Hoarding and the remote control

Have you ever watched that TV show Hoarders? It's one of TLCs new reality programs that profiles the lives of individuals trying to dig themselves out of mountains of stuff. It's a surprisingly depressing and shocking sort of show that makes you want to clean your house from top to bottom. I kind of feel like a temporary hoarder right now. Over the last few months we've accumulated a lot of items from Craigslist to furnish our new home. Simultaneously we have kept all of the inherited furniture that has served us so well for the last three years. What this has meant is that in our living room (in addition to our regular furniture) we have 2 couches, 2 coffee tables, 2 dressers, a vanity sink, a banister railing and a mountain of receipts from Home Depot.

I had a moment tonight at a dinner party when I realized that it had gotten really bad. I caught myself telling the story of how we had stopped watching TV lately because about two months ago we lost our remote control somewhere in the house and still haven't found it. The fact that our current living room layout requires us to climb over a dismantled wardrobe to get to the TV, has meant that we have reduced our evening indulgences in television programming to zero.

While (as you can see) we haven't yet tackled the furniture, we have begun to downsize other aspects of our lifestyle to prepare for the move to a smaller home. Unfortunately this has not always been successful...

For those of you that know Brendon, you must be well aware of his obsession for bikes. This year Brendon's fleet of two wheelers grew to 5. You add my 2 and we are a 7 bicycle family. A few months ago I made the request to let one of his babies go. Brendon whimpered a little but committed to selling his titanium road bike. It took almost three months to sell but two weeks ago a lucky buyer picked up the treasure and took it away. Brendon came into the house to share the good news and wave a good wad of cash in my face. And then he paused. And I paused. He had listed the bike for $500 more than he had come home with and I knew that he wasn't willing to go lower. He gently turned my gaze toward the back door and low and behold, there was another bike. Yup, we are now (still) the owners of 7 bikes. Apparently the trade was too tempting to pass up. Anyone looking for a fancy single speed? Also, if you see anything else you like in the images above, let me know. I'll cut you a great deal.

Bike A: SOLD (Brendon carried the bike to the roof at sunset to get this shot.)

 BIKE B: Acquired in a trade. Interested anyone?

It's all in the details

15 more sleeps till we're in our home and the countdown is on! Canucks? Canucks who? For us (I mean me) the only thing on my mind in moving into our home. But in order to do that Smallworks and the Purdy-Schatz construction company have been put into high gear.  There are still a lot of details that need to be finished before Smallworks can call up an inspector and get us temporary occupancy.

Over the last few weeks Smallworks has hooked us up...literally. We now have electricity, water and gas. Indoor and outdoor lights illuminate our cute little home day and night. With an installed and working toilet, faucets and a shower head too, we can now handle a whole host of human habits. Last but certainly not least, we have a hook-up inside and outside for gas. This means that our heated concrete floors and the gas stove are ready to work and our bbq can be connected for our future outdoor patio.

                                                             No more electrical cords!

Have you ever seen a more beautiful mechanical room?

On our end, I've spent the last week caulking just about anything with a crack. And when I wasn't sealing our home I was building a pony wall cap from scratch, cutting and stalling baseboards and finishing the tiling around the vanity. Brendon's taken his talents to the exterior and has been coating our beautiful cedar with an environmentally friendly oil protectant. We've even mobilized Barb and Roger and our windows are better for it.

Two weeks + infinity

The most common question we get these days is "are you in yet?" and believe it or not - we're not. 


The house will not finish itself. You'd think that by only being 500 square feet, it would be way easier to put together. The truth is though, is that size doesn't matter. Yup. You heard it here first. And to throw another awkward analogy into the mix, "Building a house is kind of like going on a camping trip. Whether you go for two days or a week - you pretty much need all the same stuff." And is seems to be the small things - like finding the camping utensils - or in our case finishing the baseboards, that seem to take the most time. 


We've been saying 'two weeks' since March and I'm starting to feel a little like a sheep in wolf's clothing. But after a conversation with our friends at Smallworks on Friday, I'm feeling confident that we'll be in by mid June. So - two weeks till we can officially say two weeks. 


Brendon is in St. Lucia shooting a wedding. Not to be the one to slow down progress on the house, I borrowed a table saw and a mitre saw so that I could work on finishing the baseboards. I finally had it all set up, cut and measured a few pieces and was ready to go. I just needed to make one small trip to the hardware store. Off I went and upon my return I dug into my pockets for the keys to the house and... they weren't there. The house was locked and I couldn't find my keys anywhere. I spent almost the entire day looking for them - 5 hours to be exact. Finally, once I'd almost given up I noticed a shiny bit of metal on the sidewalk. Low and behold it was our house key.  


Ugh. It just wasn't meant to be today. I'm packing it up an watching the hockey game. 


P.s. You probably notice the absence of photos. Brendon returns (with a sunburn apparently) and we'll be back to sharing photos and videos with our posts. 

