The basement bathroom has no window to the outside, so we framed two openings at the top of the wall to install some of those used glass blocks I bought off Craigslist about three years ago. (I installed glass block sidelites by the front door and learned a few things.) I read in a popular home decor magazine that glass block is no longer trendy, but I don’t care. I love the light effects day and night, inside and out, and the slightly green/turquoise tint.

1. We lined the opening with painted wood. A plastic floor guide was screwed into the bottom of the frame.

2. The blocks have been stored outdoors, so needed scrubbing to clean off the old paint or mortar and leaves, etc.

3. Special glass block mortar mix

4. When mixing this fine, corrosive powder, wear a mask and use gloves. This is the main lesson I learned from last time – don’t use bare fingers, because your hands will suffer all sorts of injury/pain.

5. Add acrylic (Weldbond glue) to the water to increase strength and adhesion.

6. Add liquid to powder (about 1:5). Mix thoroughly.

7. Our mortar mix had absorbed some humidity over time, so the hard lumps had to be removed and discarded.

8. The right consistency is dry-looking, and falls off the trowel in one big lump.

9. Gloves, tools, equipment are cleaned in a bucket. Mortar mix in your sink will harden and plug the drain eventually. Bucket dumped outside when done.

10. Apply the mortar in a generous layer on the bottom and sides of the opening, Then, “butter” the glass block itself before placing it into position.

11. The mortar wants to slide off the block, so I use the trowel and my fingers to push it firmly into the spaces. This is messy work, with lots of mortar falling to the floor and getting on every nearby surface.

12. Once the block and mortar is in place, check level and plumb. Make adjustments where necessary. I used some plastic spacers as “convincers.”

13. I used blue masking tape as an edge guide on the inside. It kept the painted wood clean, too.

14. Brick ties nailed onto sides to strengthen the row.

15. After a couple of hours, clean excess mortar and smooth joints with a well-squeezed mason’s sponge. Rinse sponge often, and buff with a soft dry cloth.

The end result

(Thanks to Tess for assistance with photos.)

And, an add-on: I have trimmed the openings with wood and paint. It looks much better, don’tcha think?

Outside trim

Wood trim inside

Although our basement guest bathroom is not complete, we have started the finishing on our little loft “powder room,” above.

I want it to be funky and interesting, not so sophisticated as our other bathrooms. The nice thing about bathrooms is you don’t necessarily have to coordinate them with the general interior, because the door is usually closed. You can have a little decor-fest in there on its small canvas, so to speak.

I was casting about in tile stores for a starting place, but not having any luck. Then, while trolling Craigslist one day, I saw these vintage 18″ wooden Chinese tiles.

They are hand-painted with some kind of embossing material, on 1/8″ mahogany veneer, and the Chinese characters in the medallion part read a general good fortune, according to the woman who sold them to me. She had three different designs, and these were the brightest. They provided my colour inspiration.

The orange is called “Devilish”, and the gold is called “Wheat”, both Beauti-Tone semi-gloss from Home Hardware. The orange took four coats to cover, the gold just two.

I thought about applying the tiles as a border above counter height, all around the small room (3′x7′), but I really wanted to use them on the floor. They would not be durable. The paint would rub and chip off in no time, and the veneer would delaminate.

How to make them durable? Epoxy! I remember how expensive the two-part coating was when D was building a cedar-strip kayak. But, I found some at Home Depot, sold as a kit for faux-finishing countertops to look like granite.

I have also seen it used over pennies on a kitchen countertop.

So, confidently (read: blindly), I started:

1. D glued, then screwed down a half-inch plywood sheet over the existing 3/4″ sub-floor, to make a more solid base.

2. I fitted, trimmed, and auditioned the tiles, drawing the placement lines onto the plywood.

3. Using a trowel-on adhesive designed for parquet, I applied each tile along my drawn lines.

It immediately became apparent that the edges were distorting and lifting in a completely unpredictable manner. I think the bare wood on the back of the tile was absorbing the moisture, and warping against the finished top, which did not absorb any moisture. What to do????  Send D on a hunt for heavy things to weigh down the tiles. I only applied half the tiles the first day, partly because I was not at all sure this adhesive was going to work. In the morning, I removed the weights, and the tiles were solidly stuck.

