Kingsport Water Project

A long long time ago, in a province far far away...
Well OK. It was 2007, and we were temporarily in Newfoundland.
We received notice from the county here at home in Nova Scotia, that they were considering installing municipal water along our road and requesting permission to a well water test as the first stage of a process to determine whether the area needed municipal water supplied.
Sure, of course we thought, and notified our tenants that someone would be around to take a water sample.
As a result we got a free water test in February 2008, something you should do every so often anyway, if you have a well. The results of the test for us were OK. We got a report that indicated nothing harmful in our well, but did note that we have higher iron than is considered aesthetically pleasing.
I already knew that because of the rust stains on my tub and shower and toilet.
In June that year, there was a public information meeting about a water project which we couldn't go to because we were in Newfoundland. They did send out the overall results of the area water tests, which I found shocking. Of 80 tested samples, 17 had higher than acceptable levels of something that would affect peoples health. In other words, about 22% of households in my neighbourhood had unsafe drinking water. Mostly it was bromine from the sea water infiltration, but some houses had coliform or selenium too. 13 houses like ours had high iron counts and 15 had high sodium counts.
What followed next was a number of meetings to decided if we wanted to fork out the bucks to pay for a water line installation and how much we would be willing to pay. The first proposal didn't include the whole area, and some residents felt left out. These meetings had a distinct "Gilmore Girls' quality about them.
The next proposal six months later in 2009, doubled the cost per household to about $10,000 and we all balked at that.
The third proposal changed some of the engineering to reduce the cost and the price came out to $6000. Then we were asked to commit to the project or not. To get funding from various forms of government, the project needed 40% of residents committed to paying the $6 grand. We had to commit by a certain date, just before Christmas. We didn't get the 40% because who has time to look at this stuff just before Christmas?
The deadline was extended, and eventually in early 2010, we got the 40%.
Then the proposal went to county council for approval, and to the various levels of government for infrastructure funding, some of it only available this year, as economy booster funds, from the feds. If we didn't start actually doing something this year we wouldn't get that funding and the cost per household would go back up to $10,000.
Then came the long process of the main pipe installation which lasted all spring, summer and into the fall this year. The project was supposed to be completed in September, and in August there was another public meeting to tell us that it would probably be October, but we could pay our money now.
We paid up, and started wondering when we would find time to get the lateral pipe to the house installed this fall. Then came another public meeting to explain to residents how that was supposed to work. Apparently everyone else hadn't done anything either.
Finally, on Dec 1, we had the lateral installed to the house. That looked like this.

And This.And This.
On the up side, Peter got to rent a really big tool and drill through the foundation (3 times until we got it right.)
We still have only well water though. The Village is refusing to take ownership of the project from the county until a few engineering kinks are worked out. To complicate the process, some residents who had committed to paying are summer cottagers who got tired of waiting around and left for the season. Until they pay, the village doesn't want to take on the maintenance because they don't have enough houses connected to make that pay.
On Monday we had a wicked wind storm that knocked out power for 24 hours. With a well, when we lose power we lose water. So close and yet so far.Three years and counting.

Back Door Bonanza

We are both exhausted after a marathon weekend project. One task on our to do list for quite some time was to replace the back door, which has been rotting out the floor beneath for at least as long as we have been living here.
We suspected that once we had a look at the floor, we would have a big job to replace anything rotten. We had no idea of what was below the floor, but evidence from outside suggested it was once a squirrels nest. In addition, we wanted to move the location of the door from the south wall of the porch to the east wall. The south wall is directly below the roof valley, and the ice builds up on the step making it really treacherous in winter. This was also why the door would leak when it rained.

We began Saturday morning, tearing up several layers of linoleum, chip board, 50's era tile and oil cloth to get to the real sub floor. Once we tore out the door we could see the rot extended back a foot or so from the door and also affected the sill. We decided to take out both layers of floor. The top was 1x4 tongue and groove, below that was a dogs breakfast of boards scavenged from what looked like the chicken coop.
Happily the joists were good, and the other sills were still good so we replaced the sill under the old door, and used plywood to cover the hole in the wall where the old door came out. That wall will eventually be the coat closet.
This morning we dug out the rubble under the construction. In the midst of this, we found an old green bottle, similar to a 70's era 7up bottle but without any writing on it, and a child's shoe. We levelled out the dirt and put vapour barrier over it to help seal out the damp. Then we insulated between the joists with styrofoam and fibreglass and laid plywood on top for the sub floor.
Next came the task of making a new hole for the new door. Once we opened up the east wall and exposed the studs we could see that the original door was probably there to begin with. The gable wall of the porch is constructed with a double top plate so we can use that as a header for the new door. When we insulated the porch walls a few years ago, we added studs in the right place for the door opening that we knew would eventually be there. After measuring to make sure we knew what size we wanted we went out to buy the door. By this time it was raining, so we put a plastic tent over the outside and continued to plug away. A skill saw and a reciprocating saw makes short work of several layers of sheathing and shingles.
Finally, we slotted the new door into place. It is a temporary measure so the squirrels don't come in tonight. The rough opening is a bit tight, and needs a slight adjustment before we fix it there permanently.
There is still a lot to do on this project. We need to add a bottom plate and studs in the old door opening, and replace the outside house wrap and shingles to make it weather proof. We need to finish laying the sub floor and build a set of steps up to the new door. Oh yeah, and the door needs a doorknob too.