If you can't get David Suzuki...

One of the benefits of working at the David Suzuki Foundation is that there are opportunities that come your way that would just never happen in a normal office setting. For example, on Friday one of the guys that sits across from me got a call from Daryl Hannah hoping to brainstorm with David about a movie she was working on. Something similar (though not as spectacular) happened to me about a week ago. A local paper - the Westender - contacted the Foundation to see if they could profile David's home for a column called My Digs. They had just profiled the home of Vancouver's Mayor Gregor Robertson and thought that following the success of that article, the Doc (an environmental icon) would have an interesting space to share with their readership. As often happens with a man that gets thousands of requests a month, David wasn't able to do it...but we were!

So this week I submitted answers to a series of questions on our home. Since the Westender profiles finished homes, we bought ourselves extra time to 'fake' the finished product, by negotiating that Brendon would shoot the photo for the article. We cleaned furiously, strategically placed flowers over open sockets and chose an angle that didn't reveal the fact that we were missing a hood fan. The finished product should be online soon. But in the meantime, take a look at this great little video Brendon did of our kitchen coming together. (It ends with the photo that will appear in the Westender.)

Don't try this at home...at least the first part

I'm the eldest of four girls and every time I or one of my sisters forgot to call home to let mom know that we'd be late, she would say to us, "I thought you were chopped up in a plastic bag at the side of the road!" (Yes, I know. My mother's not what you might call subtle.) A couple of weeks ago my mom's words came back to me full force. I found myself driving to the wrong side of the tracks to meet a man at a storage locker to look at some tiles. I found the guy on Craigslist. He said that he had left over stock and was trying to get rid of it so that he could make room for some new product. I pulled up to the parking lot and found it empty except for one navy mini van. You know, the kind with the sliding side doors that kidnappers use to drag people from the sidewalk into vehicles? To make matters worse, it was parked behind a gate that could only be opened and closed with an electronic code. Once inside the storage centre I would have no way of getting out on my own. Against my better judgement (sorry mom and everyone with common sense), the lure of cheap tile got the best of me and I left the safety of my vehicle to meet the mystery man.

Luckily Collin turned out to be like a caffeinated version of Brendon - super friendly, energetic and incredibly personable. He and a partner started up Cove Finishings - an online company selling high end glass tiles to designers and private homeowners. By avoiding having a storefront (hence the storage locker) they saved the costs of rent and instead could sell a great product for a very competitive price.  After a few visits to his 'display case' we settled on some beautiful mosaic tiles for our kitchen backsplash. 

Brendon and Roger are now pros at putting up tiles and were able to get them installed over Easter weekend. They are pretty spectacular and look really beautiful in the space. Take a look at some of pictures Brendon captured along the way. 

One tip they've discovered in their vast experience: kitchen spatulas are the perfect tool to get grout in small hard to access spaces.

Spontaneous combustion

Did you know that you can burn down your house with nothing but linseed oil? I didn't till this weekend. Diligent as we were to use non-toxic products on our countertop we opted to combine linseed oil and beeswax to polish and seal our countertops. We followed the proper process, soaking a rag with linseed oil and rubbing it into the countertop. We then tossed the rags in the corner of our kitchen. The next day we walked into the kitchen and noticed a really strong smell of linseed oil. At first we just thought it was the countertop off gassing. But then Brendon noticed something strange. One of the rags had been perched on top of Styrofoam packaging and it had melted a hole in the material. Brendon snooped around further and opened up one of the rags. Low a behold it was almost entirely charred in the center.

So why did this happen? Apparently if I had called my grandparents I probably could have gotten the answer pretty quickly. Years ago linseed oil was really the only product available to keep wood surfaces polished and protected. It was commonly know that rags soaked with oil should always be stored outside in addition to being laid out flat. The reason? The drying process for the oil is one of oxidation. This is an exothermic reaction which basically means that by using oxygen it creates heat, which in some cases may result in spontaneous combustion. So a warning to all you guys: just because it's natural doesn't mean it's not dangerous. Always make sure you know how to dispose properly of the product you use!

2 months, 11 people and 1 beautiful countertop

• Quinton and Harry from Greenworks helped us get the countertop across the border from Hoquiam.
• Pete from Sip Distribution held it in his warehouse for a month while we got the kitchen cabinets done.
• Gavin Scorer the exceptional cousin helped move the 400 pound slab from the warehouse to our home.
• Roger, Erin, neighbours Andy and Ian, Brendon and Gavin carried the paperstone into the garage.

And most importantly - Brent and Chris took on the challenge of cutting, finishing and installing the our beautiful countertop. 

Even though it was possible to cut the paperstone with woodworking tools, it was not an easy feat. It took a lot of muscle and sweat, not to mention two full days of work. But the finished result speaks for itself. The product is beautiful and it was made all the more so because of the exceptional craftmanship of Brent and Chris. Thinking of paperstone for your next project? Call these guys for the job - 604-338-7570.