Reconnected

Last Thursday, the big equipment arrived to start digging our hole.

The machine parked in my back yard

The digger driver dude took one look up and saw we had overhead wires servicing our power, cable and telephone. He could work around the power, but they had to cut my cable, and as a result, my internet. So they cut them.


Now, this wasn't that big a deal. I spent the weekend up in Edmonton watching the Indy car race (which I may post about if I get the chance)...

Attacking a corner 

Leaning in

Former F1 driver Reubens Barrichello signing autographs  

The Star Mazda race 

Racing in the rain

Former F1 driver Sebastien Bourdais, plus Justing Wilson

...so missed the majority of the digging of the hole, which apparently only took Thursday afternoon to dig. But I saw the aftermath when we arrived home today.

The hole. The pile of dirt in the background 

Looking into the hole at the sump. Sub-footing gravel appears. 

How the worker dudes get into the hole. Note the pipe.

Looking back at the hole. Foundation forms in place 

The pile of dirt covering my lawn 

The digger that digged it

I'll have to ask my contractor what that pipe is that's sticking out of the wall about half way down. Looks lie it comes out from behind my stairwell, but I'm pretty sure there's no pipe inside the house. Hmmn. You don't suppose it's the route the mice use to get in, do you?

And so it starts

The header on my blog describes us as "two folks... who like to... renovate their house." I'm never sure if we like renovations, but we certainly do them a lot. The latest project officially started yesterday.


For those unfamiliar, this project entails a whole raft of stuff:

1. Expand the basement;
2. Build an addition that expands and moves the kitchen over top of the new basement room;
3. Move the laundry facility upstairs;
4. Re-design the roof drainage to stop leaks in the basement;
5. Re-shingle the roof on the whole house;
6. Replace a failing retaining wall;
7. Fix any other headaches we find. More explanation in a moment.

The official start was yesterday, which was mostly a prep day. We got a dumpster. 

Big. Red. I think my hummingbirds will love it.

I'm surprised we got one biggie and not two small ones. The rule here is that all construction waste has to be separated into woods, metals, etc; there's like 5 categories. Ah, well. Not my problem, I guess.

I asked for the Douglas Fir tree in my back yard to be protected by hoarding so no one hits it and wrecks it. This is what they built:

Hmmmn...

What I'm used to is a box that stands 1'-2' away from the tree on all sides, so that if a large piece of equipment hits it (say, a backhoe, which will be here tomorrow) zero damage is done. Not so much this.

Anyway, one of the worker bees (Michael, whom has worked here before and I'm sure we will see all summer) started the demolition process. Compare this to the first photo in Sunday's post.

Mid tear apart. Windowbox and siding gone. 

Done and cleaned up. Window covered in plywood.

When Michael pulled the eave apart, an old squirrel nest fell out.

Complete with pine cones. Not this season's, or last.

Within hours of all this coming apart, we heard squirrels in the attic. Not surprising, given that there's nothing there to stop them from getting in. They won't last long. Major serious removal of the roof (and other portions of the house they may wish to call home) will start at the end of next week.

Nothing happened today. The backhoe will arrive later tonight or early in the AM to start digging the basement, with concrete pouring to start Monday. Here's hoping he doesn't hit the powerlines on his way in.

As I mentioned, part of this project is to fix any headaches we find. From our leaky roof to more squirrel nests, I'm sure we have our hands full.

A good de-fence

They say that the best offense is a good defense. Today, we de-fenced our property, providing access for the worker bees who will be here starting tomorrow for our renovation.


It wasn't really hard work; we only had to take three sections of fence down, one which was the gate.

The before picture

However, the hot sunny weather of this week gave way today to steady rain and 13°. So after 2 hrs in the garden, we were drenched.

After 

From the alley looking in

Getting the fence posts out was the only hard part. I developed a trick pulling the fence top put in the shed last year (the missing section is visible in this post): drive 2 large lag bolts (huge nails also work) into the base of the post on opposite sides, then use two car jacks to jack the post out of the ground. Because my fence posts are not sunk in concrete, but are just buried in 3' deep holes, they simply jack out of the ground fairly easily.


