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!

Roof! Roof!

Well the roofers made a surprise visit to the house this morning and started ripping up our back roof. We should be water tight by this evening! They are replacing the fascia board, all rot found in the supporting deck and putting up the proper drip edge that was missing on the last roof. Hopefully we will have the gutter man in on monday to set up a proper gutter system. I'll post up some pictures of the ridiculous gutter job that the previous owner had done.

Elctricity is to blame

A wiring problem is being blamed for a fire that levelled a landmark north-end Halifax eatery Wednesday.

The former North End Diner and North End Pub complex on Gottingen Street was a mess of charred and icy rubble Thursday.

The fire broke out mid-afternoon and took just two hours to reduce much of the more than 100-year-old structure to ruins.

"It was an electrical malfunction above a bathroom ceiling in a void space," said Divisional Fire Chief Bryson Wilson.

About 30 firefighters rushed to the burning bar and restaurant at about 3 p.m. but they were soon forced to fight the flames from the exterior.

Crews were rotated every three or four hours "to keep them out of the cold weather and to prevent hypothermia from setting in," said the divisional chief.

Most of the fire was out by suppertime but excavators were used to move debris so hot spots could be doused.

Around midnight, investigators started sifting through the charred timbers and twisted metal. By 4 a.m. they had confirmed a wiring problem was to blame.

Late Thursday morning, security tape surrounded what was left of the business and security guards hired by the owner, Grafton Conner Group, kept people away from the rubble.

The fire has left about 25 people jobless and at least two people who lived above the pub homeless.

Waitress Karen King stood across the street at about 11 a.m. shaking her head, as if in disbelief.

She woke up Thursday morning at 5:30 as usual, but no longer had a 6:30 shift to go to.

"I was just wandering in the house. I couldn’t stay home," she said.

"I’m at a loss for words."

She hadn’t heard from the Grafton Conner Group but believed officials were meeting Thursday morning and would soon get in touch. Group spokesman Gary Muise could not be reached for comment.

"It will be missed. I hope we can have a place where we can all gather again and have as much fun and enjoy every day as we did in the past," Ms. King said.

An apartment complex and convenience store next to the pub and diner were saved by a brick firewall, Divisional Chief Wilson said. The apartment occupants were evacuated until just before midnight Wednesday.

Amber Bishop, an apartment resident and manager of the Needs store in the building, as well as her boyfriend and four cats spent much of Wednesday afternoon and evening in a Metro Transit bus brought in as a temporary shelter.

"The cats weren’t thrilled," Ms. Bishop said.

Red Cross volunteers hosted the evacuees and offered drinks and a hot meal.

While she sat in the bus, she saw several employees of the pub and diner milling around and watching their workplace burn.

"They were looking confused and lost," she said.

( djeffrey@herald.ca)

’It will be missed. I hope we can have a place where we can all gather again and have as much fun and enjoy every day as we did in the past.’

OH NO!!! NED's DEAD

Our favourite Diner NED's that is block down from us has burned to the ground. I was driving by yesterday around 2pm on my way back from a meeting when I saw smoke and thought our house was burning down. It turned out that it was the diner on fire a block down. This was our favourite place to eat breakfast and one of the best venues for bands in the evening. I hope they decide to rebuild!

Kitchen and Bath

We spent this weekend painting and reparing stuff in the kitchen and bathroom. We discovered that the leak in the roof is more of a torrential downpour - right into the shower thank goodness. I was up on the roof on sunday shoveling off the ice and snow that was melting. This stopped the leak for now. So here are some pictures from the weekend...

Here Are Some Pics From the Weekend of Work
This is the new and improved entry way - notice the lack of carpet! I had to replace some of these floorboards, but it was really in pretty good shape all things considered.
This is the living room in mid-shred. This subflooring was the most ifficult of all the rooms. It was double nailed every six inches. It came up in little tiny slivers and squares. The dust was disgusting.
Al looks at the irritating floor.
Greg Jess and Clancy all scraped the stairs down to a reasonable finish for painting after we ripped off the carpet. Thank gods for Greg's ladder collection.
Lehanne Paints
The Dining room Progresses



Clancy was a floor sanding machine. He worked tirelessly for three days in the craziest dust storms imaginable.