If you wondered why it was so quiet here: I was very busy renovating one of our apartments. Among other things I redid the plumbing and the electricity, and re-enforced the kitchen floor. None of that will be visible to the new tenant. But she they will see and hopefully enjoy the gorgeous new kitchen and bathroom. I went a little overboard so it took 3 weeks longer than I had planned. It’s hard to be your own client for a perfectionist like me.

Update: We found tenants through CraigsList, our friends’ network didn’t yield any interested. Let’s hope things work out and they are good tenants.

More photos:

While I was working in my workshop Poupoune thought she would keep me company. She lay down under my table saw; a nice, cool and above all, soft spot. Sometimes she’s a real chameleon.

I had to dust her off, though.

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.

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.

I’m currently working on a big bathroom renovation and the client has a hard time deciding what tiles he wants on the floor. So he keeps going to the tile stores and buying more and more samples. His living room now looks like a tile showroom.

He still has some time to decide, I’m not in the tiling stage yet…
First I have to do lots ofplumbing, a new subfloor, bath podium, shower pan, running some electricity wires and more…

A client asked me to make a cart. She’s handicapped and her caretaker has to carry her twice a week from her bed to her bathroom for her to take a bath. Her caretaker, however gets older and suffers from arthritis so hauling somebody is getting harder and harder for her.

So I made this cart to make the trek to the bathtub a bit easier.

I went with a client on a hunt today for a bathtub. He’s quite tall and wants me to make a new, larger bathroom for him, but he has a hard time finding a bathtub that fits his frame, one that is actually big enough for him to lie in.

After visiting a number of stores we both have to pee. But asking “Do you have a bathroom?” in a bathroom store is kind of awkward, and pissing in the showroom toilets is generally frowned upon (apparently it does happen though, at least that’s what I heard). So we head to a Tim Hortons nearby and have a muffin and an orange juice. Coincidentally we order exactly the same muffin and the same kind of juice.

Afterwards we drive the long way home and even though a lot of people are on vacation, there is still a lot of traffic and it takes quite a while. I drop of my client, and when I arrive at home I can’t find my bag. I search the car, but it’s a big red bag and not easily overlooked.

The dogs are barking around me while I try to concentrate and think where I remember I had my bag the last time. I think it was at the Tim Hortons. I get the Yellow Pages, but can’t find them. Wait, the internet! But on the Tim Hortons website there is no restaurant finder. Canada411.ca. No Tim Hortons in Montréal on that street. O wait, Pierrefonds is de-merged and is a separate municipality now. Yes, there it is, in the long list of telephone numbers. I call the number and start talking to the woman who picks up in English. They all speak English in the West-Island so I’m surprised when she asks “French, please?”. I repeat my question (“Have you found my bag?”) in French, she goes to look in the place I tell her I was seating and then she comes back: “Non monsieur, votre sac n’est pas là…”

Fuck.

It now really dawns to me. I lost my bag. My really nice red bag. With my camera in it, and my cigars. And my brand new MacBook Pro laptop.
I thank the woman for watching and give her my phone number just in case. Just before I hang up I ask if there are any other Tim Hortons in Pierrefonds? She answers me that she’s not in Pierrefonds but in Côte de Lièsse. OMG. I called the wrong restaurant! Yes, it is the telephone number just below the one we visited. I get new hope. It’s not even an hour ago since we left. I call again, making sure to call the right number this time.

Unfortunately my hope proved futile. My bag hadn’t been found. I call all the bathroom stores we went to, one at the time. No luck.

Shit.

I call Alison and she has no idea what to say to cheer me up.

I hang up, and I don’t know what to do. I haven’t even paid off my credit card bill of the new laptop and I already lost it. Visa will be happy. Then I remember that my bank just recently upgraded me to a new credit card that included an extended warranty or something. I frantically try to find the leaflet that came with it. Yeah, there it says: “The Purchase Security Plan protects most purchases made with the card for ninety (90) days from purchase.” I quickly try to find the line that says what is meant with that word most. I’m sure I will find a line saying that “computers are excluded”. But there is no such line. I call the toll-free number, and someone takes my card number, address and the value of the item I lost. Thanks to Apple’s online invoices I can still find that information. She’ll send me a form that I’ll have to complete. Wow.

For the first time in an hour I can sit and calm down a bit. There is a possibility I didn’t lose a huge pile of money, but just some.

I eat a cracker with cheese and try to recall what I’ve lost, what haven’t I backed up yet.
Some photos, obviously. But for the rest I just lost the changes I made today and last night to the drawings of my client’s bathroom. Just a couple of hours to re-create those, so that’s not too bad. A good thing I worked on woodworking projects the past week and that I make regular backups. But not daily, even though I bought a new hard drive just for that purpose. But I haven’t had time to set it up yet.

I even manage to look at it from the bright side: I now have an excuse to replace my 6 year old camera.