Shower Wisdom

Learn Something New Every Day -February 15-18 2012

2012-02-18T04:49:00.000-08:00

February 15, 2012 Quote of the Day is thanks to theHappiness Project:

“Contemplate the extentand stability of the heavens, and then at least cease to admire worthlessthings."
-Boethius

I really needed to read thisquote today! I know that some days it would have been better for me to just look at the sky and contemplate the heavens... and stayed away from the market. It is a trick to know how to ride the horse in the direction that it is going. A cowboy has a lot less problem understanding that then does a stock trader.

February 16, 2012 Received an email from theElevation Group asking, “Are 100%returns per year possible?” They say“yes” if you know Senen Pousa of Investment Intelligence Corporation, Brisbane,Australia. Mike Dillard has just returned from Australia where he spent several days talking to Senen.

It was a most interestingstory to follow Senen’s trail of research that led him to the highest yieldingpassive investments on planet earth. Itmakes one pause and wonder, “If it seems to good to be true, it just mightbe.”

However, when it comes to doing research, it is often the case that one tends to find what one is looking for... if one is persistent in the pursuit for truth. And Senen has been one persistent researcher.

Senen will be doing a liveWebinar this coming Wednesday evening with Mike Dillard, founder of the ElevationGroup where members will have opportunity to ask questions and get answersdirectly from the guru. Should beinteresting. To learn more about the Elevation Group click this link.

Photographer: Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images copied from Bloomberg Feb 16, 2012

February 17, 2012 What is Linsanity? Today I learned a new word. I saw this word on CNBC early in the morning andit made no sense to me. Then onBloomberg later this headline caught my eye: ‘Linsanity’ Contender for Word of the Year. So I find out for the first time about thismeteoric rise to popularity of Jeremy Lin and his Linderalla story… how a pastbench warmer, who was turned down by two other NBA teams, has been sleeping on his brothers couch... this guy scored a career high 38 points, out dueling Kobe Bryant in onlyhis fourth career start, hitting a game-winning 3-point shot against theToronto Raptors in the final half-second of the game.

Then I saw another headline: “Lin vs. Tebow: Who Does God Love More? Both thanked the Almighty for theirphenomenal successes. Does He return thelove? Both have become known for theiroutward professions of faith. Tebow withhis prayerful knee in the end zone… and Lin… His twitter icon has Jesus saying,“No, I’m not talking about Twitter. Iliterally want you to follow me.” Linclaims to have thought about becoming a pastor if his NBA career had failed,which it almost did. So now you know. That is what theLinsanity is all about!

February 18, 2012 Today I learned how to posta YouTube video on my blog. Here isanother example of teaching an old dog a new trick... and I did it today all by myself using HTML. Pretty cool, eh?

I'm not a huge basketball fan, but when you watch this amazing guy perform under pressure... he is amazing! It is just plain Linsanity! ...a rush to a new hero.

More Lessons Learned -February 7-16

2012-02-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

February 7, 2012 This week I learned how to makean end dam. You can buy drip flashing togo above exterior windows and doors… it comes 10 feet long and you cut it forthe width of each window. But the new buildingcode now requires that at each end the flashing be folded to create an end dam. Without an end dam the wind can blow thewater sideways and it might get in behind the siding.

To make an end dam is kind oflike origami, except it is a little trickier to fold sheet metal thanpaper. I watched this video many timesto learn how to make the template, trace the pattern on the flashing, then cutit out and fold it properly. It reallyis cool to get it right and create an end dam that does not need caulking toprevent leakage.

This is a lesson learned fora change that wasn’t learned the hard way.

February 8, 2012 This Quote of the Day is a wakeup call to anyone who doesn’t have their head in the clouds.

“Total credit market debt inthe world has gone from $80 trillion to $200 trillion in the last ten years, an11% annual rate, while GDP has grown by 4%.”

“This cannot continue. It’s a simple matter of arithmetic,” saidKyle Bass, of hedge fund Hayman Partners.

February 9, 2012 Q. What is the fastest way off an Italian cruiseship? A. Follow the captain.

February 10, 2012 I have been waiting for a chance to try out my new Wagner paint sprayer and decided the conditions were perfect today tosee how it worked for pre-painting some shingles for siding our newaddition. It takes paint directly from aone-gallon pail and sprays it on what you want to paint.

And if you don’t follow thedirections it can spray paint where you don’t want it… another lesson I learnedthe hard way.

When I hooked up all theparts and assembled the unit for the first time the directions said to use awrench to tighten the hose connections to the spray gun and to the compressorunit. I did it as tight as I could byhand. I am pretty strong… right? Wrong! Hand tight is not the same as wrench tight.

After priming the unit and getting the hose filled with paint, Iswitched the unit onto spray. Instantlythere was paint spraying everywhere. QuicklyI put my hand over the fitting to the nozzle to cut down the spray from thatsource while I came to the realization I had to turn off the power switch. I couldn’t get it turned off fast enoughbefore we were both pretty well sprayed with paint.

We were both a mess! I wish now I had a picture of us... we were quite a sight! The only picture I ended up with was of the painting site after all was done and washed up.

We were set up in the parkingarea by the cottage… so we had to come back to the house to get cleaned up,change our clothes and wash off our good running shoes. Shirley put our clothes into the washingmachine right away.

Then we went back to our painting project with wrench in hand. I tightened the two fittings and now the paint came out in only one place… the spray nozzle. It didn’t take long to spray the shingles...

And then we carried the shingles into the cottage to dry.

February 11, 2012 “Behind every great man is agreat woman telling him he is not as great as he thinks he is.” Isn’t that wonderful? I am just so delighted to have a “GreatWoman to keep me in line!”

This reminds me of one of mymost favorite quotes by Erma Bombeck. “You would worry a lot less what others think of you if you realized howseldom they do.”

February 12, 2012 Today Shirley and I completedthe revamping of our address books for our Mac computers. There was no simple way to import them fromMicrosoft Outlook… plus we needed to do a major edit of both of our oldlists. Then Shirley and I merged ourContact lists together. We each printedhard copies of our old Contacts, went thru them together and crossed out allnames that we have lost touch with. Triedto update the changes to addresses where we had new information and deleted those names of those whopassed away… or we lost touch with. Lifegoes on.

The most beautiful thing wasthat we both focused on getting the job done TODAY. With one eye on Phil Mickelson playing themost amazing round of golf at Pebble Beach on TV, we forged ahead, dividing thelists up and each taking a part to do the data entry. Before the golf tournament was won, we alsowon. I phoned Rob Sauter, our localApple tech support guy and in just a few minutes he taught us how to merge allof our address book entries on multiple computers. It was soawesome! And it happened so fast andeasy. We just emailed our updated liststo each other, did a “merge” and in just a few minutes we had four Applecomputers and our iPhone all updated with the same list of Contacts. Once again we proved you can teach an old dognew tricks.

February 13, 2012 This Quote ofthe Day was a new thought to me.

'There is onepeculiarity about mass psychology in that when you are in a bubble, you can'tsee it. Bubbles are invisible when you are inside the bubble,' said the charming Jim Dines, of The Dines Letter.

Something to think about, eh?

Photo and quote credit to the John Thomas newsletter, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader.

Accomplishments this past week include completing the last item on the structural engineer's deficiency list... I had to double up the top cords on a couple of trusses that were cut off when making way for the new addition to over lap the existing garage. This is a major milestone... marking the end of any further engineers inspections and he can now sign off to the CRD Building Inspector.

After several weeks of anxiety over the best way to install and wrap the windows with 1x4 cedar trim boards, the inspectors asked me to do one window so they could see how I wanted to do them before getting them all installed wrong. This week James Robertson, CRD Building Inspector gave me two thumbs up in less than a minute. He liked it... so I am free to go on putting in the rest of the windows.

We had to wait for a few days to get some help to take this larger piece of granite off the truck and get it in place in the laundry room. A young man, Dan Phillips, came up on Tuesday evening and about 15 minutes we got this slab off the tractor and into place in the laundry room. Could not have done it without him.

An hour later I had the faucet installed and the sink back in place with a new strainer/waste fitting. We still plan to replace the cabinet doors... but there is no panic on doing that right away, as part of that program will involve purchasing a new stacking washer and dryer.

On Thursday Dan came to give me a hand with installing more windows, but it rained all day and we didn't want to get wet... so we finished putting in the last couple of pieces in the main garage ceiling and then we insulated the garage ceiling by noon. With no break in the rain we ended up insulating more of the studio for the rest of the afternoon.

Learn Something Everyday -Getting Outlook Back -Feb 5, 6

2012-02-06T08:05:00.001-08:00

February 5 Themost significant thing that happened today in my world was not the super bowl… or the salad bowl... which went just fine with pizza. It was that I got my oldMicrosoft Outlook back… and in it were over 13,000 unread messages and all myContacts, which were not backed up anywhere and had been lost since December21, 2010. We take a lot for granted until we don't have it any more.

The short version is: Aftersix weeks of working on fixing Outlook, we have it fixed and workingagain at long last. Thank you Shelby for all your help.

Lesson Learned: My son tells me that Outlook is not designedto have more than 2GB of data in it… so when I got close to 6GB accumulatedthere it crashed on me. I need to notlet unread emails pile up for years and years. Sorry. I will try to do better.

Here is the long version of what Iwent thru to get the problem fixed:

After spending more than 4hours and $200 with a computer tech guy here on Mayne Island… and taking mycomputer in to Future Shop, where they could not figure out how to fix it… theygave me my corrupted Outlook file on a portable hard drive so I could work onit.

Like, if they couldn’t fixit, how in God’s green earth would I ever figure it out? So I talked to my son and he said he thoughthe could fix it… so I mailed the hard drive to him. When he received it and finally got home where he could work on it, he had it fixed in just afew minutes… but it took several hours to scan the 6 GB file and clean up theproblem. Then to speed up my recoverytime Shelby sent me back the repaired file in the cloud… as well as mailing itback. It took me several days to findthe cloud… I had no idea which cloud had my file and when I did find it thedownload failed four times before I finally realized I had to stay with mycomputer to keep it awake to the absolute end of the download. The download took over3 hours and 27 minutes.

Next there was this hugeproblem of how to get the file into the right place and figure out how to openthe file. I needed Shelby again… and soafter the Super Bowl he guided me thru how to do it. We spent about an hour on Skype and mycomputer working on finding the right file. We ended up getting it off the returned portable hard drive. Then Shelby left me to work thru getting itto open. This was no small job… andshortly after 10 PM there was a scream of ecstasy from my corner of thehouse! Eureka! I did it… and all my contacts werethere! Equilibrium has been restored to thispart of the planet!

What a hard way to learn a lesson.

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill

February 6, 12 Have you ever heard of “The EightIrresistible Principles of Fun?” Istumbled on the guy who did this in my recovered Contacts file. Even if you have seen this before you need tocheck out this great little inspirational animated flash presentation again. It is full of choice quotes and a good way tospend five minutes.

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun:

1. Stop hiding whoyou really are and take time to figure out what makes up your DNA

2. Start beingintensely selfish

3. Stop followingthe rules… except for gravity almost all of the rules are negotiable.

4. Start scaringyourself.

5. Stop taking itall so damn seriously.

6. Start getting ridof the crap.

7. Stop being busy.

8. Start something.

Hope that you all are off to a great start on the week...
full of FUN! :-)

Learn Something Every Day -Feb 1-4, 2012

2012-02-04T23:52:00.000-08:00

February 1, 12 Today Shirley and I put 4 windows in the wallclosest to our house. We are stilllearning how to use the Blue Skin product and perfecting the technique ofapplying it correctly. It was not untila couple of days later when I went up to check how we were going set upscaffolding to get the four windows in place on the dormer above that Irealized some of the corners on the Blue Skin were peeling up.

Lesson learned:the primer must be sprayed wide enough before using this peel and stickproduct. It is kind of like usingcontact cement. You don’t get the fullaffect without having the adhesive on both surfaces… and you have to wait 3minutes after spraying the primer before putting the Blue Skin in place.

February 2, 12 If you are ever looking for a good deal on a major purchase atHome Depot, check to see if there is a capital “C” after the SKU number where they print the price… thatis a clue that the item has been discontinued… and can be bought for less. I have been shopping around for an airstapler to put the cedar shingle siding on the house. I ended up getting a Bostich staple gun…original list price $459…reduced to $349. I offered them $250…and they came back to me with $275. It kind of reminded me of the old days of buying or selling real estate.

February 3, 12 We picked up the granite counter tops yesterday… but getting the heavy slabs into the house is a bit of a trick for the two of us. So I built an elevated ledge out of 2 x 4’s with a 2 x 6 top plate that was the same height as the cabinet where the granite was going and attached it to the frame of our appliance dolly.

From the truck we slid theslab onto the extended front-end loader of the tractor. I could then drive it over to the front doorand eliminate having to take the thing up any stairs on a dolly. We used a couple of wooden dowels (cut up oldbroom handle) to roll the slab off the tractor loader so one end was receivedon the 36” high ledge on the dolly. Shirley managed the dolly and I carried the other end of the 55” longslab as we walked it thru the front door and into the pantry.

It was pretty neat to lay the granite over onits side and slide it right into place on the cabinet between the refrigeratorand freezer. Worked great. The pantry is now officially finished. Yesterday I caught Shirley standing in the room with a huge smile... just looking around.

February 4, 12 This past week we had a meeting with BobWhite, our financial planner and insurance guy from Kelowna. We came to know Bob since he basicallyinherited our account from Jerry O after he passed away five or six years ago. Jerry O sold us each sizable full term lifeinsurance policies… an amazing feat since for most of my life I considered buying anylife insurance a total waste of money.

I had sold Jerry and his wifeMyrna a lot in Peachland on Lipsett Ave when I was a realtor, and then HoneybearHomes, a building partnership with Mark Albrecht, built a house for them. Jerry sized me up as a potential insurancecandidate and thru his kindness and persistence eventually sold us each onemillion dollar whole life insurance policies.

As we sat down together inthe Beacon’s Landing Restaurant in Sydney the first thing Bob handed me was apage out of Jerry O’s files. Attached tothe page was an envelope with several newspaper clippings Jerry collected overthe years that we were involved with him. What an incredible flashback of memories! It was amazing. As I thought about Jerry… no longerwith us in person, I looked at those clippings and my mind was flooded withfond memories.

With those clippings Ilearned something about Jerry O… how his attention to details about hisclients endeared them to him. He was oneof the top insurance salesmen. And Ihave to say that he made the process of being sold most enjoyable. What these newspaper clippings told me isthat Jerry O didn’t stop “selling himself” after he won our business. He never missed a birthday and often gave usa music CD or a movie DVD… like “the Waking of Ned Devine.”

"Youdon't close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term,successful enterprise." -Patricia Fripp

These are just a few of the clippings Jerry had saved in his file on me.

The two large condo buildings are Chateau on the Green and the Ponderosa Golf course is in the foreground. This is the view from Chateaux on the Ridge... a 40-unit condo project.

There was a time I let my hair grow and not my beard... and I didn't always wear a cowboy hat.

In 1999 Acorn Homes offered a variety of products and price ranges from affordable condos in The Falls At Glen Canyon to luxury homes at Sunset Beach in Kelowna. Leisure Village was an 80 home adult community, Morningside was a four phase single family and duplex community in Glenrosa, and Shannon Woods was seven phases with 175 single family homes and 42 condos in Fairway 3.

