Take two ''great'' Danes, add Dale from Archibald & some ''birds eye'' maple...

Finally...after I stayed until midnight the night before pulling out stray nails, ripping out the old birch bark off the floor and sweeping up the century old dust and dirt, the Petersen boys returned the next morning and we were ready to lay the new flooring. First thing though, we had some repairs to do to the sub floor. There were two trap doors and several other access ''holes'' to fill in. Then we had to lay 5/16 inch presswood over the entire floor. This would even it out and to raise the new flooring to the height of the old flooring which it will join in the hallway and the dining room. The old original flooring was one inch in thickness but new flooring is only 3/4 inch.
If you remember, we intend to refinish all the floors the same. As stated in the last issue the only place that we could find unfinished flooring is at DJ Smearer Hardwood in Archibald, near Jacquet River. Dale Smearer; owner, has the most unique business for anyone that has interest in anything wood...it is kind of hard to explain. From Mercedes Benz to Fender and Gibson Guitars, from million dollar homes to ski lodges, golf resorts, etc., Dale is the man to supply you with your exotic wood needs. For our flooring...we are going with rustic ''birds eye'' maple. Once the starting point was ''mathematically'' determined by head guru Larry, we were off like a herd of turtles! I was slowing the pace by being too choosy in laying one piece to the next. The afternoon came quickly and the boys had some holiday parties (yes...we are a month behind) to attend. We were finally able to finish on Sunday; not too late. We were missing a bit of wood to actually complete the entire room but it came out looking totally awesome!! Who knew that Danish people would know so much about hardwood flooring; if anyone is in need, I hear they come pretty cheap!
I had Larry and Joe sign and date the back of one of the pieces....I wonder who will be the next person to see it.... and when....




Cette fois-ci, ça va être vraiment difficile d'écrire ma version des choses...je n'ai vraiment pas participé dans le «replaçage» des planchers...une chance !  Mais, je suis allée avec  Eric voir l'entreprise de bois DJ Smearer Hardwood à Archibald.  Incroyable !!!  Même moi, qui ne connais pas grand chose du bois (autre que ça sens bon quand on le coupe) j'étais impressionnée.  Pas nécessairement par la quantité, mais par la qualité et les différentes sortes de bois qu'on y retrouve !!  Finalement, on a opté pour de l'érable piqué dans notre cuisine.  Les gurus (les frères Petersen) et le «aimerait vraiment être guru» Eric ont travaillé très fort pour placer notre plancher de cuisine. Le résultat final est très, très beau !

Those old floors...they practically lift themselves!! Ahhhh l'histoire des planchers !!

As you may remember from some earlier posts, we had ''discovered'' the original hard wood floors hidden under various layers of plywood and flooring. Unfortunately the floor in the kitchen was just too rough to save so I decided that I would lift it and replace with some new hard wood. As our intent is to resurface all the floors and stain them, I needed to find some unfinished hard wood flooring. Thank you to Dale Smearer from DJ Smearer Inc. Hardwood from Archibald; near Jacquet River, for coming through in a huge way! Dale has the most unique business tucked away in such a remote little place...will talk more about it in the next issue.

As I have never worked in hardwood before, I called upon the expertise of two hardwood flooring gurus...Larry Petersen and his brother Joey. Joe also has a lot of experience in renovating old homes as he has tackled a similar project on a similar house just down the hill. Looking for encouragement and bravado, I placed the call. ''Would we...'' they said, ''...no problem...those old floors practically lift themselves off...'' they chimed. A Friday night was chosen, right after work, a couple of coffees from Tim's and then a few beer for later. ''The coffee won't even have time to get cold it will go that fast...'' I was told. ''We will lift the old stuff, repair what needs to be repaired (several old trap doors that led to the cellar) and give a good start to laying down the new...'' they said with conviction. ''Won't it be hard pulling up the flooring with all the old nails?'' I so innocently asked. ''Nails...nails were too expensive back then!'' I was told. ''...they might have used one nail every four or five feet...'', ''...just wait...you will see!''. 

