Wired

I am writing to you from our beautiful late 80s brass and pink trailer with some exciting updates!


Roofing / Windows / Doors: Our driftwood shingles went up and almost simultaneously, the windows and patio door  were installed. The windows are Anderson 400 casements. They are sandtone on the exterior and wood (pine) on the interior.  The house is starting to come together !


We ordered all exterior doors and garage doors and expect them to come in November 3rd. Until them, we have boarded up the main door so we can work without chilly winds freezing us. 

patio door that leads to sunroom

windows for the living room

back of house..you can see the deck on this one

front with shingles and most windows...

loft windows (middle dormer)

"secret" area for the kid's room..every child's dream

view of the dining room from upstairs

Francis' music room (over the garage)

view of house from music room

a bit more house wrap...

and all the windows in! Notice the boarded up front door..classy...

 Electricity: We have been connected and are now the proud owners of our own hydro post in the yard. It looked funny at first but you get used to it. The trailer is much more livable now that we don't have the constant hum of the generator in the background.

The house now has two functional outlets, which are currently being used for the sump pump, some work lights and the occasional radio (Dad can't work without music). 

The electrician has installed the boxes for the switches and plugs and is about halfway done running the wires.

Post!

Electricity is on its way....

Trailer Life:  On top of getting electricity last week, we also got a Bell Turbohub so that Francis can work from home from time to time. We are not getting full reception because of the trees but it's 75% there. We will likely get an antenna once we move in. It's nice to be able to be back to my normal routine of updating my podcasts and being able to update the blog (no access from work and a pain to do on the iPhone)


We heat the trailer with a little electric ceramic heater. It works wonderfully. Sometimes Chinook hogs it by going to sleep in front of it though. 


Speaking of Chinook, he is a great roommate. I mean sure he leaves fur and footprints everywhere he goes and he destroyed a dozen tennis balls but we are totally in love with him. 

Goofy smile! I mean really...how can you resist.

He seems pensive..but actually he's staring at his ball  obsessively. Typical border collie behaviour

See? I'm sitting! Throw me the ball already!

Chinook sometimes points. No clue where that comes from. The joys of mutts.

As for the property, I feel more and more at home everytime our car pulls in the driveway. I did some exploring in the past weeks. We had walked to the little creek at the back of our property before but neighbours told me there were trails that could be used a little further back so I went to find them. I couldn't believe what I saw...gorgeous well maintained sandy trails surround the back of the lot, each leading to different scenery and wildlife. Chinook and I are at our happiest there. I love to imagine us going for sunday morning walks and four wheeler rides once we are established. I could not ask for anything more.  

One of the stops along the trail...

In one of the trails...

and another...

Little creek out back

Tons of photographic subjects

Framing: It's 99% done. They only have a few outstanding tasks left...namely to lower the ceiling where our walk-in shower will be and to frame the basement walls. The strapping is done so once the rough-ins are complete we will be ready for the inspection. We made two framing changes since my last post. The first is to the upstairs bathroom. We felt one of the walls made the room awkward so we changed the layout to have a 45 degree angled wall to open it all up. I think it was worth it. It feels much less cramped now. 

Not sure what he was doing in this one...I think framing the laundry room wall?

45 degree wall in the bathroom

Another change, which isn't really a change because it was on the plan but was never done, was to frame a wall behind the refrigerator so we can run some wires and plumbing ther as well as allow us to recess the refrigerator into the wall so it looks like a counter-depth model. 


Francis' dad did a fantastic job putting in backing for dormers. This is needed so the insulators can do their job properly. I wish I had a picture. Darn it.

Radiant Heat: The basement is done and has been poured. The garage's radiant heating is complete and pouring will happen tomorrow. 

Basement floor poured

Radiant in Garage

HVAC is almost complete...big thanks to Norm Brisson for his help.

Some of the duct work

Plumbing: It's 90% done. Our septic system was installed and we connected it to the house. 

Septic System and mantle

We have a few changes to make because of the framing changes mentioned above. We went to Boone's Plumbing to pick out our plumbing fixtures. You would never think there are so many options for toilets and faucets until you walk into that store..haha. We picked out everything we had to in order to get a quote. We will likely need to go ahead and confirm our choices. The most important purchases were the bath and the shower fixtures because those need to be installed before we can drywall. Pictures to come at a later date.

Fireplace: The fireplace was delivered and installed. Dad is currently framing a box around it so we can insulate it properly. Our fireplace is pretty darn big so we first framed a 2x6 platform so it's raised from the floor. There will be a 2 foot hearth in the front to protect the pine floors.

Our BIS Tradition fireplace

Fireplace box starting to take shape. It will go all the way to the top.

Chinook wins the "which makes for a best picture" contest between the fireplace and himself

Things left to do before we can insulate:

- Complete plumbing 100%

- Complete electricity 100%

- install necessary connections for central vacuum

- install CAT5 , alarm, doorbell and other wiring

- prep the 2 bathrooms for electric radiant heat

- Framing and rough-in inspection by the city

Random pictures:

We extended the sump pit drain further into the forest...

the pile of wood seen in this picture has finally been cleared thanks to tons of bonfire evenings

Framing and other exciting developments!

Time is flying by!

