Progress on the list...

Here's how we're doing two years after the last update: (the yellow ones are things done since the last time)

1. Stop using paper towel: use reusable cloths to deal with spills, cat barf, etc.
2. Use up my disposable antibacterial wipes & don't buy any more!
3. Stop using disposable duster & sweeper cloths.
4. Get a clothesline in the back yard & drying rack for the house so I can stop drying virtually all my clothes in the dryer.
5. Install CFLs & LED lighting in all fixtures in the house as the incandescents & halogens burn out. (We've only got the halogen fixtures left--everything else is CFL)
6. Stop drafts in the house with weatherstripping & sealing up holes in the siding before winter.
7. Get more sweaters & woolly slippers & keep the heat down during the winter.
8. Replace the crap single-pane windows downstairs with energy efficient ones. 
9. Look into adding insulation to the external walls upstairs.
10. Get my plastic bag usage down to zero. (We almost never get them when shopping & recycle them with SPUD, however, we've started using ziplocs again...)
11. Eat less meat & choose organic/free range when I eat it.
12. Grow more food. (We've got compost & are ordering delivery of a couple of yards of soil to build a raised bed the whole length of the back yard)
13. Make more of our own beer & wine.
14. Sell the car & go back to using Cooperative Auto Network vehicles exclusively.
15. Try to buy local more often.
16. Buy products with less packaging.
17. Try to buy clothing made with greener fabrics.
18. Start carrying a good travel mug so I can stop using disposable cups when I buy hot drinks out.
19. Bring my lunch to work at least four times a week to avoid the packaging that eating out always entails.
20. Cut my shower time down to 5 minutes a day. (Kinda gave upon this one because my shower time is my break time away from the sprog. I feel like I need 15 minutes)

Progress on the list...

Here's how we're doing so far:

1. Stop using paper towel: use reusable cloths to deal with spills, cat barf, etc.
2. Use up my disposable antibacterial wipes & don't buy any more!
3. Stop using disposable duster & sweeper cloths.
4. Get a clothesline in the back yard & drying rack for the house so I can stop drying virtually all my clothes in the dryer.
5. Install CFLs & LED lighting in all fixtures in the house as the incandescents & halogens burn out. (We've only had to replace one or two... but we're on the way!)
6. Stop drafts in the house with weatherstripping & sealing up holes in the siding before winter.
7. Get more sweaters & woolly slippers & keep the heat down during the winter.
8. Replace the crap single-pane windows downstairs with energy efficient ones. (We've gotten estimates so far...)
9. Look into adding insulation to the external walls upstairs.
10. Get my plastic bag usage down to zero. (NEARLY there!)
11. Eat less meat & choose organic/free range when I eat it.
12. Grow more food. (When spring actually really gets here... yes!)
13. Make more of our own beer & wine.
14. Sell the car & go back to using Cooperative Auto Network vehicles exclusively.
15. Try to buy local more often.
16. Buy products with less packaging.
17. Try to buy clothing made with greener fabrics.
18. Start carrying a good travel mug so I can stop using disposable cups when I buy hot drinks out.
19. Bring my lunch to work at least four times a week to avoid the packaging that eating out always entails.
20. Cut my shower time down to 5 minutes a day. (This has proved REALLY hard because it takes a good minute or two just for the hot water to make its way upstairs through our old 1/2" pipes. I'm not willing to start my days with a cold shower... eek!)

Greenifying my green house

I was reading a friend's blog today & got inspired to take a few more steps toward becoming more green at home. I consider myself to be greener than the average person already, mainly because whenever I read any tips or take any quizzes on the subject, I've already done the majority of the things they suggest. I cycle commute or take transit to work, use recycled TP, eat mainly organic produce, recycle all the plastic, paper & metal that I can, use my own fabric shopping bags, subscribe to newspapers digitally, use CFLs, wash my clothes cold in phosphate-free detergent, replaced my old furnace with a 96% efficient one, got a new flow-through hot water tank... there's probably more, but this post is really about what I still need to do... I started a mental audit of my household & discovered a few things that the green me had suppressed thinking about. Here's a list of my goals:

1. Stop using paper towel: use reusable cloths to deal with spills, cat barf, etc.
2. Use up my disposable antibacterial wipes & don't buy any more!
3. Stop using disposable duster & sweeper cloths.
4. Get a clothesline in the back yard & drying rack for the house so I can stop drying virtually all my clothes in the dryer.
5. Install CFLs & LED lighting in all fixtures in the house as the incandescents & halogens burn out.
6. Stop drafts in the house with weatherstripping & sealing up holes in the siding before winter.
7. Get more sweaters & woolly slippers & keep the heat down during the winter.
8. Replace the crap single-pane windows downstairs with energy efficient ones.
9. Look into adding insulation to the external walls upstairs.
10. Get my plastic bag usage down to zero.
11. Eat less meat & choose organic/free range when I eat it.
12. Grow more food.
    
