Thomas is sitting at Jill & Lee's diningroom table with Pete, Jill & Lee. He just asked if I'd updated the blog recently. Yep, six days ago.
We've congregated here for Christmas because Ruth's Ridge isn't ready for family gatherings yet. Claire, Cole and his girlfriend, Sara, should be here soon. The turkey is in the oven, the pumpkin pies are on the sideboard, the sweet potatoes are cooked, and now the younglings are heading out for a bit of iceskating on the community centre a block away.
Back up on Ruth's Ridge, the drywall – all 6,500 square feet of it – is now undercoated with a Level 5 surfacer, the paint equivalent of a skim or scratch coat. Ruth & I managed to get the job done in 5 relatively short days. The finish is amazing and should go a long way to ensuring that the top-coats of paint create a lovely finish for the interior.
Pictures to follow with the next blog.
The biggest challenge for the past three weeks has been humidity. Ruth picked up a humidistat which, upon setting it up, went to 78%. No wonder we had moisture dripping from every window and door. At any rate, the dehumidifier Jim & Johanna lent us has been crunching away since David & Dale showed up and, with the help of opened windows, we managed to get relative humidity down to 67% before we left Friday noon.
Speaking of Jim & Johanna, it was a very unusual experience to depart their place on Friday morning. Jim was on the front porch waving good-bye as Ruth & I, the dogs, and the last of my possessions headed down the driveway after just over two months of having Chez Argyle as the homebase for this DP (displaced person). Their extreme kindness in offering their hospitality to me/us is matched only by that of Audrey & Allan McPhaden, where Ruth stayed until this weekend. This demonstration of friendship has been greatly humbling for both of us, and we feel a debt of love to both sets of friends which we will be most pleased to work at repaying for decades to come.
Next week, we get busy with setting up the loft bathroom before we continue with ceiling painting and the application of the first top-coat.
We pulled away from Ruth's Ridge about noon yesterday with the car laden with gifts, food stuffs and a water sample for getting nutrient levels measured in anticipation of ordering a water softener. The most important stop for me was for a haircut; the uncut locks were becoming a working safety hazard, I confess.
Other than for Ruth's time off around the holidays, I will now be a work crew of one – attended by the two dogs and a burgeoning population of cats over the next month or so.
On other fronts, we will be hooked up to the www on Tuesday or so. Unfortunately, because MTS didn't inform me that rural hook-ups only happen during "the summer construction season," we'll be cell phone-accessible only for the winter. Ruth continues to be adamant that TV is not a part of our future on the ridge. Hallelujah.
Just as we were pulling up to Jill's yesterday, my cell rang and I answered it to find my motorcycling mentor, Chas Peters (no relation) on the line. I was immediately certain that his call would be to inform me that his wife, Viola, had finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer. She passed away this past Wednesday, and Chas phoned to invite me to a private ceremony tomorrow and/or the funeral Monday afternoon. He added that she had complained once throughout the grueling course that this particular cancer inflicts. Vi was not much older than I, and I am reminded again how important it is to take great comfort and joy in whatever life offers up in the day-to-day.
Ruth & I wish Chas, his daughters and their families much comfort in the face of such a loss during the Advent season.
We remember, too, Muriel and her family as they celebrate this Advent without Orville. It was our great blessing to be Muriel's "Advent Angels" last year.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
I Think That We're Alone Now (Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: A Nod's as Good a Drink to a....
It's December 11th. Well, I done chased ever-body off'n my propty. Now, 'cept fo ma 'lil lady hangin' aroun' fo a few days 'o paintin' the walls white, I done sceered off all the hep I could find.
It's now a few days shy of five months since Davis 'n Delaeno first showed up on Ruth's Ridge to plot out and direct the commencement of this place we will soon call home. Today, David 'n Dale finished the drywall taping & plastering job, packed up and left me to ready the the space for the commencement of painting tomorrow. Shortly after they pulled away, Dave Matthews, another fine neighbour, showed up with a commercial airless paint sprayer.
Here are David 'n Dale (then Dale 'n David) doing a dust-up of air guitar and American Gothic.
Ross, my dear bro-in-law, you said you'd ask if I would recommend this type of project to others once I'd completed Ruth's Ridge. I'm not going to wait that long to say, yes, I'd encourage others to consider this type of project. There are, however, a number of important caveats and considerations I'd throw in free of charge.
Firstly, if you're going to general-contract your own house build, DO make it a full-time time job. Hire people you care about. Work with them to ensure they and you find the building process rewarding in virtually every way. DO implement the 20% rule: DO your best planning, then add 20% to your best cost estimate and time estimate.... minimum. DO give yourself at least a year before groundbreaking to noodle on your ideas, research options, select fits/finishes/details. DO work with – and consider them allies – the inspectors who will vet the work of your crew for code compliance. DO plan to have the post-drywall phase to be more exhausting than the intense physical effort of the preceding months – because those preceding months will already have tapped most of your physical, intellectual and task-focused capacities. DO count on the experience of the people you hire to inform not only their tasks, but to provide a wealth of insight into other aspects of homebuilding – because most of them are practiced in many facets of construction and finishing. DO pay careful attention to retrospective insights that you or others have regarding the homebuilding process, because those insights may save others some head-scratching.