Since August, here are the big items that got done:

1. Electricity: We dug a trench to be used for hydro and other cabling. The boys had a lot of fun with that one. The steps were as follows:

·         Prep stages: Rent a Kubota and order some pipes (db2 for the electric wires, plain white ones for the phone/misc wiring

·         Dig the trench approx 3 feet deep (takes a while if you have lots of roots as we did)

·         Fish a line in the first set of pipes and lay down at the bottom of trench

·         Put a bit of sand down on top

·         Fish a line in the second set of pipes and lay in the trench (this is to be used for phone or any other future service that runs at the street). At this point we also ran a length of pipes across the driveway in case we want to put exterior lights along both sides of it.

·         Place a warning tape (caution yellow tape) over trench so that if you dig in the future, you will know to stop at that point.

·         Fill trench with sand in case we need to dig them up again in the future.  

2. Trailer Life: We have officially moved our temporary home (it’s actually a fifth wheel trailer) on the lot and are staying there. Our last day in the apartment is September 30^th so the next few weeks will be busy moving out of there and storing our furniture. It’s a bit of an adventure living in the trailer but hey, we lived in our VW van for 5 weeks so this is roomy compared to that. Things will get easier once we are connected to our well water. We will keep using the outhouse until it’s too cold to do so. Once it gets chilly, we are hoping the plumbing in the house will be done…cross your fingers for us…cold outhouses are not fun.

3. Framing: The framing began the minute the foundation was back filled. Here are the progress pictures. As you can see, it went up quite quickly!

Garage interior

cathedral ceiling where fireplace will go

View from kitchen

Laundry Room and patio doors to get to screened-in porch

Music room over garage

Still tons of wood....

Screened in porch 

Music room over garage

back of the house

2nd floor

2nd floor loft 

Screened-in porch roof being completed

Putting strapping on the cathedral ceiling

Screened in porch completed

front porch

4. Radiant Heating: Francis completed placing the foam and pex for the radiant floor in the basement…

5. Plumbing: The rough in for the plumbing was started. We need to get the rough-in for the HVAC and electricity started as well so we can book our insulation crew.

6. Well: The well was dug. Gilles Sarault was the one who did it for us using a non-traditional approach. It starts off more or less the same, he removes all the vegetation then digs for about 13 feet around the well. He fills the hole with special filtering sand and puts clay on top of that so that rainwater is diverted to the outside. However, instead of the typical cement based surface well, he uses a 12 inch plastic tubes with holes (covered by geotextile fabric) all around the sides. Gilles explained to us that he has used this technique in the past and it has been great so far and provides as much if not more water than a traditional well. Amongst other technical advantages, he says there will be less standing water if we go away for long periods at a time and the size of the well itself is much smaller, so it’s less of an eyesore. Our well is 22 feet deep. I really really hope the water tastes and smells good! Nothing worse than bad water.

7. Roofing: The roofing has begun. Ben and Joe of Taktix Roofing will be doing the job for us. We decided on Canadian Driftwood by Gaf/Elk. They are the 40 year Timberline Prestique product line. We were debating between charcoal and driftwood and decided to go a bit lighter so driftwood it was! It's odd though, the shingles are actually quite darker than they seem on the web site. 

8. Paperwork:

·         Our mortgage papers were finalized. The last step was to fill out the life insurance forms. This also involved a “what-the-heck” random urine test.

·         I had to follow up on construction insurance with our insurance broker and I think that’s pretty much finalized except I have to send in contractor information as they start work. It’s actually a bit of a pain.

·         Financially, we had our first and second chunk of money dumped into our account. The way it works is that you call with a request for more money then they come over to examine how far along you are and give you a percentage of the mortgage value based on the percentage of work complete. I believe right now we are filed as being 35% complete so they were able to give us 35% of the value of the mortgage. Right now we are on track with our budget. No big surprises. Phew!

·         Legal aspect: I met with the lawyer for a second visit and we drafted the cohabitation agreement. There’s a lot more to think about than you’d expect. Next step is that the contract will be sent to Francis for review then we will both sign it. I’ll be happy to get that out of the way so we can concentrate on the fun stuff.

Lessons learned:

·         Before the plan is sent to the engineers that will design your trusses, make sure you list all the details which may not be on the plan. Also, make sure you see the truss layout plan before ordering them. We hit a snag when we realized our architect hadn’t specified we wanted a cathedral ceiling dormer in the middle. We had to get new trusses made and Dad (life saver) had to go get them in Cornwall so the framing could continue without delays.

·         Check your fireplace specs and triple-check to make sure there are no issues with the flues fitting in the plan. There was a mistake that was missed by our architect and our fireplace supplier. We had told both of them our plan to have a fireplace that was cathedral ceiling and had shown the supplier our plans. Nobody told us that we needed a few more inches to make the flue fit. We will be able to work around the issue but it would have been a lot less of a hassle to get it right the first time.

Next up:

·         Finish roofing

·         Window installation

·         Door installation

·         Rough-ins (plumbing, electricity, HVAC, alarm, central vac)

·         Framing inspection

·         Septic Installation

·         Pouring cement floor in the basement and garage (after radiant is done in garage )

·         Fix up a few issues in basement (windows have to move due to some of the forms giving way in the pouring process)

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Random Pictures:

Our wood pile for this winter:

View from the middle dormer:

Chinook guarding his toy: