Sheer awesome

Man, I can't even tell you how much I've missed cooking with gas. I also can't even tell you how much of a piece of shit the old electric stove was - but I'm sure going to try!

So, the stove that Frank left us was probably original to the house. Which means it was installed in the middle of the 80s, and was not exactly pampered, if you know what I mean. For example, to set the clock, we had to hold down the "Clock" button, and then press and hold the up arrow until it reached the time we wanted. Simple enough - provided the clock button actually worked, which, of course, it didn't. I had to lean hard on the clock button and kind of roll my thumb around until it engaged, and then whale away on the up button until the time started to move, and hope that I got the time set before my thumb moved off the sweet spot.

And then there were the burners. Not one of the damn things was even close to level, which meant that pots and pans wouldn't sit flat on the burners. To heat up oil in a pan, for instance, we kept having to turn the handle of the pan to make sure we got an even heat. It also meant that using the wok was an exercise in frustration, as it wouldn't sit flat on the big burner, so we'd get hot spots in different places, depending on which direction the handle was facing.

Also, I had started to notice that things in the oven cooked faster on the right side, closer to the door. Which meant that every time I baked or roasted something, I had to turn the pan halfway through cooking to make sure I got an even cook.

But not anymore! The same guys that hooked up our gas fireplace came back last Wednesday and installed the new gas stove. (I took the old electric crap-pile up to Hartland on Saturday and drove away without a second glance. We would have sold it or given it away, but neither of us really felt comfortable having anyone we knew actually use the damn thing.)

Here's the most awesomest stove in the world, nestled tight up against our favorite Frank-artifact (Fartifact?), the What About Happiness label:



It looks a little different than our old friend, but it's pretty much the same model, just five years newer - and with more glowy lights!



And just to prove that we're using it to make awesome food, here it is baking my world-famous Panko-and-herb sockeye and rosemary potato wedges:



First time using the oven, and rest assured - it kicks ASS. Seriously awesome appliance.

Whew.

Well, after that, anything I post will be a let-down, I'm sure, but I do have some other progress to report, and it's pretty awesome, too.

I was out in the garage on Saturday, putting a cat flap in our bedroom door (that's for the next post, that one is), and my Crazy Neighbour™ came wandering over. Seems like his wife had gone out for the day and he was bored with sitting around the house. So he figured he'd come over and maybe do some work on our place for a while. (Seriously - I didn't ask him. He volunteered. Because, as I may have mentioned, he's crazy.) Well, he took one look at the big mess of concrete where the lamp standard used to be, and that was it: that thing was coming out.

So he brought over a whole mess of tools and started in on it. Well, I couldn't very well stand there and let a guy going through chemotherapy tackle such a big job on his own, so I put my project aside and went out to help.

Now, I realize the picture isn't all that impressive, but let me tell you: there was a full metric shit-ton of concrete underneath that light. It took the two of us the better part of an hour-and-a-half to get it out of the pit and we didn't even break any sprinkler pipes while doing it. When we did get the lump out of the hole, we had to beat it apart with a sledge-hammer to get it small enough to lift into a wheelbarrow. I put most of the rocks we knocked off back into the hole and threw some mud over it:



The pipe sticking out the side is the "conduit" (i.e., sprinkler pipe) that Frank used to run the electrical. And yes, it was FULL of water.

Anyway, emboldened by our success, we turned our attention to the second of the two stumps left when we removed the big cedars from the front of the house. I had actually got the first of the two out the weekend before.

Before:


After:


And yes, I DID break a sprinkler pipe while doing that, but given that there are THREE of them right there, I figure one out of three ain't too bad.

Anyway, we managed to get the bulk of the thing out yesterday, and I went back out and tidied it up this afternoon.

Before:


After:


After all, it's not like we could mow the lawn, given that it was RAINING AGAIN. Seriously - there has not been a single day this entire spring that we could call the relatives and Toronto and laugh at them. (Although, to everyone living in Calgary, I have to still say, HA HA!) We STILL haven't mowed the lawn this year.

Looks like hell, too, but what can we do?

Anyway, I've got more, but it's late, and I want to save a little for the next post. Who knows, maybe I'll post something in the middle of the week! Oooh! Tricky!

A little bit of catching up...

