Day 472: Where did March and April go?

It's a new record: 57 days since our last update. Our silence certainly isn't the result of lack of activity over the past two months. Progress on the house front has been slowly inching forward, sprinkled around short jaunts to Vancouver and Toronto, a lovely long weekend of dear friends visiting, both of us working full time, volunteering, board games, and Game of Thrones. Since it's been quite a while, this will be a catch up post with a smattering of photos and notes about what we've been up to.

Kitchen & Upstairs Bathroom

The last time I mentioned the kitchen and upstairs bathroom, you got a glimpse of the state of things after the remediation contractor had gutted the space and set up a temporary kitchen and bathroom for us. Despite the minor annoyance of having to dig through a box a few times a week for that immersion blender or random cookbook, the temporary setup is working fine, especially with a few little tweaks.

Our entire kitchen in one cabinet. (To be fair, the pots and pans are still in the mudroom next to the range and we've got that little pine shelf for miscellaneous other storage. Key to this setup is the little shelf Garrett made to hold up the cutlery tray and leave room for our cooking utensils, stored in large baking pans.

There was a second white shelf that came with the sink cabinet for the temporary kitchen that we weren't using. Garrett cut it in two and fit them between the wall and vanity in the upstairs bathroom for some extra storage.

While it's a functional setup, we're keen to get going on the renovation so we can enjoy some real counterspace and a dishwasher (cue angels singing). As a reminder, we're going from this original layout...

...to this:

For a while, we weren't sure if we wanted to bring in a general contractor to manage the whole kitchen renovation or if we wanted to coordinate ourselves. Since my work contract ended last week, we've decided to take care of managing things on our end and bring in sub-contractors where needed. I'm planning to write up a post about each of the different aspects of the job because it's way too much detail for a single post, let alone a two-month-catch-up post. In the meantime, here's a breakdown of the plan for who's doing the work:

• Framing - We're bringing in a contractor to convert the wall to a beam since we physically can't do it ourselves and it's a pretty important wall (supporting half the house sort of thing...)
• Plumbing - The kitchen needs a dishwasher rough-in, we're changing the layout in the bathroom upstairs (which will be much easier while the kitchen ceiling is open), and replacing the stack while it's accessible. And all of the plumbing needs to be properly vented. We could do the supply lines ourselves but are bringing in a plumber (the one who did the drain work downstairs) for the sake of time.
• HVAC - There's a vent running up the middle of the wall that's coming down and we're adding a return vent to the third floor (there are only supply vents right now). We'll bring in the HVAC guy who did our air conditioner and put in a "forever" filter for us on the furnace.
• Electrical - When we had the whole house re-wired (from knob and tube), some miscommunication lead to all the electrical wire going upstairs through the wall that's coming down. This lines need to be moved as well as a few outlets and switches. We'll be doing this work ourselves. (In fact, Garrett's already started!)

Basement Bathroom

Before we can get started with all of that, we need to get the bathroom in the basement running so that we can decommission the upstairs bath and cut the lines. The awkward thing is that we'll need access to the joist space under the kitchen floor for plumbing and HVAC. Since this just happens to be the basement bathroom ceiling, we can't finish all of the drywall in the bathroom until that work is done for the kitchen. Sounds like we need a Gantt chart around these parts...

The ceiling may be half open but we'll have no problem getting to a functional bathroom in the next week. Just before Easter, Garrett set up the vanity sink laundry tub downstairs. We started by building the carcase for the sink cabinet (face frame). Since we don't have the cabinets to the left of the sink built yet, Garrett made use of some old IKEA bed slats to support the tub and got the drain and faucet hooked up.

Garrett connecting the laundry tub.

Laundry tub set up in the cabinet carcase.

With a wonderfully large and practical sink in place downstairs, we could get to work taping and mudding the drywall to cover up the seams between drywall sheets and screw holes and other dings. It took a little while to get the hang of it and can be a long process for a couple of perfectionists. We put up the tape and mudded/sanded the first coat in one weekend. I've since done a few more rounds of mudding and sanding to get things as smooth and even as possible. After sanding this morning, there were a few little craters that needed filling so I'll wait for those to dry before a final round of sanding.

The awesome sanding block Garrett made when he realized we didn't have one handy.

Smoothing out the latest layer of mud.

Garden

After the many, many posts about the garden and plant identification last year, I can't do a March/April catch-up without mentioning this. Another longer post is due to update on our new garden plan so I'll just share a few photos.

Filled yogurt tubs with popsicle stick markers ready for some seeds. 

We're reusing the yogurt tubs from last year's seed starting as they worked perfectly. The great additions this year are these trays and domes we picked up at Lee Valley to keep the seedlings in a moist and warm environment. They are so much easier than last year's toothpicks + saran wrap method and the nubs on the tray help the seeds drain better than cafeteria trays.

Propagation trays and domes soaking in the rays at our south-facing dining room window.

Outside, the little green and red shoots of sprouted perennials poke up through the garden soil. Let's hope they'll all survive the weather rollercoaster we're on, though. Time for a pop quiz. The following photos is:

1. Taken on April 20.
2. Taken two days after it was 26˚C outside.
3. Crazytown.
4. All of the above.

Answer: 4. All of the above. Took this yesterday morning right before the snow and blustery wind forced me to keep moving. This is two days after people were outside in t-shirts and sandals. Crazytown.

Vancouver

This last one isn't house related but it is a DIY project that you might like to see. I went to Vancouver for a few days in March to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday. Over a frantic four evenings before departure, Garrett and I made this frame for her gift:

The characters are por por, which means maternal grandmother.

We used a beautiful maple board (the nicest lumber I've ever purchased). We cut it into thirds which were glued and screwed together (with trusty pocket holes). Garrett took care of the photo spaces, cutting and routing out the rectangles. I routed the characters after finding a nice Chinese font and printing the characters to scale for guidance. I had made a similar frame in December for my dad's birthday with MDF. That was the first time I attempted making anything like this and found that the 1/4" straight bit was too big for the details on the character. I picked up a 1/8" router bit for my Dremel thinking it would be nice and easy to manoeuvre. It's probably a combination of it being a cheap Dremel bit and the maple being a relatively hard wood but the routing was not as clean as I would have liked. It looks better with the gold paint but the paint pen I was using couldn't get into all the little frayed bits of wood.

I'm drooling over some tiny bits for the proper router which I suspect would lead to a cleaner, less frayed edge. We'll see if other detailed routing projects come our way. Perhaps a replacement frame for my dad that is stained wood instead of painted MDF? There's nothing quite like a nice wavy grain of wood.

Garrett finished off the outside edge with a simple ogee bit and we stained using some water-based stain. Both the lady at the hardware store and the stain bottle said we wouldn't need to condition the wood - a step that is usually recommended before staining to prevent streaks and blotches. Since we were short on time, I stained right on the bare sanded wood. It turned out okay but I think we'll try pre-stain conditioner next time as it was still blotchier than we would have liked. I finished off with a layer of topcoat, held in the photos with a couple pieces of trusty wood panelling, and glued on a piece of brown paper for a cleaner look.

The weather was beautiful for the few days I was in Vancouver. We ate way too much food (as usual on any visit with relatives) and got to enjoy some wonderful family time. I've end off this hodge podge post with a few photos from lovely BC.

Is this not the craziest roof you've ever seen? It looks like layers of cedar shingles.

The entire roof was covered in these waves. I can't remember the street but I think it's in the West Point Grey area of Vancouver.

A beautiful sculpture near Jericho Beach.

Mountains, water and forest. What's not to love?