We had a lot of fun raising money to build two homes with Habitat for Humanity... and our annual golf tourney basically was the main source of raising money and contributions from our main trades and suppliers. As developers we gave the building lot, and most all of the rest of the materials and trades were donated. The first home that we did in Shannon Woods was built in 5 days. The foundation was ready for the building blitz beforehand and the main deck was in place, and from there the walls went up the roof was on the first day, the plumbing and electrical went in and it was insulated by day two. On day three the drywall went in with a crew of 18 guys... the board was on in the first hour and the tapers started by 9 AM. With lots of heat and fast setting mud, the whole house had three coats with sanding between each coat... plus the ceilings were sprayed with Spantex. Day four the doors and finishing went in and the house was painted... and day five the cabinets and flooring went in... the finish electrical and plumbing was done and by noon all that was left were some final touch ups. Outside the landscaping and irrigation was completed on Friday afternoon and the turf was in place. Dennis Kort, Acorn's main project supervisor, took a week of his vacation time to manage this incredible feat. Truly a very memorable experience for all involved... it was a lot of fun.

The Cove Resort went thru a pretty controversial development approval process... as the property already had zoning for the existing Lakeshore Villa cabins. But initially the Regional District asked me to include the Dobbin property and the Gellatly Nut Farm property in our first comprehensive development scheme... and that really opened up a can of worms. At that time the property was still in the Gellatly family, and this brought a lot of pressure from the community to save the famous farm as a heritage park... which I totally agree was the right thing.

So now instead of a 20 acre development, we focused on our 7 acre property. The scaled down plans now had only 150 hotel suites and rooms... still a huge project compared to the 29 unit Lakeshore Villa operations that were there.

Our plans to build the orphanage in Mexico were in the newspapers more than once. I don't remember ever clipping out the news stories... my mother used to do that... and Jerry O, unknown to me was doing it too... but I had other things to do.

"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It is the life in your years." -Abraham Lincoln

Learn Something Every Day -Scotland Travel

2012-01-31T22:13:00.000-08:00

January 30, 12 Cousin Maureen sent usa great website with 7 different self-guided hikes in Scotland… each one hasnumerous photos and they offer a variety of services, B & B’s, maps,etc. I think you will agree it is awonderful website. I likely spent anhour looking at different hikes on that Hillwalk Scotland site… including one that goes right past St. Andrewsgolf course. How wonderful it that? http://www.hillwalk-scotland.com/ I signed up for their newsletter.

January 31, 2012 I have been looking at some quotes aboutchange. It seems like I need to make afew changes… not the least, of which is trading offices with Shirley.

“Change before you haveto.” –Jack Welsh, past CEO of G.E.

“Change means that whatwas before wasn’t perfect. People wantthings to be better." –Esther Dyson

“Change is such hardwork.” -BillyCrystal

TodayI made the final decision to switch offices with Shirley. She has tried to figure out how to rearrangemy room so I would not have my back to the door. The problem is that there are two doors in myoffice… one goes outside and looks into Shirley’s garden. The other enters off the living room. Shirley is the best… and if she can’t figureit out it cannot be done. (Or is it thatShirley just wants my office? hummm)

Itis not going to be a simple move… we each have a lot of stuff. There is no satellite TV in her office… sothat will have to be fixed. But FengShui or not, it is never good interior design to work at your desk with you’reyour back to a door. My trading coachsays that if you have your back to the door all your money will go out thedoor. Yikes! So the sooner I get moved the better. Do you think I can blame my trading losses onsitting at a computer with my back to the door? Is this going to be another lesson learned the hard way?

Learn Something New Every Day

2012-01-30T07:43:00.000-08:00

When we were thinking about New Years Resolutions at the beginning of the New Year, one of the things I wrote down was to make a point to learn something new every day. As the first days of the New Year slipped into weeks, I realized that it would be a benefit to me if I kept a journal of what I learned every day... I had already forgot some of the things I know I had learned. So I started a page in my MacBook Air just to keep a record. Then this weekend as I was updating it I realized there were some pretty cool links and things that others may benefit from. So here goes. The first ten days on record of Things I Am Learning... some of them the hard way!

January 16, 12 New product... Blue Skin. When we stopped in at the CRD Building Inspection Office in Victoria today, James Robertson taught us about a new product that we must put around the base of the rough opening of the window. It is a very soft and flexible peel and stick that goes onto the building paper after one sprays it with a primer that ensures good bonding.

When we did our first window January 27 we learned that once you peel of the backing, if any part of it touches itself, you will never get it apart... and you can put that piece in the trash. Lesson learned the hard way.

This is the first window installed. Four-inch wide white cedar trim boards are yet to surround the window... and No. 1 cedar shingles will be the siding. Hopefully I can do this in a way that will pass building code and everyone will be happy.

January 19, 12 When painting with lacquer you cannot pourfresh lacquer into yesterdays paint tray, unless it has been washed clean withlacquer thinner. Fresh lacquer willsoften yesterdays lacquer film on the tray and globs of lacquer will come up onyour brush and roller… and it will not flow out level like the new lacquer does. Lesson learned the hard way.

January 20, 12 Today I learned that I need to clean up myworkspace. Lesson One of my new TradingProgram includes not only having the right computer with two monitors, highspeed internet and a printer… but also a good workspace, a comfortable chairand a tidy desk. So, I have made acommitment today to get my office totally cleaned up and free of anyclutter. Wish me good luck. I will have to be ruthless and just throw outmost of the stuff I have been telling myself is important. Much of the stuff I put into files never getslooked at again anyway… so it might as well have been thrown out in the firstplace.

January 21, 12 What is the difference between a PROBLEM anda PREDICAMENT? A problem is somethingthat has a solution… it is fixable. Apredicament on the other hand is a dilemma and is not fixable. ChrisMartenson Presentation

http://laurentmunier.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/chris-martenson-at-the-gold-and-silver-

meeting-in-madrid-nov-2011/

January 22, 12 Albert Bartlett, an academic, explainsExponential Growth. The Law of 70: At 7%growth it takes 10 years to double. At10% interest it takes 7 years for money to double. Starting with just “1” in a generic graphic,if one doubles every year in ten years it is over 1000… the power of doubling.

Explanation ofExponential Growth

http://laurentmunier.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/video-series-arithmetic-population-and-

energy/

January 23, 12 If the word FOCUS was an acronym it wouldstand for Follow One Course Until Successful.

January 24, 12 “All our dreams can cometrue, if we have the courage to pursue them.” -Walt Disney

Quite by luck when we boarded the ferry toVictoria this morning Chris Watson, the CRD Building Inspector was alsoboarding the ferry to go home to Pender, where he lives. He was the first inspector I showed my modelto when he came over last April for an initial assessment of what I needed todo to get started on this project.

So I went over to Chris and asked him if hecould spare a few minutes to look at some window details that I had in mytruck. I had planned to take a smallwindow and several sample wood trims to see James Robertson at the Victoriaoffice this afternoon. After showingChris what I thought James was looking for since my visit with him last week, Ipulled out my design of how I really wanted to do it. There was a couple ofways to trim the exterior of the window frame with the same pieces. He looked at my idea and thought it couldpass… but asked me to install one window with my preferred method and he wouldstop up take a look next Tuesday when he comes back to Mayne Island. He gave me his thoughts on how to improve itwith things to watch out for… so I am hopeful that my original dream can bemodified in a way to pass inspection. What I wanted to do was commonly done for years… but after the “LeakyCondo” problems here in BC, the Building Code went thru some serious changesand he just didn’t want me do all 36 windows wrong.

January 25, 12 Cabinetry 101: The width of the drawers must be less than the opening after the doors areinstalled. Can you imagine how shockedwe were after installing the cabinet doors that we could not pull out thedrawers! I forgot that the drawer glidetracks also come out past the face of the cabinet. So, I had no choice but to take the doorsoff, and then take the drawers apart and make them smaller. I then reinstalled the tracks with a half-inchspacer. Not fun… but there was no otherway to fix it. That mistake cost me thebetter part of a day to fix… not counting the power outage that interrupted theprocess. Mistakes are the cost oftuition for the do-it-yourselfer. Therepair came out perfect… only my ego was damaged.

January 26, 12 I viewed a most impressive photo story on theKintyre Trail in Scotland. The photos were just magnificent… and thecountry-side was quite spectacular. WhenI showed Shirley she immediately wanted to travel there and do the 87-milehiking trail. It is a 7-8 day walk… notat all rugged, so us old fogies should be able to handle it. http://www.slideshare.net/sergeverbruggen/de-kintyre-scotland

Itis fun to learn about neat places… and especially neat hiking or walking eventswith outstanding photo opportunities.

January 27, 12 Shirley called me to see a YouTube video onher computer… Michael Smith doing Psalm 139 by memory. Totally awesome! What an inspiration. One can do a lot worse than memorize largeportions of scripture. Check this outat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcXGq3IeImw

January 28, 12 Shirley keeps offering me to swap officeswith her. My coach suggests givingconsiderations to Feng Shui… and not to sit with your back to the door… yourmoney will go right out the door. I’veseen Shirley sitting in my office trying to figure out to rearrange thefurniture but it is really difficult to do with the shape of the room… a wallof windows and two doors.

January 29, 12 “A Smileas Big as the Moon” is a Hallmark movie about a special education teacher,(John Corbett) his class and their journey through to the space camp. Just released for TV on January 29, 2012 thismovie is an inspiration in how to bring out the best in children. In spite of being tired not only stayed awakefor the whole thing, there were places I couldn’t hold back the tears. No trailer yet… http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2100380/

Construction Update January 22-28

2012-01-28T21:20:00.000-08:00

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.

Construction Update January 15-21

2012-01-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

What a week!

The week started with warm sunshine and soon turned to snow and cold.

Sunday I glued all the pantry tiles in place with thin set.

This is the crawl space access hatch. It is about 22 inches square and if using 12" x 12" tiles it would take 4 tiles. This photo shows how I used 30 pieces of tile... several with angles. It's more like a piece of art.

This pantry is about 10 feet by 5.8 feet... 58 square feet... and it has 304 pieces of tile. Every tile has been cut on at least two sides... several on three sides... for an estimated total of 760 cuts. That is what one does for a piece of art.

When I was all done fitting the tiles here are the scraps of waste beside the saw. Next to nothing left over.

Shirley helped me with mixing and washing up the grout. Doesn't this look somewhat like chocolate?

We mixed up the total 25 pound bag of Mocha coloured grout... and we had to really stretch it to get this whole room finished. I had hoped to also fix a grout joint between the tile and hardwood at my office door... but there was nothing left for me to do it.

No one was happier to see this job done. Once the grout dries the colour will be a perfect match.

Since we had the access hatch cover off for the grouting process...

I decided that I would crawl under to insulate this crawl space. The access would never be easier.

I also custom friction fit a piece of styrofoam for this access, since there is no easy way to do the fibreglass insulation for this hatch door.

Telus came this week and moved the phone lines over to the new service location on the back of the garage. Very soon we will be able to push over that ugly pole that used to have the meter base... and this green pole will get removed by BC Hydro any day now.

Meanwhile it snowed several days in a row and with the blowing wind there was snow on everything in the carport.

So I had to sweep the snow off the table saw so that I could customize the boards to make the drawers for the pantry cabinet.

This week I finished the two drawers for the pantry cabinet... and installed them with full extension glide tracks. I used the Kreg Jig tool to make the drawer boxes. I would have had the doors installed by now... they are stained and lacquered ready to go... but I didn't realize that there is a mounting plate that didn't come with the European hinges. It will take another trip to Home Depot to get the missing part.

I believe this coming week we will have this room 100% completed. As soon as we connect the power to the appliance plugs I will move the new freezer and refrigerator in to place. The doors should go on easily enough... and I need another length of base board to stain and lacquer. The counter top may also be ready and it will be pretty easy to set into place.

This past week I had a very interesting session with James Robertson, the building inspector in Victoria. He taught me about Blue Skin... which I will have to put around the bottom of the window rough opening. He encouraged me to go look at some new houses under construction to see first hand how the builders were using Blue Skin and putting trim around the windows and doors... so we went to a new subdivision in Langford and a little walk around with my iPhone.

When I talked to him about the window detail for the trim boards I wanted to install around the windows, he taught me about several things to meet building code and emphasized making sure the flashing above the windows had an end dam.

Construction Update January 7-13

2012-01-14T09:18:00.000-08:00

I have a lot to be grateful for this week... not the least of which was watching some incredible golf on TV. This week started and will end with golf tournaments in Hawaii.

It was 1995 when Shirley and I played on the Plantation Course where Steve Stricker won the Sony Open this past weekend. What a wonderful golf course! To see the scenery again on TV brought back some wonderful memories... like the birdie on No. 2 par 3.

This weekend it is fun to see more of Hawaii... the Wailea with it's famous #16 fairway. I took this off the TV since it reminded me of the very first movie I ever saw in a theatre as a teenager... "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World." I never have laughed so hard in my life... but it is under this Big W that the treasure is hidden in that movie.

On Monday I bought 64,000 pounds of coffee. No, I don't plan to take delivery... it was on the advice of my futures broker, who told me that there is a seasonal opportunity on coffee, so I picked up a few contracts. On Thursday he called me and said he thought we should sell it since it had gone up so fast, we should take profits and could likely buy it back for a lot less and still enjoy more lift... so we sold it all and I put in another order to buy it back at $10 less. Sure enough the order was filled after hours Thursday night... so we are hoping it will be good for another run.

What a crazy business. An old farmer living on an island buying and selling coffee on the telephone... and he never drinks any of it. Does that make any sense? ...128,000 pounds of coffee in a week! I'm guessing that would be over a dozen grain trucks full of coffee beans. Can you imagine how many pounds of coffee Howard Schultz buys for Starbucks every year?

Trivia: Did you know that in the last 50 years the stock market has gone up 57% of the time on Friday the 13th?

This year it went down.

This week in the mail my Kreg Jig tool arrived... and it couldn't have come at better time. I bought if off one of those TV Informercials that run in the middle of the night... i saw it when we were in Kelowna... and it finally came... it sure works slick. I love it!

Here I am putting together the frame for a cabinet that goes in the pantry.

After drilling the pilot holes it is pretty easy to join pieces of wood with self tapping screws.

I put in all these shelves using the Kreg Jig system... and in less than five minutes after the shelves were in place Shirley was putting stuff on the shelves.

As you know Shirley's word for the year is "Patience..." and mine is "Faster." She needs to a little more patience... and I need to go a little faster!

I invented a hidden hatch latch this week. Since the hatch is mostly under the cabinet, the latch to lift it would not look very pretty in the middle of the floor where we always will be walking. So I made a simple latch that attaches to a wire the both hide in the crack along the side of the hatch lid. There is a 10-inch drawer just under the counter top... so when we need to go down there... which is likely next to never... we can remove the drawer to give a little more space, howbeit still pretty skinny access.

The guy who put the stupid access hatch there didn't know there was going to be a cabinet over it. We had a totally different layout in mind in the beginning... but Plan A didn't work. Neither did Plan B or Plan C. We are on Plan D now. Why is that Plan A never gets built? I guess we all have to start somewhere.

