Monday, February 22, 2010

Takin' the Bull by the Horns

Well, we're doin it. And I'm in charge.

We're setting out to list this house in 4 weeks.

Under my direction of 'what needs to be done next' Mr. J has been going full force at elminating his packrat collection. Over the course of the weekend, we packed up a full load in Cousin J's van and hauled it off to the storage unit. Then Cousin J and Mr. J took another load this afternoon, of mostly big stuff. (read, stuff I couldn't carry) We've already got another load ready to go.

We have now entirely cleared out the spare bedroom, and have nearly cleared out our own bedroom. By the end of this evening, I'm setting out that we'll have moved our bed and our skeleton crew of clothes which now live in rubbermaid totes into the spare room, and emptied our bedroom.

By tomorrow evening, I plan to have primed and given the first coat of paint to our bedroom.

Cousin GW is coming over tomorrow evening. He's a real professional woodworker and cabinet maker. He's going to custom fabricate a threshold for between our kitchen and dining room, and give us a quote on making the cupboard doors. We got a quote from another guy already who said $50 a door, which is a little too much for us, so we'll see what GW says.

On top of all that of course, we're still going strong on the kitchen reno.

This is the kitchen before, as it was when Mr. J purchased the house 7 years back. This is all the house originally had for cupboards and counter space.



Ye Ol' Standard issue 1970s faucet



This is what happens when you don't repair a leaky faucet for roughly ten years. The bottom was mush, and I just put my finger right through it.



Here's my little helper, boy S showing off our non-existent kitchen after cousin J and I ripped it out.



Re-construction in action!! This is the base of the new lower cabinet after cousin J and I started in on it.



And that's all the pics for now. I'm off to send some piggies packing out of the spare room and into the basement.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Climbing Stairs




It would seem that the stairs have become much too well worn by my feet in the last few days. I have done approx. 20 loads of laundry-which would be me carrying the loads both up and down from the second story, to the basement and back up, and then, sometimes, back down to the main level. My legs are so worn. I feel as though the stairs have become a symbol for the difficulty I am having in acheiving my goals of getting this place sorted and emptied, as my body is giving out in climbing them, and it seems as though I'm trapped somehow, by the stairs, constantly climbing, but never going anywhere.

It's official though, that Mr. J has TOO MUCH STUFF. He's perhaps what some people (not including himself) would consider a 'packrat personality'.

He has a lot of things. He has so many things, that it is becoming quite evident that his belongings are making it increasingly difficult to continue with the renovations, as they are in the way...they're blocking stairwells, and hallways and there are entire rooms filled with wine bottles. Well almost. There are boxes of things left behind from tenants of the past, there are boxes of things that were hastily picked up off the floor one day sometime ago, there are boxes of things that were removed from his last home (nearly 7 years ago) and haven't been opened since, there are stacks upon stacks of books (well many he has now packed up, but he keeps setting aside some that he may want to read in the next little while, and there is enough to fill another shelf) There is a collection of hand-me-down shoes, many came from his Mother (I dunno where she got them), which I have never seen him wear, but he doesn't want to part with them (we're talking like 20 or so pairs), there is a good deal of things which actually belong to Mr. J's best friend (we'll call him Mr.C), and there is enough clothing that the man could literally start his own chain of vintage clothing shops and run it from his bedroom.

I think Mr. J has somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 pairs of pants, and 60 t-shirts. That was a count I made sometime last year when I attempted to put them all away. I understand he likes them all, and wears most of them....but I think you need to draw the line somewhere.

So my aim for the past day or so has been to get a lot of stuff ready to move into the storage unit. Once all his stuff is out of the way, then its straight renovating, and I don't need to depend on him to do things in order to get stuff done.

I have been washing all of Mr. J's clothes, and my clothes and Boy S's clothes and Cottage towels and linens, and our towels and linens and stuff left behind by old tenants. Then I'm sorting it into piles-Goodwill-Cottage (that will go to Auntie BA to hang onto)-linens and clothes we can pack away for a while-and stuff we're wearing now, and summer. The stuff I'm keeping in ciculation is going into big rubbermaid totes, so I can essentially live out of them for...who knows how long!

Mr. J is having a hard time with the sorting aspect. Firstly, he's not here all day. And when he gets home he's tired. Secondly, he wants to make all the decisions about his things...and not have me rummage through and make choices for him. This proves difficult at best. I'm doing my very best, to respect his wishes for that, but I'm not sure how I can get the house emptied in a reasonable time and do that as well.

I have the benefit of my Mom coming over here tommorow (lord help her when she sees the disaster!) to hang out with Boy S while Mr. J and I get stuff done.

But good grief. If I can avoid going up and down the stairs....sigh.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

We are Urban Agronomists

With all the craziness of renovating, I've hardly had any time to post on here. Before I delve into descriptions of my trials and tribulations of cabinetry, or lament on the fact that we are so uncertain about our relocation options....I will set out to give a little background on our greatest hobby and passion for life.

Agronomy. That pretty much sums up most of what we appreciate. Despite the boudaries of our urban confines, and the ordinary frontward appearance of our semi-detached suburban home, our backyard is a veritable urban farm.

When Mr.J and I first started dating, he had begun the journey here, by having a densely planted tomato garden which was about 2 ft wide, and stretched the length of the yard.

