projects on the go
This is a house built in 1906 at 1403 3 Ave. N., Coalbanks (later to become Lethbridge), AB, Canada. It was the same year the Lethbridge Viaduct (commonly called the High Level Bridge) was built. It is one of the only two-storey houses built in the area. It’s been added on to four times but still maintains close to its original look. I bought the house in Dec. 2021 as a rental property. It has a 3-bedroom suite on the main floor and a one-bedroom suite on the second. This blog is an account of all that we (FT and I) have done to make it rentable. Read about the main or 2nd floor (“up”) by going to that category. Comments are welcome (but moderated)!
I wasn’t supposed to come in today as I had other obligations, but I was called away to a sewer problem at another property. In my spare time between tasks, I came here. Light duties today.
I found out why the kitchen light only sometimes worked. Here was the pattern:
bedroom light turned on
There was a rather unattractive pile of seemingly junk lumber stacked outside the back door while we worked on the mudroom. I restacked and organized it all in the front porch (sunroom). It is all usable.
Many of them have yet to be de-nailed.
The day started at 7:30 with a trip to Home Depot to get some screws for the ceiling fans. Costco is close by. Their parking lot has tall grass shrubs. This is what I would like for the boulevard to dress up the front of the house.
The boulevard is covered in weeds. I would like to plant some of the same blue flowers (a wild flower) that both neighbours have, some sunflowers, and a type of tall bushy grass (I see these in the Costco parking lot). I also trimmed one of the trees.
But the priority for my time is getting the house suites complete. The outside will have to wait.
As none of the weeping tile, run-off mitigation, waterproofing, etc. has been done yet, the heavy rains in the past few days have caused some difficulties.
The mudroom leaks. None of the flashing or sealant between the four-square house and the mudroom has been replaced yet, so the mudroom leaks.
Is today the day the welding actually starts? I’ve got my 5th or so draft of the staircase completed.
We’ll see.
The new shower stall base was put in, and the back and side walls were added. The results: The house is still crooked.
As Dave would comment, “It’s built like a pig barn.”
The only solution is to continue raising the add-on (pig barn) to be level with the remainder of the house. You can’t have plumb, level, square, and straight in an old house, so I’m told. There’s always going to be one or more of those missing from the equation. In this case:
Next step: Jack the add-on and east side of the house until it is level with the west half. There can be no progress in the eastern half of the house until this is done.
I, Floyd, and Dave are back at it again. We are removing the north retaining wall to get at a notched rotten beam. This means shovelling more dirt, removing bits and pieces of retaining wall and three posts, and hauling out buckets of dirt. Now you see it, …
… now you don’t.
We found, upon trying to build 2×6 fire-rated load-bearing walls, that there was nothing to set the walls upon. The floor is rotten. I’ll have to dig deeper, tearing up the floorboards, to see how far the rot goes.
In the mean time, we put up the 2nd wall (a 2×6 wall). It was moved from its original spot about 9 inches to the west to be placed under (not beside) 1st storey ceiling / 2nd storey floor joists. Well that’s a novel idea, eh?, supporting overhead joists with load-bearing walls! Can you hear the annoyance in my typing?
We filled the hole that the furnace people drilled in my floor.
The headers await support.
Supports almost ready.
