Saturday, January 28, 2012

Construction Update January 22-28

Three notable events happened here this week... power pole gone... pantry done... and first window got installed.

The infamous rotten power pole finally got taken down.

It didn't take long to cut up that old cedar pole up for firewood and Shirley packed it off in the wheelbarrow to the wood shed.

You can see how rotten that old pole was.  It could not have been pushed over with my little tractor if it was sound.

The second noteworthy event this week was the completion of the pantry. All except the granite countertop... everything is done here.  On our next trip to Victoria we will pick up the granite and I can install it in just a few minutes.  On the interim a sheet of plywood serves the purpose.

But to get this pantry done was not all that easy for this do-it-yourselfer. Shirley took this photo after the first cabinet door was installed.  What we didn't know at the time was that once all the doors were on we could not pull out the drawers.  #*'%&#^!  Funny thing.  They worked just fine for the past week when the doors were not on and I was waiting to buy the last missing part to install the hinges.

What I didn't realize is that the hinges did not get the doors totally out of the way, and the glide tracks for the drawers hit the edge of the open doors.  I would have to remodel the drawers, make them an inch smaller and put this all back together again.  Chalk it all up to education... Cabinetry Class 101.

In the end the drawers worked out just perfectly.

For my first attempt at making cabinets, I should not complain about having to do something twice to get it right.

Shirley now has a place in the house to keep her bird seed containers... they are on wheels and roll out on the floor.  This section of the cabinet does not have an elevated floor or toe kick... and it allows access  for the crawl space hatch door.

Shirley is getting moved into her new refrigerator.

And her new freezer.  It was pretty tight to get these appliances into place... there was not more than an extra inch to spare.

On the right side of the pantry there is a place for brooms and mops...

And a place for the vacuum hose, attachments and shelves for other cleaning and hot tub supplies.

On the right side Shirley has shelves for a variety of Costco cases of drinks, cans of vegetables, fruits and other bulk purchased foods.

The third noteworthy event this week was the installation of the first window.  I still have to trim it with wider white cedar boards around it... and the Building Inspector will review my system of trimming and flashing around it before I do all 36.  We want to be sure that some little detail does not keep us from meeting code.

See the plywood over the skylight in the workshop?  Also note that old power pole is absent!

High winds one night this past week blew this skylight off... the roofers did this piece of roofing when we were in Cannon Beach for Thanksgiving and likely didn't screw it back down properly.  It will be easier to just buy a new skylight than to replace the plexiglass.

This is one of the huge branches that came down in the windstorm... we were lucky that no trees were blown over in the storm.  We have never seen such high winds since moving here.  It was one pretty scary night.

I was able to get some scaffolding from a neighbour here on Mayne Island, Don Berkley... and it will make installing the windows and shingle siding much easier.  After working in Mexico with the scaffolding there, these frames look brand new... and he has leg jacks and wheels... and there are other parts I still don't know what to do with.  Don has been living in Vancouver these past several months so he is close to the hospital... so he hasn't told me what those extra parts will do.

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