Electricity, E-Lec-Tricity!

As the bathroom demolition progressed we uncovered some of the very special wiring that had been put in place by former owners. I'm going to continue to hope that it was the former owners who did this, because if it was an electrician, he needs some remedial electrical instruction. Perhaps starting with this.

One of the main (haha.. .main!.. .electrical pun! I rock.)
Uh oh. Mental tangent. Lost train of thought. Where was I?

Right.. so one of the main (snicker) issues we faced with the demolition was the fact that there was a small fuse panel smack in the middle of one of the walls that we wanted to remove. [shakes an angry fist at the fuse panel]

Once the layers of drywall, panelling, and plywood were peeled back we could see the extent of the trouble we faced.

Spaghetti!
[Note fuse panel that needs to move.]

Same wall, viewed from the other side.
Note the red line that's heading towards the outer wall with the window. See how it runs right across the copper pipes for the shower? Very safe, oh, yes. (Oh, NO!)
That's the line that supplies power to Slanty, the bunky.

Easy fix, though, right? Just run a new wire from the bunky to the re-located fuse box. Except the old wire was spliced, twice, underground, run through an octagon box at the near the floor of the bunky, and then stapled up the bunky wall (apparently the one and only time they bothered with staples.) Eric fought with this one chunk of electrical wire for an entire day. He had to dig up the length of PVC they used as a conduit under the grass, He had to rip apart the wall in the bunky to get at the staples, He had to bore a hole through the outside wall of the cottage, He had to unplug the nozzle for the can of spray foam.

He had to swear. A lot. He was not a happy builder.

Here's a photo of the line once he managed to extricate it from the PVC.  Our working theory is that they ran over the red wire with the lawn mower. Spliced it together again with a 2-ft section of white wire, and buried it in the PVC for extra protection. See how they joined the wires with electrical tape? Awesome. When the wire got to the octagon box under the bunky where it was spliced again, they didn't even bother to connect the ground wires. Who needs electrical ground anyway?

Earth Ground Is For WIMPS!
I might need a t-shirt with this on it.

Here's a close up of another similar cable splice, this one a 6" section leading to a light fixture. At least they remembered to join the ground wires for this one. Kinda. And who needs murettes? They're over-rated.

Here's the box for the fixture. Confidence inspiring, no?

If this doesn't make your stomach all wambly, you have nerves of steel, my friend. It makes me want to rip apart all the other walls in the cottage to identify and mend all the electrical atrocities.

At least I know the newly relocated fuse panel is well installed. It's been moved out of the bathroom, well away from any water sources.

Oh, and if you're from the building permits office, this blog is a work of fiction and these are all staged photos, not depicting an actual job. Ahaha. Yes.

Unfortunate by-products

I bet I scared you with that title... after yesterday's post about bathroom demolition and exposed sheeters? Fret not, gentle reader. Today's post is about cleaning up your demolition mess.

Smashing apart walls, ripping up flooring, dismantling trapdoors and rebuilding floor joists all generate a considerable amount of waste. I spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon whacking nails out of boards. It's very cathartic, whacking stubborn things with a hammer. It's probably just as well that I don't have a hammer at work.

I had a good system in place. Or rather, Dad put a good system in place which I adopted and ran away with.

This is the pile of boards with nails in them (already greatly diminished as I didn't think to photograph this undertaking at the outset). Not shown: spriggly little poison ivy plants growing along the edge of the cottage wall.

I took a board down, and whacked the nails out (or in some instances removed the screws).

Nails got flung onto the blue mat. Some might have landed in the grass nearby. Probably not a good idea to walk barefoot around the back door for the next little while. If the poison ivy doesn't get you, the rusty nails will!

"Clean" boards got leaned up on this side of the cottage for later re-use either as construction material or bonfire fuel.

We've been building some good bonfires trying to stay ahead of all the junk we're generating. As the captain puts it, "White man build big fire, stand waaaayyy back."

Our neighbour Doug jokingly asked us why we spent all that money on a cottage only to rip it apart and burn it. It does sound a bit absurd, when you put it that way. But I know that every bit burnt makes the lodge that much nicer.

