It’s been a busy spring, with renovations happening both at home and abroad.
In February we began work on our basement. Eventually we want to have some nice living spaces down there. We also want to add a half bath to the main floor when we renovate the kitchen. This means that some expensive and labour-intensive work has to happen in the basement first. I began by moving everything out of it and then demolishing the existing walls and bathroom. Then we hired some plumbers to modify our heating system. I couldn’t walk anywhere without cracking my head on a steel pipe, so the plumbers cut them out and replaced them with plastic lines. They also installed a system that splits the different floors of the house into different heating zones.
Though most of the cold weather had passed by the time it was completed, we had enough cold days to see just how much we will enjoy the new heating system in the coming years.
Next, we hired some people to break up the floor to install weeping tile and a sump pit.
With the rubble-stone foundation temporarily exposed, I decided that I should do some maintenance on it before it would be covered with insulated walls. I spent quite a few hours tuck-pointing all the places where the mortar was falling out from between the stones.
The floors have been repaired and the exterior walls have been framed. The contractors are now waiting for me to run some wires. My plan is to pull the permit myself. We’ll see what the city inspectors think of me.
We also decided to do some work on the rental. The new tenants weren’t fans of the 1980s carpet (who can blame them) and the tub-surround that I had tried to re-adhere to the wall a year ago was again letting go in the bathroom. We pulled up all the carpet on the main floor, patched the hardwood, sanded it down—Pam might still have the occasional dream involving a floor sander pulling her places she doesn’t want to go—and refinished it.
I didn’t want to mess with a temporary solution in the bathroom again and so we pulled out most of the fixtures and about half of the plaster and lath on the walls. After some adventures with mortar, tile, and grout, and after dealing with some stubborn water leaks, we ended up with a bathroom we can be proud of.
We might even be a bit jealous, since the bathroom is now a nicer one than our own.