The Imperceptible Immigrant

We dreamed it

October 27, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

“I painted it because I dreamed it
because we all dreamed it”

Marie Burdett, The Little Boy and the Painter

I promised some before and after images of the exterior decoration of our lovely house.

Ta-dah!…

Here are some before and after shots (double-click to enlarge):

The stucco colour is still light – we want the house to stay cool in summer – but the colours are much warmer. The woodwork at the front was previously stained but is now a fetching shade of ‘Stonehenge Greige’ (don’t ask – but it’s all the rage!).

More ‘after’ shots:

Tags: Home, House, Photo, Renovation

Decorate your home

September 21, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.

Charles M. Shulz

Just to record that our house-painters have commenced their endeavours. The stucco, siding, doors and trim of our humble(ish) abode are getting a long overdue make-over.

I will naturally post further pictures when they have finished – which should not be too long as a fair bit of the house comprises patio windows (sliders to Canadian folk).

I may even post some before/after shots if I can locate suitable ‘pre’-pictures (said he, revealing a total lack of forethought or planning!)

Sadly it was ever thus…

Tags: Home, House, Renovation

The other stuff (1)…

August 29, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

In my last post I touched on the busy nature of life right now here on the west coast of Canada. Not complaining of course – many others are way more busy than are we… but then, we are supposed to be retired(ish!).

As is ever the way when one is busy, all sorts of other stuff – and sometimes stuff that has been brewing quietly for quite a while – suddenly takes off just at the least helpful point.

Somebody has a law about this… probably somebody named Murphy – though on reflection that is more about things going wrong. In this case everything is just happening at once. Buses maybe? That is apparently called ‘bus bunching’ – or ‘clumping’ or ‘ convoying’ or ‘piggybacking’ or even ‘ platooning’… Anyway – buses lead one to think too much about the (questionable) prime minister of the UK – and no-one wants to go there!

I digress…

Here are a couple of other things that are currently in progress after extended periods of not so being:

Back in the spring of 2017 our excellent contractor set our renovation project in motion by tearing off the old rotting deck and leaking (and superfluous) sunrooms at the back of our house, before building us – over a seven week period – the splendid new deck that I look out on from here in my studio. If you want to revisit the details of that project – including the many photos that I took at the time – please do navigate your way back in the archives to May/June 2017.

At the end of that first phase of our external and internal renovation our contractor looked at us and said:

“Now all you need to do is to repaint the outside of the house”

The astute reader has already figured where this is going. Yes – more than three years later we are finally about to get the outside of the house painted! We are paying a company to do this because – though I don’t at all mind painting – I do think I am a little old to be clambering up tall ladders on steeply sloping ground. A friend that I visited whilst back in the UK last year had – shortly before that trip – taken a tumble from a ladder in his garden and badly fractured a wrist. I decided that discretion is indeed the better part…

One thing that I did need to do in preparation for the painters’ visit was to remove a large pile of garden waste that had accumulated at one point against the outside basement wall of the house. I would normally have cleared this myself during the year, but the green waste sites were closed for a number of months as a result of the pandemic and I had not got around to catching up. As I also had some other general detritus to be hauled away The Girl kindly found me a local firm who provide just such a service.

The chaps who actually do the business quickly disposed of my general waste and then made a start on the greenery. They were rapidly brought up short by the discovery that a particularly obstreperous colony of wasps had set up home in my now composting pile. Clearance was thus halted for a week whilst I called out a local pest control concern to give the irritating insects their marching orders.

It feels good to be giving lots of work to local companies in these difficult times, but it is also rather annoying when things do not run smoothly, as will be demonstrated by my other example of things that have been much delayed.

For that – however – the gentle reader must await part two of this post…

Tags: Gardens, House, Renovation

Closed in

March 29, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty…”

William Butler Yeats

As the world holds its collective breath – uncertain as to what will happen next…

…if nothing else we may find that we have time on our hands for musing – and a still, small space for so doing in this world normally in such a hurry might well be one of the only positives to come out of this calamity.

So – as a TV comedy character in the UK was once wont to exclaim…”Bear with…”

My parents were both hoarders. Which is to say – when my mother passed away and my siblings and I ventured to clear the house where they (and, for a considerably shorter period, we) had lived for almost fifty years, we discovered not only five decade’s worth of papers, postcards, letters, pirated music scores and so forth, but also – amongst many other items of furniture – every chair that they had ever purchased together… as well as some that they had probably inherited. Some of these items were, frankly, no longer in a usable condition but they had nonetheless been left in situ. When we had finished clearing the house it felt almost twice as big as it had seemed beforehand.