 We finally got going around 6:00 pm. By 10:30 I told them both to go home and rest up and we will give it another go in the morning! The hard wood turned out to be one inch thick by about three inches wide and most were as long as fourteen feet long!! What about the nails you ask? There were five inch nails doubled up every half foot or so!! It was deafening from the sound of the nails being forced to leave go their century long hold. One really cool thing though, was under the flooring the floor was lined with birch bark...the original vapour barrier! I decided to hold onto the the old flooring for a little project that I will describe at a later date. I must admit though that it was a great night...we drank a few beers and had even more laughs at the situation...''...lift themselves...''alright.

Ahhh...le fameux plancher de cuisine ! On croyait (et aurait bien aimé) pouvoir sauver le plancher de bois franc dans la cuisine. Malheureusement, celui-ci était vraiment en trop mauvais état.  Eric avait donc demandé à Larry Petersen et son frère Joey (qui ont fait cela très souvent) pour l'aider à l'enlever, ça devait prendre quelques heures pas plus... Mais, plus tard dans la soirée, Sarah et moi on a été appelé en renfort : « On a besoin du café, ça va prendre plus longtemps que prévu» !  Quand on est arrivée à la maison, on pouvait entendre de dehors les clous se lamenter !!!  Et des clous....j'en avais jamais vu autant sur un même morceau de planche !!

Nous sommes encore de retour / We are back ! Again !!

We are back! Again!!

We had to take a small break for the Christmas / New Year / beginning of flu season but we have some new (old....as the work has been continuing) pictures to share with you. The following are more pictures of demolition of plaster and yes....more steaming of wall paper!! Even though the work was progressing downstairs there was still some more prep work upstairs. We want to take the large bay window bedroom and downsize it to make an upstairs bathroom and this would enable us to increase the size of the adjoining bedroom to make it a bit larger for a master bedroom. In one of the photos you will see the ''mistake'' someone made a long time ago in measuring the stud and then scribbled it out...pretty cool.



Oui, comme Eric le dit si bien : nous sommes de retour après un court repos de Noël, Nouvel An, grippe...  Le travail dans notre maison avance très, très rapidement.  Voici quelques photos qui le prouve bien !! On vous promet (avec beaucoup, beaucoup de joie dans mon coeur ) que se sont les dernières photos «d'enlèvage» de tapisserie que vous allez voir...YÉÉÉ fini la tapisserie !!!!!!!

Before it gets better...it has to get worse...

Dans les semaines qui ont suivi la construction de notre rallonge, on s'aurait cru dans une vraie ruche !!  Les plombiers, les électriciens, les charpentiers...ça y allait !!  Je n'avais pas  réalisé combien il fallait défaire pour pouvoir refaire...on avait des trous partout pour pouvoir passer les tuyaux, les broches, l'isolation... mais on m'assure qu'après, ça va être facile de boucher les trous.




Stepping out of the new and into the old. Now that the new sun porch is in place it is time to focus on the renovations needed inside the older part of the house. It is time to make ready to bring in everyone from the carpenters to the electricians to the plumbers. This includes some still needed demolition and still more wall paper to remove....yes more wall paper! 

Let the construction begin

Hey, hey...we are back!

It has been just a little over a month since the weekend which the house was lowered onto the new foundation. On the following Wednesday construction began. Our new sun-porch / entry / mudroom was the first thing to go up (in two days) followed the following week by finishing the basement. We have a crew of three guys doing the carpentry; Carol, Gino and Marc-André. They work like a superstorm; three independant twisters massing together to converge as a category five storm....it seems like that there is nothing that they cannot do!
The second week of construction brought in the crew from Levesque and McIntyre Electric to start the arduous task of fishing wire through the maze of walls and floors and the many fire stops hidden in the old walls.
As the addition was placed onto the back of the house, the old cedar shingles were removed from the outside wall to reveal the massive lumber which the house is constructed. One inch thick boards, some fourteen and sixteen inches wide, covered by a second layer of one inch boards...all covered by a layer of birch bark!! The original vapor barrier!
We have been very busy as of late and are sorry for not being as up to date with our photos....but stay tuned, we have more to come. Again, thanks for following!




