Home Renos

Home renovation is very much on my mind, as I have just completed the deck make-over.  I'll write more about this in an upcoming post, but it is fair to say I am extremely sore and am wondering if maybe I should have enlisted more help.

While our house was basically move-in ready when we took it five years ago, there were a few changes we made right away and then a few other things that have needed to be done with time.  This list won't be 100% chronological, but it's mostly to help remember the main things that got done.

After buying the house, the real estate agent's husband helped upgrade a few electric boxes and put in a proper two-way light switch at the top and bottom of the stairway to the basement.  I also disassembled a huge desk unit thing and moved it from the back of the house to the front.  I painted two rooms right away (my daughter's and the back office) and then a few months went by and I painted the small bathroom on the main floor.  While the rest of the family was away, I upgraded the rotating fan/light fixture in the dining room.  Or rather I would have managed it, but I simply could not find the ground wire, so I ultimately brought in a handyman and electrician.  It wasn't a complete waste, as they also fixed up the closet light, which wasn't wired properly.  At the same time, I had them try to seal off the area under the porch from raccoons (which seemed to have worked for maybe a year or two, but now I need to up my game!) and install a handrail for the stairs down into the basement and reinforce the stairs as some of the risers were loose(!).  (The house is pretty close to 100 years old and is not up to code in lots of ways.)  A bit of the painting saga is discussed here.

I believe it was towards the end of year 1 when the washing machine went out and had to be replaced.  The unit was still fairly new and certainly should have held up a few more years.  I actually had to dismantle the door to get it into the basement!

It was fairly early on when I replaced the light fixture in the back office with one of those LED lights.  Never again!  It flickers all the time, and while this may be a function of crappy wiring back here, I am going to have to replace the entire unit, so I'll go back to a more traditional unit with light bulbs.  I may well do that this late fall or over the winter.

It looks like I stained the deck in two phases over the summer of 2016.  The top part was probably more critical, and I did enlist the kids to help to some extent...  Then the family went off to Chicago in the later part of the summer, and I finally got around to staining the bottom deck, though I probably should not have tried to match the stain from the upper part.  At any rate, that summer, while family was away I brought the handymen back to try to put a handrail in going up to the 2nd floor.  I was basically expecting to have to knock down the wall and rebuild it, but it turns out it was actually possible to put the railing right along the top.  So that was a lot less work in the end, and it turned out pretty well.  (Some of the details are here.)

I can't remember any major, major expenditures in 2017, though there must have been something.  There always is.  (Actually I read a post that confirmed I didn't have to do much in 2017 other than work on the gates and install a porch light.)  We did have the furnace go out in Dec. 2017, and it took a while for it to be fixed.

The summer of 2018, I started rebuilding the upper deck, a few boards at a time.  This was a pretty major effort, discussed in some detail here.  I think the A/C pretty much died at the end of the year, but we run it so rarely that we didn't think that much about it.  I did a makeover of the front yard, getting rid of the grass and starting to plant various spreading plants.  I wouldn't say it's quite where I would like it (still too much to weed!), but maybe another bag or two of mulch would help.

Then 2019 came along and was the real killer in terms of expenses.  We had tried to get the A/C unit fixed, but it was basically an antique, and it was impossible to get anyone to service it.  We decided that we would take advantage of a sale and got a new furnace/AC unit at the same time.  Then we finally got around to having the roof redone, having put that off a few years.  The roofer said it wouldn't be safe to add yet another layer of shingles (there were something like 4 layers piled on top of each other), so they tore them all off.  We had slowly been strategizing how to prepare the basement to turn it into a bedroom for my daughter (as her room was really quite small), and one key step (though perhaps not an obvious one) was to add a bathroom down there.  It's actually quite a nice bathroom, but it cost me a huge amount of storage space, and I am still sorting through the ramifications of that.  As if that weren't enough, the dishwasher gave out towards the end of the year, and we had to get a new one installed.  One thing I was able to do on my own was to replace the ceiling fan in the kitchen (it had a fluorescent ring light that kept getting unplugged and was ultimately a big hassle).

It took me quite a long time in 2020 (even with mostly working from home from March on) to get rid of the rest of the junk in the basement to allow my daughter to move in.  Three bookcases moved upstairs!  On the positive side, I am much more likely to remember to attempt reading these books in some kind of sequence, but my spaces up here do feel cluttered now.  And before she took possession, she asked for the walls to be painted white.  She also wanted the carpet torn up and replaced with laminate or something comparable, but we drew the line at that.

We had severe rains this summer (in between gruelling hot weeks), and at some point, rain started coming in through one of the windows in the basement.  It's actually somewhat fortunate that the vast majority of my stuff had been relocated (aside from some notebooks that I am trying to scan before they get totally moldy) and my daughter hadn't moved anything in.  There was then a week wasted while we tried to decide if it was from the A/C piping or the furnace, but then someone from the insurance company came by and said it was definitely from the window.  Now TD Insurance has decided not to honor the claim, and then the restoration firm vanished on me, even though we would have paid.  It has been extremely, extremely difficult to get workmen to come in, though we eventually got someone in to repair the dishwasher (not promising in that it was only about six months old) and finally we got someone else in to help clean up the damage in the basement and take care of a few other things, like adding even more bolts to the stairs to the basement.  He also helped fix a toilet that had been running for quite a long time (leading to a huge water bill) and recaulked the window well (and said that there was no real need to put in glass block instead of a standard window).  He noticed that there was water damage in the mud room (and we just had a roofer come back to fix that and stop the leaking), and he recommended that one of the drain pipes be redirected, which we'll try to have done next week.

I believe I mentioned that I managed to fix a lock (to the mud room) that no longer locked properly.  Today I added another board underneath the Little Free Library, so that won't collapse.  And of course I switched out 16 boards on the deck (probably just about half of the upper deck has been replaced between the 2018 reno job and now), which was a massive effort, as I alluded to at the top of the post.  Hopefully the last major task for the year will be painting the kitchen, which I'll be starting fairly soon.  And now I've exhausted myself, just reminding myself how much has gone into the house over the past five years...

Chilly

There is a huge amount on my mind as always, and it is a shame I can't just dictate some thoughts and have a program translate them into a blog post.  I do have a good excuse, which is work is keeping me quite busy (and I end up working late most nights) and I am also in the midst of home repairs (well, back deck repairs really).

It has been delayed and delayed, and there is still much confusion, but the kids are back to school in this really weird two-days on/two-days off pattern.  However, this is mornings only, and then in the afternoons (starting this week), they are supposed to do some on-line learning.  It's far from ideal (and will likely be disrupted several times by COVID outbreaks), but it gives them a bit more structure.  Frankly, almost anything that gets them out of the house is ok in my eyes right now.  

It's been very depressing watching the new case count increase in Ontario (we're up to about four times at high as we were in early July, though that is still half or even 25% of many US states of comparable size).  Now some of this is due to increased testing (as parents are trying desperately to prepare their kids for school), but some of it is just too much socializing.  Some of our gains have been rolled back, though for the moment gyms and movie theatres can remain open.  I would definitely welcome tighter controls and shorter hours for the bars, and we'll see if that gets announced soon.*

This has definitely put a crimp in the reopening plans of most theatres and concert halls.  RCM is having to cut its audience down in half again, and it still isn't clear if they will honor my tickets for next month or not (to say nothing of Kronos Quartet in January, though at this point I doubt they'll even get across the border).  Another concert that looked pretty interesting was cancelled, and in the end, I think this season will also go down the drain.  Several theatre companies that were looking into doing something have pretty much given up or gone virtual.  No question I am losing interest in on-line performances to the point I have pretty much tuned it all out.  Actually I did make it to the AGO for the first time since the pandemic, and that was ok if a little weird at times, seeing that some huge room was restricted to no more than 5 art lovers at a time.**

Sometimes I feel a bit like an urban pioneer, trying to find what is open and not in the downtown financial district.  Some of the time it is an interesting rush, but most of the time it is just depressing.  When I slow down to think about it, I am deeply depressed about life in general and simply enraged about the state of politics down south.  (Though I'll save most of my ire for another post.)  While there are definitely going to be delays, I'm going to start pushing through my Canadian citizenship paperwork this fall.  