This was not to suggest, however, that my parents collected furniture; and certainly not in the sense that they knew anything much about it or had an eye for an attractive or collectable item. My father’s mother had lived (when I was a youngster) with her sister, my great aunt, in a large Edwardian house not that far from Sevenoaks in Kent. When they both passed away – within a month or so of each other – my father executed their estate. Looking around the house – which had not been updated for many a long year – we were struck by some of the beautiful pieces of furniture that they had obviously accumulated over an extensive period. When I asked my father why he would not, for example, hang on to that lovely Victorian dining table and chairs (it being considerably more attractive than the one that they then possessed) he simply opined that “a table is a table“, in spite of clear visual evidence that that was not in fact the case. When said dining room furniture was eventually sold at auction he expressed surprise at the value that was placed upon it and, indeed, at how much it sold for.

I was at the time living in the very first house to which I was a party to the purchase. This was a most pleasant but tiny Victoria terraced cottage and there was scarcely room to swing a (smallish) cat, let alone to find room for further items of furniture – however lovely. At my grandmother’s house my eye had been caught by a really most attractive Davenport writing desk, after which I soon found myself hankering. I certainly did not want it to go outside the family so I persuaded my parents to hang on to it and also to ‘put my name upon it’ as a potential future inheritance. This beautiful item thus eventually found its way – upon my mother’s passing – to our home in South Buckinghamshire, where it looked quite as though it had always been there.

Naturally the piece followed us, first to Berkshire and then eventually across the pond (and a continent) to the West Coast of Canada, where it now sits proudly in our living room.

There is but one small problem, however. The desktop of the Davenport – though unlocked when the movers arrived in the UK – was firmly locked by the time the item was unpacked in Victoria. The key, sadly, was nowhere to be found. In spite of my best efforts since I have been thus far unable to gain access to the top of the desk… which is annoying!

Now – I can sense a certain impatience out there in reader-land. “Why is he prattling on about furniture (however lovely)?” – I hear you asking. “Is he just going quietly bonkers cooped up in doors because of the Corona virus?“.

Well – there is a connection and all will be revealed – but that may take one – or two – more posts…

What? You had something else to be doing?

Tags: COVID-19, House, Memories, moving

The final frontier

September 20, 2019 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“Space is big. The whole point of the frontier is that we go there to do new things in new places – not one place, and not one thing, but all of the above.”

Rick Tumlinson

It is very nearly four years since we acquired our lovely home on the Saanich peninsula.

I have – as it happens – good reason to recall that moment in time precisely. The day that we moved in to our new residence – the day after all of our worldly possessions were delivered by our carrier – I arrived early in the morning because I wanted to watch on the TV one of Scotland’s final pool matches in the 2015 Rugby World Cup, the which was taking place back in England (the reason for the early start times on the west coast of Canada).

Now here we are – four years on – and the 2019 Rugby World Cup is just about to start in Japan.

This post is not, however, about rugby.

I made reference in a recent post to the fact that we have been re-decorating our downstairs ‘family’ room. This work was actually started by a dear friend whilst we were away in Europe earlier in the year, but she and I finished it off together over the summer. We then had the carpets cleaned before reorganising all of our downstairs spaces ready for our recent guests (also trailed in the above mentioned post).

Why is all this significant – and why ‘final’?

Well – this past four years has seen a great deal of action on the home front – as regular readers of these meanderings (should such there be) will be aware. There have been legal battles to be fought – monies to be scrimped and saved – new decks to be built – extensive renovations of the main living spaces to be wrought and all manner of other nipping and tucking besides.

On our arrival here four years ago the downstairs ‘family’ room was immediately pressed into service as a repository for goods and chattels from our transatlantic move for which we did not at that point have a home elsewhere. It then became a temporary studio before subsequently being turned into a furniture store and living space when we moved everything downstairs for the four months during which we handed over the whole of the main floor to our contractor. It then reverted to being a dumping ground and part-time workshop… until earlier this year.

Now – finally – four years after our arrival here – the last remaining unallocated space in our home has been turned into a proper functioning room.

Job done! Yaaaaaay!!

Tags: Home, House, Renovation

Tree fellers

April 21, 2019 in Life in BC | Permalink

Paddy and Mick are out walking on a logging road in the depths of British Columbia. They see a sign nailed to a big Douglas Fir. It reads:

‘Tree Fellers Wanted’

“Ah!”, says Mick – “‘Tis a pity that Seamus isn’t with us. We could have gone for that job!”

I’ll probably get into trouble for that! Oh well…!

We have had the tree fellers in and they have been felling a tree (and lopping some branches). The tree was a little cherry tree at the back of our (croquet) lawn. It didn’t fruit but it did blossom gloriously each spring for all of a couple of days. The main problem can be seen in this photo of the view from our new deck:

That picture was taken at about this time of year two years ago. The tree had grown considerably in the interim and was seriously impacting our view toward Mount Baker.

As can be seen from this comparable shot – taken just this morning – we also had the experts nip out a few of the lower branches from one of those big Doug Firs:

The next step is to persuade our neighbours down the hill to trim back the cedars at the back of their garden, to give our lovely vista another couple of years of unimpeded viewing pleasure.

