Renovation: week 3
There was a lot accomplished in week 3. The crew finished digging for the cribs and re-structured the main floor joists so the house was ready for the lift. Though the lift wasn’t supposed to happen until week 4, with everything a bit ahead of schedule, they did the lift on Friday the 27th. Two large steel i-beams were moved into place and the house moved onto cribs — like giant stacks of Jenga. If you look closely in the pictures below you might be able to spot the beam. So with that, the entire house is now supported on the 6 cribs in the basement.
Over the next two weeks the crew will be doing demolition on the ground floor walls; starting to excavate for the exterior footings and do the forms for the footings/foundation. I’ll try to get some shots this week of the house with the lower walls gone.
Renovation: week 2
Week 2 began with snow, so I expected things to slow down on site given that there was still some outdoor work to be done, but things kept moving and we stayed on-time. The shed was moved from one side of the yard to the other in order to make way for the parking pad the City is making us add when the front driveway is removed. We managed to salvage about a 100 bricks from the chimney work, so these will come in handy for some other uses, likely landscaping.
The big project this week was the removal of the char from all the wood. A crew from On Side Restoration did this work using a process called “soda blasting”. Much like sandblasting, it removes the bad material, leaving the good material behind. It’s pretty amazing to see the difference between what we started with and now. It’s really hard to tell that a fire even happened in the house. Our contractor saved a chunk of beam for us as we plan to have some of it framed to remember this fire event.
Sadly, despite there being taped off seals around all the ducts and plastic everywhere, the house was quite a mess. There will definitely be some cleanup to do from this. The good news is that there was a lot more wood left than we expected to see. With the char all gone now, the joists and subfloor have been sealed off (that’s the white you see in the photos below).
The crew has started digging up the slab and making holes (4ft x 4ft and about the same depth) for the cribs that will be used to lift the house. Next week there’s more digging to be done, we the restructuring of the main floor joists begins.
Renovation: week 1
After almost 2 years, the renovation has started. I drove over on Monday specifically to see the bin in the driveway and just to see that it had finally started. It feels good to be moving forward.
Everything started on-time as planned. The contractor and crew managed to make a lot of progress. We got temporary power setup; all the basement electrical pulled out; the stairs removed; the two chimneys removed; the plumbing removed; the mechanical (furnace and hot water tank) removed; the environmental inspection completed; and the roof sealed back up. The new drawings and structural changes have to make their way through the City next, but should be at best a small administrative task.
With everything pulled out the space feels a lot bigger. The only surprise was a small squirrels nest that was starting to form near an opening (sneaky bastards). I’m hoping to save some of the chimney bricks to use for landscaping as some of them can be salvaged.
Next week is the big job of the char removal which is like sandblasting it off with a particulate (usually glass or baking soda) so that all the fire damage is removed and all that will be left is wood. The shed also gets moved to make way for the new parking pad and they’ll be framing in the chimney openings.
The picture below is a drawing my son did at his architecture class this weekend of our temporary digs — a furnished condo near BC Place – where we’ll be living during the work.
World IA Day (Vancouver)
Registration is now open for World IA Day 2012 here in Vancouver. Looks like a great lineup of speakers including my former colleague Jess McMullin (Centre for Citizen Experience), Karyn Zudinga (Analytic Design Group), Samantha Starmer (REI), Gordon Ross (OpenRoad) and Karen Pecknold.
Our fire story on TV
Global TV aired our fire story tonight on the 6pm news. Nice to see they used a lot of the video and even some of us talking about it. If you haven’t seen it you can watch here.