Dear Universe...

Dear Universe,

I could use a break.  I’m trying to remain positive, but it’s getting harder.  Just a little good news.  NOT the kind that is followed by bad news.  Or just no bad news for 2 weeks might be nice for a change.  Something like that.

So last Friday, I was involved in a motor vehicle collision.



While this was not exactly just a matter of bad luck, and we are all OK, it was very very bad timing.  We have to move in 3 weeks!  Renting a temporary replacement car has been rather more of a hassle than I might like (the rental company is apparently having trouble keeping small cars in stock!). And will they fix our 10-year old Echo or write it off? It'll be weeks before we find out, from what I hear.

On Sunday husband-man and I removed the plaster from the bathroom walls and most of the kitchen.  This went rather well.  Plaster removal is my favourite job - banging all over the walls is sooooo therapeutic.  (More on that in a later post.)  We were getting stuff done, it was great.

Until the contractor’s main employee got sick after working in the house and  yard Monday morning.  First we realized we hadn’t had the chimney mortar tested for asbestos and we needed to.  They’d already taken down the chimney!  Oops!  Off to the lab with mortar samples, and they were brilliant and came back with the result within 3 hours.  Fortunately it was negative.  (Otherwise the whole house and yard would have been contaminated.  Eek!)  Then the contractor started reacting on Tuesday, and they thought there might be something weird in the plaster - either the dust in the house and/or the plaster piled in the disposal bin by the lane, getting all soaked in the rain.  There appears to be horsehair in there, but what else might be lurking?  It tested negative for asbestos, but what about... rat poison? arsenic? lead? lye? lime? some mystery ingredient the builder just randomly decided to add to the plaster?   A visit from the HazMat lab’s consultant on Wednesday was helpful, and she determined that use and care of respirator masks needed improvement, but we haven’t figured out why the workers are getting sick.  Maybe they’re just sick.  But maybe not.  The neighbour’s woodsmoke is a confounding factor for sure.  (Who burns wood all day long every day in the city???)  So we have to hire a hazmat company to finish demolishing the kitchen walls, the pantries, and the kitchen, bathroom and hallway ceilings.  As well as clean out the last vestiges of asbestos-contaminated vermiculite that didn’t get cleaned out in the first round, waaaaaaay back in September.  And then test the air to positively determine that they can’t detect anything harmful.  And THEN the contractor can get back to work.

So, dear Universe, please send me a little break.  Let things run smoothly for a few weeks.  At least until we’ve moved into our next temporary home.

Work Gloves = Super Power

I am very squeamish.  I don’t like touching anything icky.  (I would never want to be a doctor or nurse or dentist.  Eww.)  But with work gloves on... I become Super-I-Can-Do-Everything-Woman, because...

I can touch Anything!

Dust, dirt, broken glass, bits of icky whatever.  I can scoop it up with my no-longer-bare hands.  I can lean on it.  I can pick it up and heave it.  This came in very handy this past weekend as I was cleaning up everything I could in the icky old basement to make way for the nice new basement.

Of course bugs are still a challenge... Sometimes I can positive-think my way through it.  Sometimes not.  But still:

Wearing work gloves is like having a super-power.  The power to touch anything!  

Ar ar ar ar ar...

Full Steam Ahead!

Where the kitchen cabinets used to be

Now that we got the building permit, renovations are moving forward.  Full steam ahead!

The contractor had brought in a large dumpster bin (the 2nd one!) to deal with the remainder of crap from the garage (there was a lot of garbage in it - some from demolition work we’d already done, much of it left by the previous owner... grrrr.)  But it had to get moved out of the way to allow the small excavator into the yard to work on the perimeter drainage on Monday or Tuesday.  Eeep!  So Friday night, and Saturday after work, I spent several solid hours cleaning up, demolishing what I could and dumping stuff.  In the freezing cold, because the furnace has been disconnected.  But husband man was sick and had a sore back, so I had to do it all myself.  I’m full of awesome, but I just can’t lift large shelves and giant bags full of electrical cables by myself.  I did what I could.

On Monday morning, the contractor and his crew deconstructed the hideous and useless metal shed in the backyard (again, for excavator access) and the upstairs kitchen cabinetry.  Kid 2 and I helped where we could. We had to hurry to fill up that bin before it got picked up.  We are very lucky that our next-door neighbour is a metal recycler, so he took all our metal junk, including the shed, and an old futon frame and, and... Except for this:



Husband-man asked the contractor to set aside all the copper piping so we can sell it ourselves.  It’s valuable enough that this smallish amount adds up to something, yet small enough stuff to fit in our Echo.  He thinks we’ll get enough for a dinner out.  I’m not sure if it will be McDonald’s or Les Faux Bourgeois, but I’ll be happy with whatever it is.