The big-scary bathroom project

I've been holding off sharing photos of the bathroom demolition that's been happening for a few weeks now, because, well, looking a photos of smashed up stuff isn't very interesting.

A post needs direction. Purpose. Signs of progress.

Unfortunately, the bathroom reno is a big insanely scary task of epic proportions that is taking forever.

For. Ev. Er.

How hard could it be, right?

Knock down some walls, rip up the mouldy floor, frame some new walls, and Bob's your uncle.

Oh, how very, very naïve.

A lot of work has happened, and many many photos have been taken. If I don't post something now, you're going to end up with a bathroom post that's going to take weeks to read. This is already a brutally long one. Brace yourself!

I'm trying to focus in this post on the demolition.

Next I'll share the construction that brought us back up to the point we were at when the week started (i.e. access to the kibo, a floor, and no shower/sink).
For reference, here is the original blog post about the toity*. And for those of you too lazy to review, here's a photo.

Remember how scary the floor was? It was this scary. *shudder*. Oh, that photo still gives me the heebiejeebies.

If you ever think to yourself "Hey, I know, I'll put carpeting in the bathroom!" do me a favour, and come here so I can grab you by the ears and give your head a shake.

This is why carpeting + bathroom = bad.

Ick.
The flooring had to come out. The shower was busted anyway and the sink/counter combo could do with an inexpensive facelift. Did you know you can get a brand-new white ceramic sink for $20 when they're on sale!? I'm looking at all of you who are still living with the fallout of the 70's craze of installing colourful fixtures, like lilac coloured toilets and sinks. A paltry $20 and that monstrosity is history. What are you waiting for?

Demolition began in earnest three weekends ago. Our guests had some serious fun wielding sledge hammers and reciprocating saws.

It was all very cathartic.

Reciprocating saws are seriously addictive.

I joked that the captain was going to start using it to butter his bread. He laughed at the time, but I'll bet in some dark corner of his mind he was considering it.

We had a week at the cottage at the beginning of August.

Dad and the captain spent 90% of that time demolitioning (grrrr... that's what the captian calls it. I have to drop anvils on his head and remind him that it's "demolishing") the shower/bath/back hall.

What a crazy big stinky job. It definitely doesn't help that the cottage, as near as we can tell, was constructed in 4 stages:

- 2 bedrooms and central hall (likely original kitchen?)
- Bathroom addition (where back hall now stands).
- Wing additions for bunk room and bathroom.
- Living kitchen addition.

Consquently, a lot of our interior walls are former exterior walls built with scrap materials, a mish mash of various nails, screws, and building materials, like this structural duct-tape.

And this step ladder that is holding up the floor joist. (yes, really). I did find an AA brochure in the folder of cottage material the former owners left us. That might explain a lot about their building methods.

Please pause to admire the uncapped and highly malodorous poo-hole Dad and the captain had to work around. For that alone they deserve medals.

We went 5 hours without a toilet though. And I had a BIG cup of tea that morning. It was a very long 5 hours.

As the old rooms we repurposed, the former owners sometimes patched the floor. (Note the "toilet goes here" waffle marks.)
Dad said of the wet spot on the floor, "Something's leaking!"
To which the captain replied "ya, my face". It was a bit hot that day.

By the end of the week, they had ripped the bathroom down to the wall studs and floor joists. Because the back-hall ceiling was supported by the wall between the shower and the bathroom, demolition and construction happened in parallel.

In the interest of brevity (ahahahahahahah) I've glossed over lots of the demolition (two layers of subflooring, the wall built out 2x2's, the judicious application of reciprocating saw) etc. etc.

Rest assured, it was a disgusting amount of work.

Up next for bathroom posts: Structural renovation to bring us back to square one and a foray into the mind of a madman, a.k.a "The wiring at the lodge."

Thanks for reading this far. It was a tough slog.

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*No, toity probably isn't a word, but members of my family will know that it's an abbreviation of toilet. See also terlet and terty.

My Daddy loves me

My Daddy loves me.

