Day Twentyfour

Has it been a week already? Let's see what has been accomplished.

Day 21. Monday. Best weather yet this year. Scrubbed the main doors and walls at the entrance.

Robin got off work early and was home by evening.

Day 22. Tuesdays. To the city for door knobs, Ordered a shed from the Hutterites. This is a major expense but will provide secure storage for furniture and possessions while house is under renovations. When it is finished with that purpose, it will be Robin's workshop and a place to park the tractor.

Day 23. Last weeks snow has melted. Weather has now turned to rain. The dogs that did so well at the new house for three days, have taken to jumping the fence and returning to the old house. They have done this twice now. Hope that when I start staying at the new house, they will want to stay there too.

Last week, snow. This dog shelter, made with salvaged supplies is one of the "DIY gone wrong" projects we get to deal with.

Opened up floorboards in living room. Shaved off the corners of the joists that were pushing the boards up. Floor now flat. In that spot anyways. While we will never be able to play marbles in this house, that one spot on the floor was too wonky for me to let it lie. So glad that Robin has lots of tools.

Lifting floorboards

Joist pushing floor board up

Shaving off the excess

Floorboards replaced

The exterior door knobs on house and garage are now all working and all on one key. The latch set on the right door pictured here, was broken. Instead of replacing it, (and any old passage knob would work) someone filled the space with silicone and screwed it back on. It took over and hour to scrape out the silicone and get the broken latch out.

Had to go back to city to get vent covers. Forgot to write them down on list, and forgot to buy when at store on Tuesday. Gas has spiked to $1.26/liter. That sort of doubled the cost of the vent covers.

Next, begin sub-floor in living room.

Day Seventeen

 You are going to laugh at me for this. I took the clock radio from my bedroom to the new house, so I could have some company. This morning, when I woke up, knowing that coffee is 1.5 miles away, I got up, dressed, brushed hair into ponytail and made bed. Walked into kitchen to find the clock registering 4:30. Now I have been known to get up at 4:30 in the summer. Light sensitive in summer. Seasonal affective disorder in winter. But it is April. So back to bed until 7:00.

Did I mention it is April? And that it is snowing for the third day in a row? I had to shovel the garage door. It had drifted as high as my knees. However, trusty snow tires still on the van, I made it to the new house and got dug in before 9:00

It was  a monumental moment for me at about 1:00. I got to the end. The kitchen cupboards have been scrubbed. Top to bottom. Left to right. All surfaces cleaned and disinfected, to the best of my ability. Today the bottom ones were finished. At the very end, a door came off where a chunk of framing is missing. Robin will have to fabricate a fix when he is back.

Now we will begin to prep for painting. I am trying to do the best job I can while considering the constraints of time and energy. Bought cupboard enamel last week in the city and prepped up a small shelf and one drawer so I could give them a quick brush and see if I like the end result. This paint is supposed to be very professional and has a self-leveling component. You have to put it on quite thick, but then one does not want drips and sags either. Probably after the third drawer, or so, I will lose my perfectionist aspirations and just head for the finish line.

Tomorrow is Good Friday. Commitments take me away from the house again, although I will have to be there to look after the pets. Have started looking for a mature cat that needs to be re-homed. Jo Katt, needs companionship and will need help with rodent control. I imagine we have the resources to provide a good home for at least six or eight felines.

Day Sixteen

Change your mindset. Change your reality. Switching home base is working!

Still sleeping at the old house, until I can get a bed moved over. But this morning, I got up and had no coffee here. I had to dress and head over to new house, where puppies were so happy to see me. We had our morning coffee there and by 7 am, the rubber gloves were on and cleaning commenced.

It has become apparent the kitchen renovations done in the '80's did not employ a cabinet maker. A carpenter perhaps, but not a finish carpenter. I pulled the stove and was dismayed to find this.

What we have here is DIY with no pride of workmanship. The plywood cupboards were left bare, no paint. The edges of the counter is raw, no laminate. the wall is part drywall, with four inches of vapour barrier that has never been trimmed. and to the left of that is the original fiberboard that was used for walls when this house was first built. The laminate flooring, which is a fairly recent instalation, is held in place with common nails. And the receptacle for the range was never installed properly. (yes, I turned the breaker off before trying to unplug stove.) On top of the unfinished surfaces is years of grease and oil that has dribbled down. It is immposible to clean it off of these raw surfaces.

