Topics include:
Green Roofs
Sustainable Building
Light and Heat

All the details can be found here.

Before

During

After

We still aren’t quite there yet, but our neighbours hate us a bit less now (we hope).

Doing the research you find lots of happy stories, and lots of horror stories about contractors.  And the only consistent aspect is that it’s usually impossible to tell what you’re in for till you’re in it.  Scary when you’ve got tens of thousands of dollars as well as months of serious preparation on the line.

One of the folks I’m considering using is making me a bit nervious now.  Adimittedly, I’m probably over reacting.  Still, we haven’t even signed anything yet and he has postponed a meeting 3 times and then promised to get information to me by Sunday night which he hasn’t.  That and the fact that I thought our last I thought that meeting was to sign contracts and set dates, but he wasn’t quite ready yet.

These are fairly trivial, but I’m always looking out for early signs of trouble.  Like I said though, I’m probably over reacting.  But in the spirit of a good blogger, I’m trying to capture some of the raw feelings in renovating, as they happen.

To start off, here is a list of all the stuff you should bring:

1. A step ladder. This is important to comfortably reach the top of the window to remove the shims, nails, and/or screws.  If the window uses iron weights you will be able to comfortably undo the knots that hold them, rather than reach up draining the blood from your hands and arms when you need it most.
2. A tall ladder. You’re probably going to have to pull some of the trim on the outside.
3. Cats claw. You’re going to be busting up later, pulling out lath, and prying off layers of wooden trim, and this is a whole lot better than a crowbar.
4. Hammer.
5. Small putty knife.  I say small because the smaller knife surface will give you more leverage as you use it to pry apart tight spots.
6. Masking tape.  You won’t remember what goes where, so use masking tape to write labels on absolutely everything you touch.
7. Permanent marker. No point in writing a label if you can’t read it later.
8. Safety glasses. There’s going to be a fair amount of debris, some of it coming from the top of the window right in your face.
9. Face mask. You’ll want to keep the debris out of your lungs as well as out of your eyes.
10. Gloves.  Unless you’re hands are already made of leather, they won’t stand up to all the sharp nail ends, lath splinters, and coarse surfaces.
11. Reciprocating saw.  If you get stuck, this handy device will often be able to cut you out of it.
12. Metal cutting blade. If there are any nails securing the window frame, a metal cutting blade for your reciprocating saw will go though them like butter.
13. A camera. Helpful to take shots of everything just in case you get messed up later when trying to put it all back together again.
14. Long extension cord.  Just in case there is no power available near the window, and you need that saw to get you out of a jam.
15. A partner. There are times when you need 4 hands and need to be in 2 places at once.  Getting someone to help is just easier.  You won’t need him or her till the very end.
16. Slurpee and a snack. You’ll be doing lots of banging, so you’ll need to keep your energy up so you don’t get tired and wack a thumb or send your hammer through the glass — seriously, bring drinks and a snack.

Now here are the steps I took to remove the window (cleanded up a bit through hind-sight):

