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Then I put a new plywood floor and screw it to the beams. Getting the plywood sheets in place wasn’t very easy since the sheets are wider than the clearance between the wall and the railing, but I devised a cunning system that worked pretty well.
I attached two ropes to the front of the balcony, just under the place where the new floor will be. I attached the other ends of the ropes to the poles that hold up the roof. Then I carried the sheet of plywood upstairs and slid it into the coils of rope. By loosening the ropes I could then lower the sheet so it was oriented horizontally. Then it was fairly easy to slide it under the posts of the railing and slide it into its final place. Of course this description doesn’t include the swearing when things got temporarily stuck, or the near misses when I lost my balance and almost fell down three stories. Well, that last thing didn’t happen, it was actually quite straightforward. Screwing the sheets down took longer that getting them in place.

The bathroom project is finished (will post pictures after the client has painted it) and I have my tools back at home. So I can tackle some other projects. The weather is extremely warm lately and the forecast is so good that I decide to replace the back balconies. Last year I did that with our own porch and that worked pretty well. So now I’m going to do the same on the second and third floor. That makes think a lot harder because I don’t have as easy access. First I remove the old balcony planks. Then I have to reinforce the beams that are missing or are severely affected by rot.

Instead of resting on our laurels and enjoying the nice fall weather we’re spending most of our weekends lately scraping and painting our fire escape stairs. There is a lot of rust, but on the whole its metal is in better state than I had feared. Still there are a lot of nooks and crannies to scrape the rust out and a lot of it is only accessible on high ladders. I strapped myself into my climbing harness (so it gets some use after all) and work all day with my arms in the air until they are really sore. Wearing goggles so I don’t get rust chips into my eye. Or paint.
Of course Alison is also scraping and painting but to her dismay I shield her from the “hanging-upside-down-under-stair-experience”. She doesn’t know anything about ropes and carabiners and I don’t want to worry if she’s going to fall of the ladder and break her neck. “But teach her the ropes!”, I hear you thinking, but I can’t do that without spending a lot of time supervising her. And she is kind of allergic to supervision. And there is so much work ahead.

Passed.

The bathroom project is nearing its final stage. The client is enjoying his daily showers and baths and I just have to do the finishing touches. Unfortunately a lot of finishing touches, because I almost changed the whole house to make this bathroom. I moved two doors and two walls and so there is a lot to plaster, a couple of doors and their mouldings and thresholds need to be re-installed and a lot of other small things need to be done as well. So I won’t be finished in a week or so, and after that I still have to built some custom furniture (a vanity, mirror cabinet and doors and drawers above the washer/dryer combination) to complete the project. But it looks pretty nice and the client is very happy. It even sounds nice because I installed speakers above the bath tub and while I work I now listen to music in genuine bathroom acoustics.

Scraping and painting the fire escape. My arms hurt from working above my head. It’s a lot of work, but we’re making progress. A couple more weekends and the job will be done.

Where are adults allowed to play with mud, and, on top of it, getting paid as well? Only in the bathroom and shower construction trade.

I’m doing a so-called “mud job”. It involves shaping a lot of mortar —a mix of cement, sand and water— into a shallow bowl so when you take a shower all the water flows toward the drain. The client has chosen fairly irregular slate tiles, so the pitch has to be more pronounced than normal. After the cement dries, I’ll apply a waterproof membrane, so the shower isn’t going to leak, and on top of that the tiles will be laid. An convoluted process, but it will result in a shower that last a long time. Unlike many Québec tunnels and bridges these days, whose concrete starts to crack and crumble.

During the week I’m working on clients’ projects and in the weekend on our own house. The joys of homeownership!
Our neighbour, a fellow woodworker, also knows his metalwork. So I hired him to fix our metal fire escape in the back. He braces the undersized pole that holds up the whole structure (that needs to be replaced with a bigger one in a year or two) and welds some holes here and there.

It feels strange to see somebody else working hard, and not being able to help. My tools aren’t here, and I would just be in his way. So while I hear the sound of his grinder I’m writing this post. My hands itch but I have to contain myself.

When he’s done we can start scraping the stairs and balconies, and then painting them. That’ll be a major job, involving many, many weekends.

The bathroom renovation is going fine, albeit slow. Along the way we found a lot of things that also need to be changed or updated. Like the plumbing that had so many turns in them that it would be very easy to get clogged (and really hard to unclog). So I replumbed the toilet, the shower, the bath, the washing machine and the wash basin.

All of this will be under a slate tile floor, so it better be good. I hope I didn’t make any mistakes. That’s what I don’t like about plumbing, you’re never 100% sure if it won’t start to leak after a couple of weeks/months/years. The only way to fix it then is through the ceiling of the downstairs neighbours. They usually don’t like that.

The nice thing of bathroom (and kitchen) renovations is that you have to wear so many hats. Some days I demolish something, frame a wall, fish electricity cables, plumb a bathtub and lay a floor. Very varied work indeed.