Halloween!

Craig decorated our house for Halloween... One night while I was sleeping!  Complete with a strobe light in the attic, two "people" in different windows with candles in their hands, white sheets covering the furniture, cobwebs galore, black window coverings, and bones and glow stick animal eyes in the yard.

Happy Harvest!

Grapes + Smashing = Juice!

It's harvest time!  And harvest we did.  I'm so impressed with all the deliciousness our yard has produced.  This year we successfully grew the following fruit:

• cherries
• strawberries
• black currants




I ate 2 of these per day for 4 weeks!


• grapes
• apples
• rhubbarb
• and 1 raspberry (that's right just one)

And for vegetables:

• spaghetti squash, cucumbers, zucchini,
• tomatoes, peppers, beets, lettuce,
• sunflowers, thyme, dill, basil,
• red, yellow and purple potatoes,
• and 1 very small carrot (we planted the potatoes too close and they over took the space)

  

  Our sole carrot.

  

 

Love how the hops just took over.



 We've discovered the calming powers of gardening.  It's quite therapeutic to watch things grow and to spend time with plants... not to mention it cuts our grocery bill in half!  We are already planning our garden for next summer.  The obsession has begun! 

Love colorful food.

Bye Bye Mr. Squirrel!

Today's moving day for our little furry friend! I'm not sure how long he's lived in our garage but he's been there longer than we've been here.  He had pretty easy access to the garage as there were holes in the roof and there are 2 trees that are touching the roof so he just wanders in and out all day long.  Hopefully one of the neighbors likes squirrels cause he'll be coming their way soon... Thanks to UM for the FREE shingles and to D for his help!  This project is complete.

Before

Half way...

Finished!

The Can of Worms

This summer was meant to be the summer of foundation repairs and plumbing.  But as anyone whose ever done a renovation before knows one thing ALWAYS leads to another.  Have a look at the plumbing process...I'm sure many of you can relate.

• Have the exact floor plan for the basement suite laid out and marked on the floor prior to roughing in the basement.
• Expose the plumbing throughout the house
• Have the layout of all the plumbing we want run/ changed on the main floor decided even though we aren't doing main floor renos just yet because once we drywall the basement ceiling it will be difficult to get to... So we may as well do it now! Which means we need to:

•  Design the kitchen

2x6 WOD

• Frame the basement to run the waterlines.  Which means we need to:

• Design a new staircase that allows for the minimum required headroom (so we know where to frame on that wall)
• Move the existing electrical (as it runs under some of the floor joists and is in the way)
• Build the stairs
• Order windows to ensure the framing is done correctly for the size of the new windows
• Install the window headers (a few joists are resting on the windows)
• Move the duct work in order to allow access to the furnace room
• Have a game plan for the duct work

So that's what we've been working on for the last little while... The framing process was interesting.  We had a lot of obstacles to face through the process which equals time.  A few weekends ago we had a bunch of great friends and family (thank you UR, Ju, D & N, D, C) come over to help us frame and at the end of the weekend and it was called One Weekend One Wall...  As that was all we had completed by the end of the day Sunday (although we did have a lot of the other walls close to completion).

The far wall was the product of One Weekend One Wall!  Check out the waterlines on the beam - beauty!

The duct work / furnace issue has been the craziest.  Originally our plan looked like this:

•  Keep the existing furnace / duct work for the main floor and abandon the heat runs to the basement
• Purchase a second furnace / install duct work for the basement suite (Code here requires that we have separate heating and ventilation systems) - Prior to making this decision we had explored electric baseboard heaters, in floor heating, and a few other options but decided this was the way to go.

When we were having the concrete poured in our basement we took out the furnace, as we knew we would be moving it anyway it just made sense to get it out of the way.  I realized a couple weeks ago that I made an error in the design of the basement suite because I had the door to the furnace room underneath the existing duct work.  The door height needs to be min 78" which would have been impossible with the location of the current duct work.  The plumbing has already been roughed in and the concrete poured so we can no longer move things around very much and unfortunately there was no other place that we could put the door. And because our current heat ducts are all in the center of the house on the main floor we have to crank the heat to get heat to the exterior walls...  So, we decided we may as well get the ducting run to beneath the windows and by the doors on the main floor while we have everything open up anyway.  That seems to be the recurring theme... While it's open we may as well do it all!  Haha!  So I've had a few furnace/ ducting guys out to give me some quotes and ideas.  The first 2 guys looked at the obstacles in the basement...

