poplar road

Here are the remaining photos from the long weekend renovations. I've been sick this week, so I'm behind… but now I can update you on what Richard has been doing all week.

To sum up, here was the great room by dinnertime on Sunday the 10th, after we'd pulled up the carpeting, shoveled most of the underlay off the plywood, taken down the drapes, and peeled off the wallpaper border.

In addition to the great room, we pulled up flooring in the master bedroom and ensuite bathroom (found a hint of '70s red shag!), the stairwell to the basement, and the rec room and basement entryway. And last but not least, we found the source of the horrible stench, in the subfloor of the office (what was known as the sunken livingroom). We made a start in there as well…

Here we have a corner of the master bedroom, followed by the stairs – the black dust from the underlay was everywhere in both areas – and the much improved basement entry.

This past week, Richard pulled up the lino tiles in the remaining two rooms downstairs, which was a little more difficult as the tile was glued down more securely. He also ripped out the twenty foot long hobby room worksurface, a sort of cabinet without cupboards or finished countertop. It will be a while before that room is useable, though, so I haven't bothered with pictures.

Once we realized the source of the stench was the office floor, it was a matter of pulling up the flooring layer by layer, treating it with apple cider vinegar, and hoping that was the end of it. When Richard got a look at the original subfloor beneath the first layer of plywood Chris so enthusiastically ripped up, he was horrified. It was worse than the layer above. Most of that subfloor was black, some of it rotting, and the stain extended the entire width of the room beneath the picture window, plus a few splotches in the centre. And if we were unsure before – there was that large plant in the corner, after all – we were certain now: these were NOT water stains.

The two sheets of plywood the guys had picked up at the hardware store were not going to be enough. With the sun setting our light was almost gone and it was time for the boys to hit the road, so we left it at that. Then yesterday, Saturday the 16th, Richard removed the last of what he called "the entity", by removing the entire subfloor, drywall and insulation (which he did for the entire room as he's going to reinsulate with thicker walls anyway), and treating the remaining essential wood areas with more apple cider vinegar. It turns out the cedar beams sticking out of the stucco to create windowboxes had been letting moisture in, feeding the bacteria and increasing the rot. With that fixed, treated, and sealed, the smell will finally be history. What a relief! I look forward to showing pictures of the transformation soon. It's going to be a great space.

Richard and I see huge potential in our Poplar Road house. Unfortunately, the first impression in 4881 isn’t the looks – it’s the smell. Or more accurately, the stench. When I first saw our house on September 1st, that choking, chemical odour first hit me when I entered the basement, and our initial guess was that cats or dogs must have saturated the concrete and lino tiled rec room. The owner confirmed they kept two dogs in the basement. We expected one of our first tasks would be to clean, deoderize, and seal the basement floor. It was bad, but then, the house had been unoccupied for five months at that point, five very hot summer months. A little fresh air once we took over this month would help.

Sure enough, when Richard got the keys on October 6th and opened the whole place up to the breeze, the basement aired out very well. It hardly smelled at all by the weekend. However, when we arrived on Saturday night and I took a quick peek around before going to bed, I noticed that the upstairs now had that same odour, not as strong as in September, but definitely unpleasant. Kind of disturbing, since the doors and windows had all been open for three days. A windstorm had even yanked one of the French doors off its hinges, and yet the smell in the great room was worse than the rec room below it.

So, when we looked around after lunch on Sunday afternoon, with the sun brightening up the office and great room, and a good breeze to sweep away the sour air, we decided our first task should be the musty upstairs carpeting rather than the basement floor. All the carpeting had to go – I wasn’t going to sleep or work in the house until it was gone – and with Ben and Chris to help, it seemed like an easy chore to give us a sense of accomplishment. We pulled out a few tools and work gloves, and started hauling up the blue industrial stuff in the great room.

Here is a close-up of the previous owners' mystifying choice of carpeting. They must have run out of something – Pergo, carpeting, money, sense – because there was a triangular segment of a different pattern of the industrial blue stuff along the edge of the laminate at the entranceway. Astonishing.

