The winter were the world 'normal' changed!

Greetings from my shack on the side of a BC mountain.

In my last update dated 7^th November I said I would provide another in late January or early February, so I am clearly in naval terms “somewhat adrift.” But to be fair I had nothing to show in terms of progress until now. Thanks to those who, having seen nothing from me, made contact in late March to check all was well just as the world went into Covid 19 lockdown. 

My readers will recall from the last edition that I had spent the best part of 30 days physical effort in September and October completing my patio’s stone retaining wall, installing my entrance steps (using a system of wooden chocks, slides and levers to move the 220lb cut rock slabs) and completing the groundwork for the concrete patio pour.  Then, ready last week of October, the weather turned unseasonably cold, dropping to between -7C and -14C at night and barely creeping up to +4C by day.  Those conditions are rather more typical of early December.  Far too cold to pour concrete and get a good cure, the plan had to be postponed until this Spring. 

I was, to put it mildly, feeling a little defeated after all that work, especially as the patio and entrance area were already a year behind my original scheduling intentions.  A few days after last writing I decided to shelve further work on the house until the Spring and give myself some much-needed “me” time.  Afterall, having at the start of November moved up from the untrimmed walkout basement that had provided me with my bedroom, bathroom and TV room for the first 15 months of occupancy, and into my newly finished loft bedroom bathroom suite, and already enjoying the (95%  finished) open plan main floor, I was living in plenty of comfort.  Readers may recall that on occupancy in August 2018 I had moved into a rather dusty building site with no internal doors, untrimmed window bucks, and a main floor that was just a rough slab of bare concrete, and a bare framed unfinished loft.   So now enjoying two floors of this mansion, I saw no reason to work on it over winter in a climate that slows the pace to a third of that which can be achieved in the warmer seasons.  

Decision made, November and December became a routine of the intermittent three to four days per month contract consulting work for my client in Halifax, NS, a lot of time getting back in shape in my local gym (at 45km away that is a very relative term), or curled up on the leather sofa’s reading good books in front of my wood burning stove, ...

… plus Netflix binging, and just admiring the views, which as one UK friend said a couple of years ago, I will never tire of. 

By contrast, January was completely written off as three days into the month I went down with the worst flu I have ever experienced, spending five days in bed, and once up, struggling to even breathe while climbing stairs for the next two weeks, and not finally getting back to some semblance of normality until early February.   

Second week of February I flew to UK for 18 days to attend a funeral and then spent over a week with my Mother.  Subsequent plans to catch up with my sister’s family and two sets of friends in the South West had to be cancelled as a succession of Atlantic storms culminating in Storm Dennis led to large parts of UK being flooded at levels not seen since 1947 and making travel particularly tortuous. I did manage a couple of days in and around London catching up with friends in a slightly less soggy part of the country, and then flew back to British Columbia’s East Kootenays late February to await the end of winter here.  

In spite of my “chilling out” over the winter I wasn’t completely unproductive, building a TV stand and shelving unit for the humungous sized 60” TV I bought in December for my loft bedroom suite …

… and a bookcase for my Great Room, having decided that my two existing much taller but narrower bookcases would compromise where I intend to eventually hang some big framed pictures. 

Since departing Ottawa 3 ½ years ago all my books have remained packed in boxes.  Unpacking and arranging what has gone into this new bookcase made it feel like a second Christmas. More fun to come when I eventually decide where to put my two older bookcases and unpack the remaining books.

By the second week of April both the snow thaw on the lowest slopes had more or less completed …

… and outdoor temperatures were tolerable enough for me to spend a few days working outside doing some post winter clear up and burn of the various piles of remaining glued wood-based build detritus.   With two charred stumps remaining from last year’s burn of 15 tree root stumps, I wheeled down about 20 wheelbarrow loads of junk plywood, fibreboard and other wood off-cut remnants, and had fun reverting to my childhood pyromaniac tendencies and subsequent adult professional version of the same.   

A week or so later I then spent three days doing necessary remedial work on the patio’s stone facing wall and the exposed groundwork, as the Canadian winter had inevitably exerted some toll on my preparations, and re-installed the wood forms and rebar for the concrete pour of my garage apron (threshold).  I had removed those forms before the December snow arrived as I knew that if I went away for part of the winter I would want to garage the truck – or face coming back to a snow buried vehicle.  

As you may be able to pick out in the next photos, I then taped polythene all around the five timber structural posts and along the lower part of the cedar siding in order to provide protection from concrete splashing during the forthcoming pour.  

Last year, I decided to dispense with my previous concrete contractor as his histrionics, and in particular his ability to throw text and phone tantrums at his client had passed my red-line.  I sought an alternative via Dwight Hulbert, whose judgement and high but perfectly reasonable expectations  of his own employees and sub-trades is the best I have found in the local building trade.   He referred me to Jocomo of Cen Con Industries.  Joco, both in the run-up to and subsequent concrete pour and finishing, has been outstanding: quiet and calm in nature, polite and helpful, always offering sound advice to an amateur "wannabe" builder, total reliability in terms of his answering phone calls or texts, and always being on site ahead of the agreed time, excellent concrete finishing standards, and competitive pricing.  