Canning is the New Knitting

Last week, I heard on the radio that canning was the new knitting. The idea is that people can continue to eat locally during the winter if they preserve the harvest now. My mother would say everything old is new again.
Being a country girl, I've always been into canning because I was spoiled as a child with home made everything and the store bought versions were never as good. So years ago I started with jam and sweet fruit preserves. The other one loves pickles, so pickles were my next attempt. I used to spend weeks in the fall preserving everything I could get mt hands on that I could do in a hot water canner. My intentions were good but invariably we never ate all of it, and after a few years of dusting jars full of suspect stuff that eventually got thrown away, I gave up most of it and just stayed with the staples.
I'm not so fond of pickles and making them is a lot of work, so I don't do as many of those as he would like. The picture above is a small batch of green tomato chow, because we have a lot of green tomatoes and both the O.O and his father like them.
Salsa is one of those things that I can't stand if bought in a store. It just tastes like chemicals to me, but we eat a lot of Mexican food, and homemade salsa is a staple now. For a couple of years I've attempted to plant everything in the vegetable garden that one needs to make Salsa, but no matter how much I plan, the plants don't seem to co-operate. This year I got enough green peppers, about 2 weeks earlier than any tomatoes ripened. We got cold weather in early September which threatened frost, so I picked the bulk of my tomatoes while they were still green and packed them up in boxes to ripen later. None of my hot peppers grew at all. I couldn't find cilantro to plant at all this spring and my onions are just about ready to be picked now, although they are very small. So once again I went to the farm market and bought the ingredients I needed to make salsa and spent all day yesterday in the kitchen.
The other one, meanwhile finished off roofing the garden shed with the help of our neighbour Dan. This will keep the floor from rotting out again, and will also keep the new lawn mower dry in the winter.









Today he is working on replacing the sheathing on one end of the garage in a vain attempt to keep the critters out. Again, we are doing this a cheaply as possible because we want to tear the ugly garage down someday, so instead of using something proper, we are slapping up something call super roof, which seems to be half inch chip board, but not chip board.

Shower Power

Last weekend we added a layer to the shower system. This is the kerdi membrane that makes the layer of already water proof concrete board more waterproof. We did this Saturday and then had to let the mortar set for at least 48 hours before the tiles could go on, so Sunday instead of shower building we built a back step outside the sunporch door, because some people find a 15 inch drop to the ground a little uncomfortable. Go figure.

How to Set Up A Studio:

First, spend years learning various skills like carpentry, masonry, small engine repair and electrical wiring. Instead of that, I studied mate selection and live with someone that fits that description.
We did grout the floor of the sun room last weekend. It took two sessions because we ran out of grout half way through. The second session went much easier, faster and cleaner after we applied what we learned from the first session. It is like Peter always says, "Once we are finished a job we know exactly what we are doing."
As a side adventure, not really tile related but clay related; we worked on getting one of the pottery wheels working. It confounded us in the garage, the motor would run but the belt drives would not. After some thought, we moved it into the house to warm up, and after some Armor All on the belts and some grease everywhere else it trundled along nicely, although it is less powerful than I am used to. Some structural reinforcement to stop the wobble and I have a wheel.
Then I found two pottery wheels and a kiln on Kijiji in Schubenacadie. I figured it had to be a sign so off we went on a road trip last weekend to buy them. They were all older than dirt and beat up but the price was right. They had lived in a guy's unheated shed for 10 years. They were meant to be a project, but his wife switched to painting shortly after they acquired them and the project never happened. He was selling them to make more room for the stuff he had been buying on Kijiji. (These people were really great, but the house was full of stuff - all of it great and they had many outbuildings full of more stuff. It was eerily disturbing; like looking into the future.)
The kiln is a larger version of the small test kiln we have already, it is 7 cubic feet of interior space, but it draws more power than the other and we will have to upgrade the wiring from the panel to the plug in the garage to be able to fire it. This project will be farther down the road as the small kiln will be big enough to fire the few tiles we need for the shower.
The new (old) wheels are both the stand up type and are what Peter calls third world engineering. Meaning whatever goes wrong, you can fix it with a paper clip and some bubble gum. We McGyvered one today. It looks like this but it is electric, and it is actually from England but dates from post WW2, which was sort of third worldy when you think about it. It only needed a new power cord and on/off switch to make it work, and then some silicone spray and steel wool to tart it up. At the moment it has only one speed, and although we can see that there is a potential for speed variability, we can't quite figure out how the mechanism should work as the treadle is missing. But even as a one speed wheel it might be useful for trimming and I'm definitely going to have a go at throwing just to see what it is like standing up.
All of this has taken us away from finishing the extruder. But until we get some clay, Peter won't be able to see where the problems are with the existing design. Clay is coming Monday!