13. Make more of our own beer & wine.
14. Sell the car & go back to using Cooperative Auto Network vehicles exclusively.
15. Try to buy local more often.
16. Buy products with less packaging.
17. Try to buy clothing made with greener fabrics.
18. Start carrying a good travel mug so I can stop using disposable cups when I buy hot drinks out.
19. Bring my lunch to work at least four times a week to avoid the packaging that eating out always entails.
    
20. Cut my shower time down to 5 minutes a day.

So, there's a fairly exhaustive list of things yet to be done. Let me know if you can think of any others. What have you done lately to be more green? Got any plans/goals? Please comment!

More Sewing!

Dress #2 is complete. Custom-made via emailed measurements & specs. Hope it fits, Wem!!

Can't quite believe it, but I'm jonesing to make another one. This time it will be a little black number, possibly with sleeves. Same pattern, though. I think I may have a problem here--I can't go more than a day without planning another sewing project...

In other news, we got a BBQ from a garage sale. As long as the damn thing works (we'll see... paid $10 for it, so... keep your fingers crossed, hey?) now we can grill! Woohoo! I plan on spending as much of my summer as possible out on our deck... who's with me?!?

Sewing!

I have finally made something with a piece of fabric that I bought at Value Village a few months ago. Okay, it's a bedsheet, I'll admit it. It was about $3, found at the 50% off sale.


I was inspired by Melissa of Tiny Happy, who I read nearly daily. She posted about a dress she'd made recently & mentioned liking the pattern (New Look 6725). Coincidentally, the style was just about what I was looking to create with the crazy floral bedsheet. I wanted something late 60s, maybe mod, comfy & loose for the summer.


I hadn't made anything with a commercial pattern in years--I usually just make things up as I go along, basing my garments on another item of clothing that I like the fit of. So it was refreshing to have exact pattern pieces & instructions.

The other thing I made recently was a t-shirt for my friend Raine. We were looking through my cache of XL t-shirts (from Village de Valeurs, where else?) to find one to rework for her. She loves purple & had been looking for a new purple top. Voila: a lovely eggplanty colour & it had 'Vancouver' on it as well!

Summertime.... & the livin' is easy...

Well, not so much. Summer is my busy season as gobs of ESL students flock to the city & to my school. & then there's the stilting. I tend to have a gig per weekend through most of the summer. Busy busy busy.

So little renovation has happened in the past few weeks. I have, however, actually unpacked a lot of my sewing room. FINALLY. The shelving donated by my lovely sister & brother-in-law has helped the organizational process immensely. Now I am actually getting inspired to sew! I've made a top for myself & a redux tee for a friend already. More projects are swimming around in my brain as I write this...

In other house-related news, our first house-guest has come & gone (We will miss you, Raine!) & we're already pencilling in the second batch of house-guests for next week. At least if we're not renovating the house, we're taking advantage of it. It feels good to actually use all the space we've got: stick a guest in the extra room, use the sewing room for making things, get out on the deck for barbeques & brew beer in the space under the front steps.

The beer experimentation has been interesting. The first batch of lager was... ummm... interesting. Not a lager fan, myself. The second batch will be a stout. Already promising, according to our taste-testing. Looking forward to cracking open some of it around my birthday in August.

Here is a link, house-related, of course:

Vancouver's Ugly Home Craze. City hall spawned weird new housing form: the 'Mohawk.'

The Honeymoon is OVER

After a brief few months of cordiality, more or less, our neighbours have gone insane. Insane in an aggressive, hostile, glaring & shouting kind of way. They seem to feel that it is their right to lay claim to the street parking in front of their property and ours. Though saying they seem to is really not accurate: they made their entitlement clear in no uncertain terms. Additionally, they insisted that we move our vehicle immediately so they could park a car length closer to their home.

It's baffling, really, as we've never had trouble parking the car near the house. Nor have we been so frustrated by parking that we would harass & insult our neighbours over the issue. But perhaps for them, having to walk an extra 5 metres or, *gasp*, across the street to get to one's house is too much to bear...

