BACK YARD RENO PART 1

You ask what have we been up to?  Well as the weather warms I have been spending my time in the back yard working hard.  I spent the 2 months of "winter" in our new home trying to plot out the best location for a garden.  For this year it is along the east side of the back yard.  This plot of dirt originally had cedars running along the fence; they were only a few years old so this made them prime targets for successful transplant to someone else yard. Thanks to Freecycle and Craigs List they were all gone in about 2 weeks; all 64 of them. We kept 3 that we relocated to the back of the yard to create a visual barrier. Eventually behind the cedars will be a potting bench and a compost bin.

I know some of you are thinking why remove all the cedars they were hiding that ugly chain link fence well we have other plans that will hide that fence in a few years.  This includes hopefully a new fence and some berry bushes and trees, but for now taking the Cedars out gave me a great temporary space to plant vegetables for the next few years.  

As you can see in the picture we have started planting and I still need to work on turning the rest of the dirt and adding some nice black earth to the top and so on.  I will be planting cucumbers, tomatoes, string beans, peas, kale and radishes to name a few.

More picture to come as the work progresses.

FRONT HALL RENO - PART 2

My parents were visiting for the last few weeks and my dad helped out with the front hall he finished the painting and hung up some of the hooks.  Now I need to set up some sort of organization for shoes, hats and gloves.  I need up painting twice the first yellow we selected turned out to be a fit too florescent; I am really happy we took the time to re-paint.

For the shoe organizing I have a design in mind that I want to have custom built for the space.  If you know any good carpenters in Toronto please do share their info with me.

I also wanted to take tho moment to share a picture of one of the many details from our house that made us fall in love with it when we first saw it.

The above is a picture of the stained glass window that is in our front hall.  We have another one that matches in the staircase and I am pretty certain that once upon a time their would have been one also in the top half of the front window of the house.  One day we will change the front window and have an artist recreate a matching stained glass window for us.

Where have I been?

If anyone wonders where have I been the answer is in my back yard working.  I think it's been over 3 weeks now since I have been to the park or a "drop in" in the morning.  Don't get me wrong we still make it out in the afternoon or after supper to the park - C Monster is not totally being neglected for the back yard.  Also he really loves playing and "helping me" in the back yard.

So the day is finally here I get to plant grass today or tomorrow.  and then C Monster is banned from the back yard for 3-4 weeks to let the grass take.

You ask what did we do?

A Box for the Garden

The first thing was to build a small box around our vegetable garden.  We just built the the wall 2 4x4 high and only along one side and the bottom of the garden.  This was really just to help the dirt stay in garden - it also ended up helping us ensure our garden fence is installed straight.

I had a hard time deciding what to do about this wall and how to build it; see we live in an area that is of concern for termites.  I looked at stone and brick but the cost was much more then we wanted in invest; that left wood.  I started researching wood and pressure treated wood. Non-pressure treated wood is really not recommended for use in the ground especially if you know that termites like your area already.  There are a few exotic wood that you can use but most of them are from virgin rain forest half way across the world.  Knowing all that I started looking at pressure treated wood.  Their are 2 kinds of pressure treayed wood available on the market CCA and ACQ.  CCA is the traditional pressure treated wood that hear all the bad stories about the chemicals used and ACQ is a new alternative that does not contain any chemicals that the EPA considers of concern to the environment and humans.  I am not going to go any greater detail but here are 2 website with loads of information.

Does Pressure-Treated Wood Belong in Your Garden?

Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA): ACQ - An Alternative to CCA

We were able to find ACQ wood both at Home Depot and Parliament Building Supplies.  I have to note that Home Depot had no clue what I was talking about and I have to call the mill that their wood is from directly to get the information; however Parliament Building Supplies informed me that they only carry ACQ wood.

Home for the Edemama

The next step was making a home for our Edemama, I decided this year to plant along the neighbors fence in addition to our vegetable garden.  This looks beautiful and also gives us a little more food.  I purchased a small border that matches our fence - this is to keep the #1 predator for our plants out - C Monster. This year I am also planning on doing companion garden; so in this patch we are also planting our lettuce and spinach.  

I also found these great spirals to use instead of wooden steaks.  I prefer medal instead of wood; as much as wood is sustainable because it will biodegrade I find I can only use my wood steaks for one or 2 years and after that they are dead.  These ones are sure to last many many years.  

Patio Stones for the BBQ & a Place to Rest

 

Next step was a home for the BBQ, for 5 years now the BBQ has just stood in dirt...  I spent time on Craig's List trying to score some patio slabs for free but was unsuccessful so we ended up buying some. We just got whatever was the cheapest per square foot - they are under the BBQ so who really cares what they look like. 

 

I also rejigged the stones we had placed last year at the foot of the tree.  I placed all our outdoor decorations up - the bench; some glass balls; lights; flower pots.

Finally we Have a Walk Way 

 

Last night I picked up some "fake" flagstone.  They are made from concrete.  We laided them down as stepping stones. You can't really see them well in this image because of the dirt but they are installed and we have a walk way once again.  We took out the old walk when we bought the house 8 years ago and since them well had noting. Last thing left is too plant the grass.