So, I applied the rest, piled on more weights, and even stood/sat on the edges for maybe a total of an hour.

D declined my invitation to enter my personal pub and stand at the “bar” to drink a pint! I had to drink alone in my little room, but could just see his movie if I peered around the corner, so the time passed, as time does. The adhesive set for 24 hours.

I wiped and vacuumed the tiles in preparation for the epoxy.

4. The epoxy comes in two parts. The activator (part “B”) is added to the base (part “A”), and thoroughly mixed for 3 minutes. There is no measure on it, to allow me to mix 1/2 the epoxy. I wasn’t sure what the coverage would be (packaging claims 30 square feet, but no thickness was indicated, and I knew I would need at least 1/16th to 1/8th of an inch to cover the embossing.) And remember that I was doing this blindly, no experience, just as I do most of my jobs here. I would have liked to try a sample tile first, but had no idea if I would have enough to do the whole job. The working time of the epoxy is only 30 minutes, tops. I just had to dive in.

5. The epoxy is poured onto the tiles,

then brushed into the embossing to fill the gaps.

I cursed the dog (yet again!) because she is copiously shedding these days (and winter’s coming – go figure.) I have NO IDEA how those 40 or so hairs migrated into the epoxy as I applied it, and I continued cursing while I messily scraped the hairs up.

For her part, she just grabbed one end of the toilet paper and had her way with it.

6. There was just enough to cover the floor and two more tiles for spares (a total of 26 square feet.)

By the end, I was sweating like a horse, partly from anxiety. Imagine tearing it all out if it didn’t work.

It needs to dry/cure for 72 hours, but then should be very durable.

Stay tuned for the next funky-bathroom-in-progress post. No one knows how this will end, including me. If that epoxy caper hadn’t worked out, I’d have to go to Plan B, and there is no Plan B.

D has finished shingling the house. I am mightily impressed, and it looks fantastic. I estimate the area covered is 2500 sq ft.

We used 103 bundles of shingles. Each bundle is supposed to cover 25 sq ft, and 4 bundles-worth is called a “square,” so we used 26 squares. We got the shingles from Craig’s List and various other sources, at an average cost of $20.89 per bundle (including any taxes). Total cost of shingles: $2152.

There are an average of 100 shingles in a bundle.

So, the number of shingles on this house is… wait for it… 10,300!

D used the “heritage-style” spacing (5.5″ between courses) and overlapping corners (not trimmed with a vertical board at the house corners)  It’s a more traditional look, but takes more care and time.

I hand-dipped the shingles into the semi-transparent stain. I used ten 18.9 litre buckets of stain, or approximately 1.8 litres per bundle. Total cost of stain: $1852.

Total cost of shingles and stain: $4004. Not included: staples and rainscreen (dimple board).

Some months ago, we picked up 94 lineal feet of wrought iron fencing (Craigslist – Langley). It was heavy, but the Toyota was up to it. With helpful strong men (and one woman) we moved it to the house, then to the sand-blaster, then to the studio roof, then to the grassy knoll by the garden. You’re getting a picture that this stuff is being shoved around, with some effort and expense. Finally, this week, the rusty-again wrought iron has been extricated from the weeds, and pressed into its second life as our garden fence. Here’s the “Before” photo:

A careful plan was drafted to use the fence to its maximum. I designed, ordered, and painted, and D installed 14 post brackets and posts alongside the garden’s perimeter box.

Kim, the welder, adjusted the posts for plumb with plastic shims and set screws in the brackets. Then, he cut and welded the sections according to my plan. That took him about 12 hours. This is all the railing that was left over:

I treated the rust with Rustmort (above), let it do its chemical thing for 24 hours, then rinsed the fence panels. (1.5 litres of Rustmort.)

Next, a rather painstaking primer application.

By trial-and-error, I learned a few techniques. Regular nap rollers do not bend around the twists and curlicues. I found that the cheap foam roller got around the curves much better, but lasted about 2 minutes:

I have read that a tube sock over a rubber glove is a good way to paint wrought iron. But…messy.

Then, because the stores were closed by this time, I found a piece of (free) foam in my art supplies. I scrunched it up, dipped it into the primer and it worked great. It held lots of paint and got into those small spaces.

