Back to School

That hanging lamp - I had the exact same lamp in my house in northern california..

Yeah, isn't it great? There are only two left though, the rest having been replaced with fluorescent tubes {shudder}. When we looked into buying replicas they were $99 each (we needed six) and the glass was really thin...so...we got attractive glass shaded lamps from IKEA instead. We're trying to maintain the sense of history in the place but can't afford to go broke doing it.

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Well, as you can see, the trees that were too close to the foundation are down. (And since chainsaw accident stories are floating about on another thread I'll just say that gloves, eye protection and chainsaw pants were worn.) Mr. TC has a background in forestry and felled both trees beautifully -- landing one between the front of our trailer and the hand pump and the other between the back of our trailer and our recently installed upgraded hydro line. I was impressed -- it could have been ugly! (We're not normally tree killers but these really had to go. Ironically they were planted for some beautification competition between schools years ago -- just planted WAY too close to the foundation.)

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This is what the side of the building looks like now -- pretty bare. The red squirrels are ticked off too. Luckily there are plenty of other trees on the property for shade and to keep the wildlife happy.

Yeah, that wasn't just close, that was close. Not very good planning on the part of the planter(s).

(Enjoying the pics and unfolding story, thanks!)

We will be heading north again in a week to do some major repairs on the floor (which in some spots is behaving more like a trampoline). For sure those trees didn't help, neither did the blocked air vents we have since repaired, nor the fact that we suspect the kitchen "sink" (no running water, just a sink with a drain) drains out onto the ground below the floor. We may very well have to replace everything right down to the joists. Luckily we're only talking about 600 square feet. (All and any advice gratefully received.) The good news is we opened up a 9 foot square and didn't find any wild animals...whew...

Hi soz! Yeah, the planters were schoolkids. We met one of them (he's retired now and has a cottage nearby). Apparently they won the contest

Re: Back to School


How exciting!

So...the last time I posted there was a test hole in the back corner of the room -- this is it:



And another view showing the centre concrete support:

Neat! Keep the photos coming!

The trick here was putting in the joists so that when the plywood sub-floor was added it would be level with the old floor on the other half (in case some of it was okay to leave).

Here is Mr. Fix-it bolting the new joists to the old ones on the other side:

This is what we found when we cut up the next section of flooring:



Now it's obvious why parts of the floor were behaving like a trampoline. Some of the joists were more like joist-shaped envelopes full of sawdust (you can see some of the sawdust on the ground).

This is so great. Thanks for continuing to include us in the process!

We managed to get one half of the building re-floored in 16 days, working in stages (one day to destroy, one to rebuild and one to recuperate, repeat ). Of course recuperate meant we went to town for more lumber, and to do laundry and get groceries. It was definitely a working vacation. Here is the last section of the floor with the plywood in place (this was a safety issue as much as anything else -- I got really tired of walking the plank!)

This last section was kind of tricky and took the longest because of the partition wall. It's tongue in groove fir and not really attached to anything -- basically it's sitting on the floor . On the right you see the entrance (formally the boys' cloakroom), on the left is the pseudo-kitchen (once the girls' cloakroom) and in the middle is the former teacher's room. Because the floor was sagging, the wall was sagging and had to be jacked up level and supported while the floor below it was removed...and...we had to be careful because there is primitive wiring running through and over it. Fun, fun, fun.

sawdust or termite dust? or powderpost beetles? or? I'm looking at all that sparkling fresh wood.

I'd check out that dust before I close the hole up. You might want to use some coats of vile-deterrant stuff on that wood.

I remodelled our old garage as my studio. Some years before, my husband had added a small addition to store my paintings. When I took it apart to move the door and add some windows, I found a few of the 90 year old clearheart redwood studs had termites. I found every one of my husband-added-doug fir studs did. I slathered all new wood with goop, the nature of which I don't now remember. This was in southern california; no doubt pests are different there.

Will you be replacing that primitive wiring?

Oops, too late, never mind...

osso, I was really concerned about insects too (particularly carpenter ants) but we didn't find any live insects and we have really improved the air flow under the building to combat the damp.

littlek, Mr. Fix-it is a real details guy. He dummied in new wiring under the floor for wall plugs as we went along. Anything the least bit dangerous has already had the power cut off.

We also cut "test holes" in the other half of the building. The way it looks right now, two-thirds of the old flooring can stay -- no evidence of rot/insects. When the two bad areas are opened up (this fall maybe) we'll be able to take a better look at the good area and make sure we really want to leave it (and we'll be able to finish the wiring).

Hopefully next year we'll be able to afford the final flooring -- locally milled pine.

Forgot to say, osso, re: the possibility of insect damage, that we found quite a bit of bark on the ground under the floor. Some of the lumber used for joists originally was rough and still had bark attached. There was obvious bore holes in that bark so those insects were around 90 years ago. We didn't find anything more recent -- just the dampness from lack of air circulation which we fixed. There was all kinds of stuff under the floor which we raked up. We even found one of these:



a U.S. Liberty nickel from 1868 (in really bad shape).