the update

I just got a price on repairing my camera of 300 bucks and its really pissed me off.. and i still dont have it back yet.

i have been documenting as best i can with robs camera but its just terrible.. and i have no time for editing the footage at the moment either, i have been going through what i have here and im going to try bring you all up to speed on this build.

at the moment i cant get a hold of my plumber the back up plumber or any of thier plumber friends.. some very sad stories involving plumbers at the moment.. we have a broken toe, a holiday to europe, a M.I.A. and one fella who has just got cronic fatique from working too hard... never the less i have half a bathroom and a pending demolition on the only working one...



o yea and if anyone has a line on a replacement sistern lid for a high efficiency mansfield loo... you know who to call

similar scene on the electrical front im waiting 9 weeks for my pot lights to be installed properly, it has become a joke at this stage but i have eventually got a new guy, who is as i speak hooking me up in the basement... still light on dilevery of a water seal pot light for the shower and a couple of other bits ... its not looking like it will be a finished job just yet...

looks like ill be on the phone all next week too..

saturday afternoon.

the good stuff, after spending 6 weeks plastering and sanding and plastering and sanding and yea .. plastering and sanding, we had Danny Browne in here for a month doin a bit of sanding and plastering too..

(destant for great things, but doesn't want to talk about it)

we are now gettin there, picking up the flooring and underlay, letting it sit in the space for a couple of days to get used to its new home, we got our first glimpse of a finished project..

we make it look easy!

kitchens

here is our basic idea of what we want from the kitchen,

the kitchen is such an important part of any house we need to make it perfect.

what we have done is flushed out the exterior wall, hiding our duct work and also down sizing the original window to create more usable counter space.

we are plumbing the island to put the kitchen sink in the center of the house giving you a view to every room yet keeping the sink somewhat hidden.

ok.. really sorry about the lack of posts now..

my camera has packed it in unfortunatly, and i havent got around to fixing it..

i have danny browne over here at the moment helping with the work, hes a great plasterer.. and thats good cause we have been doing so much of that shit over the last few weeks that i think i will have to avoid it for the rest of my life..

the basement has all the duct work running along the ceiling and i have been driven demented mudding and taping all the little corners.. millions and milloins of them... (on that note canadiand laugh if you ask for hundreds and thousands on an ice cream!)... they call them sprinkles.. lame!

any way after 5 weeks or so of sanding and plasterin g we are getting close to paint in the basement.. the kitchen is closed in and im preparing for the kitchen cabnets and all that..

its getting there.. its just taking a long time and a lot of work..

links now added

the crot pot and danny browne

COOL MAN COOKIES..

LINDSEY BAKES..

old school gloves and masks..

MIKE TROY!... OLD SCHOOL!.. nice one for all the help...

for anyone who cares about our R rating, we are R28 way above code in the bathroom, R12 on the exterrnal walls and safe and sound in the ceiling,

havin a little strip.

you might have noticed that there is a lot of wierdo grey paint around the place.. and you havent seen the half of it.

i had a go at the front door there the other day to see if it was worth keeping.. solid walnut door!.. how amazing,

now i havent bothered striping it fully yet cause i got tired .. but when i do get around to doing it, its going to be deadly...

wood bling!

DRY LOAD.

My trucks a beast..

full load/ up on the grass by the fire hydrant.. there wasn't a chance i was lugging 40 sheets of 5/8'' dry wall all around the side of the house like a mug.. no no the lazy mans load... but the truck just wouldnt make it up the stairs... no matter how hard i tried..

looking into jacking it up now for the 1st floor.. ro thinks about a 3 ft lift sould cut it..

they throw in a cowboy hat with a lift like that..

take it easy ..

rib cage

sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of days .. its been mad busy here trying to tie up a load off lose ends before im on my own.. once the inspector signes off on all our structural, mechanical and electrical work.. im closing everything in..

then it will start to look like we are moving.. its hard to picture what everything will look like with walls.. its like looking at a ribcage with no skin on it at the moment..

leveling the joists

due to the high profile off this job and some legal reasons the boys im using will remain somewhat anonymous.. but heres a little glimpse at the best contractor in canada.. serbian born and trained. a structural engineer came to canada with nothing but a dream, a square, a level and a big ass gas powered nail gun and i think his wife and some other stuff.... but the main thing is he just wanted to make houses strong and straight.. and thats perfect cause mines definatly pretty wonky..

out with the shitty old floors

i pulled up all the old squeeky wonky floors today, and we started leveling the joists, re enforcing them with 2x6 and shimming the tops flush..

we are then putting down a new 3/4 inch plywood subfloor

ceiling demo

just so you all know im getting my hands dirty and cut to shreds.. couldn't find my gloves.

the sound on this one is cool though..

stray cat

we where followed home the other night by this little fella, i have never been followed home by a cat before .. and not only did he follow us but decidsed to come in and have a look at the work too.. very strange ..