However, virtually all the fence boards we pulled off were basically rotten. Hint: If you're building a fence using non-pressure treated lumber, you gotta paint the thing.


We are now essentially ready for the big work. The current project schedule says 8 weeks with a finish around Sept 16. Let's see how well it goes. 

7,414 lbs

Our reno starts Monday. We have three things to do to get ready for Monday, then some more for the rest of the job. Our first was easy; clear out the window box in the kitchen that will disappear early.


Our second was to deconstruct the patio to make room for them to dig a hole for the basement extension. This involved pulling up interlocking bricks. A lot of interlocking bricks. 950 whole ones, plus about 30 partial ones and edge bricks.

The bricks removed

It took us about 4 hours in the 28° heat. We moved them beside the garage into two neat piles.

45 brick per layer, 15 layers. 25 bricks per layer, 11 layers

Each brick weighs about 3.54 kg, or 7.8 lbs. So carrying them in piles of 3 or 4, we moved 7,414 lbs of bricks, give or take. That's 3.7 US Tons of bricks. 3.3 long tons of bricks. 3,363 kg of bricks.


No wonder we hurt on Saturday.

Family visits: West Wind Pass plus

My brother, his wife and her daughter from Toronto arrived this week for a short stay. As we are evil and cruel, we decided to drag their butts up my favourite short hike, West Wind Pass, on the hottest day of the year. We have been up there many times before, and the views were stellar, as always. Easy to see some other hikes we have done (check the links below).

Looking down towards snow capped Tent Ridge 

The crew makes it to the top 

Pigeon Mountain 

Lady Macdonald and the teahouse peaking over West Wind Ridge

I don't usually see much wildlife on this hike, and today was no exception. But there was a far too friendly Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel hanging out at the top.

Coming to visit 

KC, tempting 

Investigating my pack

My brother has always wanted to see a moose. There's a spot here where moose are common at sunrise and sunset (here's a hike where we saw them, for instance). So we went there after the hike, but saw nothing. Still, it was only 6:30 PM when we were there, and the sun sets here at 9:30 PM these days.

The mooseless Engadine marsh meadows

Last week, I saw 7 bears in one day. So on our second day with the family, after touring Banff townsite, we drove up to Peyto Summit where we were last week with Amy & Michael in the hopes of seeing some wildlife. It was a blistering 30° in Banff, 27° passing Lake Louise, but a really nice 22° up at Bow Summit. Peyto Lake was its spectacularly coloured self.

Looks fake

We saw a Clark's nutcracker playing good parent.

Good mother. Or father.

We stopped at Bow Lake to see the falls and the glaciers from a distance. Personally, I like Bow Lake better than Lake Louise, but then I see them all the time.

Heading to the lake

Looking south down Crowfoot Mountain 

Bow Glacier and falls

Alanna wanted to get her feet wet, so went for a walk in the lake.

Fording the (very cold) creek 

Standing in the lake

The area by Num-Ti-Jah Lodge and sections of the Bow Falls trail have bear warnings. The folks in the lodge told us a grizzly with 2 cubs charged two staff members the previous night, and another lone griz was hanging out in front of the lodge door the previous morning. But we saw nothing. 


We also stopped to look at the Crowfoot Glacier on the way back.

The Crowfoot, minus the feet

We saw no wildlife with them all day. We dropped them at Castle Junction (they were heading to Invermere) and headed down the 1A. And saw a huge bull elk...

Big dude. Fuzzy antlers.

...and a bear.

Fuzzy but true

Sorry that the picture isn't the best. When we see a bear, we don't get out of the car to get a better photo. The tourists do, however.

Tourists being stupid

Smart mice

We have a deer mouse infestation in our house.