Another first for me is the aluminum L-trim that I put to keep the tile and grout in place when the hatch lid is moved. This will keep the grout from getting chipped away if it gets bumped in handling when opening or closing.

On Wednesday we picked up our new refrigerator and freezer for the pantry. I also brought 15 bags of insulation... and here the cowboy is roping them all tightly together for a safe trip home. Every time we bring home another load I am thankful for our truck... it has done a lot of work for us.

On Thursday we were thankful to take delivery of our windows. We had the liners stained... but since I neglected to specify the stain be sealed, we had them delivered into the cabin where we can Varathane them.

There are 36 windows in all... and at this point we have about 16 of them done. That cabin has been a real blessing... it is great to have a place where we have heat and space to work. Next year we hope to have heat in our garage... but that doesn't count for this project.

This is the bathroom window on it's side for sealing. Vented windows take twice as long to do.

On Friday I ordered a granite countertop for the pantry cabinet... and just to be sure we get the same colour match, we are going to do a new laundry counter at the same time. We did a lot of shopping for various countertops with pricing all over the place between $380 to $2,000 for just the pantry top in either Corian or granite! No we didn't buy the $380 one... it was a remnant and not Tropical Brown... but it sure was tempting. It just wouldn't have matched the rest of our countertops.

On Wednesday when we were in Victoria I just happened to see this place called Stone Trends in Sidney. So I stopped and invited them to quote on our countertop. I had just been to Capital Glass to have them fix a leak that we thought was coming from around the windshield. Turned out the leak was because of a plugged drain hole in the sunroof. Did you know that sunroofs have drainage? Me either.

This next week I hope to see our pantry completed. We will pick up the cabinet doors on Monday... which we will have to stain and then lacquer. I have two drawers to build and install... and the floor tile to set and then grout. I have most of the tiles cut out to fit... just seven square feet not yet done and that is the part under the refrigerator and the hatch access door.

My quote of the week is very appropriate for me.

"Some mistakes are way too much fun to make only once."

It seems far too often I find myself doing things twice or three times to get it right.

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

2012-01-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

The most significant thing that happened this week was the moving of our electrical service. We have been looking forward to seeing the end of these ugly poles... which soon can be removed.

BC Hydro showed up on Wednesday morning about 9:35, cut off our power and proceeded to disconnect their lines from two old poles, then bring the same wire from the third pole back...

And reconnect us to the new mast on the back of our workshop. Coming this way took about 100 feet less wire than before... but we then had to take about 75 feet of 1.75" heavy conductor from the new meter base to the house panel.

The whole thing took BC Hydro less than 40 minutes. They mounted the meter and then turned our power back on. Wesley, our electrician, had things set up so we would have power into our workshop panel immediately while the house was cut off.

The old 200 amp panel was right in the back of our closet where we are going to be walking to get into our new closet... so we had to move the panel. This was no small job, so we were glad to get going on this mid-morning. Since we needed some supplies from Victoria, Shirley went on her own and I stayed to help Wesley move the panel. With a long extension cord we brought power from the workshop to the house so Wesley could disconnect and label all the wires and know how to get things back the way they used to be.

In about an hour Wesley had the panel removed and we set it up in a much better wall in our new larger closet, only about four feet away from the original location. Before lunch we had the panel mounted in it's new home and we spent the rest of the afternoon re-routing the wiring so we could reconnect everything to the same breakers, right where they were before. Many of the wires were long enough so moving them was easy... but there were about eight or ten wires that went into junction boxes with more wire added to them.

When Shirley returned from town we were almost done re-routing wires and all Wesley had to do was connect them to the breakers. While he did that I took Shirley to the Wild Fennel for supper. By the time we got home from eating Wesley was ready to turn on the breakers to light up our house. He worked a ten hour day to see this all completed. It was no small job.

Wesley said that twice before when he moved an electrical panel and he went to turn the power on it didn't work... and both times it wasn't his fault... there was a power outage on the island! What are the odds? I fully expected that it would happen again... after all it was raining and stormy all afternoon... and you know how things happen in three's?

The next most significant activity this week was building the shelving for our new pantry. I really have no previous experience in building or finishing cabinets... so I had a very costly class called Woodwork Finishing 101. I really should have let Westwood make the pieces for the shelf gables and the 54" cabinet that goes between the fridge and freezer.

But you know me... I thought I could do it cheaper. So I ordered the doors for the cabinet, bought a couple sheets of nice 3/4" maple plywood and some 3/4" ivory Melamine. I then proceeded to cut out the pieces and stain them. I had basically everything done and the next day after Shirley was back from Victoria I started to put the Watco Danish Oil on to the stained maple... we stained them the same colour as our kitchen cabinets. Yikes! I got a rapid rude education in woodwork finishing.

As you can see from the photo above, I was mystified by the strange circles and blotches that developed as I applied the Danish Oil. I was just sick. The more I rubbed the worse it got. The Danish oil that Shirley went to town for wasn't working for us... so she Googled it up to learn why we had the problem and she soon had the answer. Since the stain was also oil base they cannot be used together. Why didn't I think of that?

So out to the workshop I went and started sanding off all the finish. What a huge job. I spent a whole morning getting the wood totally stripped so we could re-stain it. But when we applied the stain again we still had a problem! There was some weird swirls that seemed to be telegraphing thru giving a really odd pattern that neither of us liked. It was like the swirl used when we put the oil on. I tried a second board and it also had the same problem. What the world was going on? It was enough to make a grown man cry!

Shirley was ready to just paint the wood a solid colour... maybe an antique look. But that seemed like even more work that I wanted... plus how good is antique and Melamine going to look together? So back to the workshop I went and I sanded those two boards yet again. This time I went deeper and I used two more levels of finer sand paper.

Before I just used 80 and 120 grit paper since that was the belts I had for my electric sander. But I had some 150 and 250 sheets in my sand paper drawer... which meant some serious hand rubbing. I found I was spending up to an hour to polish a board now. But when I had the first one done we tested the stain... and it came out absolutely wonderful!

So I spent ALL day Friday sanding and redoing ALL the boards with ALL four sandpapers. We had to also take off the "iron-on" maple edging and re-apply new edging to all the plywood, since the oil had also affected that part as well, and it was too thin to handle much more sanding. So, as I am writing this tonight, all the boards have been repaired, sanded and stained and will sit over the weekend drying... getting ready for lacquer. Am I crazy?

Sunday I will take some sheets of plywood and block off a corner of our new studio to make a paint spray booth. I bought a new Wagner paint sprayer from Home Depot. We want to pre-finish the cedar shingles for the siding on the addition as well... and I hope to be able to hang up the boards and end gables for the cabinet and lacquer them too. Wish me well. These boards cannot afford another sanding! The maple skin on this plywood is already too thin in places!

"When you come to the end of your rope, just tie a knot and hang on."

I sent this quote to Shirley on a card in 1965 while she was in hospital for several months... after being in a car accident in Calgary.

Clickity Click

2012-01-02T23:10:00.000-08:00

It is interesting to compare the clicks at the beginning of the year.

My John Deere tractor starts the New Year with 373.7 hours... about 75 hours added this past year. That is about twice what I usually use the tractor. We did some serious tree removal and site levelling behind the greenhouse... plus all the construction work. Removing and backfilling the foundations... removing stumps... carrying rocks... plus lifting up beams, plywood, lumber to save physical labour.

The Ford 350 starts the year with 159,951 km... cool mirror number, eh? Almost 160 k's... which is 100,000 miles. We added just over 7,000 km's this past year. We use the truck more than the car to go to Victoria as we always have a load of something to bring back home. Over the past two years we have brought 66 loads of gravel for our community driveway.... plus 10 loads of navy jack for concrete I mixed on site. We have hauled lots of lumber, plywood, insulation and drywall. for our reno project. I would hate to live here on this island without this truck.

Shirley's car starts the year with 46,918 km... about 7,500 more in one year. We took one trip to California, and a couple to Kelowna. A couple times to Cannon Beach... once to Bainbridge Island to Shelby's place in the photo above.. not all that much. We didn't even get to Walla Walla this year! Ooops! But we had a lovely Thanksbirthmas 2011 with you.

Our combined kilometers driven was about 14,500... which is about 9,000 miles in 2012. That is more than half of what we used to do in the Okanagan.

Vehicle insurance dropped about 25% when we moved to Mayne Island... I guess they know that islanders don't chalk up the miles as much as mainlanders.

The thing I learned today was that the reason it's so hard to win in the stock market today is that we cannot compete against the robots. Computers are programmed to trade stocks. All the major traders have robots... so I have decided if you can't beat 'em you gotta join 'em. So, move over... I'm coming. Thank you John Carter at TradeTheMarkets.com and Mike Dillard for lesson 13 in the Elevation Group.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T21:33:00.000-08:00

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to post photos more often than once a week and to try to take some pictures every day. I'm not ready to do Project 365 like Shirley did last year... in fact we worked almost all day on shelves in our new pantry and I didn't touch my camera until tonight... to get yesterday's pictures off.

We went for a very pleasant hike New Year's Eve to Edith Point... where I captured this fun photo of my sweetheart as she posed by an arbutus tree near the Point.

Another one of my New Years Resolutions is to learn something new every day... and make a note of it.
I quite often learn something most days, but promptly forget what it was. So writing it down may help with the retention. Sometimes I will share these new things I learn on my blog... like am going to do tonight. Hope you pick up an idea or so.

Today I was reading Lesson 11 in the Elevation Group from Mike Dillard. The topic was about how to start a home business and get some cash flow from it. He obviously has it figured out... and below I want to share his list of "Core Values for a Long and Profitable Business." I couldn't just do it as a link, as this is in the middle of huge document that is for "members only." I liked it a lot... and wish all businesses operated with a similar set of Core Values... don't you?

1: Forget About The Money, And The Money Will Come.

If you do something for money, you will fail. Making money is the BY-PRODUCT or result, of helping other people solve a problem. When I stopped worrying about making money, and started focusing on helping others, the money came quickly and by the truck-load.

I do not look for ways to make money. I look for problems I can help people solve.

2: Always Deliver What You Promised, And On Time.

If you sell a product to someone, make sure it’s delivered quickly. If you say that it will be there in five days, deliver it in three days.

If you’re not sure if you can meet a deadline, then don’t set one.

3: Be Authentic.

I’ve been told many times over the years that the reason people like to do business with me, is because I’m real. Every event I’ve ever been to, I’m approached by someone who says, “Wow Mike… You’re exactly the same person in real life as you are on the web…”

People don’t want to buy from a fast-talking sales person. They want to buy from a friend they can trust.

Be yourself.

4: Deliver 10 Times More Value Than The Price.

Whenever I produce a product, I make sure it’s worth 10 times more than the price.

This is extremely important if it’s your very first product, and therefore, your very first impression on your new customers.

5: Never Make A Decision Based On Money.

There are extremely profitable products and services that I could promote to EVG Members, which would probably make me an extra $50,000 or more per month.

But I do not promote them.

Why?

Because in most cases, I don’t feel like they’re in the best interest of my Members. I do what’s right for my customers, not what’s right for my pocket book.

And it’s for this reason, that I’ll have customers for years, instead of cash for a few months.

6: Always Make Decisions For The Long-Term.

A very good friend of mine recently asked me if I had plans to write a main-stream book based on The Elevation Group in the coming months,, as it would help with branding and promotion.

I said that yes I did, but I’m going to wait at least two or three more years because I want to earn the right to produce a book that can truly change people’s lives.

I am confident the decision to wait and write a truly profound book three years from now, will result in benefits that are far greater than a mediocre book I can write today.

7: When You Screw Up, (Because You Will), Admit It And Apologize.

While I strive to be the best I can, I am not perfect. Your customers will forgive you and respect you that much more if you acknowledge your mistakes and apologize. Trying to hide it will only turn you into a liar.

8: Provide The Best Customer Service Possible.

Treat your customers as you’d like to be treated. Make it easy to reach your customer service department, and train your agents well. They represent you.

9: Say “Thank You” Sincerely, And Often.

If you don’t, they will buy from someone else who does.

10: Stick To Your Guns.

Stand up for who you are and your beliefs. You will never be able to please everyone, and attempting to do so will only make you look like a flip-flopping politician. Sticking to your beliefs will help you create true, loyal fans.

11: Never Burn A Bridge Over Money.

I see partnerships or joint-ventures fall apart all the time over a financial dispute. Always give the other person the benefit of the doubt, and the money that’s in question.

It’s only dirty paper, and burning a bridge or screwing someone over for money is the quickest way to end up at the bottom.

Industries are small, word gets around, and no one wants to do business with a jackass.

12: Never Argue With A Customer.

Just give them a refund and a respectful “thank you”. You don’t know what’s going on in their life, or the problems they may be having.

13: Fire Bad Customers.

On the other hand, if someone’s an asshole or treats anyone on your team with disrespect, fire them. Give them a refund, remove them from your database, and wish them well. They’re never worth the money.

14: Stand Up For Yourself.

If you choose to start a business in the “information marketing” world as I have, you will become a tiny celebrity in your own little way.

While most of the people you have contact with will become fans if you follow the values outlined above, “haters” come with the territory. (Even Jesus had haters).

Should you find yourself the target of a mentally unstable person who wishes to harm you or your business, stand up for yourself and take the high road. Do not engage them publically, as they are only looking for attention.

You can engage them privately to try and find common ground. When I’ve seen a negative post in the past, it’s usually a case of miscommunication. I’ll personally email or call the person to clear the air, and that’s worked wonderfully 99% of the time.

If they continue to abuse you and your reputation without just cause, get a good attorney, and sue the crap out of them.

These people are bullies who feel safe behind a computer. That feeling goes away when they’re served with a lawsuit in person.

Your reputation is your business. Stand up for yourself.

15: Thank Your Mentors.

None of us can build a business, or acquire new skills alone. We all need teachers and mentors, and I believe that teaching is the noblest profession on the world.

So There You Have It…

Staying true to these principles have allowed me to build a long-profitable business in our new “trust-based economy”.

Print them out, write them out, post them on your wall, and never forget them.

The Best of 2011 in Pictures from Our World

2011-12-24T22:50:00.000-08:00

This year I am sending out Christmas and New Year's wishes along with one or two pictures from each month of 2011. It has been a very busy year... and some months it is really hard to decide which photos best tell the story.

January sunset from our deck... we live in a ferryland... this proves it. There are two ferries busy at work and we never go anywhere without taking a ferry.

Some January days we spend in the clouds... and this part of our driveway we often use for walking or jogging, rain or shine.

In February Shelby and family came home for a weekend and we did the Edith Point hike together.

The hike provided many photo opportunities... hard to pick out the best... but I love this shot of our grand daughter Maizy at Edith Point.

This totem pole is inside the Sydney Ferry terminal. We come thru this place once or twice every week of the year, but last March I captured this shot in the evening as I was killing time waiting for our ferry to go home.

In March we took an 8 day road trip to California... to PUC to visited my Alma Mater, our friends Duane and Mary Cronk and Myron Widmer. We also visited nephew Donald Logan and family in Napa and my sister Dolores and husband Merritt in Sacramento area. While there we toured the Crocker Museum where I took this photo of Shirley examining a painting. She looks like she fits right into the picture, eh?