The real surprise, however, was the yellow foam-like substance gluing the carpet to the plywood. When we yanked the carpet back, producing a cloud of dust, the yellow underlay stayed firmly in place. So much for walking around on plywood. And that wasn't the worst of it.

Ben and Chris finished tying up the blue carpet and ripped up the more typical pile carpeting lining the sunken living room which will become my office. In the far corner, where the previous owners had left a large hoya hanging dry, there had seemed to be water damage, and then Ben gave a groan and revealed the stained plywood underneath. No, this wasn't from a leaky plant pot, this was much more potent than that. So this was where the smell came from! Poor Ben singlehandedly rolled up the carpet as I fled the renewed stench. One sheet of plywood was almost black, and this was far stronger than the basement a month ago. We set up both floor fans. Richard then called Ben away to remove the master bedroom carpeting, and Chris took over in the office to remove the strips of carpet nails from the outer edges, since the yellow foam would have to wait for something to scrape it with.

I began removing the drapes, which would need to be cleaned. The bunting went outside to give a flush of pink to our growing trash heap, and the curtains were put out of the way for the time being. Until we're living in the house full time, light and air are better than privacy. Especially air. As Chris helped me pull down the drapes over the gigantic picture window in the office, the smell from the stained plywood was overpowering.

Chris called for the bottle of apple cider vinegar, which according to several pet-owner websites was great for nullyfying urine odours. It did the trick, for a short while, but the drywall along the floor was decayed and Chris suspected the stain went deeper. The wood was almost rotten. We called Richard in from the master bedroom, where he and Ben had begun the equally ugly task of removing the carpet around the ensuite toilet. No doubt about it, the plywood had to come out.

By three o'clock we had one sheet of plywood removed in the office, the offensive carpeting (and the toilet with it) removed in the master bedroom ensuite, drapes tucked away, wallpaper border half gone, and carpet, linoleum, and some lino tiles pulled up in the basement. We also had a lengthy shopping list for a trip to the local hardware store.

I snapped a few photos, and then Chris and I started peeling the wallpaper border from around the ceiling. The paper peeled off quite well as I dug in with my fingernails, starting above the French doors. Ben and Richard headed to the local hardware store in Chase, ten minutes away, and after a few feet of wallpaper, Chris and I took a break for some caffeine and fresh air outside. I couldn't quite believe how much we'd accomplished in such a short time.

When the guys returned from the hardware store, plywood, shovel, screws, drain cover, work gloves (red ones my size!), and snacks in hand, we convened back in the great room to see if the yellow stuff would come off. As I returned to the wallpaper, Ben dug a square-ended shovel into the floor and sloughed off a measely little chunk. But Richard had a grinder, so Ben disappeared into the garage to give the shovel an edge. After a few sharpenings he was making progress. I continued around the room, scattering paper, while Ben took as much of the foam as he could off the floor. The twins took turns with the shovel and the new push-broom, and pretty soon we had a garbage bag full of the stuff. The great room floor will still need to be sanded clean so we can paint it (can't afford to lay wood or tile flooring just yet), but we got the worst of it off.

...Unless you ask me in spring. The change in seasons is what excites me, the storms rattling my living room blinds, the torrential rains, the surprises. Autumn is an excellent time for life changes, ingrained from all those years of “back-to-school” expectations – more so, I think, than the sometimes defeating resolutions of New Year's.

This autumn, unlike most others in my life, is a change of opportunity taken, rather than that inevitable shove forcing me to jump into something new. Having grabbed at this chance to take a new direction, I find myself with more avenues in front of me than I would have thought possible. One of the opportunities that thrills me the most is one of those things that required a huge shove not so long ago: GARDENING.

My mother's garden had very little interest for me growing up, beyond things one could eat from it; I paid little attention to how it all came together (how does her compost work, I have no idea?) and my last memory of actually working in it was trying to hack a thistle out of the ground. The first plants I learned to recognize say it all: dandelion, thistle, johnny-jump-up, horsetail. Weeding seemed to be an excellent reason to leave the gardening to someone else. And even though the book The Secret Garden remains one of my favourite stories, I have never had the slightest urge to grow roses – the idea of learning Cockney was far more interesting.