We had to clean as much as possible out of the basement, because the city inspector (one of only 2) had to come to do the pre-inspection on the house and the framing inspection on the garage.  This man was really nice (he even brought back the containers I’d used for the cookies I brought to the building department).  Our contractor had been worried that the city might insist on all kinds of things to bring the house up to snuff.  Maybe other municipalities are pickier... maybe this city is just happy whenever an old house gets fixed up.  Maybe they read my letter and felt really really sorry for us.  In any case, he was happy with what he saw and what our plans were, and signed a paper saying they could finish up the garage roof.  Yay!  (I need to make these people some more cookies!)

Oh, my favourite thing that the crew did on Monday: they reconnected the furnace!!! Now it won’t be so freezing.  And the poor unheated house just seemed so forlorn.  Of course the upstairs will start to smell like cat pee again.

In addition to helping out, Kid 2 got to watch several different kinds of work get done.  He asked questions about equipment.  He wore his steel toe shoes (under duress, like the rest of the outing, as he’s still getting over some cold/flu thing), and his HEPA respirator mask and ear protection as needed.



Here he’s watching one of the crew cut the concrete slab behind the house - where the shed used to be.  They need to cut this so the excavator can dig a trench there, from which they’ll access the drain in the stairwell to the basement.  This was a very noisy and very stinky job.  Two-stroke motor - peeyew!  Later they had to use the same thing inside the basement to cut into the foundation for the new basement bathroom plumbing (awwww, no more throne room!).  Poor worker had to take a break because the fumes were stinging his eyes.  At this point we had to head out to Kid 2’s lacrosse practice (which he didn’t go to because he insisted he was too sick), and then I had to work for 2 days, so we’ll catch up with the crew on Thursday and see where they got to.

Cookies All Around!

It’s like Christmas in January:  

On Thursday afternoon I got a call from the city Building Division - they had approved not only our garage roof building permit, but also our house renovation building permit! (Yes, it only took 2 days!)

Hallelujah and pass the hammers, ‘cuz it’s ON!

Now, if you really want to show your appreciation for someone, you bake them cookies, right?

So of course I stayed up late baking cookies.  Given the limitations of the kitchen in the hovel we’re currently living in, I should have made a small batch... but no... I made 10 dozen.  One dozen at a time, because the oven is small, and only has one rack, and I only have 2 small baking trays.  Fortunately, I do know where my parchment paper is, so none of the cookies burned on the bottom or stuck to the pans.



I used some of the Snickerdoodle batter we bought as a fundraiser (those are the ones on the bottom) and then I made my daughter’s famous chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, the ones with olive oil instead of butter.

Emi’s Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies with Olive Oil 

You know you want one!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 c. plus 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 c. packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ c. quick oats (NOT instant or large flake)
• ½  tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 c. chocolate chips

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 ° F, line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or silicone mat)
2. In a large bowl, mix olive oil, brown sugar, egg and vanilla.
3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, oats, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
4. Stir dry ingredients into oil/sugar/egg  mixture, then stir in chocolate chips.
5. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto lined baking sheet, 2” (5 cm) apart.
6. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, until just turning golden (don’t over bake).
7. Cool on a cooling rack.

Makes 4 dozen, using a 1 tbsp spring-releasing scoop (y’know, like a mini ice cream scoop).  But those were rather small cookies - Emi makes them bigger, so she only gets 2 dozen out of a single batch like this.

Like most cats, ours like olives, and they can smell the olive oil in these (I can’t when I use “light-tasting” olive oil like i did today, but they still can!).  Enter the furry sharks!



So I hid the cookies in a locked cupboard to finish cooling. (After I tested 4 or 6 or so...)

Work Begins!

It's that part of Winter when the buds are starting to develop.  You can't see nature at work, but it happens nonetheless.


I'm feeling a bit of that about the house: work is beginning.  Of course we've been doing stuff all along: removing carpets, removing the particleboard covering some of the floors, demolishing the basement interior.  But today I saw the contractor's crew working on the garage.  They've been there a few days already; one guy fell through the garage roof the Friday before last when they started removing the old roofing materials.  But today I was there and I saw them working on it myself.  And for once, it was CONstruction rather than DEstruction.

Hooray!


I was also (finally!) able to submit the building permit application for the interior renovations.  I laughed because when I pulled the drawings out of their envelope, the Plan Checker said he thought the site plan looked familiar.  I said they should be because the contractor had submitted a building permit application - with a copy of the same site plan - for the garage on Friday.  

 (This site plan - isn't it awesome? I drew the buildings and stuff with Windows Paint to get them to scale, then I printed it, wrote in the text and measurement arrows and then scanned it at Staples.  The building division staff were impressed - good thing too, or I might not bring them cookies.)

This is good, because it means they were looking at the garage building permit.  (Yay!)  The contractor did say he thought he'd have the permit by Friday.  And we did get the drainage permit today.  

They didn't specifically say they would consider expediting the house building permit, but I didn't explicitly ask either.  I just pointed out that I was including a letter requesting them to expedite it.  The lady at the desk behind the counter (I'll have to learn her name) said they would call us as soon as they had the permit.  I thought that sounded promising.

And to top it all off, somebody in front of me got pulled over for speeding, and I didn't.  It's totally my lucky day.