The Hard Part Begins

   So here we are in the Big Smoke. We returned from Kelowna early Tuesday morning and headed to our next house sit where we'll be until Thursday. This time we're in a picturesque neighbourhood in the west end of Toronto right by Lake Ontario.

  It's what Penny and I call a "pokey" house. It's small and fairly crowded and not very well equipped. It's owned by a woman who doesn't live here and currently occupied by her divorced boyfriend and his dog while she lives in an apartment downtown. Don't ask. He's away in Vegas for ten days so we have the dog.

  It's easy to tell a single man lives here. There's no food to speak of in the fridge, no real cooking equipment, the oven barely works, etc. We're making do with it as we're not here long but it only took two hours for this place to supplant the house in Mobile as the worst one we've stayed in over the past year and a half. At least the dog is cool.

  Scout is a border collie mix who will chase balls endlessly, as they do. His ears are up in this picture because he thinks a ball is coming his way. Happy guy. The house backs onto a waterfront park that connects to Toronto's Waterfront Trail so lots of places to walk here.

  The views are beautiful and it's a fairly interesting area so it's a nice spot to land if you ignore the house. We're about forty-five minutes to Newmarket so it's not crazy far. It's about the same to Bradford, which leads me to the "hard part" in the title. As I've mentioned previously, we're here this fall because I'm helping David build out his basement living space. In order to do that there's demolition to do first and, since David hasn't had time to do any of it, I recruited my favourite breaker of things, Jen, to help.

  There are no "before" pictures to show so imagine there's this big room where a woodstove used to sit. If you're familiar with woodstoves you'll know they need to be surrounded by fireproof wall and floor materials. The previous owners decided, for reasons unknown, that "fireproof" meant "bombproof". Also, for reasons unknown, they decided the stove should be elevated eighteen inches above the basement's concrete floor. At this point it's important to know our suspicion this guy (it's a guy because a woman would ask how to do it properly so would not end up with such a monstrosity) was in construction as he had access to a raft of building materials.

  He started by building a clay brick wall, six feet down each of the corner walls, floor to ceiling. Then he placed concrete blocks, laid flat, over a six-by-six foot quarter-circle in the corner. Atop this he poured two and a half inches of concrete. On top of that he laid two layers of the same clay brick. To finish it off he took more of the clay brick, laid on end, and built an apron around the front face of this agglomeration to try and make it pretty. If you're doing the math that's about three cubic yards of brick and concrete just to have a fireproof spot for the wood stove. Extreme overkill? Given all he needed to do was tile about a hundred square feet of wall and floor, I think maybe yes.

  Remember David Letterman's "stupid pet tricks"? My late friend, John, who ran the building inspection department in a large suburb of Toronto, constantly came across stupid homeowner tricks and told me about them over a beer. I would ask why they did the stupid thing (because I needed to know) and he would say with a sad smile, "Why is hard." Well, the thing in David's basement was a stupid homeowner trick. Why was hard.

  So, after pulling down the drywalled ceiling so I can do some re-wiring next week, Jen and I went to work demolishing the equivalent of a small house's worth of foundation material. For those of you in the studio audience who wonder why we go to the gym... (make sure you turn up the sound for the whole effect)

  Jackhammer, sledge hammer, crowbar and broken fingernails were all employed in the task but, together, we beat the bastard. This is a small sample of the debris field.

  We could have used this as a first responder training centre. David already has a collie so we could ask Daisy if Jimmy was in the well. Look it up if you just got that "what the hell is he talking about" look on your face. Completely exhausted we left David and his friend Luke to clean up the mess.

  They did a great job and now it's on to removing the raised floor and a couple of walls this week before I start building. I'm feeling like it might be time to buy the economy size bottle of Advil...

  After Thursday we'll be back at Jen's for a bit then back downtown to a condo in the heart of Toronto's waterfront area before we head off to a house in Toronto's east end where we'll be until the end of the year. The plan is to have David's basement completed by December so Penny and I can head off to sunnier climes for the winter. That's the plan... we'll see how it goes.

  Stay tuned as I'll keep you all posted on the renovation as we turn this sow's ear into a silk purse.

Cheers!