Since virtually every house in our neighbourhood has views that are not dissimilar to ours this sort of negotiation is quite common. One usually offers to pay the costs and since it makes little difference to the residence further down the slope, those concerned tend to be co-operative.

Let’s hope we also get lucky!

Tags: Gardens, House, Spring, trees

Repairing the roof

April 3, 2019 in Life in BC | Permalink

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining”

John F. Kennedy

I don’t recall ever having had to think much about roofing. Now – I know that those in the UK (and elsewhere) who own older homes – particularly those with complex roofs – may find such things to be a constant source of anguish, but apart from a few relatively minor incidents my six decades in the British Isles were largely free of roof related concerns.

This was doubtless greatly helped by living in the sort of houses that were furnished with tile or slate roofs – the which have a life expectancy of anywhere between sixty and two hundred years, depending on climate and construction.

It was thus a bit of a shock on coming to the west coast of Canada to discover that the shingle roofs common here have a very much shorter expectancy, and that our roof would probably not live much beyond twenty five years – if well looked after. Ours was already about ten years old when we acquired it!

The problem on the west coast is that the moisture-laden climate rapidly leads to roofs that once looked like this:

…looking instead like this:

Naturally there are companies in BC who will strip back all of the moss and detritus and spray the shingles with an inhibitor to discourage further growth. Such services are not cheap but help to extend the life of the roof and thus ultimately to save money.

It need hardly be said – given the very fact of this post – that this we have just had done. Our roof now looks like this:

Spiffing!

Tags: Home, House, Renovation

Give us a sign

January 19, 2019 in Life in BC | Permalink

There are major differences in house construction between Canada and the UK. When it comes to individual dwellings it is true that there is now a fair bit of wood framed construction in the old country, but here is BC there is virtually nothing else – certainly if the construction were done in recent times.

Such differences extend also to the estate itself. In Canada they do not go in for boundary fences… walls… hedges… dividers of any sort. The norm is that the open space between houses is just that – open. We have a lawn between us and our nearest neighbours with the actual boundary running somewhere down the middle of it. When either of us cuts the grass we make a ‘mood’ judgement as to how far to go. If we are feeling generous we take in an extra couple of metres to save our neighbours having to do it. If, on the other hand, we are feeling surly… or lazy… we don’t.

In many cases there is little or no division between individual properties and the public road either. As it happens we have a screen of shrubs, bushes and trees in front of our domicile, but many do not. They are simply open to the public in a way that would make many Brits feel somewhat uncomfortable (I am trying very hard not to slip into Brexit metaphors here – but it is not easy!).

One side-effect of this lack of dividing infrastructure is that there is often nothing at the front of the property to which to affix a sign bearing the house number or name. Our property has its number displayed on the front of the building itself, but as the house is set back somewhat it is not very easy to see from the road.

I seem to recall that in many parts of England there is a fairly relaxed attitude as to whether or not house numbers are prominently displayed. Here in BC it is considered important for emergency reasons that each property has a sign that is clearly visible from the public road. These are known as 911 Address Signs and they usually take the form of a vertical reflective sign at the very edge of the roadside. Given the relative speed with which wooden framed house can be destroyed by fire it makes good sense that the emergency services be given every opportunity to locate a property as quickly as possible.

For reasons unknown we did not inherit such a sign but with the advent of The Girl’s new venture looming it seemed important to make our residence more visible to the world.

Given that these things are everywhere I assumed that they would be easy to source. They are not – and I guess that the fact that most properties already have them means that there is little demand for new ones. Some Fire-Halls offer programs through which they may be obtained but ours did not obviously do so.

I eventually found a source online through one of Amazon’s third party suppliers. I duly placed an order and sat back to await the manufacturer making contact to check the details.

I received instead an email telling me that the product had been shipped!

Huh?!

I replied to the email, enquiring as to how they had managed ship my order without first asking me what house number the sign was for.

“Oh!”, came the reply. “There was an option on the order form if you wanted to customise the sign”.

I pointed out that I did not consider having the right number on my sign to exactly be ‘customisation’, that the option on the form was not at all obvious and asked who in their right mind would order an address sign with some random number on it anyway?

They seemed to take my point and agreed to refund the purchase price.

“What should I do with the random sign?”, I enquired. They told me that I could keep it.

Fortunately I discovered that – with a little careful effort – the numbers could be scraped off without causing damage and that Staples could supply suitable replacements – this time with the correct digits. A Home Depot mailbox post, some brass brackets and screws, a little white paint and a club hammer later we had a new 911 sign.

Now – ain’t that pretty?!

Tags: Canada, House, Modern life

Details, details…

February 14, 2018 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

I could not resist taking some further snaps of some of details of our recent renovations. I hope that my posting some of these to this forum will not try the patience of the gentle reader too far. This will – I promise – be an end of it!