Living room

Before I dive in, I have to let you know that Phil has been very good about not involving me in the actual destruction, or the reconstruction. I know nothing of ‘lectrics (as Phil calls them). I’ve just tried to keep the house clean and keep up with the weekly business of laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, and that kind of thing.

Because of Phil’s various health issues, this is going to be a slow reno. We’re going at Phil’s pace, which is largely on the weekends. But . . . because he’s been feeling so good lately, as a result of the medications he’s on and the changes we’ve made in diet/lifestyle, he felt good enough to tackle the project in the first place.

He chose the living room/dining room area of our small house because it would be a relatively easy reno. Strip it all down, clean up the ‘lectrics, insulate, vapour barrier, drywall, mudding and sanding, floor sanding and refinishing, and painting/finishing details.

The bedroom took about two weeks of solid work, and he had the closet to deal with.

He expected to be done before the end of October, thus making my leave with income averaging and a new puppy a possibility.

But things never go as planned, especially with a house as old as ours.

In a way, it’s good that the pay issues at work caused me to reconsider my leave. It may work out better, even though I was really looking forward to a new little squirmer. It will be that much sweeter when we can.

The ‘lectrics turned into a massive undertaking. When we had previously tackled my office and the bedroom, the ‘lectrics were fairly simple. Phil just removed all the old stuff and ran new wiring.

The living room . . . not so simple.

It begins.

The room is directly above the panel, and Phil saw right away that he couldn’t leave things the way they were.

There were hidden junction boxes, as many as five wires snaking through a single hole, and three generations of wiring dating back to the original build sometime in the 1940’s. All of this is not up to current building code.

So, Phil patiently turned off the power, traced the wiring through the ceiling, basement, and sometimes the walls, removed the old crap, and replaced/rerouted the wiring efficiently and cleanly. Not all of it, though. There were several places where it looks like additions to the house were built over/around the existing wiring. Phil would not have been able to get at it without removing the siding and original wood from the outside of the house.

He wasn’t about to do that.

As it was, he had to cut holes in the kitchen and side entry to track down and replace some of the old wiring. These will be patched up temporarily pending renovation of those areas.

The pictures:

Demo done (kind of).

View from the kitchen (today).

A fresh start.

I’m not going to show you the devastation in the other areas of the house, the problematic wiring, or the piles of old wiring (currently waiting at the end of the driveway for the second delivery of a bin and removal).

Things should be more straightforward from here on out.

I’ll offer further updates later in the year.

Have another short post coming up. Stay tuned.

Just a quick little note to let you know that I have a new piece of furniture courtesy of my friend Kim, who’s just moved houses.

This lovely file cabinet used to hold her father’s papers.

I have two metal filing cabinets in the basement, a fire-proof box, and a safety deposit box at the bank that hold all our important stuff, but I just couldn’t resist the cabinet when Kim said she wanted to sell it.

Phil and I rented a pick up truck to move it (it wouldn’t fit in our car, or my mom’s hatchback) and I spent some time yesterday afternoon polishing her up and reinserting the drawers (which we’d removed for transport).

This lovely’s new home is in our living room. Sadly, there’s no room in my office for it because I have a honking desk 🙂 I’m calling her Sally, and she’ll house our DVDs, Phil’s games, and other miscellaneous stuff we’ve kept in baskets and other hidey-holes over the years.

I rearranged some of the living room furniture to make room, and Phil and I discussed last night that we’d like to get some new furniture and use Sally as the thematic piece. We have a small house and we were going to wait until we renovated the living room to get new furniture, but the hand-me-downs we have are worn and due for replacement.

So we’re going to look into that in the fall and probably touch up the paint on the walls at the same time, pending the full reno. For the latter, we take everything down to the studs, rewire, re-insulate, and make sure everything is safe and code-worthy. It will probably be a while before either of us is ready to tackle that project, though.

Outside, my experiment in chaos gardening is coming along well. The lychnis (the fuschia flowers that complement the one young clematis along the wall) and rudbeckia (black-eyed susans) have joined the party.

On the other side of the garden my bergamot (bee balm) is putting forth its spidery blooms 🙂 Bergamot is one of my favourite smells. The roses are starting to fade, and are also putting forth a lovely scent. I have a whack of hyssop in the garden (not blooming yet) as well. I love smelly plants!