He also had many many tomatoes and various other plants growing in what seemed to be nearly 100 pots, scattered in some sort of semblance all over the then oddly shaped deck which previously accomodated a pool.

From my own experience, I knew that keeping lots of veggies in pots is not nearly as sustainable as keeping them in the ground. So the first spring I lived here, I set out to change that. Not only did I grow from seed several hundred tomatoes, but I enlarged the garden space to accomodate them all in the ground. Primarily in raised beds, which I constructed from the old sheet metal above ground pool, which was sitting around, waiting to be re-purposed.

Here are some of my tomato starts in yogurt cups last winter:


7 yards of triple mix later.....we had an extensive vegetable garden, where we grew tomatoes, corn, potatoes, squash, zucchini, carrots, beets, radishes, amaranth, beans, peas, fennel, various herbs, salad greens and swiss chard.

Here's a pic taken by Boy S of our garden last summer. You can see, its a pic taken by a 6 year old...but you can also see amaranth, dill, tomatoes, bolted lettuces and maybe some squash.



But, it doesn't stop there. No, we take it just a little bit beyond having a veggie patch in suburbia. We also make all our own compost, from kitchen scraps, from our guinea pig manure and from chicken manure. Here's a pic of the big double compost bin I made last spring. This bin handles the second stage compost, and the yard waste. We have separate bins for fresh veggies, and manure.

Here's a shot of my double compost bins:



And, in case you're wondering where the manure comes from....well, initially it came from our guinea pigs, Sooty, Jasper and Pepper (rip Pepper). But it just wasn't enough. That, combined with our strong commitment to eating local organic food...our inability to obtain fresh local organic eggs with less than an hours drive, and the fact that organic eggs run about $5-6 a doz here, and aren't always available. We're fortunate that our city is one of the few in Ontario which does not outlaw the keeping of laying hens....so enter our small flock of backyard layers.



Here's a shot of the eggs I gathered this am:



I also made an attempt to keep things going during the winter. I made a small tent for the chard...but really I should have gone the extra step to use plastic, and to close it in on one end. The open end means that our dog enters, and sometimes 'grazes' on the new chard growth. Its amazing though, with such a mild winter, that hte chard is growing a bit, even in February.







And I guess, in a nutshell that pretty much sums it up. Personally, I really feel that urban agronomy is one of the most responsible and both ecologically and economically sustainable ways to use urban land in Ontario.

The sad reality, is that most of our urban land is some of the very best farmland in all of Canada. But we turned it into cities....and the food system we have in place favours cheap production, not healthy food, or wise ecological choices, and thereby pushed family farmers off their great land, in favour of mega corporate farms. The family farmers either went out of business, or are now farming on less desirable land, and we import so so much food, from far far away, which is ecologically disastrous in so many ways (not to mention, skirts the ethical labour laws we have here by purchasing commodoties produced where those laws don't exist).

So, I hope that even though, I'm now in the business of going out of Urban Agronomy, I can inspire someone else to carry on in these boots one day. Even if it means just a simple veggie patch-it is so much more of a responsible land use than a giant lawn come golf green.

I'd also like to toss in that my future SIL and BIL live in a new Oakville neighborhood that manages land in a non-traditional suburban way. Their home is a 3 story town home, occupying a small physical footprint, with a very tiny backyard. So a shout out to all who live in a neighborhood like that, where land is more valued, for one reason or another, and more people live in less suburban space.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Blowing through the kitchen....


I feel as though this past week has just streamed past me, with little time to think and breathe...literally, as I now seem to be fighting some kind of bronchial infection.

Boy S was home sick from school all week with the same thing. He did a pretty good job of keeping out of the way so that I could get my reno work done, I must say.


I can hardly believe, but in the past week I have done these things:

1.had a eco-energy home audit assesement

this was really cool. Justin, the energy auditor came and attached a blower fan to our front door, which allowed him to create negative pressure inside the house and measure the amount of loss from different places. He also determined the overall R value of the home. Now we can go ahead and have that new high efficiency furnace installed next week, and get about $1500 back on the install fee. Since the current furnace is over 30 yrs old, we're told it will just drag down the price of the home if we don't replace it.

2.with some help from cousin J, we tore out the entire kitchen. Then, us two amateurs managed to build two banks of cabinets, with counter tops (well, the bar top is still on custom order, but will be here soon). We still need to make the doors. But I must say, I am totally impressed with how they look, and the fact that they are near perfectly square, plumb and true. We left a spot for a dishwasher, and the plumber will come next week to install it.

Tommorrow, I need to sand and prime all the new lower cabinets, as well as the old uppers. We decided to leave the old uppers in place, and just replace the doors so that they all match.

The best part about this was that I did a lot of the thinking and figuring for it. I didn't want to use the borrowed old guardless table saw, that was lousily attached to a wobbly patio table with a rusty C-clamp..so cousin J stepped up to the plate. The long and the short of it however, is that with the right tools, I feel confident that I could undertake a kitchen on my own next time. Except for maybe cutting the hole for the sink....nobody has done that yet, as we're all too scared to crack the laminate. Yes, its laminate, but at least we sprung for one of the higher end laminates. The solid surface was too too much.

Gee, I guess that's it really. It seems like so much has happened, as I've been go go go on this kitchen. With only a few hours sleep each night...and only sleeping long enough to dream about cabinet construction...yes, renos are a full time job for me right now.

More later and I'll post some pics of the kitchen.