A better picture of the stairs......

I have wanted to post a picture of our stairs that better show the LEDs that I installed. Now that we have a tripod for our camera I can better take pictures. Especially low light shots that require a very steady hand. You get a better idea of the light these little guys can put off. These stay on all time as they require only about .05 cents to operate in a year. They give off enough light that one does not require any other lights on to negotiate the stairs at night.

The deck is here.

A great big thanks to our good friend John and his family for making this happen. Thank you John for all your hard word and thank you Caroline and the boys for sharing him with us for a couple of days to get her done. It truely looks lovely and come spring will be well used and enjoyed. Getting this far took a lot of hard work. Mostly backbreaking ground moving and prep work. Then in about 3 short hours the cement is poured and the stamping done. It really is all about the prep work!!! Now we have a lovely peice of rock to enjoy that will require little to maintain. Doesn't need to be mowed nor raked. Is very easy to clean with a leaf blower and only requires being sealed once a year. The overall visual effect of the stamping is truely stunning. We have already gotten a load of dirt into fill up the sides. It makes it look much better now then it does in these pictures. We are ready to get bulbs to plant in the next couple of weeks. Here are some pictures.

Wow has it really been over a year??

My bad. It has been a busy year. Much progress has been made on the house. We have focused on replacement of our rotted sill at the back of the house. This has initiated other outdoor projects some direct and some indirectly relating to the sill replacement. Firstly we needed to lower the grade along the rear of the house. Since the backyard sloped from the back of the lot down towards the back of the back of the house and where it met the house it was above the height of the sill/foundation. We needed to remedy the grade on the lot. We removed the earth from the back 15 feet of the house and moved it further back on the lot making it all one level consistent with the level of the shed and driveway. We installed a retaining wall to establish the difference in grade. We then set up a form to do our concrete pour. We will be putting down a stamped concrete pad as our primary deck. Likely in the spring I will dig our pond. We also have some plans for doing some flower beds around the deck. I have run some wiring for electrical and speakers. We also have setup for drains in the concrete pad. That is with the intent to carry water away from the foundation. We have had an exceptionally wet summer. This has allowed water to get into the basement. Hopefully with the pad in place this will stop. I have also started ripping out the basement back to the field stone walls. I am unsure if I will refinish the basement or not but till I am convinced that the water issues are resolved nothing will be done down there. Anyway for now here are a couple new shots.

Keeping busy

Lots of progress has been made since the last post. We have also had a rather major set back too. I'll start with the bad. In an effort to prepare for our wedding which we planned to have in our backyard we removed the old concrete pad at the back of the house. It had been there for many many years. It also appeared that it had been done in more then one pour. It was over a foot thick in a few places. It was in very rotten condition and was going to be partially replaced with new stamped concrete in two different levels. I had to pay to have someone break up and remove the pad because of how thick it was. When it was pulled up the sill was revealed. The concrete had been poured right up against the sill without any protection from moisture. As a result the wood became a easy target for carpenter ants to take up residence. They did a fair bit of damage over a very long time. We will likely need to replace the sill piece meal or as a whole. I have called in a specialist and am waiting for him to get by to tell me the scope of the damage. This is delaying any outside landscaping unfortunately. On the upside this forced us to change plans and have the wedding indoors. That in itself was kind of a blessing as yesterday it was rainy and we would have gotten soaked. Also it put pressure on me to get more work done inside the house. As a result the stairs are now %95 done. As is the half wall behind the stove and cabinets in the kitchen. The whole upstairs now has finished floors everywhere. The painting is done through out the house now too. For now I will put up a couple of pics of the stairs. I installed the balusters treads and LEDs. I still need to get a piece of wood turned for the knewl post to raise its height to the hand rails new height. The LEDs are able to be dimmed which is a nice feature. We love the look of the wrought iron and wood mixed together. Without further ado here are the pics.

Back at it.

It has been a while I know but lots has gone on. Jenna and I got engaged, I started another new job, and some work has been done around the house.

Jenna and I will be getting married over the summer in a very private ceremony. We will have a party later on in August. Also I started a new job. The other one was not one I was too pleased with however I wasn't yet actively seeking a new one as I was trying to give this one a chance. Jenna's uncle let me know that his company was looking for someone and put me in contact with the right people. I was called in for an interview and hired on the spot which was pretty gratifying. I am back to working Monday through Friday days doing work I like. I now work for a company that does insurance repair work on houses and properties that are damaged and require repair through insurance. It is right up my alley. From fence repair to rebuilding houses destroyed by fire this job constantly is different day in and day out which I love. I also come home from it and have enough energy to work on the house vs. the old one where I was a write when I got home. That said there has been progress on the house.

Yesterday I made a table for our living room. It was made out of an old window shutter that came from the old segrams building in Kitchener. The wood is said to be over 100 years old. I made the sides from a board that was of the same age or older. The legs to were turned from wood of that nature. All the wood is douglas fir. All has nice tight grain. I have only put varnish on it. It took on a nice honey glow. The top which sat out exposed to the elements for oh so many years still retains many of the distress marks even after a moderate sanding. This is the effect I wanted. The picture is not the best but it will give you an idea of what it looks like.


This next picture shows some of the baseboard we installed in our dinning room. This is the wood we had custom milled to match the mouldings in the remainder of the main floor. we also installed it in the hallway at the top of our stairs. There is no finish on it yet. I am letting it sit to yellow up some naturally before sealing it in. Here is that picture.












We also have made some plans for the outside landscaping. I'm sure they won't be to cheap but we hope it is not to bad since we are doing the work ourselves. I have a friend coming with stamps to do stamped concrete in the next couple of months. Can't wait for him to show us how to do it. We also can't wait for the finished results. We are almost set to do the tile work at the back of our stove and kitchen cabinets. I secured the two cabinets directly to the floor at the right height proportionate to the stove and installed the kick plates. They look so much more finished now. As well I did some custom work on the baseboard in that section of the kitchen. It really is the little things that do make a difference. I started the patch on the wall behind the fridge that I have needed to do for over a year now. Out of sight out of mind. I framed the window in the peek of the bedroom in for the most part. I need to do a little more to get the stained glass seated right but it looks great. We bought a armoire for the bedroom as well to solve the issue of where to hang our clothes. It is from 1920 or so and made from birdseye maple. It looks great with our Heywood Wakefield furniture. I'm sure there are many other little things we have done that I have yet to mention but those are the ones that currently come to mind. Stay tuned for further progress.

Haven't posted in quite a while. Not really much has been done however. With my new crazy work hours and the bitterly cold temperatures my work has ground to a halt. The few days that have been nice didn't coexist with my sleep schedule. Nights will do that to you. Anyways with the weather destined to improve in the next few weeks I become impatient to get back to working on the house. Many of the things I want/need to do revolve around the use of saws and other power tools. Ones at this point I want only to use outside to limit the dust in our otherwise mostly completed house. Stay tuned as I'm sure post will be made soon.

In other news

We have received some of the last building materials we will need for some time. I went and ordered the last (hopefully) of the hardwood flooring for upstairs. As it turned out we were very unimpressed with the stuff we had gotten. Don't get me wrong it looks nice now that it is down but....It was laced with open face knots through out. The sample at the store had 2 little (maybe the size of a dime) knots in it. Well the stuff we got had tonnes of knots. Big small broken open faced. You name it. Faced with the need to get the floor down I sucked it up and installed it as it was. Kept telling myself it is an old home this is well suited to it. When down it looked pretty nice overall. Just hard on the bare feet if you were to catch it the wrong way. I still plan to fill the holes with a syringe of verathane when the warmer weather comes so that it will cure faster and better. Now I ordered less floor then needed on purpose because the last thing we wanted was to be stuck with extra that we couldn't return due to it being a custom order. So I needed another 80 sq feet. Fast forward to last weekend. I go and pick it up as it has come in. We get it home and open a box. There is not a knot to be found. The boards look like the ones on our main floor very much like the sample. We still have 2 boxes of the old stuff which is a good thing for 2 reasons. I now have proof of what we received aside from the flooring that is already laid. As well I'm going to need to mix the old with the new to get a more rustic look to finish the upstairs. Now in all of this I have made a few calls to the building center we bought the flooring from to complain. On 2 occasions I was told a date that I would be hearing back from someone. Both times nothing. Well finally after my third try now having the new flooring in hand to prove that the first round was the pits we got a call. I talked to the guy whom was very pleased at our patience and willingness to work with the stock. He told me he would call us back by the end of the day to give us some sort of compensation for our troubles. That was almost a week ago now. I called and left a message for him on Friday and still no word. I know anything could have happened like say a death in the family or something so we are trying to keep our cool. Will post more on this when I know more. The one advantage to all this though is the wood in the original batch had plenty of mixed species of maple including lots of birdseye pieces. We have many curly maple pieces on the main floor but few with birdseye.

