House

…like an arrow – but fruit flies like a banana!

Terry Wogan

As I write this post I am awaiting the arrival of a shock (or whatever may be the appropriate collective noun) of electricians who should be the last of the contractors to add their expertise to our long-running renovation. Hopefully by the end of the day all that will remain to be done will be further painting and cleaning.

Glancing back over the scribblings that I posted last January (a mistake I know, but it is fascinating to see how the years vary… or even repeat themselves!) I find to my great surprise that it was exactly a year ago this very day that I visited the North Saanich Municipal Offices to deliver the paperwork for the application for a building permit for our new deck – which was eventually constructed last April and May. That project was just the start of the long process of renovation which has been going on pretty much continually since then.

That set me to wondering as to when it was that we had actually engaged the designer who drew up the plans that formed the basis of said application. Hunting further back on this blog gave me the answer to that as well – it was in September 2016.

The long and the short of it – and the point of this post is of course that the long occasionally feels both short and long (if you know what I mean) – is that by the time we are done this whole renovation project will have occupied us for around a year and a half – which feels both like the blink of an eye and also an eternity!

Needless to say we are eager to crawl – blinking in the bright light of day – out of our current subterranean dwelling place to resume our former lives above ground level.

I am also – naturally –  keen to take and to post to these pages a further portfolio of photographs displaying the results of our labours – that we might dazzle the gentle reader with the sumptuous fruits of our endeavours.

Hmmm – that’s quite enough of that, I think…

Two weeks into our renovation project and good progress is being made – though not all such will be immediately apparent to the quick glance.

First appearances, for example, would suggest that the kitchen is practically unchanged from its state of a week ago – whereas in fact much has been done. The gas feed for the range has been run in; the plumbing for the sink and dishwasher laid on; the electrics for lighting, appliances and so forth installed; and the extraction facilities for the range hood put in place.

The kitchen is actually very nearly ready for the drywaller to come in and to make it look like a real room again.

Similar progress has been effected in the bathrooms, for which first fix plumbing, electrics and extraction have been completed.

At one point it looked as though we may have found ourselves waiting for more than ten weeks for the delivery of our bath tubs, such being the current shortage in north America of the model that we (and clearly others) have chosen.

Mine is the larger of the two tubs (I have expressed before my feelings regarding the diminutive size of many Canadian bathtubs) and we were concerned that it might prove difficult to source. As it turns out we were most pleasantly surprised when it was delivered within a couple of weeks of an order having been placed, enabling our plumber to crack on with the installation.

Acquisition of the other tub promised to be a more difficult proposition and I thought it a good idea to visit the other bathroom equipment wholesalers in Victoria to see if anyone had an alternative that would do the job. To my great delight the second supplier that I tried had in their warehouse one (and one alone!) of the very tubs that we were seeking. It was duly delivered the very next day and installed forthwith.

In addition to the above mentioned construction tasks good progress has been made with the stripping of the ‘popcorn’ from the ceilings and on the laying of a new sub-floor – that which had been uncovered during the demolition phase being deemed unsuitable on its own for the task of carrying our splendid new flooring.

There have been times when our humble abode seems to have been hosting an apparently never-ending round of tradesmen. Our contractor and his young accomplice (or two) are constants; the electrician and his two sidekicks have done a number of days to complete their first fix; the gas fitter and his mate have done likewise; the plumber has worked alone but is a large enough character that he more than makes up for it; and the roofer (who put in the extractor vents) came and went before I knew it.

Add to this multitude the man from the flooring company and the window supplier and you will get an idea just how busy the place has been. We have not yet seen the drywaller, the kitchen cabinet installers, the counter-top templaters (and installers) or the roof insulators.

What a merry throng; all appropriately dedicated – it would seem – to the creation of our splendid new home…

Being new to the whole concept of timber-framed houses I find myself on a steep learning curve when it comes to the business of the construction and – more pertinently – the renovation thereof.

My long career in IT brought me repeatedly, if somewhat unexpectedly, into contact with the UK construction industry. Wearing my networking hat (one wonders exactly what sort of head apparel that might be!) I was involved with a wide variety of new-build projects pretty much throughout. I became as a result familiar with the methods and materials used, be they brick, concrete, engineering block, steel frame etc, etc…

This is far from the first kitchen that I have renovated and I thought that I knew a fair bit about that which is involved. It is, however, the first such that I have done in a timber-framed residence. In a brick built house the norm is for the kitchen services (electricity, water, gas and air extraction) to be run behind or on top of the cabinets. Stripping out a kitchen or bathroom is simply a matter of removing the appliances, tearing out the units, making good any damage and then rejigging the services appropriately.

I was taken aback to discover, therefore, that in a timber framed house all of the services are run through the walls instead. Stripping out a kitchen or bathroom thus also involves tearing out the drywall (plasterboard) walls and ceilings along with any insulation, going right back to the bare stud-work. The rebuild thus essentially starts with a blank canvas and is done from scratch.

The images that accompany this screed will give an idea as to what is involved and comparison with my last post may startle the gentle reader as much as the real thing did me.

This first phase of the project – the demolition – has been mercifully quick. From here on in we start to play the longer game.