We're mired in that seemingly interminable process of painting, installing, filling, sanding, filling, sanding, painting, and painting the trim in my office, and none of it looks all that impressive. It also, as I may have intimated, takes FOREVER.

So I thought I'd use this post to catch up on a mixture of things that have been going on around the house and in the neighbourhood. Not really sure what I'll wind up including, but hey - you get what you pay for with this blog.

Let's get started, eh?


Timer switch



That little beauty is the awesomest invention ever. I know it just looks like a light switch with a clock in it, but check it out:



It glows! Hahahahahaha!

Uh... too excited? Yeah? Thought so...

Anyway, the point of that particular switch is that, here in the wilds of BC, the sun goes down awfully early in the day in the winter. This meant that the War Department was getting home from work in the dark, and trying to unlock the door in the already darkened doorway. We needed a way to make the outside lights come on before she got home - preferably a way that didn't involve leaving the damn things on all day, sucking up power.

Unfortunately, the outside lights are on a three-way switch (there's another switch for them inside the garage), and we really didn't want to start tearing out drywall and rewiring them for a timer or light sensor.

Fortunately, we found these on the inter-tubage, and what with the War Department's prowess as an electrician, we now have outside lights that come on automatically when the sun goes down - and yes, the switch calculates sundown for us, without the use of an exterior light sensor. It even compensated for Daylight Savings Time. Gotta be right up there in terms of the best 60 bucks we've spent on the place.

New Arrival
I had to transfer some money from one of my investment accounts to another, and some of it "accidentally" made its way into an entirely different account. One that promptly signed over the contents to Sears:



What's in the box, you ask?

One of these beauties:



No, you can't see the front yet. Not until it gets installed on Wednesday.

Finishing Up Old Chores AND This Week In Mayonnaise
Way back when, we fixed this monstrosity on the front wall of the living room. As I explained at the time, it was a piece of old extension cord spliced into an electrical wire that ran through sprinkler piping out through the wall, and underground to the lamp beside the driveway - the fake wrought-iron Canadian Tire special visible on the right side of this picture.

Anyway, we were out puttering around in the nice weather on Saturday (seriously - what the ever-lovin' Jebus is up with the weather this spring? It's almost April and we haven't even mowed our lawn yet! Sheesh!) and Amy asked if I thought I could just push the lamp over, and get it out of the way. Turns out it wasn't nearly strong enough to support the weight of the slab of concrete in which it was based, and the lamp snapped neatly in half. Which, I suppose, made it easier to carry into the garage where it will sit until our next trip to the recycling depot. Once that was out of the way, though, we took a closer look at the base:



Yeah - looks like the electrical was equally as crappy on both ends of that installation. It's not even outdoor wire - just regular old Romex. They just fed it right up through the form and poured the concrete over it. And then they set the lamp down into the concrete, essentially ensuring that the wire would ALWAYS be passing directly through whatever water had accumulated in the base.

Oh, and those little round marks around the outside of the footing? Coins. From the eighties. Oh, and I just KNOW you're wondering how (because "why?" would be unanswerable) the coins were attached to the concrete. Go ahead, ask me.



Mayonnaise, of course.

Finished!
Anyway, in the five days or so that it's taken me to get around to actually finishing this post... we finished the office! Whoo!











Of course, I can't actually use it as my office yet. See, we kinda need it as a spare bedroom and to store all the crap we've been storing in Amy's office.

Three guesses what the next project is, and the first two don't count....

An Anniversary
Before I go, I'm not sure how this affects what I'm sure are a number of various and varying pools and betting circles out there, but this was exactly a year ago today:



So there. Nyaaah!

Happy birthday to meee

I hate to admit it, but I just might have found the one renovation task that, well, I actually enjoy. I've certainly expounded at length on how much drywalling or insulating or digging sucks, but there have been precious few tasks that I've admitted to not hating.

Flooring, on the other hand... well, I actually LIKE it. I mean, if I didn't enjoy it, why would I spend the entire day - on my birthday of all days - looking forward to leaving work so I could get home and do some more of the flooring in my office? I even considered bailing out early so I'd have more time to work on it and maybe even get it all done before bed, instead of having to finish it later in the week. (As it turns out, I didn't leave early, and I therefore had to finish it later in the week, but hey - I actually looked forward to that part, too.)