In April when Shirley went to Paris with her sister Marilyn and was joined a week later by her friend Gail Booth...

I spent a a lovely three weeks with Lorne Booth in Tucson playing golf and pickle ball... soaking up some sunshine.

Lorne and I drove together home to Alberta... on the way we spent an enjoyable afternoon at Bryce Canyon, waking up to snow the next morning.

We went to Kelowna for Mothers Day... and Shirley joined me climbing Carrot Mountain. Only in the Spring is there water running beside the trail... plus a couple of waterfalls. Shirley found the water shockingly cold.

Mayne Island has several great places to hike... so when Sherilee and family came home we all took a stroll to Bennett Bay.

Memorial Day weekend the whole family was home and we had endless fun and games together.

We even converted the tennis court here to play Pickle ball and really had a blast!

In June we spent a wonderful weekend with sister Rose and Morian in Abbotsford... we went to the Cirque du Soleil together... but we were not allowed to take any pictures of that event. However, the most unforgettable experience was not even planned... Morian took us to the mission and this truly spectacular church. In my book this is the nicest church I've seen in Canada... an amazing work of art in concrete and stained glass. The town of Mission BC was named after this Catholic monastery.

In July we started in earnest to construct the carport/studio that would connect the existing house and garage. I did all the excavation for the footings and foundation mostly by hand, using the tractor to take away the material removed. Our place will never look the same again.

I made this scale model of what the addition would look like and from this made the drawings to get a building permit. Because of the long spans and unconventional design the Building Inspector told me I had to have a structural engineer stamp my drawings and oversee the construction... all of which added to a big time delay in getting the first concrete poured.

After getting the structural engineer involved the depth of any excavations that were not on bedrock got deeper and wider... this one ended increased from 36 inches square up to 52 inches deep with a 12 inch thick footing 5 feet by 6.5 feet.

We used the tractor to help us place the rebar cage into the hole... it weighted almost 250 pounds.

With the help of Brendan and my tractor, we put all the beams and TGI's into the project. It took us most of seven weeks to complete the framing and get it ready for the new roof.

Our car can hardly wait for the carport to be completed... can you see the smile on her face? Both the car and Shirley are very happy in anticipation. Note the 16-inch deep TGI's on 12-inch centres.

We had not originally planned this dormer with windows in the loft of the studio... but the view was just too spectacular. I was able to make the roof joists work in the modified plan and only had to buy a couple of 2 x 12's for the dormer soffits.

We were very fortunate to get our roof on the new part as well as all the existing shake roof removed and redone in a cold and rainy time of year with no problems. The snow came and went the next day.

Since paint won't dry outside this time of year, Shirley painted all the facia boards in our guest cottage. We had to have the facia boards on before the roofing could be completed, so we had to find a way.

We took almost a week off and joined our kids/grandkids at Cannon Beach to celebrate US Thanksgiving, several birthdays, Christmas, Sher and Alan's Anniversary and Kim's new US citizenship... there was always a reason for another party every night... and Sher would re-decorate the fireplace for each new occasion.

Sher and Alan made Thanksbirthmas '11 hats for everyone to commemorate our family time together this year.

Since this photo showing the pantry drywall ready for painting, we have almost finished the painting, put up shelves and the ceiling light. We have the tile ready to do the floor. Shirley can hardly wait to get moved in and get this corner of our house back to normal.

December gives us some nice winter sunrises... and sunsets. And as this year is drawing to a close, Shirley and I want to wish all our friends and family the very best of the Christmas holidays with a healthy and prosperous New Year.

Construction Update December 5 to 16, 2011

2011-12-17T20:44:00.000-08:00

My wounds have all healed marvellously. Isn't it wonderful how the Creator designed our body so it would mend itself... but when my car or a tool gets broken it stays broken until we get it fixed.

I think one of the most wonderful things is to have our new roof completed on everything.

When I think back over the past couple of months, it is amazing that these guys worked thru the rainy season... with even some snow... and they got the existing house and garage done with no water problems. This is Lance Vaesen completing the ridge cap on the garage.

Two of Lance's boys work with their dad... this is Kellen finishing off some flashing on our house.

Here Brant is working on a last piece of flashing on the highest peak... 29 feet off the ground.

After the shakes were taken off the garage the nails that didn't come out with the shingles got pounded into the strapping. You can see how important it is to have a hat on as I was checking and nailing some of the sheathing that was missed during the framing.

The garage attic has never looked better since we have been here. We totally cleaned out all the junk that used to be stored here...

And we have been running some new electrical thru this attic to a new panel on the back corner of the garage where our new service will soon be switched over to.

It took Wesley our electrician, Shirley and me, as well as a come-along to pull this heavy new service line from the back of the garage to the new panel location in our new closet.

I took the sheathing off the house to expose the old panel in the back of our closet. All these wires will get moved to new panel on a dedicated wall of our new closet. The day we do this switch over will be a busy day for Wesley and we will be most of the day without power.

Both telephone and BC Hydro power will come into this back corner of the garage... and Wesley installed a guy wire so the mast will be strong enough once the new line is connected.

We purchased three dozen pot lights at Home Depot...

and it is such a joy to have them working in the carport already. Can you see the smile on our truck now that it can park in our new carport?

One of the items that the engineer caught was a double 2" x 10" beam that I didn't see in the drawing. So, I had to cut in space under this window for it.

Once I got it all installed, with insulation behind, it looked like it had been there all the time.

Last week Thursday we picked up the drywall for the pantry. On Friday I called the Building Inspector and asked permission to cover in this one room. He suggested that I send photos of the room to the Chief Building Inspector and I may get approval to cover without waiting for the next week inspection.

So I sent off 15 photos with notes explaining all the steps I had done and by the end of the day I received a phone call from the Inspector with his approval to cover... and one of the nicest compliments with it. He told me he had never seen a nicer set of photos. That made my day.

Here I am last Saturday night starting to screw the drywall to the pantry ceiling. Shirley should be in this picture too... but she was taking the picture. Together we had the whole room done by Sunday noon.

I had never before used this cool corner bead that is designed to make smooth curved edges.

I didn't count how many screws and nails are in this arch, but I am sure there are more than a hundred in all.

By Friday afternoon I had the third coat on the drywall... so on Sunday with a little light sanding and a wipe off with a damp cloth we will be ready for the first coat of paint.

Shirley is anxiously wanting to get moved back into her laundry room, as well as this new pantry. Every day it is a little closer.

Ouch, Ouch!

2011-12-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

If bad things happen in three's... it made me hesitate to get out of bed this morning. Two days ago I stepped on a board with a spike sticking up... and I felt it going in... and coming out. I checked and it didn't come out the top of my foot, even if it felt like it might have. Shirley called the doctor's office and went down to pick some antibiotic's for me.

Then yesterday as I was putting the last pice of facia board on one of the high sections of the roof, I was trying to pull out a nail when the wonder bar slipped off the narrow head on the siding nail and my hand slammed into the edge of the metal roofing. OUCH! It was a nasty gash and that finished me for the afternoon on that project.

This is the last piece of facia where I cut my hand. Notice the little vertical guide boards that I attach to the facia board to hold it at the right height... it makes it possible for me to do this task by myself. The roofers are basically done, except for some flashings and trim caps around the edges... a few vents and a couple of garage skylights to finish flashing.

I also want to do the wood shed with metal... but it is pretty small. We are really happy with the new roof... the colour as well as the quality of the workmanship.

We hardly had any rain this week. What a joy to wake up to see the sunrise. I called for a building inspector to come by... and on Tuesday Chris Watson came and spent almost an hour with me. I had lots of questions and he helped me a lot to sort out some options on how to finish the siding, rock facing, flashings around windows, water screen and building paper applications.

It was the first time that Chris had been here since April when all I had to show him was a cardboard model of our dream... and he was quite impressed at the progress... he liked it.

He also told me what I had to do to meet code in the pantry. He pointed out how to get roof ventilation... and I drilled some vent holes to allow air to pass above some solid insulation I am going to use.

The BC building code requires minimum R-28 insulation in all ceilings... so three layers of R-10 rigid foam above exceeds the code. I inherited a lot of rigid insulation with the place, so am delighted to be able to finally use it where it counts. The walls need to be R-20.

Wesley, the electrician came three times this week for half a day, so I could do the insulation and finish off this pantry.

It seemed like huge progress when I cut the opening for the arch doorway between the laundry room and the new pantry.

I made a mistake thinking I could have 2 x 4 walls here. It takes a 2 x 6 wall for R-20 fibreglass insulation so I furred out the end wall with an extra 2 x 2. It is so much faster to install fibreglass insulation vs the rigid stuff.

I had a call into Ritchie Smith, my engineer to come as soon as he could arrange it... and he called on Thursday to tell me he would be here on the first ferry Monday morning. I am really going to push to get this pantry finished as soon as possible... it would be nice to have it done by Christmas.

That is probably not possible with the kind of cabinets we are now talking about getting... but we will know more as we make some calls this next week. Plus, to get a dry wall finisher??? I may end up having to do this room myself... but I sure won't do the whole studio and loft myself. That is a lot of hard work to install the heavy board.

Cannon Beach Thanksgiving Memories

2011-11-25T23:47:00.000-08:00

We left Mayne Island with the power out... and after driving all day in the rain arrived at Cannon Beach to find the power out within hours after we got here. So the next day we went out for breakfast in Seaside... where they had power. Getting there we had to go thru some severe flooding of the road.

Adjacent to the road was this RV campground. Shelby thought he saw a sign that said "Dry Creek RV Park"... but Sher set him straight... it is "Circle Creek RV Park." I guess that is because the water circles the place. Still very appropriate.

Late afternoon the sky cleared a bit so Alan and I went for a walk on the beach. The wind was having fun with the waves.

As the sun was setting the rain was moving back in... and before we realized it we had to hustle home.

The tide was out more than I have ever seen before here, so we explored up the beach to the north. Coming back I took this shot of Alan with the famous Haystack Rock in the distance.

As I was taking this sunset shot the rain was pouring down on us.

The golden sun reflects in the windows on the houses... beautiful, eh? This was happening in pouring rain and we were getting soaked!

Thanksgiving Day was a continual storm and I never once even ventured out the door. It was delightful today to see the sun come out and wind subside...

A perfect time to go for a walk on the beach with the family.

"love builds up the broken wall
and straightens the crooked path.
love keeps the stars in the firmament
and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides
each of us is created of it
and i suspect
each of us was created for it"

--Maya Angelou

Sher and Seth. This young man is getting taller than his mother!

"I hope you always have a shell in your pocket... and sand in your shoes."

Occasionally we would get surprised by a wave that comes higher up the beach than most others.

Shirley was enjoying taking pictures of the foam on the leading edge of the waves... until she was caught off guard and got totally soaked up to her knees. I found this quote for her.

"My life is like a stroll on the beach... as near to the edge as I can go."

“Don't grow up too quickly, lest you forget how much you love the beach.” -Michelle Held

There was lots of photos taken... with pictures of those taking pictures.

And even some selfie photos.

Not to be left out, I had Shirley take my picture too... I wanted to show off the hats that Sher made up for the Thanksbirthmas '11 celebrations. A lasting reminder.

Huge breakers.

"If you want to know how much I love you, count the waves."

The sand dunes were begging to have some pictures taken of them...

The blue sky was perfect today with the sand and the grass.

When Maizy and Lucy saw me over on the sand dunes, they wanted to play and climb around in them too.

It is wonderful to see these two sisters play so well together.

When Lucy was getting tired Maizy carried her quite a long way without a word of complaint.

There is endless variety in the sand dunes and the wild grass.

I love the patterns that the water etches in the sand on the beach.

And these patterns just happen randomly.

So simple. So beautiful.

Construction Update November 12 to 19, 2011

2011-11-19T21:16:00.000-08:00

This morning we awoke to a skiff of snow on the ground!

I guess because we are about 600 feet above sea level, we get some snow that would not stay even a hundred or two feet lower. Our temps rose to over 8 degrees C. this afternoon... so a lot of the snow melted.

The early morning sunshine and snow on the pampas grass.

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night." -Steve Martin

It is good to see so much of the roofing getting done. This shot taken out of the side dormer window looking back to the peak.

Out of the same dormer window this shows the loft roof done... and the old shake roof on the living room and bedroom. This is the last shot before it got torn off and replaced with new standing seam metal panels.

While Lance and his boys tore off those old shingles....

Brendan and I set up our longest ladder and Lance's long extension ladder to install the facia boards on this most difficult side of the house. Monday was Brendan's last day working here so I tried to get everything done where I needed his help.

This is what this side looks like with the facia boards on. I still have a narrow top board to do on the top of the dormer facia... but I will do that tomorrow if the roof is dry enough to walk on it.

Looking back from Deck Three the new dormer plywood exterior stands out. Once the windows are in and they are trimmed with white boards it will blend in with the rest of the place.

This is likely the last photo of this part of the roof before the shakes got torn off.

Brant is flashing around our new skylights that will be over our master bedroom. This wonderful idea provides beautiful daylight in our formerly dark bedroom.

On Friday afternoon I removed the insulation inside the skylight curb and cut thru the drywall. Shirley was on ladder in the bedroom to catch the 22" x 46" piece of drywall so it didn't fall on the floor or the bed.

We will finish these off with drywall and paint them when we do our new closet... hopefully we can fast track this so we get it done before Christmas. Our new mid-term goal is to get the pantry and the closet finished ahead of the studio... so we can get our house back to normal as soon as possible.

Lance was a little reluctant about tearing off this side of the roof on Friday... the clouds around were dark and unpredictable. But once they decided to do it I was amazed at how quickly this crew tore off the old shakes and had it cleaned up ready for the Titanium underlay and metal panels.

I was on the phone when I looked out the window Friday afternoon and saw these huge snowflakes falling out of the sky. By the time I could finish the phone call and went out to take this picture all the guys were off the roof... and the roof was papered.

The snowstorm only lasted 20-30 minutes and soon after the guys were back up there putting metal panels of roofing in place... they got a good start on this section.

Coming in after shooting some snow photos the morning sun was on this yellow hibiscus. Sad the blossom only lasts a day.

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." -Dr. Seuss

Construction Update November 6 to 11, 2011

2011-11-13T22:25:00.000-08:00

On Sunday I worked by myself putting down all the plywood sheathing on the roof that connects our house and the new closet for our bedroom and then extends over to the mid point.

On Monday the day started off with some serious rain. We tried to work anyway, but we got cold and kind of wet... so Brendan suggested he would be happy to take off the rest of the day and go to town... which was fine by me as I thought we wouldn't see any roofers that day.

Within an hour of that decision Lance and his crew showed up and decided he wanted to start on the new roof over the studio. We already had the Titanium UDL down, so even in the rain he could work here.

So I had to get cracking and get a couple of skylights set up on curbs and cut out the plywood between the TGI's... so I pushed and got it done before stopping for a late lunch.

Lance has a machine that takes 24-guage pre-finished metal off a roll and can form any length of standing seam panel right on site. On the first day they did most all of the highest roof and up to the skylights on the lower roof.

When it wasn't raining Brendan and I put up as much facia board as we could. Here we are doing the facia on the new pantry.

This is Lance is putting down the first layer of "torch on" roofing on the pantry.

