Doors open – cancelled

Just a post to inform all of you that we have had to pull out of being in doors open. It sad for us as we have been prepping all summer to complete as much as we could, with the knowledge that we were working towards a date when we could share our story with others.
The city sent us forms to fill out one of which was a liability waver, here is part of it….”Each participating site must ensure that they have adequate public liability and property insurance to open their site to the public. The onus is on the site owner to verify whether their existing insurance coverage is adequate, or whether they will require additional coverage. As circumstances may vary from carrier to carrier, it is important that each site works directly with their insurance provider to determine whether adequate coverage is in place.”
So we contacted our insurance company to inquire. To make a long story short, turns out that doing something like this raises a flag to insurance companies which in turn could lead to higher premiums.
That said, we are passionate volunteers but not at the expense of higher premiums!
Sorry all, in anycase if at any time you’d like to stop by for a peek you know our doors always open, just drop us a line.

P.s. I should mention that other houses will still be participating so check those ones out.

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The piles are gone!

It’s September and here’s a reflection on our summer house activities. Our goal this summer was to clear the yard of all the piles and it’s nice to say we have accomplished what we set out to do. A few days of sore backs but it’s looking good!

A view from the end of the drive way. We’ve got alot of grass seed to plant!

Remember the dirt pile, gone, gone, gone! You can see what it looked like previously from this post.

This is the spot where the brick pile used to be!

Aside from clearing the yard we also finished the stone facing around the whole house, let’s just say I will in no way miss doing that job, sooo happy to see it completed.


You can see the previous rock post here.
And a bit of work inside the house. I started sewing curtains for the basement room, it’s almost completed.

curtains on the back of the door for a bit of privacy.

We lost the door on the wardrobe when moving the unit so I covered the frame with fabric.Going for traditional decor in this room.
You can see the previous post on this room here. And for the few who would like to see what this area looked like before the room, click here.
And lastly, we are finally getting around to putting the original trim work back up around the windows, doors and baseboards.

Here is the original post from when we started working on this window.
Lastly before I go, I just wanted to let you all know that we are registered for ‘Doors Open Ontario 2013’ as an unfinished house restoration. It will take place on September 28 from 10am – 4pm, more details are available at http://www.doorsopenontario.on.ca or you can inquire at the City of Markham website. Not sure what the fee is but there will be other houses in our neighbourhood with their doors open as well. It’s probably the first and last time we will do this so if your attending drop by and say hello!

A few projects on the go!

Here is the update on where we are at. We’ve got a few projects on the go at the moment, all making good progress. By the way my body hates me!
First up, we decided in the spring that we would complete a room in the basement to give us some more space. Sam had already framed out the basement see the previous post here, so we ordered insullation and drywall and we were at it again.

I gotta say I hate mudding drywall but I’m actually starting to get the hang of it! We painted and as you can see ran out of paint… but that can wait for another day! Thanks E for the wardrobe.

Installed the door, LD look familiar?

Here is a final pic of where the room is at, still lots to do but for now this works, guest room, and soon to be my sewing room!

Next up, we are still working on completing the stone facing around the house.



Sam closed the side of the deck and finally the south side of the house is finished!
Lastly the big push to clear the backyard, still underway but closer than we’ve ever been. We finally pulled the tarp off the wood pile and spread out the wood to dry. Maybe we can put some moulding up before the winter comes!

Here’s a close up of the moulding, not looking forward to scraping it all!

Finishing off the stone work

We are back at it again, not quite full steam ahead but, moving forward at a leisurely pace! We had one rain free day this past weekend so we decided to take a break from the basement, and start our long to do list of outside jobs. First up add the final touches to the stone work foundation around the base of the house. To get the restored look of a house built with a stone foundation we were advised to fill in between the rocks with white cement, its supposed to mimic limestone which was used when our house was originally built (1845). We got one wall done, only 3 to go. Here is the before pic.

During the process our son asked to help, turns out he is actually really good at it!

And the final completed wall. I’m hopefull that with time the shine on the rocks will come back.