mr inspector

so we had our first two visits from the city inspector,

he couldnt find any fault in the framing and structural work we have done. all passed above code, but just to make a bit of a scene and throw a bit of weight around, he requested we trace where all the existing plumbing, venting is going, aparently the original plumbing in here wasnt primed properly, so we had to dig about 3 feet down and re work the old pipes, needless to say the plumber was none too impressed with this as it was existing work. also the inspector decided to break the heating and a/c guys balls in the same breath looking for his licence and certificates, we got all of that sorted for his visit yesterday and he didnt even want to see it.. he said it was all good work. and we can continue to close everything in.

at this point we have the majority of framing in the basement completed, plumbing rough in is complete and our heating and air conditioning is a couple of hours away from bieng completed. we are now locking down the main floor and getting a plan of attack down to get the floors leveled, kitchen framed, plumbing for the island and support for the stairs.

the next inspection will be done after i complete the insulation and vapor barrier.. nooo problem...

have a good one.

let me know if you can get the video to work..

i think it might be too big.. i stick up a low res version if so.. nice one.

roncys reno the movie part 1

yep.. a lot of work has been done but it is all ahead of us..

full speed.

9 lads of various ages shapes and sizes, one truck.. and three tones of plaster, metal and wood

45 minutes. good stuff lads.

permitted

check it!

hows that for an eye sore.

disaster.. look at the state of that... not impressed at all with this one .. looks like a robot is eating the room..

we had to run duct work all through the house we upgraded everything to high effency furnace forced air and heating. it is the most economical way of heating and cooling a canadian home. the furnace is the rolls royce of furnaces yet the duck work in what will be the sitting room come library is like sticking a poxy spoiler on it

all duct work has to be boxed in but the elbow on the duct work at the bottom comes out nearly 2 feet and the are 8'' wide i cant stick two, two foot by one foot boxes floor to ceiling either side of the front room window, it will look shite!

one sugestion was a roman column...

fuck that.

number bender

driving miss davidson.... got to get one of those stamps man..

open plan.

as you can see here the new 9 ft opening in the load bearing wall constructed of from 3 2x12 beams, what we did was build a wall from 2x6 both sides of the opening to take the weight as we removed the old wall, then cut back to fit the new headers and it will all be finished in drywall and plaster for a clean look,

you can also get a better idea of the oak ceiling we found beneath the suspended ceiling, i had to dismantle parts of it to build the support walls, still the decision to restore or repair hasn't been made.

these rooms will become the new kitchen (far room) come dining room. with an island between.

locked down by the man

permits permits and more permits.. permits to be here permits to work here permits to think about thinking about doing everything.. we went ahead and started getting the work done on our house under the impression we where remodeling, we where just updating plumbing and wiring moving a few things and away you go..

unfortunatly we got stung and in the process of getting stung we get stung for everything, we dont have a problem as far as the work that has been done, its all better than code and we havent closed anything off now we have to wait for the city to process all this shit and pay them for slowing us down.

unfortunatly it also turns out we where reported by a neighbor, now that is going to come back to bite when it comes to me building my fence, and the morning they wake up to that unfortunatly will be the last morning they get sun in the windows.

what can you do shit happens!

in the walls.

we discovered that one ceiling was lower than the others during demo, there where a few ideas floating around to explain this, but the only way was to open it up, starting late one evening myself and mike went at it with an ikea lamp a saws all and a big crow bar, a couple of swings in i started to see moulding appear, buried beneath insulation and more two by fours we found the original 1912 oak work, and the best part is that we had exactly what was up there in our designs.. down to the last measurement.

you cant fight good design. we are assesing now weather its a strip it and rebuild or repair and paint.. it is beat up pretty bad some splits in the wood and lots of holes from nailing the ceiling on beneath.. ill keep you posted.

two by four's

everything is made from two by fours.. luckily i was told how to check which ones need to stay..

fail safe kick test, if it wobbles take it out.. if it hurts your toe it should stay.

back to brick

discovering the external walls with rough pointing and exposed headers.. the design ideas start to flow.

Demo demolition

Demo.. yes the best part.. totally destroying walls ceilings floors and crown moldings..

given that our house here is laiden with old oak mouldings, painted and beat up they are but its nice to keep the old charm by restoring where possible.. not always the easy option.

so after the careful dismantle of all existing oat period features such as the high base boards and solid doors, antique "knobs and knockers" and all the rest we where ready to distroy the place...

its all great fun busting open walls, and in this house it is all old lattice and plaster so it is a step by step process plaster off... bag it lattice off bag it eat, breath and sleep 100 year old plaster dust... bag it. plaster dust gets everywhere, we taped off the stairs and rooms to contain the mess.. no such luck.. it travels through walls and floorboards imm nearly sure it was blowing out the first floor windows and coming straight back in on the second floor.. disaster..

3 days in the house and we had the first floor and basement demolished.. leaving us with a clear view off what lies ahead of us.

sealing the deal.

Alright.. here it is..

the garden project.. after viewing over 100 houses starting back in september, we eventually sealed the deal on this funny house in the west end of toronto, previously an income property inhabited by a paranoid scitsofrenic, it was a wierd one but we liked it. located just west of the vibrant roncesvales ave. and a stones throw to high park, it really is location location location...

with a serious lack of curb appeal and any real charm we have our work cut out for us to turn this tired old house into a luxury breath taking designer single family home.

em