This section of the our closet and bedroom is now ready for the metal panels.

Don't these metal panels look good? This is the canopy that connects to the new closet lower right.

Lance with two of his boys are doing the second layer of "torch on" thru the cricket. With five skylights so close together, this section is extremely time consuming and difficult.

On Thursday Shirley helped us clean out all the junk stored in between the trusses. There was a lot of junk up there that we inherited from the previous owners and didn't even know what all was there... plus there was some of our stuff up there as well.

Then Brendan and I installed plywood on most of the ceiling in the garage. When the old shake roof gets torn off, if we didn't have a ceiling here there would be a lot of debris that would fall into the whole area below... and it would be a huge mess to clean up. Now we can just vacuum in the attic and then set insulation between the trusses... and save the mess getting into all our stuff.

With a ceiling in this area it makes it easier to heat this space if we so choose... plus it really makes it a nicer environment.

This time of year painting outside is not practical... this type of paint has an emulsion that needs some warmth to get it to dry. So we have turned our cottage into paint shop for a few weeks... with poly on the floor. Shirley has been painting almost every day here this past ten days. The good news is the end of the facia boards is within sight.

This next week I will take more photos with the finished facia boards installed. It is looking really good, but with the rain on the weekend we didn't take any more exterior shots.

Once again, thank you Shirley for the photos.

Construction Update October 30 to November 4, 2011

2011-11-06T07:23:00.000-08:00

On Sunday we returned the trailer we rented from a friend in Sidney... we needed the trailer to bring home the custom cut 1" x 12" cedar facia boards... some of which were over 18 feet long. Our return trip back took us to Saturna first, so we got to see our home with renovations from the ferry. Pretty cool, eh?

On Monday we went to town again. Since Brendan was setting up the fireworks for their Halloween party it gave us a chance to run some errands and pick up some supplies for the project... like skylights, white Flood paint for the facia boards and some cedar shingles for siding. I only bought a square of shingles, as I wanted to get started on figuring out if we are going to pre-paint them, or how to put them on the wall.

Is it not a little ironic that we are taking the cedar shakes off the roof and now planning to put cedar shingles on to the wall?

As we were taking off more of the cedar shakes over our master bedroom closet I called Shirley to take some pictures of the crop of mushrooms that we have growing on the roof. It amazes me that the roof still keeps us dry.

On Tuesday Brendan called and said he needed another day off to clean up after the fireworks... so Shirley was recruited to help me build the east wall of the dormer... the one with the two 24" x 24" windows just above the ladder. Shirley also helped me finish the 1/2" plywood sheathing in the section.

On Wednesday Brendan and I set up the rafters over the last section of the dormer.... and Shirley caught us putting them in place. We then built the last section of the wall between the lower TGI and the upper dormer rafter... another tricky project as each stud was a different length with a different angle on the top than the angle on the bottom. Now that we have it done we know how to do it more quickly.

Ever since we put up this five-ply LVL beam I have wanted to trim it off to the right length... and on Thursday when I started to build this canopy roof I took out the chain saw and did the deed.

Since paint doesn't dry very well this time of year outdoors... and there is always a threat of precipitation, we got the brain wave to put down some poly on the floor and use the cabin as a paint room. When we moved the first batch of boards into the cabin it was already raining.

This week Shirley painted the first five boards with two coats and we set up another batch of seven boards... so we will have enough to do the upper roof and dormer when these boards are dry.

I made up a list of windows this week and am looking for candidates who would like to bid on making these 36 windows. In the last two weeks since we added the dormer in the loft, we eliminated one round window from the plan and added eight more! So glad we did it... it was a now or never decision.

On Friday we made some serious progress on the roof over our new master bedroom closet and the canopy extension to the cantilevered beam. Since we had to open up the roof to marry the new roof into the old one, at the end of the day I put poly over that area. We have rain in the forecast for the weekend. Weather permitting Lance has scheduled to start roofing here on Monday.

This is a pretty boring picture... but the results are awesome. We are taking out the service pole with meter base in the previous photo and changing the way our house will get power service. In fact we will eliminate two poles and over 275 feet of power line. We will then come directly from the pole in the triangle on our circle drive, which is about 125 feet from back corner of the garage, so we will hardly never see it from inside the house... or when driving up to our house.

This photo taken from the loft shows the ugly service pole and the green second pole on the left... they will be removed... and along with it goes all the wires you can see thru the top windows on the right. In an ideal world electricity is to be enjoyed but the power lines are never to be seen.

Wesley, our electrician, has installed a new 200 amp panel in our garage and from there we will go to a new panel in our new closet... so all that wire will be hidden in the building. We are setting aside four feet of wall just for electric panels in the closet... and it will have clear floor area in front of them so it will meet code.

Currently when breaker trips we have to take clothes out of Shirley's closet to access the panel and get a flash light to find the problem... not cool.

Construction Update October 23 to 29, 2011

2011-10-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

To make this dormer I found that we had to make a few modifications just as soon as we stood up this wall of windows. For example, we had to extend the top plate on each side with lookouts to receive the eave rafter and facia board.

We also set up the roof joists on Shirley's new pantry and installed 3/4 inch plywood instead of 1/2 inch since the fall on this roof is only 3 inches in six feet it needs to be as solid as possible.

Immediately Brendan waterproofed it with Titanium UDL.

Next we prepared the roof TGI's to the right length and with the right angles on each end... and built them up ready for facia boards. These were almost 22 feet long and sure didn't feel as heavy as those TGI's on the other side of this building.

What a glorious autumn day to be working on this project. We pre cut all the blocking to size and installed them at each end along with the TGI's, which went in really quickly.

In order to accommodate the new dormer, we had to purchase three 2 x 12's... the first one became the outside rafter over the bathroom... it will hold the facia board and soffit.

We also built the last two walls for our master bedroom closet... and this coming week we will get the roof for it built, as well as the canopy that extends over to the central cantilevered beam.

On Wednesday we went to Victoria for Shirley's eye appointment... and I also picked up over 500 lineal feet of custom cut full 1" x 12" cedar facia board. It was the most beautiful cedar product I have seen... but when I saw the pile of boards, there were several 18 foot boards... and there was no way I could transport them on my short box pickup. So I rented a trailer.

We unloaded the boards into the studio next to the storage under the waterproof roof and stacked the boards with slats between so this green and wet lumber can dry out before we have to paint it.

We set up the rafters on the dormer on Thursday afternoon.

We also added a small raker window on the side of the dormer... and will do it on both sides of this dormer.

It was a very difficult task to build this wall between the top of the dormer and the roof over the storage beside it on the left side of this picture. There are two different angles on each vertical member, and it was a trick to measure and cut them to fit perfectly. I had to do one of these 2 x 4's three times to get it right. and we get to do it all over again on the other side next week. By the time we get if finished I will know how to do it.

Looking down from the loft to the main studio we enjoy the view thru the front window. Also notice the three clearstory windows above.

At the end of this week this is the front elevation view as you come from the cottage to the house. Shirley has requested that we trim off a few of the lowest branches on a couple of trees to tidy up this front view. But that is a minor problem compared to the ugly power pole.

We are looking forward to getting rid of this power pole that has the meter and brings the power from here underground into our house. This past week our electrician installed a new electrical panel in the back room on our garage with a 12 foot mast and new meter base. It won't be long before we will be taking down that ugly power pole which is so close to our new addition.

Happy Birthday Shirley

2011-10-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

The leaves were turning colour and many have fallen... and it was a glorious sunny day to be with my sweetheart at the Royal Oak Golf Course today.

Shirley took this one shot of me thru these gorgeous leaves... thrust me, that really is me. I don't wear my cowboy hat when golfing.

There were even several holes where Shirley got par and I didn't. She felt pretty good about the day golfing together and told me as we drove on the way to lunch that she was happy go count this Groupon golf day as "her day" and who knows if we can even golf in my birthday.

My game was pretty slow starting... but on the second nine I had some good luck... twice in a row I got a birdie. The second one was a chip in from off the green.

After the game we went to White Spot for fish and chips... and then to Lance's... our roofer to pick up some larger metal colour samples for our new roof. Then we went to the Running Room in Langford and each spent another last minute Groupon. Shirley got a really cute purple top... and I got some push up swivel things that help you get more muscles involved in doing pushups.

"I think it pisses off God when we walk by the colour purple and don't notice it."

We picked up a door and frame for Shirley's new recycling room under the stairs to the studio. Then we headed for Safeway in Sidney... picked up a few groceries... a couple of sticky buns and some Starbucks soy latte.

When we got to the ferry every one was already driving on, and the ferry dispatcher waved us to follow the last car on. This is my sweetheart working on her laptop on the ferry. No more snagle tooth. Tomorrow is officially her birthday... but we started a little celebrating already last night by watching the movie, "Thelma and Louise" and eating home made popcorn and apples.

Shirley says she it doesn't feel like she is 65. Isn't that wonderful! Somehow I think she is going to keep saying that until she is 90!

"Everyone wants to live a long time, but no body wants to get old."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SHIRLEY

Construction Update October 16 to 22, 2011

2011-10-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

This has been a pretty productive week, in spite of the rain.

The first order of business was to set up the tallest wall on this west elevation. We had it made last Friday, but we needed Shirley to help us... and she was in Victoria that afternoon. Different than the other large walls, we could not build it and just stand it up. After finally getting it vertical we had to rotate it 90 degrees but it was too heavy to just pound it into place. Then I got the idea of putting a couple of dowels under it and while Shirley and Brendan kept it balanced I rolled very easily into place. Once again we couldn't have done it without Shirley.

With the wall in place we could now set up the 3-ply LVL beam on the roof ridge.

After making a couple of calls to Matt at Atlas Truss we agreed to modify the layout to give us the maximum roof area from the 15 TGI's we have for each side of the roof. On two foot centres that gives us a maximum of 28 feet wide... so I revised the layout on the top of the wall.

The only problem was that our ridge beam on hand was 27 feet. So with a couple of pieces of left over LVL which I cut down to the 11-7/8 inch height I did a diagonal splice which we glued and screwed and then let dry overnight. See how this added an extra foot to the beam.

We staggered the three beams putting a full beam end next to the two spliced end and then gave it extra nails. When I ran this creative solution past our beam engineer, he said he had never seen this done before, but in actual fact just one of the three LVL's could carry that outside TGI since it only cantilevered one foot past the bearing point.

It only took us a couple of hours to put the three beams into their final resting place. Here Brendan is doing the final nailing on the most difficult part of the span. We are now ready to finally put up the TGI's.

But there was lots of preparation on each TGI before we even lifted them to the roof. First we had to cut both ends at the correct angle... then Brendan put on the special joist hangers.

We added 2x4 blocking to each end of the TGI's to make possible nailing on these hangers as well as facia boards on the tail end. Pretty cool hangers, eh? They are are upside down sitting here.

We set up a 2x6 ramp in the window to guide the TGI's one at a time as I pushed them up to Brendan...

who pulled them from the window and wrestled these heavy 25-foot long joists around by himself... poking one end out the window in order to turn it around before setting it down.

He then stacked them side by side ready to go up into place.

The next morning we set up all 15 TGI's and that afternoon we started to put down the 1/2 inch sheathing. Shirley took this photo early the next morning.

I picked up some Titanium UDL vapour barrier which Brendan put down making this half of the new addition protected from water a little more. See the 1/2 inch H-clips we used between the sheets midway between the JGI's.

It didn't take Shirley long to clean up and sweep this half of the studio. Behind the 2x4 stud wall is a storage room about 6 x 22 feet with headroom from between 6 to 8 feet.

We also got some more 2x6's, which I used the tractor to lift up to the loft level... which is about 18 feet.

Being lazy I look for every chance I can to use the tractor to save me having to do too much lifting.

After finishing the first side of roof joists, we found that our main ridge beam needed to be 3 inches less... so I did the delicate task of cutting it off with my new chain saw. It was like walking thru a mine field of nails and I was amazed I was able to detect each one and cut around them so I didn't wreck the teeth in the chain.

We then built the short wall with the clearstory windows on top of the beam. See my selfie shadow?

Here is the view from the loft... the new dormer windows are framed... and the Mayne Queen is passing by on it's way from Saturna Island. To see what the dormer will look like look at the previous post from yesterday, "A Flash of Light."

And this is the part of the loft that is over the bathroom and stairs.

This shows the roof from below on our circle driveway.

Another photo from the circle driveway from the other side. In another week we should have the roof on the other side ready for the roofers.

This is what our place is looking like today if you were coming up the driveway from the cottage.

A Flash of Light

2011-10-21T08:15:00.000-07:00

After working much of yesterday on the roof and loft level I was just overtaken by the absolutely incredible view from this height. It was a glorious day.

Last night as I slept I found myself in my sub-consious working on a way to make a dormer for the loft. First I tried an A-frame type dormer, like we have in our current living room, but there is not enough height to give us much benefit. So I then tried a flat top dormer.

My original plan treated the loft primarily as a storage area... hence no windows on the side facing the view. It is now or never if we want to do anything about this. For the last few weeks I had brushed off my wife's constant ooooo's and aaaah's about the view, telling her we could put in a few opening skylights that fit between the roof joists.

Then as I was waking up I mulled over a couple of different ideas as to how I might do it better. Today we planned to build the walls and next week set the roof josits in place... so I quickly pulled out the model and started to cut out cardboard to make a dormer.

This shows a nearly flat top dormer... roof slope falls about a foot over 18 feet.

This shows a dormer that would be about 10 feet wide.

I think I can make it work with the TGI's I have on hand... I may have to use some 2x12's on top of the side walls... and get 2x12's for the eaves.

I have posted these photos so that my TGI engineer and structural engineer can look at this idea and tell me the best way to proceed from here.

Construction Update October 9 to 15, 2011

2011-10-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

With the Thanksgiving holiday and Brendan calling in sick, we went to town on Tuesday and really only worked three full days together on the project... and I think it is safe to say it was the hardest three days yet on this site. We were building angled walls... and to get them square and plum when set up had my brain working overtime.

Cutting out the windows was the easiest part... and I could do it in short order.

Tying together the angled walls required cutting angles into the top plate that overlapped. It was a thing of beauty when it worked out right.

On Friday morning before Shirley went to town she helped us lift up and put in place this 14 plus foot high window wall. It was by far the heaviest wall we have put up to date... the 8 windows had 8 headers... and each one is built up and very heavy. Then we had to cover them with 1/2 inch plywood.

When she came back we had another wall that is over 17 feet high almost ready to go up... but we still have more plywood to nail in place first. I told Brendan that by the time we get these walls done we will know how to build them right the first time every time... something that we can not say we've done.

This is what we looked like at the end of this past week. By the end of this new week we hope to have up all the other walls, the main heavy beam that will carry the clearstory windows and the higher roof truss joists. We just got the last three main roof beams delivered mid day on Friday... and on Monday by noon I expect we will have them in place and laminated together.

Shirley enjoys taking photos of the views from all the windows. This one is of the three windows that are in the stairwell area.

This is the view from the north west corner of the studio over looking the knoll to the right of the water tank... seeing the top of the cabin and some of the meadowland.

From the same window with a slightly different angle we see the corner of the greenhouse, more of the meadowlands and in the foreground the TGI roof rafters under protective tarps.

