Vent-Thing

Anyone have any idea what this thing is? It has a couple of thin wires in it, one yellow, one blue. I call it "Vent-Thing" and will be hiding it behind drywall and plaster soon. It will become a mystery for the ages. I am thinking about putting a time capsule in there for future generations to find. I'm not kidding, a newspaper from this year, some recordings of current music, personal anecdotes, etc.

Why am I so willing to embark on such an adventurous renovation? Why do I not fear living in a construction site for the next year(s)? Why is living with sawdust in my hair and chips of plaster on my floors so comfortable? For the last year, it's been all I know. See below.




This was me using my computer during window replacement, wearing gloves because it was early january and a nice, dry-cold below zero day, which rarely happens in my locale, but did mean that the workers tracked in frozen dirt, rather than the usual mud on their boots.




This was my living room one day. That big hole where the door was goes outside.

subfloor prepping

Last night while Lisa was in her German class, I went into the new place and did some work on the subfloors to make sure that we are ready to lay the hardwood flooring.

With the carpet ripped up and most of the underlay gone, I was left with row upon row of nailheads sticking out just a few millimetres from the floor. These nails are not in nice, straight evenly-spaced rows. No, they are in ragged bunches, like groups of little nail hooligan teenagers, just begging to be taught a lesson.

Now, it is possible that the sound-dampening underlay might just hide these by compacting a little more in those areas, but I wouldn't want to find out it wasn't enough while I was laying the actual hardwood planks down and have one or two of them bulging out at weird angles.

I tried prying up some of the nails, but they are big suckers, about 4-5 inches long and twisted like corkscrews. Easiest thing to do was nail them further down into the subfloor and cover any dents with levelling compound. Pity the poor downstairs neighbours as I worked, beer in one hand, hammer in the other, but it is all even and ready for the levelling compound and underlay, once the walls are painted.

Here's some history on the neighbourhood.

I dream of green

Our ceilings are now green. Wait! Before you scoff or choke on your food, let me say that it's a very light green. And the walls will be darker, so it won't look quite as weird as it does now...

Thank you Traci & Phil for your help yesterday!

The bedroom walls are ready to paint: cleaned, crack-filled, sanded, primed. I can't believe how much time we spent making the hideous monstrosity in the master bedroom into a smooth, white wall...

We are calling another painting 'party' for this coming weekend. Anyone interested should email us or comment here.

Reno Hall of Fame

Yesterday most of my family trooped through our condo. I think I gave the "grand tour" about 5 times. I'm starting to have a memorized repetoire, like a tour guide, about what we plan to improve & how bad it was originally.

We got a late start, but accomplished quite a bit. Cathy played chauffeur & helped lug paint & supplies from the co-op to the condo. Aaron & Sarah arrived next & immediately got to work spackling, sanding, edging & painting ceilings. Mike arrived soon after, bringing Sheila & Barry through (grand tour #3) & joined in the wall-smoothing efforts.

We took an early dinner break at Hawker's Delight & grabbed hot drinks for the walk back down Main Street to the place. On the way, we bumped into some old friends of mine (Shelly & Ian) who, coincidentally, live a block away from the condo. That was one thing I thought I'd miss about living on the Drive: bumping into people I know all the time.

The funniest thing about Shelly & Ian is that, despite not having seen them for a few years, they knew all about the condo & our real estate quest of the last 6 months. Shelly teaches & carpools with our Super Sleuth realtor/cousin(-in-law), Traci's boyfriend Phil. (Try saying that 5 times fast!) So she had heard all about the ups & downs we've had offering on condos in this crazy real estate market. Small world...

So, anyway, as promised: besides providing food & drink to all who help work on our place, I also offer fame. See the ever-growing RENO HALL OF FAME in the left sidebar of this blog. Thanks guys!

View

From Yaletown to down along Main St. towards Chinatown. Visible mountain (Hollyburn Ridge?) holds Cypress Ski Resort

Across the False Creek Flats to Strathcona. Grouse Mountain in background.
Further east towards Commercial Dr. and parts beyond (like Mount Seymour).

Wallpaper Archaeology

We discovered even older paper under the stuff in the master bedroom. It was actually kind of neat, sort of a golden metallic giant cedar motif. Very 1970s BC.

Shag

Before:

After:

Decisions, decisions...

We need to start painting the walls this weekend. Which means I have to decide exactly what colours & where they'll go. I say "I", meaning just me, because Oliver is "chromatically challenged". (I think that would be the PC term for colourblind.) Subtle differences in colours that have a red or green tint are lost on him. Eggplant vs. navy, pink vs. beige, mossy green vs. grey, lilac vs. sky blue: these distinctions mean nothing to him. Thus, I must take on the heavy mantle of responsibility for the colours of our new place.

Woohoo! Carte blanche!

Anyway, I'm thinking turquoise/teal-ish, wasabi/lime & lighter variations on that theme. To anchor things, we'll have black or dark brown picture frames & furniture. Can't have the whole place looking like a cell from an undersea shot of The Little Mermaid.

Bad Pic

Bad pic of the shag rugs in the bedrooms that doesn't do justice to how truly awful they were. When we pull them up, the room fills with floating particulate from 30+ years of dust mites and disintigrating shag-a-delic lung-clogging evilness.

Pics on their way

Things sometimes have to get worse before they get better. Pictures are coming, but keep in mind that we need to break a few eggs to make the particular (h)omelette we have in mind. The "during" photos are possibly going to look worse than the "before" photos.

We know what we are doing, really we do...

Day Two (rhymes with mouse poo).

Sunday was productive, but didn't feel quite as satisfying. I guess because we were doing the messier, more detail-oriented work. Like scraping mouse poo out of the cupboards over the fridge. *shudder* We removed the last little shreds of wallpaper from the walls in the hall & master bedroom, then scrubbed them to get the 30-year-old wallpaper paste off.



The place still smells of old man & dog... I hope that's just the carpet in the bedrooms. Otherwise we're going to have to become air-freshener junkies.

The good news is: the parquet looks like it'll come up easily. Whatever glue he used is not particularly sticky now. Anybody want 300 square feet of slightly used parquet flooring?

Next step is to get rid of the last chunk of carpet in the master bedroom & spackle the walls. Oh, and patch the walls--there are at least TEN places where old Frank cut holes into the walls to access various wires & ducting. Instead of patching them with drywall once he was done, he tacked thin bits of masonite or card over them. The walls remind me of my patched jeans...

Day One.

And so it begins. This afternoon, we packed up various & sundry tools, dragged them over to the condo & set to work.

Oliver & I removed two layers of wallpaper from the master bedroom & most of the thick, painted-over textile-based wallpaper from the hallway. Although, honestly, we didn't take all of it off today: I gleefully ripped several swaths of the top layer of blue & purple rose wallpaper off the walls last night when we got the keys.

We've left the wallpaper in the bathrooms so far... but I don't want to keep it. The master ensuite has a black & shiny gold blobby pattern: oh so seventies. The main bathroom has a bizarre lumpy wallpaper that looks like it's made of string...

After donning cheap (but surprisingly effective--no sneezing at all) dust masks, we tore the one-inch-deep bright green shag rug into manageable strips & bagged it along with the disintegrating foam underlay. The second bedroom is now a shag-free zone!

Tomorrow we'll tackle the master bedroom carpeting. And the mouse poo left behind by the previous owner. Thanks, Frank!