rough shape. Because of poor roof and gutter maintenance, water and ice built up on this corner in the winter. The results of freezing and thawing caused two of the bricks to be severely compromised.

I’ve been putting off the repair for a while because I was trying to find replacement bricks that would match the house. No luck. It seems no one makes bricks of the same dimensions anymore, let alone colour or texture.

If you look closely you can spot the two bricks that don’t match. It’s not as bad looking as I thought it would be. Eventually I plan to build a new porch that will cover this corner and therefore eliminate both the water problem and the mismatch problem.

There are two other bricks that have begun to deteriorate but I decided to leave them be for now. Although the bricks look weak and compromised, they are remarkably strong and stable. It would take a couple of hours with a hammer and chisel to get each out and at this point I don’t want to replace two pretty good, matching bricks with two perfect, mismatched bricks.

With (Canadian) Thanksgiving coming up and 14 people coming for the weekend I had promised to myself (and to The Lovely Christina) that I would have the laundry room finished in time.

Nothing motivates like a deadline and all my friends and family coming to inspect my work.

This room was a challenge for a number of reasons:

• Small size,
• Three doorways,
• Stairwell,
• Washer and dryer connections,
• Attic hatch, and
• and a built-in cupboard.

The colour is “Sisal” from Home Depot and is the same colour as the other common areas of the second floor. If you were to walk up the front stairs, along the second floor hallway, through the laundry room, and down the back stairs every wall is the same colour and every piece (and I mean every piece) of trim has been stripped to bare wood, patched, primed and refinished.

Now that one more room is finished, it’s onward…. to the rest of the house!

Stay tuned.

One of the things I’ve learned aboot working on this house is that preparation is everything. For example, I’ve spent the past five months stripping paint, filling holes, stripping paint, sanding rough patches, stripping paint, manufacturing replacement baseboards, stripping paint, and sundry other tasks.

Five months!  Five freakin‘ months!

I’m so friggin‘ tired of working on this room.

To complicate things even more I have to unhook the washer and dryer and move them out of the room every time I want to work in here.

Just recently Dad and I drilled 3 5/8″ holes in the walls and blew in cellulose insulation. You won’t be able to see anything in the pictures because I forgot to take pictures. It looked something like this.

One of the reasons I took these pictures is that I have a difficult task ahead of me. My next step it to prime the bare wood that I’ve spent the last FIVE MONTHS stripping. It will be emotional but I a have a tub of Heavenly Hash to help me through it.

There hasn’t been much activity on the blog lately because all I’ve been doing is stripping paint in the laundry room / back stairs area of the house.

In order to properly strip the paint on the skirt board we had to remove the carpet. Removing the carpet allowed me to strip the skirt board and part of the steps themselves so that I could get a nice clean finished edge, and it also eliminated the possibility of me setting the carpet on fire with the heat gun.

The Lovely Christina was in charge of pulling up the carpet and I cut it up into small pieces that fit nicely into some cardboard boxes we had. The under pad had been on the stairs so long that it had either a) disintegrated into dust, or b) fused itself to the steps. And so the afternoon went – scraping, sweeping and vacuuming under pad dust.

And then there were the staples. I think the carpet was installed on the same day that the installer bought his first staple gun. There were literally thousands of staples holding the carpet in place. I say were, because the Lovely Christina and I have spent days pulling them out. There are still a few stragglers but I am patient and meticulous by nature and they don’t stand a chance.
The above picture shows the bottom portion of the stairs. The steps making up the “turn” and those below are new. Well, not exactly new but newer than the other steps which are original. The house was made up of two apartments in the ’70′s and from what I can tell, the lower portion of the back staircase was removed and blocked off to provide the necessary separation between the main floor apartment and the upstairs apartment. When the house was converted back into a single-family unit, the stairs were replaced, with a considerable amount of skill – it is only evident after close inspection.

Being newer, the steps only have two thin layers of paint on them and are in really good shape. A quick sanding and they will be ready to be repainted. On the other hand, the steps above the turn have considerably more layers of finish on them and are in need of a full stripping before being repainted.

In addition, a portion of the base cap needs to be repaired. You can see the white bit on the base cap in the photo. It looks as though this part was notched out, possibly to allow a partition wall to sit flush. In any case it should be an interesting repair, involving templates, epoxy, sore fingers, curse words, and hurt feelings (in that order).

This photo shows steps above the turn after a two-day stripping marathon (not nearly as fun as it sounds) while the Lovely Christina was out of town visiting her aunt. As you can see, I stripped the skirt board, the base cap, and a two inch strip down the side of the steps. This two inch strip will allow me to fully refinish the skirt board while leaving the steps until later.

That’s all for now.

Ever since I had to put Truck-Truck down this past winter, there’s been a void. We tried to make do without a truck but after four months it was finally too much.

Here’s the new truck – a 1999 Ford F150. It still needs a name… any suggestions?

Once upon a time I went to Home Depot and bought some deck stain. Then it rained. Then it rained some more. Then the sun came out one morning, made a nasty face at me and promptly went away again. Then it rained some more.

The rain continued every day for about 4 weeks. And then something remarkable happened – the sun came out again and didn’t make any faces. In fact it stayed out for nearly two days.

I seized the opportunity and stained the deck on what was perhaps the hottest, most humid day of the year. It was so hot the stain was dry moments after being applied.

Here is the result:

The colour is Oxford Brown by Behr.

Since finishing painting the staircase last month I’ve been spending time admiring / criticizing my handiwork.

I found the large expanses of white trim a little too bland, especially where it abutted the white ceiling. After careful consideration, consultation and debate I decided to paint the inset panels the same colour of the wall.

Here’s how it turned out… I think it’s the difference between “ok” and “wow”.

I also spent time touching up the line between the white trim and the brown treads. Being an old staircase, the corners in these areas aren’t perfectly crisp and therefore there was some bleeding beneath my taping job. This past weekend saw me using a tiny hobby brush to touch up the line – by far one of the most ridiculous (yet necessary) things I’ve found myself doing around this place.

Next weekend I’ll try to start the Varathane on the treads.