I think my favourite non-water view is out this single east facing window overlooking Shirley's sunken garden... which she lately has been calling her sunken jungle. It has really filled out this past summer and I think it's looking really great.

We wish you and us all a really great week. Stay safe and don't work too hard, eh?

My DeWalt Service Dilemma

2011-10-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

I have for years been a dedicated DeWalt tool fan... and just this past week pulled all my DeWalt tools together to take this photo. I then did an inventory of my DeWalt tools and counted 13 cordless products and 14 A/C powered tools.

There is hardly a day in my life that my hand does not touch a DeWalt tool.

I have always bought only DeWalt saw blades, drill bits and cutting discs... and in fact just bought both 10" and 12" saw DeWalt blades this past week. But our local Slegg Construction Materials Ltd. store has wronged me in my last two customer service events... and I am greatly distressed to think of where I will be getting future Dewalt service. As you will see, I would be crazy to give them another tool to send off for service... and I will be hard put to want to even buy another DeWalt tool because of this.

"Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me."

A couple of months ago I stopped in at Slegg Lumber in Sidney, a DeWalt dealer, and asked Dave Bennett if he could help me with belt alignment on this sander. I told him the problems I was having with my sander.

When I noticed sanding belts were breaking far too often I decided to try to find out why. Shirley had been using the sander in prepping the sun decks this past summer... which involved sanding some already painted cedar. Some of paint dust got into the works and over time formed globs of paint on the front rollers. I deducted that possibly these thick, uneven globs of old paint might be the reason the sanding belts were breaking far too often. In any event, I went to work and cleaned off the rollers.

I could clean the lower roller easily enough after the sanding belt was removed... but to get to the upper roller I had to remove the front assembly. When a couple of small rollers fell out as I took it apart, I was worried I might not get it back together the same way that it came from the factory. I figured that these small rollers had something to do with the adjustment of the belt tracking alignment. Sure enough, after trying a couple of possibilities of where to put those rollers in the re-assembly I realized I couldn't get the tool to work again as it used to... I lost the ability to adjust belt tracking.

Dave Bennett sent me to a tool website that showed the parts, but that did not help me to know where to put these two small alignment rollers. So I took the sander in to Dave and told him I needed help to get my sander put together right. All the parts were there, but the alignment rollers were not in the right place.

So, he sent it off and a month later I got a call that the sander was back. When I went to pick it up he said they replaced the front assembly and he handed me a bill for $110. I complained about what ever happened to simple service? This same sander had gone thru a DeWalt service overhaul under warranty during my first year I owned it... and I was told then they changed the front assembly.

Dave told me that the way they now were handling service issues on DeWalt tools was that they were not calling the owners with any estimate or approval for work needed... that they would just look at the tool and replace any worn parts, give the tool a 90-day satisfaction guarantee and whatever it cost we would have to pay.

I told him that I didn't believe that this tool needed a new front assembly as this tool had not done that much work since it had been rebuilt... I just took the tool apart and could not get it put back together right again. I was not happy to have to pay $110 to have them but my tool back together again. It didn't even look to me that the front assembly was replaced, as the front roller was the same one that I had cleaned paint globs off.

My second DeWalt service issue involved this framing air nailer. As I started to use it this fall I notice after only a few clips of nails that there was a serious air leak in the gun... and it seemed to be around the trigger. I opened it up and found that one of the O-rings had been blown. So I did a little checking online and found that there was a shop in Victoria that had the right O-ring... and I picked it up and put it in. However, there still was an air leak.

So I took it into Slegg Lumber and they sent it into DeWalt repair service. Again I got a call that the nailer was back and ready for pick-up. However when I went to get it they told me that they changed the cylinder and piston, new O-rings and trigger... cost was $148 plus tax... $165.76.

That is when I hit the roof. This tool had not even used a full box of spikes. I told Dave Bennett that when I bought the nailer I also bought 4 boxes of 3" spikes... and at this point had not used even one box of spikes! When I had the tool apart to change the O-ring I was amazed at how clean and perfect the cylinder and piston was. I told him that something really smells wrong with this.

When I got home I looked at the box of spikes... and in fact I had only used half of the first box. So, it sure bothered me that these guys were making decisions and replacing some significant parts with no customer approval. This seems totally wrong to me and I have vowed not to give any more of my DeWalt tools to Slegg Lumber for service. What a rip off!

This past week I stopped in at Slegg and Dave Bennett was not in so I asked to talk to the store manager. He was not in at the time either, so I asked who was in charge when the manager was not there? They directed me to Dan Chan... who listened attentively to my DeWalt customer service beef and said he would look into it and get back to me. That was last Tuesday... and I have not heard anything as of this point in time. I had sent an email to him on Friday, but at the end of the day found a "No-go" message in my Inbox... so he did not get it.

Dan Chan took a copy of this receipt. He told me that my tool was sent by courier to the DeWalt Service depot in Burnaby and back. I would like to see the paperwork on that cost. Also I would like to see the paperwork on what the DeWalt Service Depot did on my tool. There must be some record of what they did, but Slegg has not yet given me anything that tells me this. Is this not a reasonable request? My only record of the transaction is the copy in the photo above.

I have been wondering if my case is an isolated situation, or are there others who are not happy with the new DeWalt customer service policy at Slegg Lumber. Any suggestions?

BONUS SLEGG STORY: About a month ago when Shirley went to Victoria by herself I gave her a list of things I needed to pick up at Slegg's or Home Depot. She went to Slegg Lumber first and got everything on the list, including a box of 2-3/8 inch nails for my DeWalt framing nailer. On my list I had put 2-1/2 inch nails, but it seems like nobody stocks any in this part of the world... they all are using 2-3/8 inch nails. So, after Shirley bought them at Slegg's she double checked at Home Depot and asked them if they handled 2-1/2 inch nails for my air nailer. They looked thru all the stock and none could be found. However she saw the same boxes of 2-3/8 inch nails there... and the price was $65.99. She didn't know what she paid at Slegg's so was anxious to see what they had charged us... Would you believe $113.76 for the identical box of 5000 Paslode nails!

So we called Slegg's and asked if they had made a mistake. No they said, that was the price. And since I had not had that item previously quoted on my material list the best they could do was to take off 15%... $96.69. We told them that Home Depot had them on at 65.99 and they said that they could not even buy them for that price... which I seriously doubted. We told them they would be getting this box back if that was the case.

A GOOD Slegg Customer Service Story

On our next trip to Victoria I called to Slegg in Sidney and asked if they had 1" stair tread material in 12 foot lengths. They said not in their store, but the man I talked with said he thought the Admiral Way store did. So I asked him to give me that number and I called them. Yes they did and Jeff told me it would be at the front counter when I arrived. I asked Jeff if I could pick up other supplies quoted by the Sidney store and they said yes... so I picked up a lift of 1/2 plywood and a couple of 14 foot 2 x 12's for stair stringers. While there I thought I would check with them on their best price for 2-3/8 inch nails... and he said that the very best price he could give me was $75.65. I told him the Home Depot had them at $65.99. Jeff said that he had reduced the quote to cost plus 20 points... and that was his best shot. From this I deducted his cost was about $63.00.

I was very impressed with the customer service at this store. For example the yard serviceman who brought me the 2 x 12's on his fork lift asked me what I was using them for. I told him I was making stair stringers with them. He said, "These have some checks in them and you may have some of the stringer points fall off. Come with me and let's pick out some better ones than this." I really appreciated that. We went to the stack of l4 foot material... he lifted off the top pallet and opened a new pallet and we picked through more than a dozen boards to find a couple of perfect ones. I told him how much I appreciated him looking out for me. That was an exceptional man. He also helped me load the plywood and banded my load together so I could get everything home safely on the truck. Check out the beautiful banding job that he did for me in the photo below. 14 foot 2 x 12's on a short box. We cut 4 feet off the 12-foot stair treads so the 8 foot pieces fit on top of the plywood lift... and then I put a couple of 4 foot ones on the end gate to reduce the fulcrum point overhang. We then banded the 8-foot treads on top of the plywood so there was no risk of them going thru the back window of the truck. A perfect loading job... a thing of beauty!

So our next stop was to buy the $65.99 box of nails at Home Depot and then take the over priced box back to Slegg in Sidney. When I handed Dave Bennett our Slegg receipt with the box of nails and told him why they were getting them back he asked me if I had already bought another box at Home Depot... and I showed him the Home Depot receipt. He indicated that he would have matched their price if I hadn't already bought them. This was the day I picked up my air nailer from him, so he knew that he was off side with me for the repair costs of $165.76 on a nailer.

Isn't customer service fun?

I sure hope that Slegg can get their act together on how to handle DeWalt Customer Service. The way they are doing it now may work easier for them... but they are driving customers away from wanting to buy DeWalt tools and for sure I won't use them for repairs unless I can talk to the DeWalt service shop. In both of the situations I do not believe that my instructions were communicated to the service repair shop. Somehow I do not think that my case is an isolated one... and there are likely many others who have been shocked by huge repair costs and wish they were in the loop on approving costly repairs.

Construction Update October 2 to 7, 2011

2011-10-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

This is the stairwell opening into which our new stairs are to go. I had hoped to find someone to build them for me, as it might save me a days work. In Kelowna there is a company called Rise 'n Run that we used in our projects there... and they saved us both time and money. But after calling four companies, the only one I could find to even quote on them was a company in Nanaimo. It didn't seem to me that they would be quicker... or save me money.

On Sunday afternoon I did the layout for the new stairs which had a 7-5/8" rise and 10" run.

I enjoyed cutting out the stair pattern with the circular saw...

I then cut out the corners with the jig saw to avoid over cutting and losing strength.

I just tacked the stringers in place to see how they looked before cutting out the treads and risers. The stringers looked good... but we would assemble them in the garage on the workbench where we had better control and wouldn't be working in cramped conditions.

We used lots of glue, screws and air nails.

We made all the risers from 1/2" plywood and cut the treads to length. In about two hours we put it all together. We now just let it sit while the glue dried.

We wanted to put the siding back on the house before putting the stairs in place... as it would be really hard to install the siding after. We put horizontal 2x4's for nailing the siding to with two layers of 1" Styrofoam insulation between... and it is here we could correct the small discrepancy of the house being not square with the old garage and our new building. It was less than one inch out of square... no big deal.

But before I could cover the 3x8 posts at each end, I knew I needed the engineer's approval. Ritchie Smith asked me to send him several photos of the posts with close-ups of how they were attached and very soon after emailing them to him he gave me the green light to go ahead and cover.

So the next morning we re-installed the vertical channel cedar siding... anxious to get our new stairs in place. But it was not as simple to get the stairs into place as I had imagined. They were really heavy... and there was not enough room to get them in from the front step... try as we may it was a "no go."

So plan B was to take out three or four studs in the new master bedroom closet so we could slide them into place parallel from behind. It was a piece of cake... howbeit a heavy piece of cake!

We were so excited to get them installed... but my first time walking up and down told me I had miss calculated the headroom clearance and made the opening for the stairwell too small.

I made a call to the building inspector to find out for sure what the building code was for headroom clearance. If I was going to fix it, I only wanted to do it once. The inspector was very helpful and told me the minimum code was 6 foot 5 inches... 77 inches vertical clearance from stair nosing to header. I checked and as it sat at the time it was 75 inches. Close but no cigar. It had to be changed.

So out came the chain saw. We pulled out all the nails from the joist hangers and in no time the surgery was complete.

Here is an action shot of the header and about a foot of the TGI's coming down.

And here is the finished repair job.

With a simple stud cut to the right length and a lever with fulcrum we had the header moved over a foot and up tight to the floor plywood as tight as ever. This repair fix took no more than about an hour and we now have headroom clearance of 80 inches... 3 more inches than the minimum code required. It feels alright now. You can see the pencil line where the joist hanger used to be on the joist.

If Michael Jordan comes to visit he will have to duck his head... but for the rest of us it will do just fine.

This is the first wall that we built... the short wall back of the storage, over the garage.

The next day we had more walls built... and I now had to do something to protect our house from water penetration. I needed to get the cricket built. Shirley hadn't heard that word used before for the small false roof used to divert water away from an obstacle, a chimney, etc. Check it out.

So we snapped a couple of chalk lines to layout the cricket. One on the wall of the new studio and another on the roof where we would cut away the shingles. There would be a new valley with a fall of about two feet when completed. But first we have to cut the shingles and remove the ones that go in the area of the new cricket.

Once again we used the tractor to haul away the ripped off shingles.

Then we started to build the cricket... each support rafter was progressively longer as the cricket widened.

Once the cricket was built we put 6 mil poly from wall to wall, over the skylights and everything, holding it in place with 1 x 4's and then tapping the poly to the new plywood wall. Brendan said that this was a 100% fix... and we are ready now the new roof in this area.

Friday was a sunny day and we not only got up all the floor joists for the loft, but also most of the T & G floor plywood.

The higher we get in this new building the more spectacular the view gets. This storage loft is begging to have a few skylights... and I am thinking they might be the Velux opening type. They may also be helpful for ventilation on hot summer days.

Construction Update September 25 to 30, 2011

2011-10-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

Today I will try to get the construction of the last two weeks documented with photos... and it will likely take two blog posts.

Here is a little custom cutting to combine a top plate to tie together the new pantry wall to the old house and a new support post at our front door in the existing wall.

This top plate ties into the 3" x 8" post that fits into the wall and will support an :LVL beam that carries the wall and roof load adjacent to the house. This is the only part of the old house that we have used to carry any of the new construction...

Only in this corner of the original laundry room closet does our new addition overlap our existing house. Once the beams and joists are in place it will take away a small corner of the closet about 15" x 18"... you can see what we had to cut out to make room for the floor joists to be installed.

In order to build the stairwell and finish off the floor joists right up to the house we had to remove all the shingles, soffit and rafter tails on the eaves on the entry side of our house. Brendan has lots of experience taking off old cedar shakes to install new roofing... the past three years his main job had been with a roofing sub-contractor.

The chainsaw was the easiest way to cut off the rafter tails. And Brendan did a great job of cutting them off without hitting any nails... which was a little tricky.

Brendan is setting the TGI's into the header for the stairwell. I removed the rest of the siding in this section so that I could put it back and cover the new support posts as well as the LVL beam adjacent to the house.

Before we put the 3/4 inch T&G floor plywood on the studio joists, I wanted to extend the concrete posts higher to encase the LVL beams... it would be impossible to do it afterwards. Ritchie Smith liked this idea, but told me to protect the wood from any reaction of the concrete... so I stapled some 6 mil poly to the beams first. Each beam has either two 1/2 inch rebars or ready-rods that go thru the beam and are attached to vertical rebars in the concrete. This is on Foundation post #4.

Each one was a little different, but the concept was always the same. Here on the top of Foundation Post #2 I used a ready-rod thru the beam, and wrapped a rebar around the end of the LVL 3-ply beam and back to the other end of the same ready-rod. After the concrete is poured into the form we will face three of the four posts with 3" of sandstone rock.

This is the detail of the post inside the garage... Foundation Post #1... the only one that will not be faced with rock after. Note how we also put four 1/2" x 3" lag bolts with washers to help hold the concrete and the beam together. In the end of the beam I used a couple of 5" long lags. This is all to help to keep the beams from twisting under seismic pressure.