In other wood news. We have gotten about 100 linear feet of the baseboard topper seen in the previous posts picture custom made. A guy at the local lumber yard made it for us at a reasonable rate. Took a little while as I gave it to him before Christmas. I must say it is very nice looking stock. We only need some 30 or so feet. I figured in case we need to repair or replace something in the future or choose to build off the back of the house that it would be good to have the extra stock. That way any other work will flow better with the house. I can't wait to install this stuff. My only problem is the old stuff takes on a nice honey hue when verathane is applied where the new is more blond in appearance. Hopefully it will darken up with time. It is in behind the couch in the picture below as well as the 4 boxes of flooring above it. I know the stairs look a little funny but we have cork under the treads to cut down on the noise for the time being as the treads are still not secured down yet.

Then there was fire

Well it has been a while since our last post. Many reasons for this. Mainly I found a job and I'm still trying to get used to it. I am working 4 on 3 off 12 on 12 off 2 weeks days and 2 weeks nights. Needless to say when the weekend arrives I am slightly pooped. Being on nights right now and having gotten somewhat used to the hours I still can't run a sander or table saw while Jenna is sleeping so. I surf the net and watch tv. So here I am to share some more pics and progress. Most importantly the fireplace is in. There was a whole saga surrounding the installation and the really decent gas plumber that came to run the pipe and turn it on. He came on the morning like he said he would and was able to tell me what he needed on my end to be done. Namely popping the hole through to the great outdoors. Told me he should be back by 2. He called at 4:30 and was sorry for the delay but still planning to come. He got here just after 5 and we got the pipe run stove in place and vented and turned on. All that went relatively smoothly. Then he went to turn it on. Welll the flame was far less then desirable. Looked very pathetic to be sure. Little blue flames no more then 1.5" high. Not a think like either of us expected. So we started to trouble shoot this problem. It was pretty cool. Me with minimal knowledge in gas learning plenty as we went. Was it a blockage in the line? Was it getting enough pressure? Was it the valve? there were a few theories going around. He stayed till almost 9 o'clock. We pulled a good portion of the stove apart and reassembled in the quest to solve the problem. Finally I had to send him home. I felt for him, it was late and we were not getting anywhere. I told him I would call him if I got to the bottom of the problem. If I required any warranty work from a gas fitter I would do all in my power to get him to be able to do it as he had been so helpful already. We left it going all night and it kept the house very warm but the flame looked terrible.

Fast forward to the next day. I get up call my friend that I bought the stove from. I had already called him the night before to see if there was something we had missed. Seemed there wasn't. Told him we didn't fix it and asked if he could contact someone to help figure it out. He agreed and was going to call me back. So I turned off the stove in case I needed to take it apart again. Well after an hour or so of reading and re reading the manual I decided to pull the stove apart further. I dig till I find the orifice and the venturi. Look at the gapping and of the venturi and have an erueka moment. It wasn't spaced for a gas stove but rather for a propane one. Excitedly I call my friend back and ask if this could be the problem. He figures it is and wants to check something and will call me back right away. At this point I happen to look down at the bill and notice that the model number includes a "P" in it and not a "G". All the lights go on. My friend at this point is feeling really bad as it was a keying error on him part. DOH. So he scrambles to find out what can be done on such short notice. (this is the Friday before Christmas and everything will be shut down for a little while) Finds out the Napoleon sells a retrofit kit to convert the unit back to NG but I'd need to drive to get it. Wanting this little bad boy running for christmas I agree to take the tour and get the part. 5 hours of driving (should only have taken 2 or so) in horrible traffic and I get the parts that take all of 15 minutes to install. Right off the top it fires up and the flame starts to look amazing within a few minutes. They have come a long ways with fireplaces in the last several year. I called the plumber whom happened to return my call while at Napoleon and had me ask the million dollar question. Why was the unit not marked anywhere that it was LP and not NG. Napoleon had no good answer for this. That aside though this little unit is very impressive. Dollars to Donuts it is a great deal. It is small but packs a decent punch perfect for our little house. We can't leave it running on high as it gets far to warm. I also worked it out. If left on high all the time it would use 360 cubic meters of gas in a month. That is as much as we used in Our 2 highest gas usage months last winter. Unless it was minus 20 all month long we wouldn't need to run it at high all month so we already will save over using the furnace which I have now turned off. Anyway here is a picture of it installed and running. You can also see some of our now restored baseboards as well as window frames in the living room. They look great to us.