Anyway, I thought that maybe the best way to explain why I like it would be to try and document the process. So, without further ado, this is how to lay an engineered hardwood floor - the Don and Amy's Broadmead Reno way.

The first step is to clean, scrape, sweep, patch, fill, and prep the subfloor. This may, as in our case, include a half-box of coated floor screws driven in every eight inches or so along the joists to tighten up any warped boards and reduce the amount of squeaking. If you have a War Department, get her to to do it: she's really good at it. Also, get her to patch the floor if you can, because that stuff is hard to work with and she's probably already got the knee pads on from putting in the screws anyway.

So, once the patching compound is dry, give the room a good sweep and a quick vacuum, and you should have something like this:



Nice colour, eh? It's yet another Restoration Hardware-inspired choice, called "butter". (We used the "saffron" from the same collection in our bedroom, and the "butter cream" in the downstairs hallway.)

The next step is to gather all your tools. If you're like us (and who isn't?) you probably keep all of your tools in the garage, which requires several hundred trips up and down the stairs because of course you're working on the room that is the furthest you can possibly get from the garage and still be in the same house. Once you've gathered everything you think you will possibly need, organize them on the opposite side of the room from where you intend to start putting down your floor:



From left to right (mostly), the assembled tools are:

• Work light: used to mess up your sense of time so you can keep working long after it gets dark and you should have stopped for something to eat.


• Ear protection: almost everything you're working with is LOUD. Especially the compressor.


• Hammer: used for pounding things, like staples that didn't go in quite far enough.


• Nail set: (hidden behind the hammer) used to keep the hammer from hitting the flooring and wrecking the edges when a staple didn't go in quite far enough.


• Screwdriver: not required, actually, unless you left it downstairs, in which case you WOULD need it and have to go downstairs (again) to get it.


• Box cutter: used for cutting the underpad and (sometimes) fingers, and opening the boxes.


• Safety gogglers: like the screwdriver, completely unnecessary unless you don't have them, in which case a freak, never-happen-again-in-a-million-years accident will send a staple directly into your eye socket. (I wore mine.)


• Pencil: used to make pencil marks.


• Tape measure: used to determine where the pencil marks should go.


• Brad nailer: not actually the ideal tool for this. We really should be using 16-gauge nails, but our little nailer only takes 18-gauge. Given that the flooring is really light, however, and I can make up for the weaker nails by using more of them, I figure we can get away with it.


• Stapler: used to pin down the underpad to the subfloor so it doesn't move around while you're trying to work on it.


• Floor stapler: I love this thing. It's my second favourite tool, behind the reciprocating saw (of course).


• Big-ass box of staples: surprisingly economical, given how much the smaller packs cost. I'll never use these up - not in this house, anyway - but it was still cheaper than trying to buy a bunch of smaller boxes.


• Way-too-long air hose: seriously - WAY too long.


• The Incredible Hulk: our Kawasaki air compressor that we bought for a ridiculous price at Costco. This thing is loud, large, and in charge, baby. And really hard to get up the stairs. I actually filled it up while it was still in the garage because it's REALLY loud, and I figured the cats would appreciate not having the Hulk roaring away on a bare wooden floor for half-an-hour.


• Big roll of underpad: there should be lots left over to do the War Room.

Also required, but not shown (and therefore most likely requiring a separate trip back downstairs to fetch them when you realize you've forgotten them):

• Flooring blocks: used to brace against the lip/edges of the flooring so you can whack them into place with the hammer without having to whale directly on the floor. Still can't believe I forgot about these things when I was prepping - you literally can't do flooring without them.


• Scrap blocks: used to ensure you have adequate space around the edges of the floor to allow for expansion.


• Broom: to make sure there aren't any little bits of wood or other debris underneath the underpad before you staple it all down.


• Magic bar: to pry up the first row after you screw it up (I'll get to that in a minute).


• Pliers: to pull out staples that didn't go in anywhere close to far enough.


• Knee pads: cause, otherwise, your back is going to burn like the fire. Oh, and your knees, too.


• Chalk line: trust me on this one.

So, once all of the necessary tools and materials have been gathered (the actual flooring itself - Elements by Kentwood Maple Saffron - has been sitting in the upstairs hallways and bedroom closets for more than a year; it's the one thing I DIDN'T have to bring up from downstairs), it's time to get busy.