Here is Foundation Post #3 with forms in place ready for concrete. It was no small task to get the concrete into the small opening on the top of each of these. Thus we had to do this before putting any of the floor plywood. Even Shirley helped Brendan and me to place the concrete. It took three full wheelbarrows of concrete... plus another part mix to fill all four forms. This one task took almost a full day to complete.

Once we stripped the forms off and saw the concrete done, it just looked like it was always that way. Now, with this concrete post complete, it gives me the base on which I will apply the rock facing. But the most important thing is that structurally it keeps the integrity of the LVL beams from any movement... much better than any metal Simpson bracket one can buy.

We look for every opportunity to use the tractor to help us lift anything up. We were able to take about 6 or 7 sheets of 3/4" T & G fir plywood at one time... and the studio floor will need about 32-34 sheets.

We put down floor plywood on this entire level in a single day and used over 15 pounds of 2" deck screws. This floor had better not even think of squeaking!

I was not prepared for the great view that we had once we were standing on the studio floor. See Shirley's garden boxes on the knoll.

When Brendan told me around 11 AM that he was not feeling good and wanted to quit at noon, I told him no problem and Shirley went with me to Victoria for the afternoon. I was able to pick up some supplies... like a lift of 60 sheets of 1/2" sheathing for the walls, two 12" x 14 foot stair stringers and 1" stair tread material in 12 foot lengths and a new chain saw.

By banding the 14-foot boards to the plywood I was able to bring them home in my short box pickup with no problem. This truck has never came home from Victoria once in the past three years without having a load of gravel or something. We seldom take the car to town as there is always of load to bring back.

The Floor Joist Week

2011-09-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

The first order of business this week was to remove the upper portion of the first three trusses of the garage so that we could set up the TGI's (engineered floor joists) on the beams. Here Brendan is cutting thru the end gable truss after we had just completed removing all the shingles... hence the shadows from the roof strapping on the wall.

With the siding removed off the end gable and all the strapping taken off that section, we are ready to take off the end gable.

With a rope attached at the top of the gable, Brendan lowered it slowly and I was in position to receive it and take it away to separate the plywood from the 2 x 4's. It came down perfectly!

Taking down the tops of the other trusses was pretty easy once they were cut off... Brendan just passed them down to me. We then had to temporarily support those few trusses with 2 x 4's from the garage floor until we had some floor joists to attach them to.

After putting up the heavy LVL beams, these TGI's were light and much easier to handle... however, every one had to be cut to the right length first.

From the cutting table we lifted one end on to the beam...

I would then push the TGI just over half way so it would teeter into Brendan's hands.

And he would walk it up the ladder and set in place on the beam.

With an air nailer it made spiking the TGI's in place pretty easy and quick to secure.

At the mid point we had to assemble a 5-ply beam, which we used the tractor to carry these heavy LVL's (Laminated Veneer Lumber) to it's final resting place.

With a chain we kept the LVL attached to tractor bucket extension and Brendan walked beside it balancing it.

The tractor took the hard lifting out of this job. Brendan just had to balance it into place as I drove forward putting the beam over the other beam. We got to do this 5 times here... as this is the heaviest beam here. With five ply's this one ends up 8.75 inches wide by 16 inches high and about 33 feet long.

On the other end the tractor lifts the beam close and Brendan takes up the final bit into place.

There is no doubt that the little tractor really helped to reduce the lifting we would have had to do. It actually made setting up these beams fun!

This was a little sketch I did to figure out the bolt layout for this five-ply beam. In addition to nailing each ply together with four rows of nails a foot apart... we also needed 5/8" bolts every 16 inches to secure these layers to make one very solid beam. By determining the layout for the blots we could then nail with confidence knowing we wouldn't be hitting a nail when drilling holes for the bolts. This helped me determine we needed to buy 24 10-inch 5/8" bolts with 24 nuts and 48 heavy washers.

It sure felt good to have most of the TGI's in place and this heavy beam in place... with the trim boards in place. We left this centre beam un-trimmed for now... as this will carry a canopy roof that connects to the new master bedroom closet. At this time I don't know exactly how that roof is going to come together. There are a few possibilities of how much soffit it will have and how this will work best.

Shirley took this shot from her "Sunken Jungle." It was a good week.

We still have the TGI's to put over the pantry and closet... but before we can do that we have some walls to build there as well as tear off the old eaves of the house in those areas. With all the rain in the forecast we have left those eaves in tact as long as possible.

We pulled our car into it's future parking place on Saturday... where I took this photo of Shirley as we were heading out to an evening fund raiser for Pat Hennebery, the father of Brendan, who is suffering with Parkinson's Disease. It won't be too hard to get used to this luxury.

Once again all the photos in this blog except this last one were taken by Shirley... who only charges me $1,000 for each one I use.

Concrete Completed and Now Framing Starts

2011-09-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

The delivery of truss joists and LVL beams took about 8 trips... and this was the first load. The driver brought a small load so he could check out the route... he did not want to take out any low hanging telephone or power lines coming up the hill and he wanted to see where he had to bring the load.

There were 19 LVL beams... some up to 36 feet long! ...and we just piled them up along the side of the driveway, using the tractor to help to push them into place.

We moved the truss joists off the truck onto the tractor...

and stacked them on the gravel yard by the greenhouse. The whole delivery process happened over four days and involved a lot of hand work. There is still 27 more roof truss joists to come... and I think Atlas Truss will be having Home Hardware pick them up in Vancouver and bring to me directly.

This concrete slab will be under the stairs to the studio... and will be the floor of our new recycle department. At last this is the end of the concrete work! Hip, hip hooray!

New lumber! Nice clean 2 x 10's! I had to move a water service out of the corner and pull out the PVC storm water collection pipe.

Shirley is excited to see the floor joists for her new closet.

This is a close-up of the Simpson tie down of a 3-ply 2 x 6 post, which will carry one end of the longest 36-foot beam.

On Wednesday we went to Victoria and instead of bringing back the usual load of gravel from Trio, we picked up a lift of 3/4" T & G Fir floor plywood. I was amazed at how the they used two fork lifts to get this heavy load on to my pickup in less than a minute. One brought the lift of plywood over to the back of the truck... the second one (in photo above) came and then picked it up by the end so the other fork lift could back away so he could slide the load into the back of truck. Very slick.

Once at home it was a little more work to take it off one sheet at a time. Here Shirley, who helped with every sheet, poses as if she did the whole thing herself!

This is the pantry... the floor joists are 3" x 8" fir... left over from Jack's house next door. What a solid floor this is. I connected the dryer vent before screwing down the 3/4" T & G sub-floor.

Friday was the first day that Brendan Henneberry came to work with me... so we started by setting up the long beams. Using the tractor we dragged the beam close to where we needed it and then balancing the beam on the bucket extension lifted it as high as possible.

Brendan is getting ready to lift his end over the rebar into place on top of the column.

Each major beam is made up of three ply's of LVL... each one 1-3/4" x 16" by either 34 or 36 feet. With each layer we added we refined our process so we could use the tractor more and have to do less heavy lifting ourselves.

On the second major beam I screwed a few boards to the end of the bucket extension that gave us a little more lift. Once we were done we had our technique perfected.

Once the major beams were up we spent the rest of the afternoon taking down eavestrough and facia boards. In order to put the new floor joists into the garage section, we have about six feet of trusses, roofing, etc. to remove... so we will be in the destruction business for a little while.

We also started to remove the eavestrough, facia and soffits on the house. By this time next week we hope to have the main floor deck completed... floor joists and plywood in place.

2011-09-10T21:53:00.000-07:00

How do you like my self-portrait shadow? Sometimes we see photos in places we least expect to see them... and at times you could never duplicate again. Shirley says this is a "selfie."

You can see tire treads in the shadow from a huge crane truck that came to deliver our truss joists and beams.

And when I saw this huge truck and trailer that was 65 feet long at the front gate, I knew that there was no way he could get anywhere close to the construction site. I took Sean, the driver for a walk up the driveway to our house and he just shook his head. They should never have sent the load on a truck of his size. He also had a pallet of trusses for a job near Langford... and neither of us got our product delivered on Friday.

I called Home Hardware here on Mayne Island and asked if they might be able to help us with a smaller delivery truck. Yes they could... but their truck was out doing deliveries right at the moment. They were not sure when it would be back.

In the meantime I helped Sean back his truck and trailer off Heck Hill... which took the better part of an hour. It was so good to get that rig back on level ground at the bottom. As we waited and time kept slipping away, an anxious truck driver kept telling me that he had to be on the 5 pm ferry home.

So I called Home Hardware again and Rob suggested we unload the product in their yard and they would bring it up next week. Sean jumped all over it... and I headed home for a late, late lunch.

Now for the weekly construction update.

Foundation 1 is totally complete, including the repair of the garage floor and parging on the column. Notice that last week we had 18 bags of cement on the floor here... today there are less than two.

Columns 2 and 4 are completed and backfilled... ready for the beams. I used a weaker cement mix in the dirt to backfill #4 in an extra wet mix and it really tightened up around the foundation... almost as good as concrete and perfect for backfilling. I will be inlaying rock and mortar to finish up to the pavement level... but this won't happen until after the framing is completed and I can do this kind of thing on a rainy day then.

Column 3 is also totally completed and I before I added the top half I cut in a 1/4" drip irrigation line to 18" above grade so if Shirley puts a flower pot beside the post it will have drip irrigation on a time zone. Then I parged both columns 3 and 4 on the bottom for a cleaner look.

Foundation 5 is done ready for floor joists and walls. I cleaned up the bottom of this crawl space with gravel and levelled it so if we ever have to work there after it will be cleaner. Note the Simpson bracket attached to the anchor bolt on the left... it will attach to a 3-ply 2x6 post in the wall which will carry one end of a 36-foot LVL beam that is 5-1/4 x 16 inches.

See how nice the concrete conforms to the paved driveway? Pretty nice, eh? The 2x6 sole plate is tight to the inside of the foundation allowing 2-1/2 inches ledge for rock facing on the closet walls.

This week I finished the concrete footing and foundation for #6... the stairs with room under for recycle. Sunday we plan to pour the floor in this area... and we will then retire the cement mixer for a while and go full throttle into framing. The concrete work will be all done!

Foundation #7... the pantry, is also ready for joists, floor and walls. I also brought a bit of gravel with the tractor and backfilled the lowest part of this crawl space to clean it up and level things a bit.

I also added two more anchor bolts on Friday. The engineer was here again on Thursday and caught an oversight I made. I failed to see that one section of the wall closest to the entrance needed to have anchor bolts on 16 inch centre... not 32 inches like all the rest. So Shirley picked up a couple of wedge anchors in Victoria on Thursday afternoon and I drilled into the concrete and pounded them in... then tightened the nut. Works great!

Shirley posted several photos of the work in progress during the week. Check out her blog... click here.

Nest week you will see lots of wood and a few beams set in place. Hopefully we can make some serious progress.

Construction Update September 2, 2011

2011-09-02T23:57:00.000-07:00

As I was putting my tools away the sunset on Friday evening begged me to grab my camera and capture this moment. It has been a really good week with lots of progress on the project.

The black hole in the garage wall is a hole I cut earlier in the week at the exact spot where the major beam goes into the workshop. I then ran a string at the correct height between the garage and house and squared the new building at approximately 92 inches above garage floor... which is where the bottom of the main beam will rest. I had to trim off a few rebars that were too high so the beam can set on the top of the concrete. When I squared the building I was able to confirm that the distance between the beams was 22' 8" outside to outside in the main area where there is no cantilever sections. This gave me great comfort, as I had ordered the LVL laminated beams and truss joists... and for the most part they are going to come 23 feet... and I can then trim them to fit.

When we first conceived expanding the studio over a part of the garage, we thought we would have metal or a wooden posts to hold everything up. But after talking to engineers about the project, Brian, my friend in Phoenix suggested I consider a concrete post with rebar inside. As this soon became the most advantageous system we forged ahead with it. But when I went to put the rebar cage into the hole I first realized that there was less than 8 inches between the overhead door tracks on each side of the common wall. Once I removed a section of the wall it became very clear that I could not run an 18" or even a 13" concrete post between those overhead door tracks. So in consultation with Ritchie Smith, my engineer, we came up with a modification at the top. It meant bending the 5/8" rebars near to the top and making a notch in the post for the door tracks. These are things that come up that one never imagined would be a problem. Hence, I am making the concrete post a full 18" of concrete up to the bottom of the overhead door tracks. The whole place may fall down, but this post is huge and has a great foundation.

Friday Shirley made a gravel run for me... and I hope that will finish off the concrete stage. Along with the Navy Jack she brought another six bags of cement... which brings our total to date to 50 bags, if I use all that I have recently purchased. So far 32 bags have been used.

If you look closely behind the bags of cement there is the 18" x 18" form for column #1 in the garage. We poured the bottom half, up to the cleat on the form this past Tuesday... and today I added the top half without stripping off the bottom... and we will put concrete in the balance on Sunday. It will not be easy to get this one done since I have to work between the existing trusses in the garage.

You can see column #2 in the background. We also poured concrete up to 6" above grade on Tuesday. This is the rock ledge height for this column. From here to the top the concrete will be 13" square, leaving me 2.5" for rock facing.

We also poured the bottom part of the column #4 on Tuesday, which matches #3 for height to rock ledge.

On Thursday when I was excavating for #6 (the stair foundation) I dumped three loads of dirt removed from there into #2. I then had Shirley come with a garden hose and I brought several loads of fill dirt that I had stock piled and we completely backfilled #2. I doubt there will be much settling as Shirley really soaked it good and I threw in lots of rocks. Does it ever feel good to have that huge excavation backfilled... and we even dressed the top with crusher chips... my favourite road and yard gravel topping.

Again you can see a yellow string at the top of the columns... this is part of the squaring the building exercise. The laser level on the tripod makes finding the correct height of the column pretty easy

It won't take much to backfill #4 on Sunday. We developed a good solution to prevent settling of the driveway, which has some serious undercuts to fill in. We found using between 1 to 1.5 shovels of cement to 15 shovels of dirt and rock makes a very solid backfill... with no shrinkage. It worked really good on #3 the week before.

No. 3 was about 40 inches of backfill and using the reduced cement formula in a soupy mix not only filled in all the cavities, but there has been no noticeable shrinkage.

The nice pile of gravel in the background will go into foundation #5 and #6... plus the tops of the columns... and then we are done with concrete.

I finished forming the walls of the foundation in #6 this week and by Sunday evening I hope this will have concrete in it. The cross bracing looks kind of honky... but with only one side formed with plywood and the other side dirt walls, I had to come up with some way to keep the walls straight under the pressure of concrete.

Foundation #6 is for the stairs and the wall adjacent to the house that will support the second story walls and roof rafters.

I removed a few more boards of siding in two places this week... where 3" x 8" posts will go to carry the wall and roof load.

Each rebar that attached to existing house has epoxy in the hole. Two horizontal footing bars... and two vertical foundation bars.

I took half a dozen photos of this footing and foundation preparations and emailed them to my engineer... hoping to hear back with a green light so I can pour concrete footing here this weekend. My concrete mixing helper goes back to school after the weekend.

The last one... #7 foundation for the pantry came out really good. My careful cutting of plywood to follow the contours of the pavement payed off. My home made anchor blots worked out just fine. I am now ready to set up the floor joists... but I still await another quote so that I can decide who will be supplying the lumber and plywood.