House update – Build permit verbally closed

It’s been awhile since I last posted! Sorry, this is nothing more than a brief update as life has been overwhelming. I switched jobs 3 weeks ago and it’s really been my focus for the last month. Here is the house update. Last week Friday we finally got the verbal ok that our building permit will be closed, we are currently awaiting the paper work.

Simple right…. not so, not so. After we got the HRV system installed it was 3 weeks straight of working on the basement at the city’s request. We (mostly Sam) tar papered, studded, insulated and put up vapour barrier throughout the entire basement all 1600sq ft at a height of roughly 8ft, not happy campers at this point. None the less we were finished and ready for the inspector to give us the final ok….. it didn’t happen, he was unable to attend our appointment and instead sent a colleague, well the colleague then came back to us and said he could not sign off because he would like us to do some more! Well !@#$% that I had enough. Sam tried to talk to the supervisor but, there is something about a deranged woman on the other end of the phone listing in chronological order the hell the city has put us through for the last 3 years that might of had something to do with the fact that we are now awaiting the signed off paperwork! Whoot whoooo!!!

It’s like a breath of fresh air. Although we are still at it and will probably be for many years to come at least we can work at our own pace and just take time to breathe.

HRV system (Heat Recovery Ventilation)

Here’s my attempt to put this all in perspective. Last I left off we were trying to close our building permit but got asked by the city to install our HRV system, here are 2 posts that link back to the topic, 1 and 2.

Now for the HRV system, we had to install this system in conjunction with our radiant heating system since we have no air flow/ circulation throughout our house. I know very little about explaining the specifics of an HRV so in general here it is on Wikipedia.

So over the course of 2 days we were up and running. Day 1 aluminum vent installation.

Yes, the underside of our basement looks like ‘Frankenstein’ but we’ll deal with that another time…. bottom of the list!

Day 2, the system got installed and working, yeah! I was excited until I arrived home from work and realized that the unit itself was huge. Cancel my plans for that corner of the basement! The installers were nice enough to install a heater (the small metal square on the right side of the picture below), apparently this air flow system can make the air really cold, especially in the winter.

The pic before they added 2, 6″ tubes to vent to the outside. They attach to the circles you see at the side of the unit.

To accommodate the exhaust and intake vents leading to the outside, Sam ended up having to knock out some rock facing on the exterior of the house, if you remember the crazy rock cutting post then you will understand our frustration. One step forward 2 steps back, we will have to do cosmetic surgery on the exterior rock facing when the weather gets better!

So, our installation of the HRV is completed 🙂 We then had the city inspector come back to sign off, only to be told that the city now want us to insulate the entire basement before they will close our build permit! F#$%^, I am soooooo pissed off that I am pretty sure you can see flames shooting out from my head! So, were are we now…. well NO VACATION and 1600 sq. ft. of basement to frame and insulate! I can no longer write anymore of this post for fear that the cursing will begin and never end!

Heating our home

Way back when we were drafting house plans to submit to the town for approval we were tasked with things totally unfamiliar to us (there were alot), for the purpose of this post, the heating system. I never really thought about alternatives, I only knew that every home I’d ever lived in or visited had a furnace. We were introduced to alternatives; geothermal, boiler, radiant, etc. I was like, what do you mean we don’t need to put in a furnace?? Turns out it was a huge space and money saver not to. Instead after much research we opted for radiant heating. To that point, our house is heated by radiant heating tubes that are connected to a central boiler that runs off of natural gas. These tubes run in zones throughout the floors in our house, both on the main floor and under the concrete in the basement. The great thing about having zones is we can heat rooms (zones) on a need to basis. It’s been a real cash saver for us.  Not to mention heated floors throughout the Canadian winters has it’s benefits! I dug up some pics from the installation.

This is the installation of the radiant heating loops on the basement floor.

The basement floor was poured through our cold cellar.

This pic is after the floor was poured and leveled

Here is the boiler before it was all hooked up. Yes, that little grey rectangle heats our house and our water!

This post although missing the fluff of decor is a lead into my next post!