• Low headroom as is - 80" from concrete to bottom of floor joists
• Support beam that runs in the center below the floor joists that goes down 7"
• We can only run duct work on the east side of the beam to allow for the door
• It's a small space - just under 600 sq feet
• Aesthetic requests - I want to have the narrowest possible bulk head

 ... And told me that I should really consider electric baseboard heaters for the basement.  So I explored them and did the heat loss calculations and learned all about HRVs and talked it over and priced it out... and decided to go with the second furnace.  Luckily we had D help us out by getting creative and thinking outside the box and a game plan for the duct work was created.  We had a couple more guys come out to give us quotes and hopefully we'll get them all back soon and book this job as it's starting to get cold!

Here are our latest accomplishments... We finished framing 80% of the basement, we abandoned all the old waterlines in the entire house and ran new ones throughout! 

Progress

Pex - You have such a clean look!

Powder Room Anyone?

Just starting...

Making our home a bit more functional while maintaining and / or restoring as much character as possible is important to us.  So our first major functionality decision is to add a powder room to the main floor of the house.  The only logical / practical location was in the front entry.  There's a house in Garneau that has a similar lay out and provided us with a little inspiration.  Although, as I've mentioned before just measuring out space and going for it is not really our style.  So, one evening after we cycled through our same set questions:

• Is there enough room for a small closet?
• Toilet on the North or South Side?
• Is this enough space?
• Will it be too squishy?
• Will the entry way feel too small?
• Will we wish we hadn't built this?
• Should we center the window and make it longer or does added length just equal more wasted space?

We got in the car and headed to Home Depot, then Rona, then google, then Home Depot and then back to Rona to purchase the pedestal vanity and toilet that we had decided on.  We got them home and built ourselves a faux bathroom out of poly.  We left this up for about 3 weeks to sort of get a feel for it.

The Poly bathroom

In progress... Just like many projects at the moment!

Once we had made our decision official  we began the framing process.  As this was our first time framing we appreciate the framing lessons and advice from my dad, brother, J, and YouTube.

Pinspiration

Yay for Gutter Garden Basil!

Pinterest is the most bizarre phenomenon - yet I'm completely in love with it!  Every time I try explaining the concept to non users they end up thinking I'm weird.  But get me in a room with other Pinners and we can talk about it for hours!  It's funny to me how I'll see a friend and often the first words out of one of our mouths is, "Pinterest?" and we'll point at whatever creative item we've got going on that day.  The friend will answer, "Of course! Have you seen...?" And on it goes.  This year, inspired by pinterest I tried out a few of the garden ideas.

I really need to maintain this... and peel off the labels!

The original Gutter Garden failed and I had to replant the seeds.  This time I put straw in the dirt to help hold the moisture in the soil.  I haven't been as attentive as I would have liked to have been and the watering was lacking... luckily we started getting more rain after I re planted the gutter garden - Next year I'll remember to water you daily. Thanks to UR and AC for the free gutters and K for the straw!

My Wine Bottle Garden Border exists thanks to all the company I've had who've helped us drink that wine! I wasn't sure about this idea because of the maintenance piece so I only put up a very short section of the border for a trial run.  I think I'm going to abandon this project.  Who wants to weed wack or peel labels?  Maybe I'll retry this one next summer...

Re purposed concrete

The third project was using pieces of the concrete we removed from our basement to create a pathway.  I talked about this one a bit in a previous post (One Step Forward Two Steps Back).

So Grateful for so Much

I want to take a few moments to reflect on the kindness of others that has been so present in the last few months.  We feel fortunate to have so many great people in our lives.  Thank you for being AWESOME!

My Gratitude List (without naming specific names - As you read you'll know who you are)

• Family
• Friends
• Advice from Loved Ones - ALL THE TIME!
• Recommendations  
• Lending us Tools & Supplies
• Helpful Inspectors
• Finding a Great Foundation Company
• Answers to Questions
• Patience
• All Those Who've Lent an Ear
• Building the Path
• Garden Help
• Weed Lessons
• Moving Plants 
• Planting New Plants
• Picking Cherries
• Making Delicious Cherry Creations
• Zucchini
• All Those Who've Gone the Extra Mile
• Exceptional Plumbing Help
• Design Advice and Suggestions
• YouTube
• Google
• To Do Lists 
• Pinterest Ideas (post to come...)
• Free Gutters
• Weeding Volunteers
• Digging Volunteers
• Volunteers to Lift Heavy Stuff
• Kind Neighbors
• Visitors Checking out the Progress
• Cheap Stuff on Kijiji 
• Free Mulch
• Hauling Dirt
• Free Shingles
• Help with Framing
• Blog Views & Comments
• Asking and Listening to Updates on the Project
• Reminding us that it's Worth It
• AMAZING FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Concrete Milestone

These guys can get concrete anywhere!

