House Surgery

Charlotte has been dissecting fetal pigs in Biology 12. She has some tasty shots on her cell phone which I won’t share here. (You’re welcome.) Chris seems to be doing similar work on the guts of the house, sort of the work of an orthopedic surgeon. Here is the beam and the supporting post between [...]

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The First Before & After

Our garage door is saggy. The wood is drooping across the panels and as you can see it has leaked. See? We actually considered refurbishing it, but it really would have been an enormous job. If we had nothing else to do on the house, well, maybe. But the motor is shot, too. So it [...]

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Men at Work

This past weekend the heavy work of tearing out the ceilings began. To recap: The ceilings are really ugly. Really, really. They are so bad that I was quite turned off by the house on our first look through the place. I just did not want to talk about it when we got home. I [...]

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A trailer is a place to put your stuff.

George Carlin said it best: your house is a pile of stuff with a cover on it. To move stuff to and from your house you (usually) need some wheels. And if your stuff is big like a sheet of plywood, or a lawn mower, or some bark mulch, well, then you need a trailer. [...]

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Robins in the Wisteria

Along the back of the house we have a spectacular wisteria vine stretching 6 metres over the dining room window and kitchen door. We missed the height of its purple, drooping blooms this year, but we will enjoy the extra cooling shade it provides all summer. The vine needs pruning and propping, but that will [...]

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Tough and Cheap

The plants in the yard look very healthy and I attribute that to the great soil that Marilee cultivated and enriched. Considering how much rain we’ve had in the last six weeks though, it’s amazing the whole place hasn’t turned to compost. We have arrived just in time to enjoy some nice irises. I love [...]

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The Big Jobs List

I am considering changing the tagline of this blog to “requires updating”, but that doesn’t really tell the story. As exciting as it is to buy this new-older house, the list of major work is pretty daunting at the moment. Here it is: Install some sort of floor in the dirt crawl space. Could be [...]

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Trim

Each room in the house has ¾” by 3″ cedar trim nailed around the off-white berber carpet.  Time for it to go–the trim that is, the berber will be with us for a while. The colour of the strips varies from orange to dark brown and they are full of knots. This was the first [...]

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A place with good karma

We took possession yesterday.  That sounds very chest-thumpy: really, becoming the owners of Tofino Place feels more like continuing a legacy than “taking” the house. Marilee, the previous owner, left a welcoming house plant and lovely note: Welcome to your new home. I will miss this house. It holds a lot of good memories for [...]

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Appliance Binge #3: Range* and Hood

Fridges and freezers I know, but a gas stove* is new territory for me. This is Chris’s thing: he has been wanting to cook on a gas stove and convection oven for years. He likes the instant on/instant off  and the perky blue flame that lets you know how hot hot is.  The Kenmore Elite [...]

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