That's probably enough catching up for now, and I have got to get back to work.  Ciao.

* We did just hear that closing time in bars and night clubs has been shortened to 11 pm.  I'm sure it won't make a huge difference, but it is a step in the right direction.

** This week Ontario is closing in on 500 cases, and not surprisingly people are travelling less, though we don't have mandatory stay-at-home restrictions (yet).  The push to get people to come back to work has been suspended, and I imagine transit ridership will drop again.  However, it could be worse.  Quebec has just shy of 900 cases!  Nearly all of them are in Montreal or Quebec City.  I had decided a while back that flying and the train were just too risky to get to Montreal.  Apparently, I should have rented a car in late July or early August, but that window has closed (now that Montreal is back at Orange level of danger, and I clearly am not going to make it out there in time.  I really did want to get to see this exhibit on post-Impressionism, though it turns out that the library has a copy of the catalogue, so I put that on hold, though it is a poor substitute.

A Chill in the Air (Take 2)

I'm still incredibly annoyed that the save and even the update functions no longer work as before.  I am doing a bit more testing to see if I can get the base functionality back in Blogger, including tagging.  If not, it was a pretty good run, but it's true that hardly anyone reads blogs any more and they certainly don't drop by to comment, which sort of defeats the purpose, unless this is truly just going to be an on-line diary.

I'm definitely glad I didn't watch the Raptors get dismantled in Game 5.  Unfortunately, they are basically being outplayed by Boston, and it doesn't seem likely they'll get out of this round.  It's actually quite rare for me to watch an entire game of basketball (and perhaps I never have), though last year I caught chunks while at the gym.

Despite it being a holiday, I did some work.  I managed to fix one of the doors that just wouldn't lock (or rather it had to be slammed and occasionally kicked to lock, particularly when it was really humid).  I think the house is shifting just enough to cause these issues (and some in the basement), though this was relatively easy to fix.  While it has taken much, much longer than usual (and we had to resort to putting out a call on Facebook), it looks like I finally have a handyman who will stop by this week -- and do inside work, which has been quite a problem for a while now.

I did go off to the gym, which means I will likely make it 3 times over 7 days, which was basically my pre-pandemic routine, though I probably won't keep that up.  Twice a week is a little more likely for the time being, and I am not swimming at the moment either.  Going to the gym is probably the riskiest thing I've done to date.  I did go to the movies twice with my son (to see Inception and then Nolan's Tenet), though only four people were in the theatre for Inception and only 6 for Tenet!  So that didn't feel remotely risky.  I assume it is somewhat busier downtown.  I do know there are some incredible scolds who feel nothing, and particularly not movie theatres, should reopen until the pandemic is over, though I personally feel a more balanced approach is in order.  Large chunks of the economy are still in tatters (and it is quite likely that most of the entertainment industry is going to go under by this winter), so I'm certainly willing to do my small part to keep some things going.  That said, I probably would go ahead and shut down all the bars once patio season is over, as drunk and even tipsy people have been shown time and time again to have poor judgment and cannot maintain social distancing and quite a few outbreaks have been linked to bars.

I even cooked a potato-carrot casserole, but I won't know until tomorrow how well it turned out.  I didn't get a lot of work work done nor did I get through enough of the clutter that I still need to deal with, but I definitely wasn't completely idle.  I think that's enough retyping for the time being.  If I still am in the mood tomorrow I'll cover a few more of the topics that were erased.

A Chill in the Air (the prequel)

I'm so pissed.  I have been having so much trouble finding an ad blocker that actually works (and isn't actually compromised and spying on me as most of them do) that I went with this extreme one that doesn't play well with Blogger.  I saved my post before publishing, but it blocked the save and then literally wiped out the entire page.  So now I have close to half an hour of blogging completely wiped out and unrecoverable.  I honestly don't think I will bother to retype it.  

I will either have to give up blogging (which I'm somewhat inclined to do as it just feels increasingly pointless) or start searching again for a better ad blocker that isn't allergic to Blogger.