So the war is on. If they are going to make me feel uncomfortable in my own home, on my own property, I will fight back. But it will not be with glaring, threats or screaming, which is their way. The first order of business is to tackle their nasty smoking habit.The smoke filtering into my home through the windows has disturbed me for months. I am not a smoker & find the smell of smoke to be quite offensive. I am concerned about the effect of second-hand smoke on my asthma, as well. However, I have not approached them directly about it, as I dislike confrontation & assumed correctly that they would not take well to any suggestion that they change their behaviour.

As you may know, the city of Vancouver recently introduced a new & stricter bylaw vis-à-vis smoking. As of October 2007, people are no longer allowed to smoke near windows & doorways to buildings.

VANCOUVER HEALTH BY-LAW NO. 9535

Ban on smoking

2.2 A person must not smoke:

(e) within six metres measured on the ground from a point directly below any point of any opening into any building including any door or window that opens or any air intake;

So, according to the bylaws, it is illegal for our neighbour to smoke directly below our bathroom window, which must be opened to allow damp air out, as it is our only source of ventilation for showers. Since we have several windows along that side of the house, it's basically illegal for her to smoke anywhere but the middle of the front or back yard.

The next question is, how do I proceed?

...must... get... going...

...can't... bring... self... to... renovate...

I'm finding it hard to get started. Easy to shop for materials & research stuff endlessly online, but hard to actually start the work of sanding, TSPing, ripping up rotting subfloors, painting, replacing light fixtures...

Any advice out there on how to get going & keep on track? Lists haven't really worked so far, except for the shopping part.

What I'm reading...

Thought I'd add a list of links to the blog. These are a hodge-podge of blogs that I find illuminating for various reasons. They mostly fit into the categories of design, crafting, fashion & politics. Check them out on the right side of the blog here & enjoy clicking!

I'm excited about a dish rack... weird.

How much time do you spend on any given day thinking about your dish rack? Probably none, but perhaps you should think about this one... Before you say, "Ack! You paid $70 US for a dishrack!?!" Let me just say that we bought it at Costco for quite a bit less than advertised on Simple Human's website. It's one of the best designed dish racks I've seen in a while.

A second shelf can be positioned to have a two-tier drying space over the rack, or vertically to support large items, or extended outward horizontally. There are four cup hooks that slide around the sides. The tray beneath it has two sets of drain holes so that you can position the whole rectangular shebang lengthwise or widthwise (is that even a word?) next to your sink. To prevent drips onto your counter, you can plug the unused drain holes with the included silicone plug. The tray also has extendible legs (very similar to a computer keyboard) that will tilt it in the direction required. Another advantage this rack has over others is that the pieces all come apart--the plate rack part is removable for cleaning, as is the knife rack insert & the cutlery bin.

Why did we buy another one, when we had a perfectly usable one? Our previous one was an oval-shaped solid plastic rack from Umbra. It was an sad case of function following form: aesthetically pleasing, but for the fact that it was hard to clean & tended to get scummy between the plate/bowl ridges. If you had large bowls, pots or wine glasses loaded onto it, invariably there would be a 'dishalanche' at some point during use.

I'm going to hang onto the Umbra rack, maybe for auxiliary use in drying paintbrushes & containers... sweaters? snow boots?

Some headlines for you

"Country's housing price growth cools off"
CBC News, February 15, 2008
By 'cool off', they mean a price increase of only 8.6% from last year. However, not in Vancouver. We were up 10.8% over last year's average sale price, bringing us up to $588,183. I assume that's the average including condos & detached homes in the city of Vancouver. Now, I'm not an economist & have yet to figure out why they'll say 'slowdown' or 'decrease' when the numbers seem to indicate increases, but isn't an increase of 10.8% pretty damn good?

"The great boom is winding down"
Globe & Mail Report on Business February 15, 2008
Same numbers as most other articles, with a slightly more pessimistic interpretation: a slowdown. When I hear any word with 'down' in it, I get a little knot in my stomach, but slowdown doesn't mean the prices will actually go down. I have to stop & remind myself that it just means they will stop skyrocketing.

"Housing is healthy"
National Post, February 9, 2008
The headline's nice & everything, but the --- was really reassuring: "CMHC: Real estate investment is still wise across Canada". I admit, it crossed my mind a few times that if the real estate market actually did tank after we'd bought, we could be rather screwed. There would have to be a HUGE slump for us to end up with a mortgage higher than the value of our house, but it would really suck to lose equity.

I'm not really worried about a slump though, because the only people I can find saying that it's coming are generally self-proclaimed experts on real estate who are holding off on buying until everything becomes magically affordable. When I read their blogs, or talk to them in person, they often seem to overgeneralize too: reading housing stats for Canada & expecting Vancouver to follow suit.