This coming week on September 8 we are scheduled to get delivery of the beams and TGI's. It will be interesting to see if they can be delivered on schedule. Soon or very soon we will be done with concrete and on to bigger and better things... but without a good foundation the rest would be in vain.

I enjoy telling people that this house was built according to the Bible... it has been built on the solid rock! ...and we have cut no corners on the excavation, concrete or steel. So we expect that our new addition is designed to withstand the high winds, heavy snow load and even earthquakes, if they should happen. Fortunately we do not get hurricanes here... even though some days it sure feels like it!

But I did talk to a lady at the stock brokers office this week who said her name was Irene. I jokingly asked her if she got much abuse because of the hurricane last weekend... and she said she sure did... it comes with the territory.

City of Victoria Tour

2011-08-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

Just over a week ago we used a Groupon 'City of Victoria' bus tour... and we saw and learned several new things about our home city.

After driving around through Chinatown and past several sites the tour bus took us to the top of Tolmie Mountain, where we could see a fabulous 360 degrees.

The crane silhouetted against the ocean is for the construction of the Oak Bay Beach Hotel.

The island in the foreground with vertical cliffs is James Island... and behind it is Pender and Saturna Islands. We had hoped to be able to see Mayne Island... but Pender, which is higher blocks our view from Victoria.

I enjoyed seeing these girls having fun capturing creative photos at the parking lot on the top of Mt. Tolmie.

We have been fascinated by the Garry Oaks in this area... and Mt. Tolmie has the largest group of the most beautiful protected specimens we have ever seen.

We drove thru the most exclusive areas of Uplands and Oak Bay.

This plant sculpture was located on the corner near the Empress hotel.

The Butchart Gardens have this antique car in front of the Empress Hotel.

Tour buses stop in front of the Empress... a great spot for tourists to take some cool photos of the capital buildings and inner harbour.

It is no accident that the Butchart Gardens is the most visited tourist attraction of Victoria.

Victoria is a city of flowers. Over 25,000 hanging flower baskets are hung on lamp posts thru out the city... and many, many flower beds.

The inner harbour is always busy. Water taxi's and tour boats leave from here to go whale watching. Ferry's leave from here to the USA... and float planes are landing and leaving all the time.

As we headed back to the truck, we were drawn to this orca sculpture. In 2004 the BC Lions Society did a fundraiser and had 50 different artists decorate identical orca's, which were displayed all around the city. At the end of the campaign these were all sold by auction and brought in between $3,000 to $28,000. It was a very successful charity project. You can see the different orcas here.

We look forward now to going back to Victoria and checking out some of the cool things we learned about that we didn't know even existed... and we will keep you posted of our new findings.

Deepening and Widening the Column Excavations

2011-08-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

Over a week ago I worked on this No. 1 excavation... widening it on each side, to get the maximum possible footing size. Then I twisted my brain around how best to layout the rebar. To go straight with the world here didn't work as good as going straight with the biggest rock.

Each bar has been drilled into the rock on one end and after blowing out the hole with an air compressor I put a generous amount of epoxy in and then pushed the rebar into the hole.

The number "1" is on a stick that I set up to guide me in knowing when there is enough concrete to make the concrete footing 12 inches thick.

In most footing preparations one sets up forms at the proper height. If you want 12" deep footing you make the forms 12" high. But here there are no forms except the earth walls of the excavation, and no easy way to know when the concrete is deep enough.

So I came up with a simple tool to help me. As I am placing the concrete in the hole the bottom of this stick is 12 inches off the bottom of the excavation... 16 inches below the garage floor. I can move it around all sides easily to check when placing the concrete to insure I have the right thickness of footing.

Ritchie Smith. Hoel Engineering, told me that I needed to make hole No.2 a little wider and deeper than I had already. So, I made it a full foot wider than he told me... and an extra 6 inches deeper.

There was this rock in one corner that was too big for me to lift out with the tractor. Trust me I tried... but then decided that it would be easier to leave it there and just pop off the top of the rock.

So with my 12" rock saw I made a series of cuts about 2-1/2 inches apart.

It almost looks like sliced bread... however the rock doesn't cut as easy as most bread!

I then take my heavy rock hammer and one inch chisel and break each slice of rock off.

Once that layer is removed I did another series of cuts and this picture shows breaking the final layer off.

I was able to take off a full 8 inches and now can run the rebar grid each way right into the corner without any hassle. The horizontal white board gives me the top of footing guide again, making it easy to get the concrete 12 inches thick overall.

I appreciate having an engineer who explains the reasons for criteria. This gave me the choice of going a little deeper and wider, which is better able to withstand the uplift and twisting in the event of an earthquake.

Hole no. 3 was such a hard dig to just get it 22 inches deep initially, I soaked the bottom of this hole a couple of times. It made the digging a lot easier... but it seemed like it made the rocks grow! Ritchie asked me to increase this hole to 4 feet by 6.5 feet and 36 inches deep.

I needed to use the tractor at least 5 times to lift heavy rocks out of this hole... and you can see I was working pretty late in the day as Shirley had to use flash to capture this shot.

There were also lots of smaller rocks that I could dig up and lift out by hand... some will be used in future rock walls and rock facing.

I never realized when I started how deep that this hole would finally end up. I just kept digging and kept pulling out rocks until I reached one rock that was bigger than my John Deere could even budge.

I drilled into the rock and pounded in a short rebar to prevent my chain from slipping off the rock... but this was just too much rock for either of us to handle. So I ended up digging lower and was able to set a full pattern of rebar at about 52 inches below pavement. This will now tie the huge rock into the footing, providing more weight to the foundation.

My next task was to build the rebar columns that will be poured full of concrete. We tackled the toughest one first... this one had 16 vertical bars, 12 horizontal wraps 11 inches square and 13 - 4" x 11" wraps in between.

Here the engineer specified the rebar layout showing the difference between pad 3 and pads 1, 2 and 4.

To bend the horizontal wraps I needed to make this jig by welding a couple of short rebars to an angle iron and attach it the workbench. I was lucky to have guests coming from Victoria who brought me a new package of welding rods since I could not buy any here on Mayne Island.

With a stop set at 11 inches it is easy to make all the square wraps the same size using a short piece of steel pipe as a bending handle.

We learned how to tie rebar in Mexico, so made a couple of these hooks out of 1/4 inch scrap wire I found at Home Hardware here on Mayne Island.

I doubt that there are very many women in this country who know how to tie rebar... but Shirley's help was much appreciated this week.

There is more than 240 wire ties in this single column... and we have another three to make up next week.

With this column weighing over 240 pounds, it would take more than me and Shirley to lift it into the hole. Enter John Deere to the rescue!

Once in the hole I tied the hooks on the bottom to the footing rebar and then plumbed it and braced the column both ways. This one is now ready for concrete.... but I first must get my building permit and get the Regional District Building Inspector to give me a green light.

Completing New Pantry Excavation -Number 7

2011-07-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

I cut the pavement last Friday and dug it up... but there was lots of extra work on this excavation that was not on the others. Since the laundry room cantilevered over the foundation about 16 inches, a makeshift brick wall that was to keep the planter dirt contained had to be removed.

Also, the front steps hung over into the space where the new pantry wall had to go... so I had to cut it off. Problem was the solid rock steps were over 7 inches thick and my diamond saw blade, which is 12 inches actually only cuts about 4 inches. So that left a little chisel and hammer work. I also cut up the planter footing into liftable blocks so I could dispose of them in my favourite fill site behind the greenhouse.

Victory at last and was able to pack away the unwanted foundation and step blocks.

After working a day digging mostly by hand after loosening the dirt up with the front end loader, I came up with a way to go further into the excavation with the tractor using a pile of short 2 x 8 boards.

It was amazing how the four-whell drive allows you to do things you could never do without it.

Shirley zoomed in to capture this shot of my bandaged kneecap. When I caught my toe on the edge of the pavement as I was coming out of the shallow stairway excavation number 6 on Sunday evening, I not only banged my knee up pretty good, but I got a nasty crunch on my favourite zoom lens... which is now in the Victoria Camera Repair shop.

It was no ordinary trip and fall... I had so much momentum that as the ground was coming up to meet me I let go of the camera and folded into a summersault... the end of which still ended up skinning my knee and ripping a good hole in my jeans. I wore shorts most of this weeks since long pants irritated the bandage and gave me grief.

I finished Number 7 today... over 30 inches below pavement on the outside, with washed bedrock readily visible. I salvaged several loader buckets of sandstone rock for future walls... but there was one very heavy and ornery rock that was too far under the pavement to readily move. A chain around it to the front end loader could not budge it... so it will become part of the footing.

I did the calculations to see at what elevation the pantry floor would end up... and we decided to have a 6 inch step down and use 8" floor joists. The bottom of the level is where the top of the floor will one day be.

Most of the photos in the blog post were done by Shirley... and she caught me feeling pretty happy to have all the excavations completed today! All done mostly by hand... and not a single broken service line.

Excavating for the New Addition

2011-07-11T02:28:00.000-07:00

After completing most of the excavations I set up the model in the driveway between the house and the garage and took this shot with the real trees in the background.

It is going to take quite a bit of work to complete this project, but we will just do what we can every day until we see it thru. Here you can see where I have cut the pavement and started excavating.

I have numbered this plan to show each individual excavation. Each one is unique. Number 1 is located inside the existing garage and required cutting the concrete slab so that I could dig down to bedrock. Number 2 is outside the garage and inside gravel path contained by a rock retaining wall. Numbers 3 and 4 are in the middle of the driveway and must carry about 35,000 pounds. Number 5 will be a closet extension for the master bedroom. Number 6 is for the stairway to the second level... and Number 7 is for a pantry which will be accessed off the laundry room.

The garage floor concrete was cut 28" by 36" and we found some huge boulders that are very tight and immoveable. I may still have to try to widen where possible before drilling into these rocks and pining them together with rebar.

Here is another angle on Number 1 taken from the other side.

Number 2 has been excavated 4 feet wide and is 54 inches between the garage and the rock wall... about 36 inches deep... and I expect to see a 12 inch thick footing 42" by more than 60"... the full distance from under the slab to under the rock retaining wall.

The garage is a slab on grade with no footing or foundation... so I have dug under the slab 8 inches so that I can drill into the slab to tie in rebar to the new foundation and footing. The centre of the post is 36 inches off the garage wall. The black 3/4" poly pipe is water supply for irrigation. The yellow level is 48 inches long.

Both Numer 3 and 4 were cut 36 inches square. This was the tightest material of all the excavations... hence I stopped going deeper at 22 inches.

It took me 90 minutes just widen the base three inches to 42 inches square to receive a 12 inch high footing... that is how tightly packed this gravel is.

This hole was much easier to dig as it was full of many rocks, which I separated out and saved for future rock facing, which I plan to do on the posts supported by this footing an foundation.

This base is undercut to receive a 48" square by 12" thick footing... and the bottom is 28 inches below the pavement.

I took this photo to show not only the amount of rock, but the size... the largest ones are already loaded into the tractor bucket. A few of these rocks came from the hole Number 2 by the garage... but one day many of these rocks will graduate to a place of honour in rock facing on these posts or the house.

Number 5 is the master bedroom closet expansion... and it all is down to bedrock. Only where the service pipes are laying on the bedrock will I cover with sand and soil so the concrete will not touch them. Minimal footings here will be used to level up the base so that a standard 24-inch plywood form can be used.

Knowing there were electrical, phone and water service lines in this area, I choose to dig most all of this area by hand... it took most of two days.

Under the stairs we plan to set up our recycle department... which will be on a concrete slab on grade. But next to the house at each end of the stairs that go up we will need support for posts that will carry a double truss joist the will support the outside wall and roof joists.

There still is some excavation to complete here, regardless of if I do slab on grade or floor joists. From the steps to the left there is a cantilever... so to contain the planter next to the house bricks were stacked under the outside wall. The planter footing 24 inches away from the house will be removed if this is going to be crawl space... which it likely will be.

As the sun was setting we look back from the future pantry towards the garage.

From the pantry side we look at the model again.

Bits of Last Weekend -1

2011-06-04T20:29:00.000-07:00

We are always delighted when our kids and grandkids come to visit us on Mayne Island... and to have them all home at the same time is pretty special.

Sherilee, Alan and Seth arrived first and on Sabbath afternoon our walk to Bennett Bay provided many photo opportunities.

I asked Seth to look into this hollow log.

I took this shot of Georgeson Island from the point.

Looking north towards Vancouver the shipping docks and ferry terminal doesn't seem all that far away.

Everyone was into taking pictures.

And sometimes camera's were shared.

Shirley and Sherilee were excited to see the arbutus tree was in bloom...

Have you ever seen these blossoms up close before?

Meanwhile Seth carved his identity into another arbutus.

Isn't this a lush, green time of the year?

As we were walking out the last rays of sunshine added yellow to the trees.

Looking back into the sun coming thru the trees.

On the way home we stopped at the Lighthouse Park at Georgina Point. Seth wasted no time before heading down to the water.

While I got focused on shooting a few flowers...

And sunlight maple leaves...

Alan and Seth were scrounging for starfish and sea life around the rocks.

It was a lovely afternoon to be on or near to the water.

Pickleball Comes to Mayne Island

2011-06-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

One of the highlights of my time in Tucson this past April was playing pickleball with Lorne and the other retired guys every morning between 8:30 and 11:30 AM. So, I have been waiting for the opportunity to have someone to play it with since coming home.

But where could we play?
And what could we use for a net?
I had picked up a starter package in Tucson with two wiffle balls and two paddles.
Shelby has ordered online an official pickleball net for Father's Day...
But I was anxious to not miss the chance to play while the guys were home for the weekend.
So, I went to my scrap pile and found some weathered half-inch plywood from which I could make a couple more paddles so that we could play doubles right away.

So we just took a short rope and and tied one end to the rear door handle of our car... which just happened to be about 36 inches high... and the other end we put thru the rear door and closed the door on it at the same height.

Soon Seth and I were batting the ball back and forth... having a great time.

I don't have a picture of the next stage of development, which was adding the masking tape to the pavement to create the serving zone and the rear limit line. This was important so we could play a game and know if our serves were good or our shots were too long.

In no time at all we were in the throws of a serious game of pickleball.

Shelby came out and saw us having such a good time with next to nothing for equipment and said,
"Plywood for homemade paddles... 50 cents.
Rope for net... 75 cents.
Whiffleball... 90 cents.
Cars to hold up the rope... eighty thousand dollars."

Yes... and I might add, "A grandson to play pickleball with... Priceless!"

On the U.S. Memorial Day Seth and I invited Shelby and Alan to join us in a match at our Mayne Island Tennis courts. With a new roll of green masking tape and a measuring tape we very quickly laid out an official pickleball lines and were into some serious competition.

We played hard for a couple of hours. Our only problem was we didn't remember to bring water. So I volunteered to go and get some. As I was turning the car onto the street I noticed the neighbour watering her newly planted grass... so I backed up and asked if that water was good for drinking.

She said it was great water for drinking and invited us to have a drink from the hose.

As we were driving home we were wondering how best to find out if there were other people on Mayne Island who might like to play pickleball. That will be my next challenge.