Banister

I finallt replaced the dodgy old banister going up the stairs. We wanted a stainless steel rail but I couldn't find anyone who sold such a thing on this side of the atlantic. I was going to make one but stainless is so bloody expensive. We were at home depot and looking at lights when I saw the steel conduit used for running electrical cabeling. Our neighbour Benny had buit his own rail out of shower stock so I decided to take a page ou of his book and make out own rail but out of some burly steel pipe. - the conduit. The entire project cost $26. Conduit, Silver spray paint (for the brackets), self tapping screws, and chair caps for the ends.

Kitchen Floors

This weekend we tore up the kitchen floor and put down a porcelain "faux" slate tile. The tile looks and feels exactlylike a natural store, but the tile is harder and much less poreous than true slate. The tile is also fireproof so we can use it in the fireplace.

Door Story

I found the original front door under our deck a week or so ago and it was in pretty good shape - all things considered. I thought we should restore it and stick it back on the front of the house where it belongs. I has a giant window in it and is nice molded Douglas Fir. We screped all the old paint off and I picked up some security plastic instead of glass - for obvious reasons - and started after it. The hanging of the door- I hate hanging doors. so much screwing around. I ended up plane-ing the bottom, sanding down the sides and having to redrill the hinges (which would take hinge recesses for some reasion) all of this mucking about meant that there was a good 1/8' gap on the hinge side of the door and the same on the bottom. Weather stripping fixed the hinge side one no problemo - but the bottom is just a bit too small to take a proper draft cutter that you attach to the door. I still have to figure that out. Any way, we painted it Green.

Hail Cedar!

I was getting into the shower the other day and stepped onto a freezing cold tile floor and thought to my self "this sucks." My favorite thing is a long shower, and a cold floor is the pitts. The shower in our house is big. Really big. It's 58'' x 34'' and all tile. The floor tile is super haggard and gross. The grout is greying and dirty looking and the tile around the joint where the walls meet the floor are all chipped. Basically from the floor up to two inches of the wall is gross and terrible. This is a mild exaggeration - the tile is clean, and the chips are superficial, but when you want to have a sweet, sweet shower, these things get amplified. I was going to pour concrete over the tile to cover it up so that we wouldn't have to deal with grout any more but that was going to be a ton of work and really messy.

SO - two nights ago Peter McCarron cam over for a visit after his trip to Mexico and I was telling him about the shower issues. He mentionned that his parents who have recently built a house in PEI had put down a cedar shower tray over their tiles. It's warm, looks nice and smells awesome. I had seen a similar thing in a kitchen and bath magazine but done with teak. Cedar is equally weather/water resistant and looks nicer with our existing floors (spruce) I went out that night and bought $100 worth of cedar planks, some deck screws and a couple of l brackets and some finishing nails at Home Depot (thanks Ben and Wendy for the Gift Certidficate) I drew up a quick plan for a floor and a corner seat and started ripping planks.

I had two evenings to get it in and working level before Tamara got back from Victoria. It went reasonably fast until it came to leveling and shimming up the flor so it wasn't too bouncy. The Shower is thankfully quite square, but the floor is totally wacky. Shimy Shimmy until it sat flat.

Here's a picture of the finished shower. ( I still have to trim it out around the edges, but you get the idea)

It pulls up from one end to rinse once a month, which takes about 5 minutes, and then snaps back down just by letting er go! There you have it - Hail Cedar.

Some More Progress Pics

Painted Stairwell

Jack

Dining Room From Stairs Kitty Spot

The Office

Pumbling?

So I successfully pulled out the stupid busted bib, got the whole kit up and running (so I thought) Hoses connected, drainage engaged, plugs plugged, the whole 9. What do I find when I go to turn on the water? The past owner, instead of just taking the 10 minutes and $20 to fix the busted bib, went and hired a plumber to cut off the plumbing to the washer under the cabinets. For the love of gods! 4" of pipe missing on each pipe - all neatly capped with copper fittings! Holy crap, what a bummer. Because of the location (in the kitchen cabinets) soldering was a problem. I went out and bought a fire extinguisher because I knew Tamara's fire fighting brother Jeff would applaud this decision. I borrowed Greg's torch, bought a foot of copper pipe and four couplings, some solder and some flux. It's a good thing there's a hardware store two blocks away. Cutting the pipe was a giant pain in the arse. It was too tight to use a pipe cutter and a hack saw was taking forever. The solution was - use the light-saber. Nothing beats a good recip saw, seriousely if you don't have one go out and buy one- right now. Don't get a cordless one, get one that uses a good old fashioned "plug." It'll get used more than you think. Great for tight spaces that a jig saw can't reach and powerfull enough to cut through a HAUNCH of Alberta beef. After everything was cut to size, trimmed and sanded, I grabbed a sample tile for the kitchen floors and used it as fireproofing in the cupboards. All in All, the tight space was a pain in the butt and made getting the backside (ha!) of the pipes difficult. Having the fire extinguiser handy made the job way less stressfull. I did laundry last night.

What stupid thing to do - but at least it was done well.

The Best Tool Ever!


Cleaning up the cut pipe was way easier with a rotary tool than by hand

Tile Fireproofing kept the cabinets from going up like the North End Diner

Well, there it is, four solders for Eight Inches of tubing.

Allways take a trophy - that's what I say. Washer, you have been conquered!

X-tractor

I went to hook up the Washing machine today and discovered that there was a broken hose bib on the cold water tap. The bib had busted off right at the threads and the piece was still stuck inside. I couldn't just cut the fitting off because our pipes are integrated into the cabinetry in the kitchen. I went to Home Depot to find a pipe extractor but they had no idea what I was talking about. Finally I found a half inch pip extractor at CTS supply in Burnsude. $20 and ten minutes later I had the little nub out and a new bib threade in. I found out later that Home Dpot haspipe Extractors but the guy I spoke to couldn't plumb his way out of a paper bag - soggy paper at that.

All you need for an Extraction Mission

Pound the extractor in to the offending nub...

Twist it out with the ol' adjustable and...

Bingo Bango!