I started by measuring the width of the room to make sure that the last row wouldn't wind up being an inch thick or anything. Luckily, the room size and the width of the planks match up fairly well, and the final row should be about four inches - close enough for government work! Let's get started!

The first step is to lay down a piece of underpad. The stuff we're using is supposedly designed for maximum noise reduction under engineered hardwood, and we got a big roll of it when we got the floor. Next, I grabbed a few likely pieces of our fine flooring and started laying them out.

Now, when working that close to the wall, you can't use the flooring stapler because the handle and the magazine for the staples stick out the back - you simply can't get the tool close enough to the wall to place it over the tongue of the flooring (unless you've got 12" wide planks, which... we don't). So you have to use either a hammer and nails, or - like me - a brad nailer held at just the right angle. It also means you have to be extra careful putting in the first few pieces - which I certainly THOUGHT I was.

Uh, not so much. The first row I put it looked okay, but once I started laying out the second row, I realized I didn't quite have it perfectly straight - the next pieces were not fitting anywhere near tightly enough. So I pulled them all up and tried again.

The next attempt seemed to go in quite a bit better, and I even got the floor stapler going to snug up the second row. Unfortunately, once I took a closer look, I realized that I had followed the wall a little too closely - because the wall was curved.

You can't see it in this picture, but trust me, this is not good enough:



So I ripped it all up again, and did what I should have done the first time: asked the War Department what I was doing wrong. She suggested that we get the chalk line out, and measure equal points from the far wall - that way the flooring would stay straight as it came across the room. We did, and snapped a nice clean line that I could use to line up the first row of planks.

Much as I hate to admit it (any more than I absolutely have to, anyway), she was totally right, and the third try produced a nice, tight, straight first row that only looked better once the second and third rows were installed. (It's a good thing we've got extra wood!)



Once I got to the fourth row, however, I had to deal with the first finicky bit; the closet opening:



Fortunately, I had actually planned ahead (shocker, I know) and aside from having to make a couple of extra trips up and down the damn stairs to trim up the inside piece on the table saw, I managed to wrap the wood around without any problems, and got in a couple more rows before I ran out of working hours and had to call it a night:





The next night was actually my birthday, and with the War Department out at the opera (gettin' sum kulcher), I was free to keep plugging away at it to my heart's content. Which I did. Got a fair bit done, too; I was doing so well, I had to stop and remind myself to take a picture so as not to let it all get away from me (I had to move the compressor and work light to the other side of the room anyway):



And here's where I stopped for the night and treated myself to one of the excellent Scottish beers my Crazy Neighbour™ left on the front steps for me in honour of my birthday (seriously, is there anything in this world better than free surprise beer? I doubt it...)



It was actually about 10:30 at that point, and I had reached the limit of what I could do with the floor stapler. See, you need a fair amount of room on the front side of the stapler too, what with having to swing the big-ass mallet around to drive in the staples. From that point on, it would be mostly the nail gun and a lot of finicky work around the door opening and up against the wall, and I was utterly gassed.

I couldn't work on it Tuesday night, but on Wednesday I geared up again and, after a quick jaunt over to Home Despot to pick up some more nails for the nailer, I got right back at it and finished it all off:





Even tidied up a really narrow bit tight up against the wall inside the closet, too:



All in all, I'm quite pleased. It looks really good, and the War Department did a great job of locking down the subfloor, so it's really solid and doesn't squeak a bit. So now, it's off to Rona to get some trim, and then the fiddly stuff REALLY gets going.

While you're all here, though, it's been a while, so here's another edition of everyone's favorite feature,

The Injury Report

The good news is that I didn't hurt myself while doing the floor and therefore avoided splashing blood all over the new hardwood. No, it was actually a couple of weeks ago that I smashed my left hand with a hammer and walked around with a bit of a bruise for a few days.

Why did I smash my hand?
See, I was fixing an axe, and trying to knock the old handle out of the axe head. I was holding the axe head on a stump while swinging at it with a hammer. I missed the piece of metal I was using to drive out the handle, and whacked myself a good one right on the base of my thumb.

Why was I fixing my axe?
It's not my axe, it's Amy's.

