Day 1629: No power tools on Easter

Apparently there is a verse somewhere in the Bible that forbids power tools on Easter Sunday (or at least according to Carolyn).

So today I had to down tools and postpone all the great projects I had for the day. Instead I decided to do some gardening ..

With the contents of the old shed strewn across the lawn under tarp .. the grass had taken real beating this year. Today I decided to get it back into shape. I did some radical weeding and pruning and cut the grass. Then I planted some seeds and watered them. Nothing like watching grass grow! All done very quietly so not to disturb the Easter bunny or our neighbours or break any commandments etc.

And with all that quiet ... Could I hear the birds, the crickets, the wind blowing through the trees?

No, all I could hear was a powersaw across the road and an impact gun 2 doors down. Obviously these people weren't observing Easter .. or didn't get the memo. Who knows?!

Looking forward to creating 2 days worth of noise tomorrow!

Day 1617 - My first video (and first log cabin too)

I've been a big consumer of YouTube videos on my DIY journey so finally time to give something back. Needless to say, making videos is much harder and time consuming than DIY .. I'll stick to my 'other' job I think. 

This video shows our one-day installation of the Tuin Elizabeth cabin. Stay tuned to future posts as I show the installation of the flooring, roofing and painting (very exciting). 

Some great inspiration for both the log cabin installation and the video format came from - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4UDFzeOPhEkPJMuIqoVqTA. Worth checking out if you're attempting to do something similar as he clearly is much more ambitious with his project and proficient in YouTubing than myself. 

Anyway, hope you enjoy the video. It's my first so while I probably won't be making another cabin any time soon, I will definitely keep the videos coming!

Day 1599: Back to base-ics

Now with the garden clear of the old shed, it was time to do some of the hard work. While I'm not shy from doing a little manual labour, this was a bit too much for me to take on at the moment so I decided to call in reinforcements .. in this case our neighbour and friend Scott from Scott Greenscapes. 

The task was to break up all the old concrete base and who knows what else, put in a new fence and pour the concrete base for the new cabin. This took several nights of rigorous planning at the Royal Oak to make sure we got everything correct. I've found going over plans to be much more enjoyable with a pint in my hand. 

So here is the starting place .. doesn't look great does it?

Maybe this time around, we'll finally find dinosaur bones or some viking hoard like the luck folks below ...

But, alas .. no. We found the remains of an old green house (with all the broken glass to go along with it, yeah), a spoon, a plastic army figure and a bit of riveted metal from a boat or plane (of course).

   

Scott also found some not so little beetle grubs under the rotting old fence. These things were both big (size of my pinky) and really gross. And like any good dad, I had to show them off to the kids.

More than enough stuff to fill up an 8 yard skip. The thing I find with projects  is that you always seem to need more time and more skip than you'd ever imagined. 

Beanbag was also there to "help out"

With everything cleared, it was now time for the fence. Most of the trees back there were dead and cleared out. There was one tree in the middle that straddled the property line. This had to be pruned slightly and the fence also trimmed around it. As 90% of the fence will be hidden from view, it probably didn't matter. But Scott did a nice, clean job regardless.

A nice finished fence. Looks great. Now to hide it with a cabin :)

It was great to watch Scott do the cement base as I've had little experience with cement myself and good to see how it's done. We originally planned to put in place paving slabs and bridge these with a timber frame but elected to go with a strip concrete base instead as it would be cleaner and stronger. 

For the cabin, all the weight would be on the edges with little down the middle so it was important to make sure this was solid. We also decided to put a strip down the middle to provide additional support to the flooring joists. 

First the frame to pour the cement was made. Gravel board was dug into the ground and made square.

After that .. cement time. Bridges were run across the channels to allow the cement to be poured from the wheel barrow. 

And the finished product looked great .. much better than what was there before.This was a lot of hard, back breaking work of which I did little more than taking pictures. Credit to Scott for the great work he did. Now we are just waiting on the cabin to arrive .... counting the days! 

Day 1596: Shedding some unwanted items

Timing is everything .. 

So the grand plan was to do our loft conversion this summer. However, of course this is not straightforward. Back before the Beast from the East, I decided to board over the loft to create some much needed storage - see here. This was a very good thing to do to make good use of the loft space. The only problem was that now that we want to build into the loft, all this extra stuff needs to be put somewhere else. And I don't want to put this in the dilapidated shed at the bottom of the garden (with all the spiders and snails and who knows what else living there).