With regard to the last point, the cold of winter descended just as David 'n Dale began the taping and plastering. We found we have a six spots that tend to stay moist, namely the six inside corners on the ceiling that were not 90 degrees: on either side of the kitchen, and the four points at the front of the great-room. At each of these points, at least three roof trusses meet, creating a number of opportunities for cold air incursion past insulation and to the back of the drywall. In addition, the wood trusses do a fairly good job of transmitting cold in toward the ceiling. Hint to future builders of homes having this type of construction: caulk the joins between individual studs or plates AND spray-foam any such complicated wood joints in advance of closing in the area or moving to insulate and/or cover the area. A couple of dollars and ten minutes will save lots of anxiety and inadequate remedies. (Happily, we seem to have solved our six problem areas.)
David 'n Dale say many expensive homes by top-name builders do not address these kinds of issues despite repeated occurrences of such problems. I'm totally confident in saying that I won't build another house without doing this little big-value preemptive strike. Oh, right; I'm not going to build another house.
It's December 13th. Yesterday, after another fabulous breakfast at the hands of Jim 'n Johanna, Ruth & I headed up to the Ridge. While I tidied up, got the basement set up for painting and got acquainted with the paint sprayer, Ruth mused on colour palettes. By about 10:30, the level 5 primer was hitting the walls and, about 3 1/2 hours later, the contents of the first 5-gallon pail coated 80% of basement's perimeter walls.
So, we're less than 2 weeks to Christmas. This coming Friday Steve Hintz will hook up our Xplornet internet equipment. By then, we hope to be close to having one bathroom set up, at which point I hope to carry my bride across the threshold into our new home to stay.
It's now a few days shy of five months since Davis 'n Delaeno first showed up on Ruth's Ridge to plot out and direct the commencement of this place we will soon call home. Today, David 'n Dale finished the drywall taping & plastering job, packed up and left me to ready the the space for the commencement of painting tomorrow. Shortly after they pulled away, Dave Matthews, another fine neighbour, showed up with a commercial airless paint sprayer.
Here are David 'n Dale (then Dale 'n David) doing a dust-up of air guitar and American Gothic.
Ross, my dear bro-in-law, you said you'd ask if I would recommend this type of project to others once I'd completed Ruth's Ridge. I'm not going to wait that long to say, yes, I'd encourage others to consider this type of project. There are, however, a number of important caveats and considerations I'd throw in free of charge.
Firstly, if you're going to general-contract your own house build, DO make it a full-time time job. Hire people you care about. Work with them to ensure they and you find the building process rewarding in virtually every way. DO implement the 20% rule: DO your best planning, then add 20% to your best cost estimate and time estimate.... minimum. DO give yourself at least a year before groundbreaking to noodle on your ideas, research options, select fits/finishes/details. DO work with – and consider them allies – the inspectors who will vet the work of your crew for code compliance. DO plan to have the post-drywall phase to be more exhausting than the intense physical effort of the preceding months – because those preceding months will already have tapped most of your physical, intellectual and task-focused capacities. DO count on the experience of the people you hire to inform not only their tasks, but to provide a wealth of insight into other aspects of homebuilding – because most of them are practiced in many facets of construction and finishing. DO pay careful attention to retrospective insights that you or others have regarding the homebuilding process, because those insights may save others some head-scratching.
With regard to the last point, the cold of winter descended just as David 'n Dale began the taping and plastering. We found we have a six spots that tend to stay moist, namely the six inside corners on the ceiling that were not 90 degrees: on either side of the kitchen, and the four points at the front of the great-room. At each of these points, at least three roof trusses meet, creating a number of opportunities for cold air incursion past insulation and to the back of the drywall. In addition, the wood trusses do a fairly good job of transmitting cold in toward the ceiling. Hint to future builders of homes having this type of construction: caulk the joins between individual studs or plates AND spray-foam any such complicated wood joints in advance of closing in the area or moving to insulate and/or cover the area. A couple of dollars and ten minutes will save lots of anxiety and inadequate remedies. (Happily, we seem to have solved our six problem areas.)
David 'n Dale say many expensive homes by top-name builders do not address these kinds of issues despite repeated occurrences of such problems. I'm totally confident in saying that I won't build another house without doing this little big-value preemptive strike. Oh, right; I'm not going to build another house.
It's December 13th. Yesterday, after another fabulous breakfast at the hands of Jim 'n Johanna, Ruth & I headed up to the Ridge. While I tidied up, got the basement set up for painting and got acquainted with the paint sprayer, Ruth mused on colour palettes. By about 10:30, the level 5 primer was hitting the walls and, about 3 1/2 hours later, the contents of the first 5-gallon pail coated 80% of basement's perimeter walls.
So, we're less than 2 weeks to Christmas. This coming Friday Steve Hintz will hook up our Xplornet internet equipment. By then, we hope to be close to having one bathroom set up, at which point I hope to carry my bride across the threshold into our new home to stay.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Farewell, Delaeno
Today was Delaeno's last day on Ruth's Ridge. With many thanks for your craftsmanship, diligence and commitment, Ruth & I want to wish you all the best. We don't know how you persevered for almost five months of weekdays away from home. And thanks to you, Miki, for your support in letting D be gone from home for the summer and fall. This isn't the end or good-bye.
Wishing you a happy re-entry into day-to-day life at home, and a Happy Advent season.
G&R
Wishing you a happy re-entry into day-to-day life at home, and a Happy Advent season.
G&R
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