This prompted an odd moment for me. I felt so sad for the little house.  No one had ever cared enough to take care of her in these unseen but important areas. It was like the house was embarrassed for having to reveal herself. But it is not her fault that she was not loved or cared for properly. I don't know how much I can fix of all this, but I can help her make the best of what she has. I promised the little house, I will do my best to help her earn back some self-respect. So rub-a-dub, scrub. The cleaning carried on for a five hour stretch. By the time I was done, the upper cabinets were completed.

Today, I feel like I got somewhere. Tomorrow, we finish the bottom cabinets.

Day Fifteen

It has been a whole week since I did anything at the house. I should be so much further along. I am reminded that we were on the road for six days. "You can't be in two places at once." I am told. But somehow, I should have figured a way to do the road trip and progress on the cleaning. I pause to daydream about a cleaning fairy that does my bidding. I send her instructions by telepathy.

Still I am feeling discouraged and having trouble prioritizing my efforts. So I go around in circles for awhile. Then, a plan begins to formulate. I am at the old house, wishing I was at the new house. But by the time the chores are done, bed made, pets fed, messages answered, the morning slips away, and then I am busy with commitments that take me away from the houses again. To wait for a large chunk of time and corresponding energy to go to the new house and dig in, is difficult to orchestrate. So I do some laundry and wipe the counters in the old house, thinking about all the work I am not getting to in the new house. Can you see the problem here?

Change your mindset, change your reality. It's time for me to flip my home base. If I am operating out of the new house, I will be there for the wee moments that I can use to chip away at the larger projects. Add that to the chunks of time where one can really dig in and things should start to come around.

So on day fifteen, I relocated the cat to the new garage along with another van full of bins from the basement. And then each of the dogs came to the new yard. They had just spent the weekend at a kennel, so I figured now was the best time to confuse them some more.  There is a makeshift dog run, that is attached to the house. I can see the question marks floating above their heads. But they are comfortable and safe and don't have to be tied up to keep them from bolting back to the old house.

Also my coffeemaker  found it's new spot. And I had hoped to move a bed up, but on my own, this won't happen as it is snowing and slushy again. I will be patient and wait for a helper so I don't drop my mattress in the mud.

Just yesterday, the  yard was clear of snow and ice. Thoughts were turning to spring work, and then like a late April Fool's joke, (a bad one mind you) winter returns. With snow in the forecast until Friday, it will be awhile before a rake is needed.

Day Nine

It was shopping day in the city today. Benjamin Moore paints. Rona for sub-flooring. Home Depot for laminate flooring. And a few sundries. Top speed on drive home was 80 km/h. Poor old truck.




This will be unloaded on Day Ten.

We also admired appliances and picked up a few inexpensive light fixtures. So many critical decisions made in such a short time frame left me with insomnia, so around 2 AM, instead of just tossing and turning I spent some time drawing out the floor plan.

As we are going away this weekend, there will be no further activity at OTU, for a few days. See you when we get back. 

Day Eight

Well that went (fairly) well......

The last of the Christmas bins have been moved from old basement to new garage.

Although that is not all of the Christmas "stuff"  Yes it is a lot. I used to decorate trees for businesses. Did I mention before that the house I am leaving had ample room for storage?

Next I got a good hot pail of water with TSP, Dawn and CLR Grease Magnet mixed up. Donned my rubber gloves, wiped two shelves and was interrupted by one of my most favourite people in the world.

Three year old Miss Bee came to see Gramma's new house. One of her astute observations was, "This is your bedroom? Where is your bed?"

So that was it for the cleaning, because housework will always be there but little girls that want to dance and sing in the sun beams are a miraculous moment of time that needs to be savoured.

Miss Bee and her mom left the old house with a box full of scrapbook albums. Then Robin arrived home, fresh off night shift. We completed a tour of the new house, waving our hands about and drawing pictures in the air of moved walls and new doorways. Tomorrow will be shopping day. Sub-flooring. Yipee!
  

Day Seven

Today was one of those days. Worked on all sorts of projects but didn't seem to get anywhere. And at the end of it, when I had almost completed the blog entry, we lost internet connection and the whole of it disappeared. Sigh.

Short summary of day. Vacuumed cupboards and living room floor. Brought ten bins of Christmas decorations over to store in garage.

The "New to You" sale on the weekend was successful on several fronts. The most pertinent to this project being that an entire mini-van, packed full, was removed out of the current home. And what I mean  by full is that a Tetris champion would have been impressed.

At the sale, our booth looked like this:

The bins held kids clothes, sorted by gender and size.

When we were done, the remaining items were taken to my daughter's home for a soon to be scheduled garage sale.