Holistic Renovations

Peter says he wants to write a sequel of sorts to the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Here's why.
Peter would like our first house project of 2009 to be the shower. We have most of the stuff we need, we bought the tile and cement backer board years ago (literally, years ago) but I've decided it would be fun to make a border tile to trim the subway tile we bought. With my new ceramic skills I can do this, but it makes the process of installing a shower a little more time consuming. Yesterday, Peter researched and bought the required plugs and breakers for wiring up the kiln. Today we are firing the kiln empty to see what temperature it will achieve and whether it will set the garage on fire. So far so good. It reached 900 F, after 3 hours on low. Then I thought I set it up to medium, but I set it to off so it cooled down for an hour until we noticed. (I have the same problem with my slow cooker, it must be a left handed thing.)
To make ceramics you need a place to do it 'cause it can be messy. At the moment, in lieu of building a whole new studio, my best temporary place is the sun room; it's warm, close to water and has lots of natural light, but it still needs a waterproof floor which was on the house 'to do' list already. We have all the tile for that too (longer than we have had the shower tile actually) but we did need to buy underlay and thinset to put it in. That's looking like tomorrow's project.
Once that is complete, we will need to make a clay extruder from some old plumbing supplies and a motorized plunger. Peter has some ideas for that already. Then we will have to test the shrinkage of the clay during firing so it will end up the same size as the manufactured tiles we have already.
And then we can make the border tiles and install the shower.
Holistic renovations, you see?
And before anyone points out the obvious:
Yes, I know you can buy preformed plastic showers.
Yes, I know you can buy ready made border tiles.
Yes, I know you can just shower in the tub with curtains. But where is the fun in life if you take the easy route?
And you all wonder why it takes so long for us to renovate the house. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there Peter needs to finish his PhD.
If you think we're mad, you should meet my friend Guild.

Building Withdrawl

The first week we were here, both Peter and I suffered from Building Withdrawl. We were both so used to visiting the Canning Maple Leaf everyday (twice and three times on some days) that we found ourselves gravitating towards those Godless box stores here in St John's just to get our fix. By the second day we had already sussed out Home Despot and Cambodian Tire on Kenmount Road ( a strip we call "Not the Blip")
Pictured above is Peter installing a transition strip on the floor between kitchen and living room. Ho Boy! Do we know how to live! But wait it doesn't end there. We also purchased a Yakemshelf for the kitchen (because we needed more room for our Stuff of course.)
What is a Yakemshelf?
A long, long time ago, in a province far far away... Vancouver in 1994 in fact.
Our first apartment was the ground floor granny suite of a Vancouver Special. We rented it from an elderly Ukrainian couple that lived in the main part of the house upstairs. They were the Yakemchuks; John and Olga. As I type I realise that he is almost certainly dead now as he was mostly dead even then, and I am sad. The kitchen in that apartment has almost the exact layout, counter and cupboard space as this one. Read: Inadequate for our meal preparation style. I introduced Peter to the art of yardsaling way back when, and though slow to warm up, he was converted the minute he scored several pieces of plywood which he proceeded to make into a shelf unit for pot storage in the Yakemkitchen. (It was Vancouver, we had a lot of pots)
The plywood also became a bookshelf, a micowave stand, two tabletops, a desk and a plant press for my school herbarium project. It was a lot of plywood.
Skip forward a few short years. Almost as soon as we arrived here, Peter deemed it necessary to have a Yakemshelf in the kitchen. I understood right away what he meant. Scary isn't it?
Lady Catherine deBourg would approve I think.