 

Looking forward to

Relaxing in the back yard while C Monsters plays in the grass.

December Renovation Review

Back in December, we were still doing some tear-down. In the upstairs hallway, I'd peeled back the layers 'til we got to this nice plank subfloor. A little squeaky, but authentic. On top of it was really thin 1/4" ply with some strips around the edges, which I decided to replace:


Downstairs, we still had linoleum and carpet, which we'd just gotten clearance to replace without worrying about asbestos, which was great news:


Mostly, pulling the linoleum was as simple as sticking a prybar under it, hitting it with a mallet, and then prying:

Although you had to be careful not to lose a cat into the cold air return where they could go climb into the furnace ...
Once the linoleum was pried up, I cut it in strips and sealed it with duct tape to be trashed.


The carpet was broadloom rolled-goods, held down with a transition strip that was no match for a prybar:
Although the underpadding revealed some more of our friendly neighbourhood carpet-wormy things.
At the transition to the kitchen, I discovered that the kitchen may have a layer of christmas tiles, red and green. I'm not sure who thought that would be a good idea.
The subfloor was covered with ply, and the ply had some crusty layer of paint or possibly adhesive that I could easily scrape off with the prybar:

So, that's where we were in early December. Things have come a long way in the last month or two.

Hallway Flooring Retrospective

This is from back in December, again. It's the flooring in the hall outside the bathroom. Underneath the carpet and the vinyl tile, there was this odd snakeskin vinyl rolled goods, with some kind of coconut-husk-y backing. Underneath that was old linoleum/marmoleum, 1/4" thick, flexible, and with a nice green stripe to it.

Underneath that, some plywood - subfloor/underlayment on top of the plank subfloor. The ply didn't go to the edges, so we ripped that up and put in new 1/4" fir ply. Once I finish sanding down the underlayment/subfloor on the bathroom transition, it'll be ready for a little leveling compound/crack filler, and the new bamboo.

This week

Both Geoff and I have been very busy during the past week.

Geoff has been working hard on the house getting almost all the underlayment for the floors complete. We picked up from friends all the tools necessary to complete the floor, a compressor, a floor stapler, a water saw... (a thank you goes out to Shawn, Kregg, Deanna and Ed)

On Wednesday our new fridge arrived. Yippy for us.

Today I work on my picture wall. At the top of the stairs we are hanging a selection of frames that will end up covering most of the wall. All I need to do now is wait till we put in the corner shelf to hang the rest of the frames to make sure they are all nice and snug to the shelves.

I also spent a large chuck of the week cleaning up the chaos let behind from both Geoff and I being sick. Now I am relaxing while Geoff is finishing up the dishes, I think I must of done 5 loads of dishes during the past 2 days so I decided it was Geoff's turn.

This morning baby finally decided to let us hear his heart beat. We bought this weird baby listening device that was absolutely not working for us now for almost 2 months, but this morning finally we got it. It was like we struck gold after trying for so long. I will take more about this next time.

Busy Month for Daddy

(Posting from Pierrette's Laptop, even though this is Geoffrey; more on that in the next paragraph.)

It's been a busy month so far.  While working from home on the holidays, my laptop brick died, and Best Buy will only repair the unit as a whole, so I had to ship out the entire laptop so that they can fix a defective power adapter.  That, or pay $150 for an adapter that they will fix for free on a laptop that only cost $699 to begin with.

So my laptop's in the shop, and with it, some of the photos I was planning to post here.  If they fry my HD while fixing/replacing the power adapter, I'll be very irritated, but there wasn't a good solution to backup the HD while I was running out of battery power, and their $80 backup didn't appeal to me.

After that, I really focused on the renovation, tearing up the flooring on the main floor to make way for the bamboo.  I carried an 8x12' 1/4" plywood panel home from Home Depot to acclimatize for new subfloor - not yet sure if it's enough, but it's a start.  Also took the fan off the ceiling in the bedroom since the light has stopped working - either I've gotta diagnose it, or we've gotta replace it.  Either way.

Then I got the flu - fever for several days, lots of sleep, not much else.  Yesterday, I recovered enough to return to work and then we spent the evening picking up 13 boxes of composite vertical strip bamboo flooring from Rona in Ed's van (Thanks, Ed!).  I know I'm recovering because I'm no longer able to sleep all day every day - so I was up 'til 2am reading about tiles and transitions (tiles should probably have a backerboard, rather than simply subfloor - so subfloor, thinset, backerboard, optional membrane, thinset, tiles; thinset for porcelain needs to be premium latex-modified, unless you're using schluter ditra, at which point they recommend unmodified thinset, etc.)  Adding to all this, Pierrette had heavy heartburn and was running low on liquid cal-mag, which wasn't working, so I went out to get her some Tums at 3:30, after doing a quick round of research on what heartburn medicine was ok for pregnancy (stick to chewable calcium carbonate, mostly).

So it's a late start to Saturday, after a long night.  Time to go eat breakfast and get on to cutting some subfloor (outside, I hope, if the weather co-operates).