Sunday, the household mass was reduced by another couple of bins full, as I delivered the items I had sold on-line.

So much lifting and toting is waking up muscles that have been hibernating all winter.By the time I got to the house to clean on Monday, I was tuckered right out.

Robin comes home on Tuesday. It will be his second time inside the new house. The differences from his first walk through to now, will be obvious to him. But to me, in the thick of it, I just keep reminding myself......inch by inch.

Day Four

Friday started at a balmy -2C degrees. Hooray! We will be in plus temperatures today. A short snow squall lasted just long enough for me to say "What the...??" and then it melted as quickly as it fell.

An early call from brother and it was lined up to have my helper remove the particle board sub-floor. The residue from the demolition work is starting to form quite a pile. To cut down on the lifting and moving and lifting again, a contingency of Philippines showed up to push a converted trailer closer to the house. 

I had errands to run in town, and didn't get to start scrubbing until after 2 p.m. So I didn't make my goal today, but I am up to the cupboard before the fridge. And very happy that there were no more calling cards from furry critters today.

By the ends of the day, the living room floor is down to it's base.

The weekend with be reno free for me. Day 5 will have me busy with a "New to You" sale where I will be helping my daughter sell the baby clothes I no longer have room to store for her. (very, very sad to say good bye to all these wee things) and  Day 6 is a meet-up day for the on-line auction groups I am in.

Will return on Monday with more of the same action packed, riveting, edge of you seat, play by play of the old, tired, and ugly, house renovations.

Day Three

And behind cupboard door number two, is mouse droppings. Great. Really old ones too. Will be taking steel wool with me tomorrow to plug up the obvious entry points around the plumbing. Also made a note to watch for "free kitten" adds this spring. There are enough out-buildings to house a dozen or more felines.

Also today I have my first visitor. A Jehovah's Witness came to my door. Guess I am not as remotely located as I thought.

Was delighted when brother dropped off his helper, again. More flooring removed. And all the nails and screws and sundry fasteners that populated the walls, ceilings and windows are now history. Pulled out an old boot shelf and some "floating" corner mirror shelves too.

This is Mark. A man with a mission,

In all I sanitized one set of upper/lower cabinets and two drawers, and cleaned as best I could under the sink. Yes that is pretty slow for a day's work, but I am moving slowly, as I hurt in a lot of places. And I am being really fussy about reaching all the surfaces and getting into the corners. Evan in behind the drawers (which is where the majority of the dropping laid)  Inch, by inch, is my motto today.

Now a mouse free zone.

Tomorrow, I will aim to get as far as the fridge.

Day Two

And so we begin.

Tenants have vacated. And for a couple of  knarly bachelors, they left the digs in fairly good shape. Their stuff was gone and the kitchen floor swept and mopped. But in typical female fashion, I will have to do a deep cleaning to remove every trace of previous occupancies. And it is spring, (sort of) so a good spring cleaning is in order.

Started the day by taking 200+ photos of the interior. I always seem to forget to take "before" shots and then get half way through a project before I think about it. Hard to do before/after comparison when all you have is a photo from in the thick of it. So today I tried to get all the details of walking around the house. They will be good for reference later.

After that, I really didn't know what to do. Where to start? I walked around looking at details like the cove molding, and nibbled on dark chocolate, trying to get my bearings. Kind of a meet and greet between the abode and me. Eventually I occurred to me that the first thing that you see as you come in the door would be a good beginning. A stretch of glass door cabinets face the entrance. Below them, a straight bank of bottom cabinets with drawers. An afternoon of scrub a dub-dub, they are whistle clean and sparkly now.

In the middle of that job, my brother showed up with an able helper. When they were done, all the rugs, under-padding and carpet strips were pulled up and hauled to the dump. Guess that means we are committed to new flooring. I keep reminding myself  that it has to get worse, before it gets better.

Tomorrow we will find out, what's inside cupboard number two.

Day One

4:30 Rise and shine. Begin caffeination process.
6:30 Complete review of social network groups.
7:30 Wonder what compelled me to rise so early. Begin packing cleaning supplies and tools.
8:00 Load vehicle with enough cleaning agents to stock a small independent hardware store.
8:30 Drive to new home.
8:35 Greet former tenant who is taking things off his truck and adding to a pile of junk in the yard. Ask him facetiously if he is leaving you all this great stuff?
8:40 Learn that he has not completed evacuating the house or the garage.
8:50 Get a key.
9:00 Go to town to get keys cut and call it a day.

End of Day One.