Category: My Old House
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Un-Done
Just as some guys don’t remove their facial hair during hockey playoffs, I decided not to wash my work jeans until my final energy audit was complete. Like a talisman, I slipped on those pants day after day – ragged, stained and holey – until they could almost walk by themselves. Today they’re headed for… Read more
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Between a Rock and a Fireplace
Evidently a geologist-type owned Old Gal sometime before us and felt inspired to face the brick fireplace with his collection of semi-precious rocks and stones. It wasn’t just the out-of-square placing of the crazy stones that bugged me, but the fact that it protruded from the walls by ten inches and was just, well, so… Read more
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Mother Nature’s Blower Door Test
I woke at three a.m. to howling winds, heavy snow, and a bitter minus twenty-four degrees with windchill. Stray bits of untrimmed Typar flapped violently against the polyiso outside our bedroom window. After two months or so I’d hoped I’d stop noticing that sound on the windiest of nights, but no such luck. However, unexpected… Read more
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First, You Crawl
No word of a lie, I am THIS close to becoming a hobbit-like anti-social Howard Hughes troglodytic crawlspace dweller that descends the basement steps in the dark and ascends, filthy and abnormally bent, once night has fallen. No, I think I do hobbits an injustice. They’re much more social than I am these days, not… Read more
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Cheerios in the Floorboards and Other Assorted Commonalities
Most people pick their friends based on sympathetic personalities, socio-economic similarities, common interests, or the age of their children. But we seem to be collecting friends who, like us, live in old and partially renovated houses. I can’t decide whether our rural roots or similar value sets are bringing us together or whether there is… Read more
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Crazy Like the Wind
I think that everyone develops their personal and unique bit of oddness as time progresses. Choosing something that meets my current interests, I’ve decided that I will be the nutty woman who runs around her house obsessively checking for drafts. I spring out of my chair in the middle of conversations asking whether someone opened… Read more
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Chills and (almost) Thrills
I’ve learned through experience that snow can be expected in Ottawa from Halloween on. Only a dusting landed here in the Banana Belt but it was enough to remind me that we were now in the zone and bad weather would become less of a possibility, and more of a probability, with each passing day.… Read more
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Old Gal Gets Naked
Stripping on the main street of any village is usually frowned upon except, perhaps, in the most liberal enclaves. In our little microcosm of the world at large, structural nakedness – the disappearance of siding and the appearance of paint swatches – can set gums a flappin’ and opinions a flyin’. It’s good for at… Read more
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110 Years of Dirt
At 3pm yesterday Husband declared it was time to remove the layers of kitchen ceiling in preparation for the installation of the new tin ceiling. Old house renovations are like Gordian knots: you pull one thread and it looses all kinds of other tasks that are interrelated and sometimes unexpected and almost always mean more… Read more
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Zen Zapped by Hydro One
There’s nothing like waking up to perfect blue sky and plenty of sunshine, strapping on the toolbelt and heading outside to find my zen. A little hammering, a little head-scratching and soon a big fat smile on my face reflected the pleasure of working on the energy retrofit of our Old Gal. Husband showed up… Read more