I know this because he made me this trunk/chest/blanket box/hope chest for my birthday. It's the new coffee table (tea table? I don't really drink coffee) at the lodge. My birthday was in June, so it's a little late arriving, but he has a very good excuse. He's been spending all his spare time working at the cottage!

I think I can forgive him.

The photos aren't the greatest. I remembered to snap them just as we were packing up to leave amidst a day-long downpour when everything (Gene and pals) had been brought inside off the porch already. It's a fantastic size, not too big in the tiny space, and best of all the lid is hinged for ample storage of junk. I'm a bit of a storage freak, I think. It's also the perfect place to display the Summer Cottages book that my Aunty P gave me for my birthday.

Love it!

Whoops

We always seem to be running out of gas in That Damned Boat™. The 25 gallon tank that we have only seems to last us about four trips to the cottage. Short trips, too. Like 10 minutes each way. I don't know if that's just the way boats are, or if we're having fuel efficiency issues because our motor is acting up.

After the captain dropped off our guests at the landing to head home after a fun weekend, he came back to pick us up and cart us over, because we wouldn't all fit in the boat at one time with all our junk. That was trip #4 on that tank of gas.

So yesterday you read all about how I finally got to drive the boat and took it around the island to see the other side? ahaha. Yes, well, it seems I wasted a bit more gas than planned. Just as we were pulling into the marina, we (I) realized that the car keys were left behind on the hook at the cottage. And....at just about the same time, we discovered we were pretty much out of gas in the boat. The motor conked out just as the boat was drifting into our slip.

We had no keys to get into the car (to go get more gas). And, we had no gas to get back to the cottage to get the car keys. We were trapped! Oh, the humanity!

Enter Handy Dad - or rather Handy Dad's boat. With his permission, we pilfered the spare gas tank from his pontoon boat, mixed it with some oil (thank heavens the captain keeps that in the boat), and the captain and the princess headed back to retrieve the keys while the red-head and I guarded our stuff.

I'm kind of glad it happened, to be honest. Had we dashed off in the car, I would've missed the loveliest moonrise over the glass-calm bay.

The sky was almost lavender, and the full moon glowed heavy and pink on the horizon. The lake looked irridescent.

As the moon crept higher in the sky, we could hear the sound of the boat puttering into the marina.

The captain even had a chance to try out his boat lights for the first time.










Starboard shines green and port is glowing red, I can see the barges dead ahead.*

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*In addition to learning how to braid, embroider a french knot, and build a wash-stand out of twigs and string**, Girl Guides also taught me my port from my starboard. 

It's true. Guide's honour.

Whee!

Look at me!
I'm driving That Damned Boat™.

Or rather, "Look at me! I'm pursing my lips strangely while driving down a water hill!"

Well at least this picture is a bit better. It does rather make me look like I've got a death grip on the wheel. I can assure you my other hand is on the throttle and I was squinting at the confluence of oncoming boats, trying to remember the rules for right-of-way.

"He who is in the way has right-of-way."

Mmm... No, I don't think that was it.

I took DC the drywall instructor* out in the boat to show me how to drive. I learned a long time ago that having the captain try to teach me anything is just a recipe for an argument.

Learning to drive the boat was good fun (though stopping was challenging) and I finally got to see the other side of the island.

---

*no. He's not really a drywall instructor. He's a good and patient teacher though, and he even sorted out my bendix problems when the boat stalled a short distance away from the dock and left us adrift. My Hero! ♥

Chippie

A cottage without chipmunks is like a lake without a loon.

We've got at least one adventurous little fellow living under the stairs up from the dock. We catch glimpses of him from time to time scurrying across the front porch, but he's very timid and he bolts the instant he catches sight of us moving.

He couldn't resist the siren song of fresh, sweet grapes though.

He popped out for a visit when the kids were all swimming and we were sitting on the dock supervising. 

But he high-tailed* it out of there the moment we moved.

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* What's the etymology of the expression "high-tailed", meaning to leave a place quickly? Do you suppose it has to do with critters like chipmunks who flip their tails up before running away? Like the tail somehow kicks him into chipmunk overdrive? Hmmm.