It's been pretty exciting around here with the anticipation of 2 things... to have a mud free home and to have hot water! We've had mud (dirt + plumbing work) for about 3 weeks and cold water for about 2 weeks so this concrete was kind of a big deal around here!




The new foundation (frost wall construction) was poured  under the addition. 

Waiting for the concrete to cure...

New concrete foundation!

Close up of the forms

 
 The makings of a concrete floor complete with rough ins for the plumbing...

3 weeks ago...

Last week...

New Concrete!

Oh yes... and then I wrote our initials in the basement floor (I've wanted to write in concrete since I was a kid) but I didn't plan out where I would put my graffiti and as it turns out it was right where we ended up putting the hot water tank and since we were so excited about hot water I forgot to take a pic before we installed it so here's my best attempt at a good shot...

 

I will miss attempting to go to Millcreek pool every second day but we're grateful for the return of hot water!

One Step Forward Two Steps Back!

Isn't that the way most DIY projects go?  We spent a lot of time in the beginning of June moving around plants.  Our goal was mostly to move all the plants that were close to the house away from the house so that they would be safely out of harms way when the weeping tile was installed.  There was a patch in the front that we just loved!  I thought the new arrangement was gorgeous and it made me smile every time I walked to the front door.  When we decided to replace our water line on our property as part of the Epcor Lead Pipe Replacement Program we needed access to the water supply line which is located right in the center of the flower patch that had become our favorite patch in the front yard.  Although really when we weighed the pros and cons it was a given that we were digging up the yard - Drink lead water or spend a day redoing the garden? So in came the bobcat and out came the garden.

The garden after a little help.

The garden during the replacement

They spent about 4 hours coring the line, installing a new water line and a new sewer pipe. Fortunately, I had help getting the front back together!  With a little bit of help from Pinterest I found some great ideas to give New Life to Old Concrete and we created a short path using the concrete from our old basement floor.  Thank you to m & d, R and B for coming over to help us with the garden and removing heavy items from the basement.  In the pic to the right you can probably see the furnace that has been covered in orange poly on our front step... We're sure our neighbors love that! :)

Falling in Love with our Garden!

Digger's favorite spot in the yard... On the lettuce.

Plants + Weeds = Happiness

One of the things we were excited about when we first bought this house was the garden.  Craig loves plants and trees of all kinds and I love fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers.  We are fortunate the we bought a home that came with tons of plants.  Our first priority in the spring was to build a few more planter boxes for our vegetable garden.  Luckily we've had a lot of help in the garden - Thank you mom, dad, C, B, and N.  The gardening "lessons" often went like this, "That's a weed...  Oh that's a weed too...  You need to pull those - they're weeds!" It was quite humorous when C came over because she would say all the same things but she would tell Craig to do it!  HAHA!  The garden has been a fun adventure this year - each week it looks completely different as different flowers are always blooming and new fruits and veggies are ready all the time.  Our main goal this year was to make the yard more manageable-  which is a work in progress.  In the meantime we've decided to embrace and love the weeds as we can't keep up anyway!

First zucchini

Cherry bucket # 7

Enjoying the fruits of our (and my mom's) labor... I'm pretty proud of my first zucchini - I made Zucchini Lasagne which I highly recommend! It's simple, healthy and tasty.  We've also been enjoying the cherries - I made Paleo Dark Chocolate Cherry Brownies with N that ended up tasting like cheesecake... not sure how but it was good! Buying groceries is much easier when you take the following off your list - lettuce, strawberries, herbs, tomatoes, cherries, and zucchini.  The anticipation of more fruit and veggies is exciting - Gardening is good.

Garden + Love = Delicious Summer Lunches!

Keep Calm and Dig Another Trench!

