The British Are Coming

In keeping with the age and style of the house we decided to wallpaper one wall in the living room, now being English I have done my fair share of wallpaper hanging so should pose no problems..

The paper we decided on was make in the UK, nice, pre-pasted vinyl, easy to clean. Rather smart we thought.

I started with marking a straight line in order that the pattern and paper would all line up correctly, I think I may have broken the cardinal rule in wallpaper hanging and started in a corner, while still trying to maintain the straight line.

Making progress



Moving right along, so far so good

Getting close to finishing now

Well what was I thinking, 2 pieces left to cut and hang and no more paper. This paper was a special order product from General Paint, looks like we may be living with a 3/4 wall papered wall for a few weeks.

If you ever come and visit 1927 Atlin please admire the wall paper from a distance, lining up the pattern and maintaining the nice straight line did not work out as well as I would have hoped for.

Karen thinks it may just be my critical self but at one point I was ready to tear it all down and start again. I need to check it out in the daylight, it was midnight when I finished after all.

Cruise On By

Cruise Ship season is, despite the weather, fast approaching,

Out of nowhere one of the cruise ships will slink past, heading back from Alaska, the port of call in Prince Rupert is short and sweet.

Ever heard of the container port in Prince Rupert?

The Prince Rupert container port is 3 days closer to the Asian market and as such we expect to see a large number of container ships going through our waters. This photo shows the container port cranes being shipped to Prince Rupert.

Insulate You Say

I wonder how the previous owners ever kept warm in this house, we have (As required) fully insulated, vapour barrier, tuc taped and acoustic sealed this house beyond any building code regulations, its itchy, messy and time consuming but in the long run we hope well worth the time, cost and effort put in.

Bare walls clean and ready to start insulating









The ceiling and attic were totally void of any insulation



The insulation process begins



The top and bottom of the vapour barrier needs to be sealed with acoustic sealant, messy job, never looks nice and clean but will all be covered up with drywall so all is good.



Karen became very proficient at cutting and installing the insulation, so good that it became her job to insulate the house.






One wall almost complete with insulation, acoustic seal and tuc tape.

Hardwood Floors, Beelzebub and The Good Guy

The past weekend was set aside to sand and refinish all the Oak and Fir floors.

I headed down to the local (and only) tool rental supply and picked up a fancy new floor sander and a few hundred sanding disks.

It was a shame that the previous owner had painted the fir floors with 5 coats of oil based paint.

5 coats of oil based paint to tackle



With this new sander it should take no time and I am sure all will turn out just perfect. How wrong I was, this machine is a combination of Beelzebub and Satin in disguise. I have happily used floor polishers in the past and as this is just a floor polisher with a sanding disk is should pose no problems.


Beelzebub



Satin himself looks so friendly until you turn him on



Well let me tell you, as soon as you start this puppy up it takes off like a 747 with a mind of its own, I ended up spinning in circles and destroying pretty well all the sanding disks with no results other than my arms being ripped out and nice swirl marks on the floor. Time to rethink this...

I loaded up the sander and headed back to the rental outfit, I had hoped to pick up their standard floor pad sander and edger, I knew that this may take longer but a much easier machine to use (apart from the fact that it weighs in at close to 160 pounds) anyways, I got the machine and started over again, much better results after 12 hours of sanding with the pad sander and my trusty DeWalt orbital sander, now I need to work on some corners and fill in some of the cracks and areas where the flooring has been damaged over the years.

The Good Guy



This machine works like a treat



Progress is being made



After 5 hours of sanding I am starting to like the results



Dining room and Living room close to being finished



A few sanding supplies were required.



Good thing I picked up a box of industrial dust masks



I hooked up a home made air extraction unit to try and keep the dust down, this sure helped during the main sanding process.



My trusty DeWalt sander has worked faultlessly, I have gone over all floors a couple times with this unit to get things really smooth.



I managed to get the cord jammed twice in the belt sander, I took this as a sign to take a break.

Here was me thinking that I was close to finishing and ready to apply some nice finish coat, not so it seems, I meandered my way to the hardware store to pick up some wood filler as a few floorboards were in less that great shape, seems what I needed was a bucket of trowel on wood filler, you pour, spread and work this stuff in to all the nail holes and cracks. Once done this is the end result...

The already twice sanded floor filled and ready for more sanding !!

Some sanding progress being made

Sander used for this little sanding job, this filler sets like cement, I also had to go around and set each and every nail hole

It took close to 40 sanding disks to sand the entire floor, now on to the staining process.

My first step after cleaning all the dust from sanding was to apply 2 coats of WATCO Danish Oil Finish in a Golden Oak colour.

You can see here the first coat applied to the living room

This stain needs 72 hours to "set" before I can apply the first of 3 coats of ureathane, man this is a long process.

All in all a challenging exercise so far. Now on to cleaning and applying 3 coats of a water based Urethane. Wish me luck.

Random Images

This is what happens when you get your head and hair to close to the firepit. One good thing that came out of this was to hear Karen laugh out loud (At my expense of course)



The 2nd floor chimney taken down to a new starting point before the new floor was built.



I have had enjoyed building the window and door casings, anyone need crown molding installed?



Jake and Keith from Northern Landscaping have been frequent visitors (As long as there is beer at the end of the day, just kidding they do great work)



Starting to level the front garden and cut in 2 tiers.






Another great light fixture from Restoration Hardware



Karen returned from Victoria with wooden placemats, I think she must spend her nights thinking this stuff up and then letting me know that they are to go on the front of the bench seat. (Of course where else would you put placemats?) Turned out quite well.



The Sun Room bench seat is taking shape



The new front door came from BC Door (I call this my Mexico door because it cost the same as it would for us to spend a week at the beach) Nice door though and we do get lots of complements on it. Took a whole week to stain and finish using Sikkens Cetol Door and Window stain

The new front door came unfinished



After 5 coats of Stain, installed and good to go.