Oui ! On est de retour....Depuis que la maison est revenue sur la terre ferme, tout va très, très vite !  Les charpentiers ont construit notre ralonge/ nouvelle entrée en deux jours seulement !  On découvre les dessous de la maison : du bois, des grosses planches, de l'écorce de bouleau...vraiment impressionnant !

Step one.....check!

Finally, after many sleepless weeks, the crew showed up on Saturday (two weeks ago) to lower the house down on to the new foundation.
After the foundation was poured it was suggested to allow the concrete to cure for at least a week before setting the house back down. It was an extremely cold and windy day but the crew from Victor Godin House Movers did not let that get in their way from doing their ''thang''. Super professional bunch of guys. After it was down and the beams removed, another seperate crew set in to put in the drainage around the foundation and ready it for the backfilling.
What a crazy few weeks! Later that day, I took Margot and Sarah down to Moncton for a quick two day trip; as Monday was a holiday for us, for some shopping and get-away- time....they deserved it for putting up with my hysteria during this part of our adventure.


Enfin, après quelques (longues) semaines notre maison allait redescendre.  Il faisait tellement froid pendant toute la journée, mais l'équipe de Victor Godin était concentrée à la tâche....une chance !  J'ai seulement pu rester quelques minutes pour voir la maison redescendre.  C'était un peu dur sur les nerfs...penche par en avant...penche par en arrière... !

Finalement, tout s'est très bien passé et oui, on méritait une belle fin de semaine à Moncton ! :)

Vraiment...un ouragan...vraiment !! Really....a hurricane...really!!

C'était déjà assez stressant de voir sa maison se tenir debout sur des petits blocs, trop semblables au jeu Jenga. Il a fallu que quelqu'un creuse tout le tour et surtout en dessous pour préparer le terrain pour la fondation.  Comme une cerise sur le sundae, on ajoute l'ouragan Sandy qui se dirigeait vers chez nous et surtout qui rencontrait une autre tempête...question de redoubler, voir même «retripler» notre niveau de stress. Deux semaines de nuits blanches : les vents vont-ils faire tomber notre maison ? La pluie torrentielle va-t-elle causer des glissements de terrain ? La pluie et les vents...

Finalement, Sandy aura été bien sage pour nous.  La fondation pouvait donc être coulée avec un peu de retard, mais quand même coulée.  C'était assez impressionnant de voir les gros camions se promener sur le terrain (très, très vaseux) tout près de la maison qui semblait si fragile.

Malheureusement, on a dû sacrifier quelques arbres pour les deux gros camions de ciment.  RIP mes deux beaux lilas en arrière de la maison.  Ça m'a fait de la peine, mais entre deux arbres ou pas de fondation, le choix n'était pas trop difficile...je me suis fait dire : «y'en a trois autres des arbres de lilas dans notre cours» !

En quelques jours, l'aspect de notre nouvelle maison a beaucoup changée...




Take one very old and heavy house, lift it five feet in the air, place it on blocks to play ''Jenga'', excavate all the earth around it to essentially make it ten feet in the air, now add one post tropical hurricane Sandy and what do you get.....about two weeks of constant worry and very little sleep!!

After the wow and cool factor of lifting the house, the realization of having our house supported on just a bunch of blocks of wood becomes all consuming; every other thought, morning, noon, and night....especially the night! I kept waiting for that early morning phone call....''Mr. Perry, there seems to have been an incident with your house...''. Now throw in for ''fun'' some post tropical hurricane Sandy winds and drenching rain for about three days! Talk about good timing to jack one's house in the air.

Two days after the initial lifting the footing was poured. We were hoping that the foundation would follow a couple of days later but there was a conflict in timing with our concrete guys. This is when Sandy rolled into town. They were able to put up the forms during the storm but running the concrete was impossible. That Wednesday night (Halloween), right after work, as the storm was fading, I headed down to the house to try and pump some of the three feet of water out of the hole and the forms. Stayed there into the night to try and ready it for cement the next morning. Everything went well except for a major house fire that I was called out to with our fire dept. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to choose your priorities in life; so to all my brothers and sister in the Charlo Volunteer Fire Dept.....I am sorry for not making it to this one.
The foundation was poured first thing the next morning.