1. Break some of the plaster at the top right or left hand corner of the window.  This should allow you to easily get an edge of the catsclaw behind the trim.  Pull gently and slowly.  These nails could be 70 years old.  The trim boards will be pretty long, so they’ll be fairly flexible.  Still, don’t try to pull the corner out all the way.  Pull it out a bit, then move down and that out a bit, and work your way across the board.  Then do it again from the beginning, and repeat till the last nail pops.
2. Place each piece on the floor behind you in the same configuration it had on the wall.  Label each piece you remove with a description written on a piece of masking.  Try to you a permanent marker on the tape.
3. Now remove the trim panels covering the spaces between each window panel.  In my case I had 3 window panels, and so 2 trim panels.  This will expose all of the counter weights.  We’ll deal with them a bit later.
4. Remove the lath and plaster from behind the trim you just removed from around the window.
5. Close all of the window sashes — unless you want them to crash when you remove the counter weights.
6. Remove each of the iron counter weights.  That can take time.  The cords are likely very stiff, and very grimy.  There will be 4 for each window panel.  Each window panel has an upper and lower sash (hence the term double-hung), and each sash has a counter weight on the left and right.  These weights are what hold the sashes in place when you open them.  I had a total of 12.
7. Now you need to remove the lower sashes.  There will likely be a thin strip of trim on the right and left side of the sash.  each strip will be nailed into the frame.  These strip hold the sash in place while you open and close it.   These strip will also likely be sealed to the frame by several layers of paint.  Use the edge of the putty knife to score through the paint.  Score several times, but not too hard because you don’t want to damage the wood.  You just want to get through the pain so you can work the putty knife between the strip and the frame.  Once you’ve got that, work very slowly and carefully with the putty knife to pry the strip away from the frame.  Remember, you’re fighting both nails and age old paint.  And also remember that this strip is probably very thing, and too much muscle will easily snap it.  Pull out the knife and score the paint a little more if its giving you trouble.  Once you can fit the catsclaw in without forcing it, you can use both the putty knife and catsclaw to pry the stip off.  You only need to remove 1 strip for each sash.
8. With the strips removed, pull the sash cord through the pully and pops out the side of the sash where you just removed the strip.  This should require next to no effort.  Repeat for each bottom sash.
9. Removing the exterior trim is going to be hard.  This is the stuff that has been exposed to elements for longer than you’ve been alive — probably longer than your parents have been alive.  The nails will be big and rust, and some of the wood may have almost fused together.  Depending on the kind of trim it may be easier to push it out.  What I mean is that the back of the exterior trim should be open to you because you removed the lath and plaster from around the window.   Take a peice of wood about 1 foot long.  One of the old lath pieces might work, but a 2×4 would be better.  From the inside start at the bottom of top of the trim, placing the wood peice on backside of the trim and hammer away it.  This should loosed the trim without damaging it.  This should give your catsclaw enought space to get in and pry.  Be careful, the exterior trim wood could also be brittle, so it you want to keep it pry only a little at a time.
10. Almost there.  At this point your window should be open to the outdoors almost the entire way around.  It will likely be secured by both shims and nails.  It might be easiest to remove the shims by going outside and knocking them back in.  This may take a lot of muscle.  Carefull not to loose your grip and break a window.  You will likely only need to remove the top shims.
11. Get someone to hold the window.  While it should be completely level, this is the point where you’re going to release it, and it may fall in or out.  Use a flashlight to see where the nails are securing the bottom of the frame.  Then use your reciprocating saw with a 4+ inch long metal cutting blade to slice off all the nails hold the bottom.  You’ll be surprise how easy this is.  Cut through any nails on the sides, and then top if there are any.
12. Now with your partner try to lift the entire window frame to make sure it is completely released.  If it won’t budge make sure you removed all the top shims, and make sure you cut all the nails.
13. Before moving the window frame notice that the window sills both inside and out are wider than the hole in the wall.  In other words, you can just tip the window pull.  First lift it slightly, and then shift it either left of right as far as it will go.  This should be enough to get the edge of the sill on the other side passed the wall opening.  Pull that side in the house, and then pull the other side in.
14. Ta Da!  You’re done.  Now you just have to get that thing home, clean it up, strip it, satin or paint it, replace the cords, fix the damage, mount it in your wall, and replace all the peices.  Ah, but its all worth it… hopefully.

I’d the say the hardest, and most time consuming thing has been the design.  There are so many options available.  So many it’s almost paralyzing.  Over the past year I’ve been chipping away at it in Sketchup.  I’ve gone through dozens of different designs, and probably hundred of minor variations.

Acting as the general contractor has taken a lot of my attention too.  After get a few sporadic quotes over the past year for a thing here and a thing there, I got serious about 6 weeks getting quotes for labour and materials.  We’re now just starting to make specific choices, lay down the credit card, and commit to dates with people.