The easiest solution would be to rent out some storage as and when required. But there isn't much of a DIY element or good blog story to that. So the option we chose was to knock down ol' ugly at the back of the garden and put up a nice new log cabin. I'm sure I can get a few good blog posts out of this....

So first things first .. bye bye old shed. This thing has had a good life but was well past its expiry date. 

Caitlin and Bean Bag helped clear out the old wood - where on earth were we going to put it all?!

My main concern was whether or not this thing was made out of asbestos .. a common building material back in the day. Without testing I wouldn't have any idea. I got a bunch of quotes but went with Clear Away Asbestos as they were local and seemed easiest to work with. And the best part, it turned out there wasn't any asbestos so the work ended up being cheaper than planned. 

Graham and team from Clear Away came in and took everything out in just a couple of hours (I happened to in Germany so thanks to Carolyn for the photo). I can't say it was any prettier than before but at least the shed was now out of the way. 

Now comes the fun part of putting a new fence in place and preparing the base for the cabin. Probably the most labour intensive part of the whole process - and one that I decided to outsource. 

As to the timing part.... Unbeknownst to me at the time, we were about to embark on a global pandemic of a scale not seen in 100 years where we'd be all told to isolate in our homes for several weeks and not go into work. What a great scenario for DIY'ing and I just happened to have a new project to keep me busy. Timing is everything.  

Stay tuned as I show in future posts how the cabin went up .. even trying my hand at a video. 

Day 1274: The big game

Big game 7 tonight vs the Bruins .. I'll be up at 12am to watch it.

Go Leafs Go!!!!

Day 1258: Something old and something new-el

With the house empty and nobody to complain about me leaving tools and other dangerous things around the house, it was time to kick off the 2 weeks of DIY flooring. A lot of work to do but with about 8 solid weekend/holidays of time, I was hopeful that it all could be completed. 

Some obligatory before pictures of the flooring before I got started. 122 years of wear and tear on the floors have taken their toll. Not sure how many of these floorboards are original, but some clearly aren't and many I've already replaced. The others have been sliced and diced a few times over the years as electrical and pipes were installed. And now that all the key water, heating, electrical and gas works have been finished, I could finally cover everything up.

The first major task was to install a new newel post base on the stair case. This would hold the newel insert that we'd chose at a later date. I was specifically told not to choose one without consulting Care, so I obliged and got a multi-part newel. We have about 60 different posts to pick from now - hopefully that will give her enough options.

The first step was clearing everything out. Seems like we keep everything except for 10 year old wizards under our stairs. All this had to be moved and the paneling ripped out. 

I ordered a 90cm base as I wasn't sure how long I would actually need. The idea was to mount the post between the first "starter step" and the second step to give us a bit more space in the hallway around the bend. I also ordered a bullnose or rounded step for the same purpose. I also really like the look of this setup on some of the Pinterest photos I've seen on similar houses.

The old newel base was cut off at the step level and as far as I could see, not fixed to anything. Ideally the post should be fixed to a floor joist to provide adequate support. This was what I planned to do. The other complication was the stair string (the notched part that holds the treads) needed to be cut to allow for the recessed newel. And yes, stair parts all have very strange and confusing names - see here for an explanation. 

As I was cutting the base, I needed to make sure the stairs were properly supported before the newel was installed. A 2x4 was fastened to the joist to hold things in place. 

With the temporary support in place and the first step removed, I could now cut the string to accommodate the newel base. Again comes the magical floating saw.

My suspicions were correct and the old newel base was only held onto the floorboards with a couple of nails. 

Now the fun part came - notching and cutting the newel to fit in place. This took several attempts to get right - lots of action with the saw and wood chisel here. It didn't help that the joist wasn't true on multiple planes.

I picked up some pretty meaty 8.0 x 100 mm coach screws to fasten it all together. These were some solid fasteners, perfect for what I wanted.

Everything was fastened using the coach screws - to the joist, to the string, on both sides, on multiple planes to increase the shear strength. Believe me, this thing is now very solid. It took the better part of the weekend but I wanted to make sure I got everything right on this one.

Finally the new newel is installed. Everything is solid and some extra work for my quads as I'll need to skip a step for the next couple of weeks until the new step is installed.

And here is the first weekend's carnage in our garden. 

Day 1257: DIY-athon

Starting the monumental task of putting down more floor in the ground floor. But not before starting off with a builders breakkie!

Care and the kids a back in Canada for a long visit so I've been given my task list .. and it's BIG.

But at least I'll have an empty house to work in.