Regular readers may be thinking ill of me for not posting. (Or they may be thinking me ill.)

Like many people expressing good intentions this month, I decided to take some time off the green house-building to do some writing and make some art. I can’t show you my writing, but here’s a photo of some ideas I’m pursuing in my fibre art:

At least it’s “green”, because I use the tiniest scraps of leftover fabric to make these confetti trees (local species, in negative.)

This larch is not in negative, however:

So, don’t be mad. The green house-building posts will resume.

A Forest Cabin

Like so many others, I have reviewed my blogging year stats.

Compared with 2010, the number of visits to my site has nearly doubled.

I have averaged one post per week.

The “top fives” lists from my previous post, Blog Statistics (a three month review) are similar to this 12-month review. Readers’ countries are the same. Top referring sites have changed a bit. In addition to the search engines and Facebook, they are now:

A Vintage Green

Miss Mustard Seed

Tantalus Roofing

Fibre Art Network

Eat Logical Sentences

Thank you for providing the links, referrers!

The most popular landing pages:

119) Design/Engineering/Construction of a Rooftop Garden

87) Wall Finish

111) Random Slate Foyer

Rainscreen

52) Rainscreen Airspace Behind Shingles

Spending and Saving

Most bloggers I follow thrive on the interaction with their readers that comments provide. The five posts that gathered the most comments were:

130) A Forest Cabin

153) Driveway

Blog Statistics

Generations

124) Generations

90) Floor

The top cities where my readers are from are still Vancouver (1), Kelowna (2), and Prince George (4), but Haney (5) and (surprise!) Oakville, ON (3rd place – who are you, Oakville?) are now on this exclusive list.

Surrey and the Sunshine Coast are off the top five list.

I’m sure that I find all this much more interesting than my readers do, but if you want to get a little competitive….

And, in any case, Happy New Year!

Wishing you a merry time.

LED lights in carboys

Photo credit: Rafferty Baker

It was a mistake, I think, to look back at our Christmas photos from 2010. In 2010, we made a big push for the holiday, as so many people do when building or renovating a home. The main floor was essentially finished:

Banquette 2010

The living room was furnished.

Bringing in the tree 2010

I thought we worked so hard in 2011, but the photos (of the interior at least) don’t show much of a difference from last Christmas to this. Here are the roughed-in stairs from 2010, though:

Stairs 2010

And, in 2011:

Perhaps the bulk of the work was outside. In any event, to make myself feel better, here’s a small recap of our 2011 progress in photos:

I did the stonework on the entryway pillars:

December 2011

The major hardscaping was done:

Back retaining walls

Front yard

The driveway was poured:

Basement gallery

Finishing trim/built-ins

Funky Powder Room

Basement bathroom

Basement passage

Google Analytics tells me many things about my readers. In the past three months, for example, my top fives:

Referring sites (Thank you!):

A Vintage Green

Tantalus Roofing

Fibre Art Network

Eat Logical Sentences

Canadian Design Bloggers West

Search Keywords:

flexrock paint

mooney wall

action spray foam reviews

flexsnap flextherm

garden boxes

Locations of Visitors:

Vancouver

Kelowna (who are you?)

Sunshine Coast

Surrey

Prince George

(BTW, Haney and Toronto are next, lest you think only BC communities are represented!)

Countries

Canada

US (about 1/2 as many as Canada)

Australia (many fewer, quite a bit of spam coming from here)

India (I gather it’s the source of most of the spam. I get an average of 2 spam/day, and I consider comments that just want to promote their building products to be spam. If they are commenting about my subject in a thoughtful way, I will allow the comment.)

UK

Regular readers will wonder how many posts about tiling Gail can possibly write.

We’ve had a few guests lately, so the demand on our one shower has been high. We decided to prioritize the guest bathroom on our still-two-pages-long job list. I’m doing a post on this bathroom because its design raised some questions about how I might proceed, and I hope it might help someone else with some of these decisions.

Because it’s designed to be a wheelchair-accessible steam shower, the access and water-proofing had to be thoroughly thought out. There is a concrete base, installed by the plumbers, covered by a rubber film, then another layer of relatively dry concrete, sloped to the drain and to the rest of the floor outside the shower.

The second layer of concrete over the rubber dam. You can see how "dry" the mix is.

Two coats of RedGard waterproofing were applied on top of the second concrete and onto the cement-board walls and ceiling, which had been prepared with taping and cement.

The lighter pink is the third coat of RedGard which is still wet.

In corners and whenever air bubbles developed, a third layer of RedGard was applied.

The white bubble-holes had to be re-coated

If this shower leaks, it will be a miracle.

I chose to use mosaic glass and marble tiles to accommodate the sloped shower pan, and large white tiles for the walls and ceiling.

Turns out the glass tiles are very challenging to cut because they crack and splinter. The Home Depot staff had no suggestions on how I might cut them. I took some to the local glass shop, but they couldn’t help me. They did cut a 4″ circle for the drain, which was the biggest hole they could cut, but it wasn’t  big enough, so I had to re-cut as best I could with my wet-saw and angle grinder. I used the electric grinder to smooth the cut edges of the glass. Frustrating indeed. I bought a 1.5″ diamond hole saw for the numerous pipe holes.