Why was I fixing Amy's axe?
Because I broke it. Again.

What do I mean, again?
Well, TECHNICALLY, it's the first time I've broken THIS axe. Which is actually her splitting wedge. The other axe, well...

Did I break Amy's other axe?
Yes.

How many times?
Twice.

How many times?
TWICE. (And no, despite what Amy says, I really only broke it twice. She says three times, but the "third" time I broke it, I hadn't fixed it from the second time yet, and I just, well, I finished breaking it - totally doesn't count as a separate break.)

Did I fix that other axe?
Yes.

How many times?
Twice, now. After I finished fixing the splitting wedge, I fixed the other one. Again. So I fixed two axes that day I hurt my hand.



Am I going to break her axe again?
No.

Why not?
Because she won't let me use her axes anymore. I had to go and buy my own. Ones with fiberglass handles.

Why do I break so many axes?
Cause I'm good with tools.



In my defence, I've never broken her hatchet, and I've used it plenty of times.



Yes, I know it has a metal handle.

Shut up.

Enough lollygagging - let's do some renos!

Skip: "You lollygag the ball around the infield! You lollygag your way down to first! You lollygag your way in and out of the dugout! Do you know what that makes you? Larry!"

Larry: "Lollygaggers!"

Skip: "Lollygaggers!"

Sorry, but pitchers and catchers reported on Monday, and Spring Training begins for real this weekend. Whooo! Go Jays! Lollygaggers!


Ahem... moving on...

First of all, thank you everyone for your kinds words both here and on Facebook as we mourned the loss of our dear friend. I couldn't help but notice that nobody sent any money to help us replace it, but hey: it's the thought that counts and we appreciate the sentiment.

Now that the maudlin is out of the way, we can focus on what everyone really comes here to hear: me hurting myself! Well, I didn't this week (yet) so how about I just post some pictures or something and stop prattling on about baseball, hmm?

Sadly - man, this post is turning out just disappointment top to bottom, isn't it? - the pictures I have aren't all that interesting. Well, they're interesting to us, and seeing the changes in person is pretty impressive (our drywall guy is an absolute artiste), but the pictures are kinda sorta mostly blah. It's white on white again, I'm afraid.

So, the backstory first: for our next project, we had planned to tackle the remaining two bedrooms upstairs - my office and the War Department's office-slash-guest-room (I think I'll start calling it the War Room - ooh, I like that). After some long discussions and due consideration given to schedules, plans, and the turning of the seasons, we decided to just do one room at a time, instead of both together. We didn't want to have to find storage for all of the bookshelves, books, beds, desks, and other assorted crap - not to mention setting up an office downstairs in the living room or something - and then having our lives all disrupted and shit for three months or however long it was going to take us.

Instead, we packed up all of the books and other detritus in my office, and set up a temporary desk in the War Room for me (the War Department is using her netbook instead of her desktop machine until this round of renos is over, so full props to her for making that sacrifice). Once all the crap was out of the way, we cut back the valance in front of the windows, scraped the popcorn off the ceiling, and called in Tony, the Master Mudder, to work his magic.

Now, somehow, in my multitude of pictures, I have absolutely none showing my office in its "before" phase - like, prior to us doing anything. All I have is a few shots of the office after we took everything out, and cut back the drywall in preparation for Tony. I don't even have any pictures of it before we took the carpet out - well, except for the one from the original real estate listing:



Looks... a lot bigger than it really is, actually. Must be the lens, obviously, as it looked a lot smaller when we finished prepping for Tony:



It took Tony four trips (and a broken ignition switch - don't ask), but he worked his usual magic, and now it looks freaking amazing.



I took a lot more pictures than that, but like I said, it's white on white, and hard to make out any details anyway.

So that's where the project stands now. This weekend we'll get started priming the ceiling, cleaning the walls, and filling and sanding a few minor holes.

Oh, speaking of which, it's time yet again for...

This Week In Mayonnaise

I don't have any pictures to share right now, but I thought it worth mentioning that Tony noticed the mayonnaise on the walls of my soon-to-be-office. Well, considering he IS the professional, and probably more familiar with all the different types of wall patches available, I asked him what it was.

He had absolutely no freaking clue. None.


He did like the fact that we called it mayonnaise, though. And so the mystery deepens...