If the last few years of weirdness in following the housing markets across Canada have taught me anything, it's that every city is a totally different ballgame. So many cities have skyrocketed, while others are stagnating. Look at housing prices over the last year in Regina (+24.9%), Edmonton (+21.5%), Saskatoon (+45.1% for a new house), Montreal (+4.1%), Toronto (3.4%). five years ago Regina & Saskatoon weren't on anybody's radar when it came to housing prices. You could have bought a house for less than an SUV around Saskatoon a few years ago.

"Real estate affordability to improve, experts say"
National Post, February 12, 2008
This article predicts housing prices to level off, more or less, & interest rates to continue falling. Sounds great to me! With a floating rate mortgage, I'm happy to see a downward trend when it comes to the cost of borrowing.

"Relax, the sky's not falling"
Globe & Mail Report on Business February 15, 2008
While not specifically about real estate, this is a heartening one. Everyone who thought Canada was tied to the US as it was falling off the bridge is realizing that either the cord is very long, or it's more psychological than real. As the US economy flounders in the havoc that the greedy mortgage lenders & naive home-buyers have wrought, Canada's doing... fine, thank you very much.

I think I'll leave off at that. So relax, all you Chicken Littles out there.

The Biltmore, plywood & beige

We finally went to the Biltmore. It was CJSF's 5th birthday party: a few bands & DJs. Unfortunately, I was pretty tired from a long week, so after the third act, I fell asleep, so we went home. It was nice to have such a short commute: I was in bed by 12:30.

Today we went to Home Despot, again. We've been there nearly every day since we moved into the house. We scored an amazing deal on a 3'x8' piece of sanded plywood to build a shelf for the microwave. $5! We took advantage of their paint sale to load up on low-VOC paints to fix up the suite downstairs. We'll get the paint tinted later, probably to a neutral beige colour. The question is, which beige? These two are in different colour 'families' but seem so similar that it's hard to understand why they even have different names...

Who knew?

I've just learned that the bastion of pink neon, the navigational landmark for many a drunken punk heading eastward on Kingsway, the Biltmore, is the new hotspot. Apparently the non-top 40, slightly less commercialized nightclubs are being forced out of the downtown core by the crazy rents. The good ol' Bilt is trying to break the oddly narrow-minded Vancouver attitude that the only clubs worth going to are downtown.

I'm not sure what to think of this new development in my new 'hood. The Biltmore is well within stumbling distance of here. That makes for an easy trip home after a night at the bar. It's far enough away that we should hear it & whatever brouhaha will likely occur outside its doors, thankfully. I guess we'll have to pay the place a visit & try it out.

Anyone want to join us?

The only good roach is a dead roach.

I think the roach control (that we unfortunately paid quite a bit for) is working. Found another one hanging out next to the fridge & poked it with a stick: no reaction. Then I sprayed him with a lovely-smelling mandarin cleaner: a bit of twitching.

Theoretically, the little bastards will be 95% poisoned within 2 weeks. Their survival skills, which have enabled them to survive for millennia, work against them when it comes to poison. They're cannibalistic: when a roach eats a poisoned one, it'll die too.

Bleagh. I will be very happy if I never see one of those awful bugs again.

Mouse Memorial #2

Lil' Sniffy passed away suddenly on January 27th, 2008. He had a good life, snacking on crumbs, running about in the warm, dry cabinets & walls of the house. He will be missed by his 38 brothers, sisters & half-siblings, his parents & grandparents. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in the form of overflowing bird feeders, crumbs on counters & open boxes of food in cabinets. A short service was held at the toilet, prior to flushing. Rest in peace, Lil' Sniffy.

RENT (not the Broadway musical)

As I’m leaving the land of really crazy rent (Whistler), it makes me wonder if rents are going to stay where they are in Vancouver. Compared to the rest of the country, rent in Vancouver is not that bad. It’s not the priciest, by far. But the real estate is, so why the discrepancy? Maybe the rents are going to have to go up in Vancouver soon to reflect the cost of buying. I’d have thought they’d be connected, as so many rental suites are condos or basement suites that someone bought as an investment or ‘mortgage helper’.

Or maybe the rents won’t go up. Maybe the competition from the basement suites & apartments that were bought waaaay back when real estate was reasonable will keep the rents down. Hm.

It’s an interesting issue for a lefty like me to decide how much money to ask for our ground-floor suites. There is an element of ‘landlord guilt’: I have now become one of the petit-bourgeoisie! Ack! I’ve got a red star tattoo! I used to be a card-carrying Socialist! I’ve joined the dark side!