So, do I tile the walls first or the floor? In the last shower job, I did the floor first, then slopped the mortar all over, even though I had covered it with cardboard. This time, I decided to start with the second row of wall tiles, and tile up.

Then the floor, then the bottom row of wall tiles to cover the floor tiles.

I’m always thinking of where the water will go: it will slide down the wall and onto the floor, then, obviously, to the drain. I sloped the “floor” of the little shampoo nooks so they won’t collect water.

I had to make oodles of decisions about aesthetics, too – what do we see when we enter the room? On the diagonally-tiled main floor of the bathroom, do I center the floor tiles to the door?

Do I have a flat-cut tile presenting first, or the point of the 12″ tile (bad Feng Shui)?

In the cases where partial tiles must be cut, do I put the partials in the corners, equally divided on each side? Where the tiles’ edges will be exposed, I put the one white-glazed edge facing out. Do I allow any cut edges to be seen, or must they always be concealed by another tile?

When applying the diagonal floor tiles, I  drew a straight line from the center of the door to the shower, then lined up the corners of the tiles along this axis.

Then I drew in the placement for each tile and row of mosaic accents. This took a lot of figuring and careful measuring and squaring, but it still has flaws. Hopefully, our guests will not nit-pick!

I used the white thin-set mortar, because I like the way it keeps the tiles in place and doesn’t allow slippage. (Two 30-lb bags of MegaLite, for 250 sq ft of tile.) Also, the glass tiles are translucent, so a dark mortar would produce a darker effect.

I won’t bore you with a photo after the grouting and sealing is done. But, expect another guest bathroom post when it’s all finished, because I will be re-using some old building materials, and this is, after all, a blog about building green!

My older brother, bless his heart, brought my father over to the house today. It’s Dad’s first visit in the year-and-a-half that we’ve been building. Until recently, we didn’t have the requisite handrails on the stairs to enable him to climb them.

All his life Dad’s been a hobby carpenter, usually building something to lighten the load of a neighbour or friend or relative. At 90 years old, he no longer has the agility to climb ladders or the strength to swing hammers or the balance to read a level. If he could have, he’d have been here to help build, just as he helped build our first house 31 years ago (and in 1985 – the time he broke his back climbing a ladder when helping with our addition.)

As we toured the house, I began to absorb that Dad HAS helped build the house, or at least parts of it. There’s his first woodworking project: a shoe-shine bench he made when he was sixteen.

There’s the maple wardrobe/desk unit he built for our daughter. The record box for D. The pine table he repaired, then gave to us. His and Mom’s first chesterfield suite, recovered by us 25 years ago. The treadle sewing machine cabinet he adapted to fit my modern machine. The notions cabinets and refurbished Home Economics table in the studio. His heavy old Craftsman jointer, which has trimmed plenty of stair risers and window trim for this house.

Then, we reach back another generation, and there are Grandma’s light fixtures from the old ranch fireplace and her Chinese seasons paintings. And now that I come to think of it, I’m sure I inherited some gardening skills from Grandma and my mom. In so many ways, my ancestors are with me, building right alongside, in spirit and in genes.

I really wanted Dad to see this home – partly because I value his opinion about building, and partly because he still has a youthful sense of curiosity about everything. I’m so glad he is still mobile and strong enough to walk under his own steam, and that he is interested. The first question he had was about the bookshelves in the living room. Dad is  a voracious reader, who loves history. I thought this would be the best backdrop for the photo proving that Dad was really here.

Oops!

The last 3 weeks have been busy ’round here. Vincent re-milled and finished the square solid ash table that we picked up at the Sally Ann thrift store. He turned it into our nook table. He also built the nook seating, trimmed it with some leftover flooring scraps, and Tibor upholstered it in Naugahyde, so that it looks like a cafeteria in that corner.

We found some bookcases in Vancouver. They are made (overseas, unfortunately) out of  used pine boards, repurposed as furniture, complete with holes and dents. Placing the 7′ bookcases atop 2′ A/V stands filled the 9′ height. Vincent trimmed and secured them to resemble built-ins.

I spent most of my time tiling, grouting and painting the main floor bathroom, and the plumbers came yesterday to attach all the working bits. Can’t expect guests to have bucket showers, even if they are family!

The family’s here now. We have curtains for doors, and the Christmas gifts have not been made yet, but we’re all just taking it as it comes, eating, drinking, playing games, and just enjoying each other’s company.

The bush tree was cut this morning, and we’re fashioning a stand for it, since we can’t find our usual one.  It’s a test of how livable this home will be. Where do we put the decorations/cards/tree? Where do we hang out? Now I must go out and cut some holly from our tree before it gets dark.

We have necessarily been out of communication with our treasured friends and family as this massive project draws to a close. To those of you reading this, we send our seasonal greetings with a promise to improve our contact soon!