Joco and I agreed to go for the pour on 2^nd May.  I’d had some trepidation, in spite of Joco’s assurances that my preparation was thorough, as to whether the patio loose stacked facing stone wall that also acts as the formwork for the concrete pour, might just be pushed aside by the weight of wet concrete.  I had worried unnecessarily as there was not so much as a movement in those rocks, nor a dribble of concrete between the gaps or down the face wall.  

A few hours later Joco spread a dust charcoal colorant, slate stamped the curing concrete, and cut four stress lines. The garage threshold aprons have a more simple and much cheaper broom brushed finish. Next day I had the task of washing all that dust colourant off – a two hour rather messy job, and the day after Joco jet spray washed it, returning on the Saturday to apply an acrylic spray seal.  As well as sealing the concrete, this gives a slight wet look that brings out the texture of the slate stamp finish and the colours of the rock wall.  A few days later I removed all the polythene protecting my cedar siding and timber posts, and some 2½ years after window installation, removed the protecting film and manufacturers labelling from the adjacent windows.  Over a year on from my original aim, the now finished patio and entrance area is a huge visual improvement and I can now come and go and welcome future visitors at my front door rather than through the garage.  

In the photo of the garage apron below, I have yet to remove the wood forms. I will later grade the area this side of the aprons up to the top edge using a washed gravel and compacting thereafter.    

So, looking ahead ......

First, after a year of barely averaging 3-4 days contract consulting work with my client company in Halifax, NS, the pace of work finally picked up dramatically in late March to the 12 days a month I wanted.  That is digging me out of a small financial hole and will ultimately pay for such things as curtains and blinds, some of the landscaping work I hope to achieve later this year, and if international air travel resumes next winter in the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic, some overseas travel.  

On the Covid 19 front, I distance myself from the excess of media white noise beyond my early morning read of the news and certain websites like https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ otherwise I would get exasperated with the mixed and confusing messages from those in authority, those in denial, and those who chose to pick statistics in order to present either extremes of the argument (“lies, dammed lies and statistics”: attr Benjamin Disraeli).  The situation is what it is, and we have to face the facts, adapt and mitigate.  Bill Gates recently said that few countries will get an A grade in how they managed the pandemic and I would not venture to disagree.  In spite of my inevitable healthy scepticism for government "smoke and mirrors" data, it appears that in terms of numbers per million of detected infections or deaths, Canada might be doing generally slightly better than many of the G8, and BC in particular would appear to be significantly better than the rest of Canada, and even be on a par with countries that indicate more favourable statistics (either by luck or preemptive planning and subsequent sound public management) such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and S Korea. Fingers crossed as BC is now carefully easing some of the lockdown measures.  Overall I probably feel much safer than some of you living in crowded cities, be that here in Canada or elsewhere in the world, and at least have space around me rather than being coped up in a house or apartment no bigger than a box "without room to swing a cat."  I do worry though about the recently emerging and doubtless still very under-reported figures for Brazil. (These had not been so publicly declared when I took the screenshot below on 14th May as they have been in the last few days).  My brother lives and works in Brazil and for the last two months we have been chatting about the inevitable and now emerging situation there.  

Besides the effect of lockdown on a social life, and no access to my gym and physio treatment for my neck and associated occipital neuralgia, the really big personal downside to the pandemic is that I had expected my first two sets of visitors who were booked to fly out from UK.  My Mother was due to arrive this week for a 16 days visit, followed within days by two very close friends (Holly and David). Fingers crossed for next year. With their visits approaching, I had intended to complete the wood trim work to doors and windows to both downstairs bedrooms and bathrooms, and time allowing, the downstairs family room.  But as their visits are now postponed the pressure is off.  I have made a start on that work and will show you the finished result in my next update. Elsewhere in the house I am in the process of negotiating with one contractor to hopefully get him to wood trim the stair gable windows that look under the roof extending over my covered concrete deck.  That work will need scaffold rigging, and while I am capable of doing that and the trim work, those that know me well are well aware that I am less than comfortable when working at heights. In this instance, I would prefer to pay somebody to do the work for me.

Once those gable windows are trimmed I can finish some remaining work on the stairwell, then remove the cardboard that has been protecting my timber stairs since installation in May 2018.  Then there’s my laundry area to finish.  And …. and … and.  The list goes on.   Outside there is much landscaping work and I have yet to decide which parts of that grand task to tackle and finance this year, and which to leave until next.  But I hope by the end of this summer to have improved the general appearance of the ground at least in front of the house.

TTFN.  Stay healthy and safe.  I’ll aim to update again late July.