But where I did pay attention was indoors, with houseplants. And then I discovered as a writer what an asset it is to know the names of these plants, and even more so, outdoor plants. My "garden tours" with writing friends in college days were slow walks through Victoria's residential neighbourhoods to a litany of "hydrangea, azalea, forsythia, camellia..." while my friends made mental notes for later projects. Which required that I go back to my mother and grandmother for more information on this plant and that, time that I'm grateful to have spent with them. Thanks to Mom and Oma, I eventually developed a miraculous thing: a green thumb.

However, proud as I am of my growing collection of houseplants, I can't really claim any gardening ability up to this point. Yes, my orchid survived the awkward "stick" phase and is putting out new roots like a mad thing despite Richard's frequent insults, and I can boast having taken a forced gift shop variety gerbera and made it a regular show on my spring windowsill for four years running. And I have resurrected my 9-year-old ivy, gift of a former roommate who was living with leukemia, from attacks of scale four times. (I had to give up on my roommate, but I will NOT give up on this ivy. It cleanses my rooms of the very toxins that can give one cancer, so it’s fitting that I keep it around.) But let’s be honest, ivy is nearly indestructible unless you forget to water it. And my orchid is listed as “easy” by those in the know. The gerbera may be beginner’s luck. Whether it survives the move to Pritchard or not will probably be dependent on another Sunday morning question period with Mom. In any case, houseplants are one thing, but a plot of land in an unfamiliar climate is quite another.

So that’s the state of my gardening knowledge as I look forward to next spring, when everything in my half-acre or so of garden-friendly yard is going to come under scrutiny. Richard will take care of the fruit trees – if it can fill a pie, he pretty much knows how to care for it – but I’m claiming the rest (whatever doesn’t fall into the “shop” zone), and hoping for some more luck, and a lot of help. The image at right, for example, shows the Granny Smith apple tree, and a weedy rectangle that was formerly a vegetable garden. The only "vegetable" remaining seems to be a large, alien-looking fennel plant in the centre of it. Next year I hope it might boast climbing spinach and zucchini vines, and maybe a row of sunflowers.

It was wonderful to dream as I wandered around our property this Thanksgiving weekend, and photographed the wild and lovely corners of fall colour, fruit and seed, some of which I’ve included here. I hope my houseplants forgive me for having forgotten them for a while. But it’s a long way until spring and I’m not in any hurry.

Here we are just about to set out in the pouring rain with most of our wordly possessions stuffed in the camper, canopy, and trailer. And it took less than 4 hours!

We arrived in Kamloops at about midnight, a full four-hour trip from Burnaby loaded down as we were. Everyone was exhausted, so we put Ben and Chris up in a hotel for the night, and Richard and I arrived at the house at 12:30am. After a rocky night’s sleep in Richard’s trailer we were up early, ready to start unloading stuff into the garage. (The plan was to remove all the carpeting in the house, so we didn’t want to put furniture or boxes anywhere that might interfere with that task.) However, the garage was full of the previous owner’s junk and garbage, so we spent an hour or so cleaning it out while we waited for the twins to join us.

Once we got moving, we had all three vehicles unloaded in an hour and a half. I was amazed... even the boxes which had made an obstacle course of our apartment seemed to disappear into the second spare bedroom, and the main garage had more than enough room for the furniture after we loaded all the tools, sports equipment, Christmas lights and other stuff onto the existing shelving.

The camper fit on the concrete pad in the back yard, and of course Rob had dropped off Mechano on its trailer in the back next to the barn. I wandered around taking pictures, and then we moved the couch and camp chairs onto the front lawn for a lunch break. It was cool and windy but the sun kept coming back, and despite lack of sleep we were ready to tackle the next step of making ourselves at home: the renovations.