Then, a thick coat of paint with a water-based rust paint. Because the paint was thinner than the primer the foam roller and an ordinary brush worked better.

It took me a whole week of 12-hour days to paint the wrought iron, and I am soooo tired of painting. (Quantities used: 2.5 litres primer and 3 litres paint.)

Kim and Dave lifted the sections into place, and hung them on a clamped-on bracket to tack then weld the sections to the posts, taking great care not to step on the plants.

This photo shows the majority of the railing installed.

The pole beans and sunflowers will be very happy to have a fence to finally climb/grow against:

I know we should have installed the fence BEFORE planting the garden, but time happened to be marching on.

And, by the way, would you like to see one of our cauliflowers?

We have already harvested 2 broccoli, all our spinach and most of the lettuce, swiss chard, and given away those plus cilantro and parsley. I’m loving the organic pest-free garden (the pests haven’t discovered it yet.)

Update July 22: The cabbageworm found the brassicas after all! I deleafed them and crushed the larvae, as well as harvesting most of the broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. The threat seems abated.

Also today, Kim the welder finished installing the railing.

Because we are at the finishing stage, inside especially, my posts are drifting from general to specific/decorating. But we are still keeping the “green” criteria at “top-of-mind.”

For example:

After I broke the very bottom glass block beside the door, D spent a good hour gouging/breaking it out. It took me a few weeks to get rid of the taste of fear to replace it. The glass blocks are in their third life (Craigslist), so I still have several. But, stuffing that black mortar into the spaces around the bottom block still took this amateur a few messy hours. It allowed D to apply our finishing trim yesterday, which is re-purposed fir flooring that had lost too much tongue & groove to use for the floor.

What a difference trim makes.

And then, there’s the insomnia/snoring nook, otherwise known as a window seat. Both of us suffer from insomnia on (rare) occasions. We asked the architect to design an alternate place to sleep/read for those times.

D built a box. I faced it with more scraps of that now-famous fir flooring.

I covered a foam mattress that had been kicking around with this fabric called “flying carpet.” It looked like an old-fashioned train-booth fabric, so we carried the theme to the curtains, which are made from a hemp fabric. My in-house design consultants, Nancy and D, suggested the red fabric could make a good border right around the opening, and I think it is perfect. Without the red trim, the hemp fabric would look bland.

The charcoal cushions are salvaged from the couch that floated away in the condo flood.

Bedding is zipped into the two neck rolls I made out of the leftover fabric.

Above the nook, an 80-year-old Egyptian applique that I purchased at Toronto’s Textile Museum (I love this understated place) many years ago. I’ve been looking for the perfect location to display this piece ever since I bought it.

This is much more fun than cleaning up drywall dust.

Into the studio I take you, where yesterday we started applying the wall finish. Recall that we built with insulated concrete forms. This form construction retains the styrofoam on both the outside and inside, so the finish is screwed to the vertical plastic nailing strips imbedded in the styrofoam every 8″.

Most builders apply drywall. Because this is a studio where things will need to be hung from the wall, I sourced (through Craigslist) used commercial slot wall from a film production studio. It’s in great shape and cost 1/5th of its retail price. They threw in 8 boxes of hanging hardware for free (I donated most of them to the Restore.)

Susan and Ken came to visit just in time to help us cut and lift those heavy boards and screw them into the wall. It’s an unusual finish, but I like it! The little mouse family is no more, I’m afraid. But the studio smells so much better.

I have made reference to the quotation difficulties in dealing with a door supplier on the Sunshine Coast. I gave up on him and ordered the bifolds and pocket door slabs we still needed (after several months of combing the Habitat for Humanity Restores for used) from DoorExpress, a company in Richmond, BC.

DoorEx is one of the local suppliers who advertise on CraigsList under the Materials For Sale heading. They and a couple of other door companies contravene CL rules about no commercial advertisers and advertising too frequently (considered spam.) Angry postings over these contraventions have added a certain “energy” to my shopping for used building materials. Accusations are made about cheap Chinese-made doors that fall apart.  I, too, am irritated by constant, ridiculous postings.

Nevertheless, I went shopping at DoorEx, eventually getting made-to-order-locally, stain-grade (i.e. very beautiful clear grain wood) hemlock doors. Hemlock has a very similar grain to the fir we wanted, but has some characteristics that reduce its attraction: it stains quite a different colour (no warm golden glow as with fir) and it splinters very easily.