6 weeks isn’t bad, but since I run my own company I’ve been able to take time away from my work for this.  If I had a 9-to-5 I’m not sure it would be possible–at least not possible for the first time.  After we’re all finished though, and have learned so much, I’m pretty confident if we do this again I can probably get the entire project organized and underway in about 3 weeks without even taking much time from my real work.

So far our ad-hoc process for renovating this old house has gone something like this:

• Contact kitchen designers, and find ourselves disgusted by the idea of paying $150/hour for some one with a specialized but relatively simple domain expertise.  We decide to design it ourselves
• Designing ourselves with the help of Sketchup is slow going.  Partly because we’re not experienced in kitchen/bath/landscape design, and partly because I’m really busy with real work and can’t devote much attention to this.  We determine $150/hour is an offensive rate for a kitchen designer, but overall would have helped us avoid many headaches and got things going faster.  However we’ve gone too far ourselves now and won’t bail.
• With design complete we determine how long we can live with the chaos of renovation.  About 6 weeks seems to be what we’re comfortable with.  After that the microwave lunches and eating out will start getting a little old.
• Early July we make a rough list based on the design of all the jobs that need to be done, and which trades we need to call
• Mid July, and with the help of the yellow pages and the BBB site I start contacting contractors.  This yields very slow progress.  The Internet is of no help, and searching it to find good contractors ends up being more of a time sink than anything else.  There seems to be a ratio of thirds.  Call 3 contractors, 1 will respond; with 3 responses 1 is worth considering.  In other words you’ll have to speak with at least 9 contractors to find one you like.  Multiply that by the number of different jobs you need done.  That’s a lot of calling.
• Calling is a complete pain in the ass.  You’ll call and sometimes you’ll get someone, sometimes you won’t, and sometimes you’ll get voicemail.  I found that I almost always had to followup more than once to actually get the quote.  Often I’d have to make several calls.  The supply and demand ratio is not on our side right now.
• What turns out to be helpful is asking some of the contractors who do one thing, who they’d use to do something else.  This seemed to connect me to more available contractors more quickly and accelerated things.
• I visited lighting, window and eco material stores.  Yes I spent some time at Home Depot and Rona, but more from price and availability benchmarking than actual shopping.
• After 6 weeks of sourcing contractors and materials I had enough information and quotes to start deciding on who I’d like to work with.
• And now I’m just about ready to pull the trigger and break ground on this renovation.

That’s the process so far.

We want to open it up with a single large window centered between two pantries with bench storage just beneath it.

We got a couple quotes from Heritage Windows and Home Depot that were really high — like over $5000 high.  After calling around a bit more to places like Marvin Windows and Pella, I got prices around $1500 for the window itself and another $1700 or so for installation.

Obviously these would be new, energy efficient windows with all the handy hardware.  But they would be new windows, made in a factory according to a strict template.  In other words, we could choose the size, color and material, but that would be all.  This was a problem because all the frames I saw were simply too decorated and wouldn’t quite match the rest of the house.

But sometimes you just stumble on things, and the plan changes.

This past weekend we took a drive out to UBC.  Normally we take King Eddie, but like nearly every other major east-west road, it is now under construction.  So instead we took 33rd, which is somewhat less convenient.  Just as we passed Arbutus, Lola saw a giant spray paint sign that said “Demo Sale”.

We pulled over and wandered in the house to take a look.  It’s took bad they’re demolishing the place, becuase it looked like it was really nice once upon a time.  However, decades of mistreatment from being partitioned into several rentals has pushed it beyond repair.  Their loss is our gain.  Everything was for sale.  Windows?  Yes.  Doors?  Yes.  Everything.

So for about $200 we pickup a 3 paneled, double hung period windows that will just barely fit the space we have.

Sure we have to take them out ourselves, but that extra $1500 in our pocket should make us feel better.

They have a door and some hardwoord flooring that we might also pick up.