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By bsharwood, January 15, 2007 3:47 pm

This weekend Melinda, Fred and I were busy on the house. Saturday was devoted to hardwood. With a new hardwood floor nailer we figured out a “better” way of putting in the flooring from how we were doing it before and proceeded to finish off the second floor, including the landing to the 3rd floor. It still was long, hard work and we didn’t finish until after 9. While we were doing that Melinda painted the back area of the house in our downstairs colour Carolina Strand.

On Sunday I did more painting and cleaning around the house: Another coat on the back of the house and a coat on the wall beside the first floor stairs. We also decided to remove the covers on the stairs as there was so much dust embedded in them and it was getting everywhere in the house. We’ll have to be careful now not to stain them or get water on them as the untreated oak stains easily.

Before dinner we did more cleaning on the first floor and putting things away, as well as bringing more kitchen stuff up from all the many boxes downstairs in the basement.

We will post pictures of the unveiled stairs in the next round of pictures. On Thursday we have the London Stair and Rail folks coming to put in railings and banisters, so it’ll look even better then.

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By bsharwood, November 10, 2006 7:22 pm

This week Fred called the building inspector to come look at the place and he approved our vapour seal. We then ordered the drywall from a company the Drywall guy, John, suggested, The Builders Supply.

The company had to bring a big boom truck to bring the drywall in the 2nd and 3rd floor windows. They also needed a parking spot for the giant truck with the boom. I went over last night and secured a big parking spot and put some big pieces of wood in to make spot bigger. I then went over this morning and made sure the spot was still there, which it was (apart from getting a parking ticket).

The truck came at 10 and it was cool when they loaded all the drywall upto the 3rd floor window. Pictures to come soon.

Hopefully this weekend we’ll have a furnace going in.

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By bsharwood, October 9, 2006 11:11 am

It’s been a while since we posted some pictures on the website. So now I’ve done it. Here they are.

On Saturday this weekend we went over to the house and did a little work upstairs on the third floor installing some cripple studs, putting in some insulation, and taking out one more wall which was falling down anyway.

Fred has installed the bathtub on the third floor and we just need to install the one on the second floor. That one will probably be a bit more challenging because it involves a pump and electricity.

We had a fellow come and givce a drywall quote on Saturday also. Nice Russian fellow who came with his wife, but his quote seemed a bit high. I think he may have included the price of the materials in the quote.

Heading over today to do some bits and pieces if I can.

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By bsharwood, August 25, 2006 9:18 pm

So, we finished the week and got what we wanted to do done. There is now a new back on the house, both the upstairs and the downstairs back rooms.

I certainly learned a lot doing it. I built walls, rafters, roofs, put on ESB siding, installed plywood subfloors and did a lot of demolition.

On Wednesday afternoon our neighbours told Fred and I that perhaps the inspector wouldn’t be liking the new roof desiegn we were making. In theory we shouldn’t have taken down the back of the house, because we are supposed to be working with the ‘existing’ structure. We called the inspector the next morning and he came by at around 11:30. He said all was fine, and what we were thinking was okay. He even gave us some other suggestions on what we could do. Hopefully he’ll continue to be like this throughout the project.

Just before the inspector arrived our temp stairs arrived from London Stair. They were a little tight to get in place. With a little prying and pushing the main stairs got in place. The second floor stairs were also pretty heavy but were easier once we removed a little piece of baseplate from the 3rd floor walls.

By Thursday evening we had most of the walls up as well at the rafters for the first floor.

On Friday I got a message that our tubs had arrived. It’s quite exciting, but wasn’t quite true. The message was that they were on their way. We should have them by Monday, which is still quite exciting. It’s the first thing that’s final decor that’s going to make it into the house.

When we finally finished at 9pm on Friday it was a satisfying week and we got a lot done. It feels like we are close to finishing the main framing of the house. I am still waiting for the HVAC quotes to come in, and hopefully we can get the electrical stuff done pretty soon.

Melinda came by after work on Friday to check out what was done and help out. Heather also stopped by and brought some well appreciated beers.

I feel like it’s going well. Perhaps a little behind schedule, but we are doing more, with this rebuilding of the back of the house.

The pictures of the last 2 days are here.

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By bsharwood, July 28, 2006 12:15 am

It’s been a long week at the house, with lots of progress.

The main front stairs are gone and plumber is coming tomorrow. We’ve had a HVAC engineer come and look at the house to make some plans for us for the heating and A/C system. Hopefully I’m going to go pick them up tomorrow.

I think we’ve run out of room on the dot mac account, and I’m trying to figure out how to put some more pictures up for all to see. It’s more challenging than i thought and I’m going to work on it over the weekend. I’ve put a couple up on the site here which show the changes that have happened.

Today the building inspector came by while Fred was there. I’m told he’s a pretty cool guy, very laid back and didn’t even look at all the work we did downstairs putting in concrete and jackposts. Hopefully this will make it easier as we go forward.

The stair guy from last week hasn’t called back. So on the supplier side, right now London Stairs is not on the positive list. There’s another place in Ottawa where it looks like you can order stair pieces from that I might try next.

Well hopefully I’ll figure out a way to get more pictures up on the site.

Lots of stuff to do tomorrow.

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By bsharwood, June 6, 2006 5:06 pm

Last night Don came by and gave us our official, stamped plans, and a building and plumbing permit which we can put into the window of the house when we go there on Wednesday.

We are now legal to build and demolish.

We’ve still got a fair amount of demolition to go, but the next thing on our minds is to get the basement braces to hold up the key joists upstairs. We’ve had an offer to help on that, and I’d like to learn.

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By melindam, May 31, 2006 3:06 pm

So we have approval for the construction. Our architect got the permits today. We are planning to head to the house tonight as our 4th dumpster is being dropped off today, and we want to secure it with tarp so strangers don’t throw their trash in it. It has already happened! We arrived on Sunday and someone had thrown in some ugly tables.

More to come…much more, in fact, as we now must start hiring!

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By bsharwood, May 29, 2006 10:52 pm

Hopefully our architect was submitting the plans today to the city. We haven’t heard from him since Friday, but we’re hoping all is going well.
Today was the start of bike-to-work week, and what a day to begin. The TTC went on strike today, illegally, and the streets were chaos. We biked to work today, then to the house after work.

At the house we filled the bin right up to the top by cleaning up the 3rd floor and taking some walls and ceilings down on the 2nd floor. No camera today, so no pictures, but we’ll catch up with them next time we’re in to show you what we’ve done. I think we probably have one more full bin still to fill. it was really hot today, over 30C for most of the day.

On the way home we stopped at the Free Times Cafe for a beer, then went to Bar Mercurio for dinner. Good, even though we were probably the dirtiest clients in the place. (or on the patio anyway)