The old pipes

The new pipes

I have a lot of respect for designers as I struggle with ensuring all of my measurements are 100%.  When I design things I often try to "eyeball it" and then figure it out after.  Which is a slight problem when the work is as extensive as the work we intend to do in our basement.  I normally do a lot of moving around the space and squatting to imagine the actual size of a toilet, etc ... Being fully aware that if I took out a tape measure I would know for sure if these things would fit but I continue to do my thing.  Unfortunately, I was unable to use my "procedure" for a lot of the basement stuff because I had the plans done before we gutted the basement.  The process to develop a basement suite begins with submitting a site plan showing parking, the proposed floor plan for the suite, a floor plan of the main floor of the house, pictures of all sides of the house, a drawing of all the plumbing, heating and electrical changes and the location of the carbon monoxide and smoke detectors.  I completed my application and received my permit in March and filed the plans away while we transitioned to foundation mode.  So, last Friday evening I got out the plans as we started prepping for the basement rough ins.  As I wandered around the space trying to place all of the plumbing I realized I had made a bit of an error.  The shape of the furnace/ laundry room would not allow me to move a washing machine in or out of the space without first removing the furnace.  Practical?  Not at all.  So after hours of working through how we could regain functionality and practicality while staying as close to the original plan as possible we went to bed.  I recently saw the saying, "Keep calm and take a nap" on pinterest and I do believe this is often the best solution.  Luckily we were right and in the morning (with the help of N and my dad) we maneuvered one wall and voila!  Functionality had been regained.  One full day of digging trenches + gluing ABS + 3 trips to Home Depot + help from great people and the rough ins in the basement were finished and ready for inspection. 

Before

After

The inspector came on Tuesday...  Tuesday is also the day I realized how susceptible I am to other people's feedback.  We had installed a mainline backwater valve - I had spent time convincing people who questioned this that the guy at the permit office had explicitly told me to do this.  However, we were not supposed to put in a mainline backwater valve, we were supposed to put in separate backwater valves for the basement plumbing.  When he first said this I told him that the only reason we had done this was because the man at the permit office had told me I needed to install one.  The inspector was really kind and helped me come up with a solution as to how we could remedy this issue without having access panels in the middle of our future bathroom.  We came up with a plan, I took a deep breath and then started digging a new trench.  As I reflected on the day and on how the guy at the permit office told me one thing and the inspector told me another I started to piece this turn of events together.  I would like to label it telephone.  The guy at the permit office had explained the need for backwater valves in the basement to me and he showed me a few pictures in a period of about 1 minute.  I processed what he said and then I talked to a few people about it and as I explained it someone started talking about a main line backwater valve.  I pieced all the information from the day together and transformed the original message into something slightly different.  WOW!  Anyway, this was my mistake and I was feeling terrible that I had blamed it on someone else.  I had N come over to help me and in a few hours we had the basement plumbing completely roughed in and up to the correct standards.  Wednesday, the inspector came back and gave us the florescent green sticker and I cleared up the accusation I had made the previous day.  It feels good to fess up to mistakes and accept responsibility when needed.  Now I need to get these pipes to the Eco Station...

Solid Foundation

This Lego image seemed very fitting! (image from tsbmag.com)

Prior to purchasing our home we had a home inspector and a structural engineer examine our home.  It was found that from what could be seen the only major "foundation" issue was the rear addition on the back of the house.  You could see large, visible cracks in the foundation.  So before purchasing the home we got a few quotes on how much it would cost to fix and then we negotiated the purchase price of the home accordingly. 

Cracks on the back corner of the addition

As soon as we moved in we started gutting the basement with hopes of developing a basement suite to help off set the mortgage.  Also, we may be addicted to income property... Does anyone reading this know Scott McGillvray?

Anyway, once we had the basement demoed we discovered a bit of water on the interior, some large cracks in the walls, and numerous cuts in the floor joists.  So, we went to the City of Edmonton's "This Old House" seminar that focused on foundations of old  homes in Edmonton to get some more info.  We spent a great deal of time consulting our friend Google and then we ended up hiring another structural engineer to give us some recommendations.  After hearing his recommendations and getting quotes from 4 different foundation repair companies we were feeling pretty overwhelmed and confused.  All 5 individuals had varying opinions and recommendations and although there was a degree of overlap between some of them there were many differences.  This process along with us wrapping our heads around all the opinions took us a few months to sort through.  We asked a million questions, talked it over with ALL of our friends and family (thanks for all the input), and finally made some expensive decisions!  Which leads us to where we are now... 

Maybe we should cancel the weeping tile and replace with a moat?

Temporary support beams while the footings set

I wonder what lives in the straw...

Temporary support beam under the addition...
That beam is holding up my bathroom!

The company I chose is installing a weeping tile system and sump, pouring new footings and replacing the teleposts in the basement, and installing a frost wall under the addition.  They started about 10 days ago and have been working hard.  I'm relieved that this process has finally begun.