On the one hand, $750 for a one-bedroom suite (heat, hot water & electricity included) seems high. That’s nearly 60% of before-tax income for a full-time minimum wage worker. I never paid that much in rent when I was renting, between 1997 & 2006.

On the other hand, $750 only comes out to about 20% of the average person’s before-tax income in BC. It’s in line with other places in our area. Theoretically the person who lives in our suite would not need a car, as we are so central. And while it’s true I never paid that much myself, it was because I shared with roommates. The last one-bedroom place I lived in was $700 plus electricity. That was eight years ago.

Part of my plan to assuage my ‘landlord guilt’ is to provide decent housing. Our plan is to fix the suites up beyond the point where they’re just ‘rentable’. I want to paint them completely, fix the bathroom floors & broken tiles, install proper emergency exit-able security bars, add cabinet latches… it’s a long list. I don’t want my tenants to resent me because I never fix anything. I don’t want my tenants to trash the place because it was in crappy condition when they got it anyway. I want to create a space that someone can make home & be proud of.

One day we will all look back on this and laugh

So I own a house in Vancouver. A single detached home worth well over half a million- it is creeping awfully close to 3/4 of a million, which is what the owners were originally asking. I got it at a bargain price in comparison.

But it is a project! For starters, we have discovered active mouse and cockroach activity, as my recent posts indicate. Secondly, I have a furnace that is on its last legs, and a lower suite with a toilet that is about to sink into the earth with whoever seats themselves upon this underworld lord's throne. I am facing a million DIY jobs and some of them I am not capable of doing myself. I have to prioritize and make at least one of the suites ready to rent in the next month or two, or the payments will slaughter my ability to save any money at all. Fortunately I won a $500 Home Despot gift card from my employer to help pay for some immediate things.

On the plus side, I now have a handy garage, covered deck and I can skip stones and bounce them off of boutique shopping hipsters on Main St. Despite being closer to what I want, this place is the quietest place yet, as traffic drops to almost nothing at night. I am finally in a house in the neighbourhood I wanted to be in.

I think that my social life will suffer considerably, as the only priority is getting the house in order and I think it will take a year or two of all my weekends to achieve this.

This is the price you pay for Exile on Main Street- which just may be the last best album by the Rolling Stones, so all in all, it's not a bad place to be.

No mousies, but furnace estimator finally crawled out of his hidey-hole.

It took a few weeks of trying, but the nearest plumbing and heating company's (3 blocks away) furnace installation estimator finally paid me a visit after I called him first thing in the morning and he let me know he *might* be able to come by at some point in the day. As it stands, he called me with about 10 minutes notice- good thing I hadn't left the house- and told me he was on his way.

When he walked into the basement suite that contained the furnace and hot water tank closet, he looked at the outside of the furnace, stooped down and opened the door to the heat exchanger and read the thermal output of the existing furnace 105,000 BTU and told me he would be recommending a 120,000 BTU unit, to help warm the downstairs suites. And that was about it. There was no measuring, no questionnaire to fill out, nothing. Without my barrage of questions, he could have been back in his truck in 5 minutes. And this I waited several weeks for.

One Modest (ex)Mouse.

Seems the cats (or "mousers", as I commonly refer to them) did their mousing job and left us a slightly snacked-on mouse carcass near their favorite spot next to the heater in the living room. It was quickly disposed of, kitties were thanked, and I resisted the urge to impale it on a spike as a message to the other mice.

Looks like we have more than just a historical mouse infestation to deal with. I'm glad for all the Tupperware we have now.

Surprise!

We're in, finally. After a gruelling 11-hour move, it's done. Now onto the unpacking & the surprises. So far there have been quite a few, some not so bad, some extremely frustrating. Here are the ones I can remember:

• The front door lock is so sticky that you'd think you had the wrong key every time you try to open it.
• There is a lot of mouse poo in the cabinets.
• There are no power outlets in the back two 'bedrooms' of the house. A single bulb in the middle of the ceiling of each, with an accompanying oddly-placed switch is all the electrical they've got.
• The hot water that comes from the taps is hot, really hot.
• There are no bathroom fans.
• The few electrical outlets in the house that we do have are set in the wall sideways & some aren't grounded.
• The windows are only three years old.
• The street we're on seems to be quieter at night than where we were before so I've stopped sleeping with earplugs.
• We can't seem to get CBC with the rabbit ears, only Global.
  
• The kitchen was really not clean. Bleagh.

Let's just hope that there aren't any worse surprises in store for us...