The doors were not particularly inexpensive, and looked beautiful before I stained them. I sanded them first.

But, after staining, I saw the imperfections: darker areas that looked like drips of extra stain, lighter areas that must have been glued areas, and very uneven stain slashes. This is not good quality construction, and I feel ripped off.

To their credit, however, their sales staff is attentive, cheerful and helpful. They didn’t over-package the doors for shipping (just recyclable cardboard). They delivered a couple of weeks later than they promised, but we weren’t really in a hurry.

Remember the old post 3) Sourcing used building materials?

“Free to a good home – one plank. It’s a big one – 2 1/4″ thick x 16″ wide x 12′ 7″ long. This was found in the basement of our circa 1920’s home when we moved in and it looks like it is just about that old. Nice straight grain, wood species unknown. Suitable for miscellaneous wordworking projects, or perfect for a pirate, if your ship is currently plank-less and you have a prisoner that you want to get rid of but are stuck due to your current lack of a plank. It’s leaning up outside the house and has to go ASAP. A smaller version is also available – 5′ long, perfect for your pirate dinghy. Pickup only, sorry – no mooring nearby.”

Before and After Pirate Plank

Well, that not-so-lovely pirate plank we got on craigslist has turned into a swan of an elegant eating bar.

The foreground flooring has been refinished.

I have shared the how-to’s about our re-used heritage fir flooring here.

And, the professional re-finishing here.

Pre-finish (top) and finished (bottom)

Now, I can report a minor miracle: we have finished the main floor flooring installation.

The "Before" photo

The "middle" photo

The "After" photo. No dog is allowed for four days unless she wears socks.

Over the course of the approximately 100 hour job (x2 of us), I nervously husbanded the fir strips I bought through craigslist for an average of $2/square foot, saving the longest pieces (up to 200″) for the last room. (FYI, the refinishing cost was about $3/square foot.)

Here, D is applying what we call "Ikea" wood, because it's so clean and perfect. Unfortunately, the pieces are all short, but they piece together smoothly.

Hundreds of lineal feet had to be cut off and discarded (or ripped for window/door/shelf trim) because they wouldn’t make a sound floor. A few pieces wouldn’t fit into the tongues of any previously-installed boards, so were junked. A whole batch had boards that were 1/8″ too thin to use. The area of coverage was about 950 square feet. I estimate we collected close to 1500 square feet before trimming and culling, from five different batches.

Yet, I can report that we had JUST ENOUGH! Here’s a photo of the dribs and drabs that remained at the end. That was cutting it close.

D and I did a little dance when the last 3/4″ strip was nailed in. What a feeling of accomplishment we enjoyed.

This advertisement in House and Home magazine shows an elegant dining room with floors more rustic than ours, before refinishing. Maybe we should have left it that way if we want to be fashionable.

Our old fir flooring is undergoing its first sanding. The various stains are lifting right off.

I’m so excited about the floor refinishing.

Jade starts with 36 grit sandpaper on this huge belt sander, going with the grain. (The photo shows about 5 minutes-worth of sanding.) It is loud, but doesn’t produce  a cloud of saw/stain-dust, as the bag collects it all (two bags-full on the bedroom floor with the first sanding.) The uneven board heights are sanded off, but any cracks between the boards are now more visible because of the contrast between the “new” wood and the shadow.

He then goes to 60  grit, and sands across the grain. Then 100 with the grain again.

The orbital edge sander gets all the edges, and produces more dust.

This is the final sanding machine. It has a drywall-type pad on it, not sandpaper, per se.

Then, with a different large orbital machine, he goes to about a 200 grit pad.

Jade is using a Bona commercial satin finish. First, he seals it. Then, it dries overnight, before the first of three coats of the finish.

He uses an applicator that doesn’t leave brush strokes. Each coat dries in 4-5 hours. It smells a bit like ammonia while it’s drying, but odorless when dry. Curing takes a week. The wood will be dented first before the dog’s claws scratch the finish. In other words, the finish is harder than the fir. We have had her claws trimmed.

We can see more of the imperfections now, and that is just fine with us. It’s beautiful!

Too many photos???