We discovered this when our cat showed up in our bedroom one night with a mouse at 12:30 AM. He dropped it on the floor and played with it, batting it around and pouncing on it until KC finally grabbed the mouse in a plastic bag. The next night, same thing, except the cat showed up at 4:00 AM pleased as punch with his captured mouse. He played with the thing for 15 minutes (including a time when it ran behind a chest of drawers and he flushed it out) until finally the mouse hid under a pillow on the floor that Jello uses as a playground with his plastic toys. Jello couldn't get the injured mouse out of the pillow case, but I could.


Our next door neighbours laughed. They said the previous owners always had mouse problems, but they have never had any.


So we went to the hardware store and bought your basic mouse traps. I've used traps before and always found them effective. We bought 4, baited them with peanut butter, put them in the basement, and in the morning...


All the bait was gone. No mice captured.


So we tried again. Same result: bait gone. No trap sprung.


We went to the store and bought a different kind of snap trap. Now with 6 traps out... bait gone. No trap sprung.


We jammed nuts into the triggers. No luck. Nuts gone. No trap sprung.


In fact, for one of the conventional mouse traps, the mice had pushed it under a board so that it couldn't snap. The bait was gone, the trap was ready to spring - but the mice had prevented it. Smart mice, these.


We got glue traps. These are supposed to be pre-baited. We placed them beside the regular traps. In the morning, bait gone. No mouse in any trap. No evidence anyone came near the glue. Smart mice.


Last night, we decided to go the chemical route, putting out poison impregnated seed bait. It looks like some was taken.


The current score: mouse traps 0, mice 26 free meals. From this point onward, their free meals will be a lot more costly. 

The Best of the 2012 Hummingbirds (So Far)

This year, we have two kinds of hummingbirds, Rufous and Calliope. Our best guess is that we have (at least to this point) 3 male Rufous, 4 to 5 female Rufous, one male Calliope and at least 2 female Calliope.


The male rufous are the most dominant, defending our 3 feeders from 6 AM to 9 PM daily. Fights are common; one will come in and another will chase him away. You can hear their wings buzzing all the time. They also park in the trees next to the feeders, and they will sit for quite a while, dropping in for a feed from time to time. Typically, the birds aren't that active during the middle of the day. The girls are a lot quieter and generally only show up in the evenings. We see them -- boys and girls -- hunting for insects in the trees from time to time, too.


I've been working on taking as many photos of them as I can. Since I have posted none so far this year, I thought now was a good opportunity to put up some of the highlights from this year so far. In no particular order:

Rufous. Male.

Calliope. Male. Look carefully at the throat.

Calliope, male. Note the way the feathers sparkle purple in the light

Calliope, male, licking his lips

Calliope, female. They are very tiny

Coming in for a landing

Made it

Rufous. Female.

Karen set up her camera one day while we were sitting on the deck and took burst shots of the birds coming in to feed. She got some killer photos of the male Rufous hanging around.

Coming in... 

...hovering... 

...more hovering... 

...maneuvering for a landing... 

...still hanging out.

My buddy the Rufous

We have one very bold male who will hang out and feed patiently. We have a chicken male who will show up at the feeder, stick his nose in, stick his nose in another portion of the feeder, and never sit still.


Not a day goes by that I don't watch them, and when we come home, I look for them. Since I first saw them in Wyoming back in 2008, they have become my favourite birds.

Urban forestry

We didn't move to the mountains to cut grass. In my perfect world, I would have a front yard full of wildflowers over my septic field, and a forest in my back yard. And over time, this is what we will work on achieving.


The folks who came to look for my septic system demolished so much of my front yard that we decided to take advantage of it and start the transferal. Over the part of the lawn where the septic field is, we have to keep grass-ish kind of things, but were cleared to plant whatever we wanted in another section. To us, that means trees.


Step 1: Continue the wreckage


The first step was to advance the destruction caused by the backhoe. I rented a rototiller and over the space of 2 hrs, destroyed my shoulders, my wrists, my hands, and a good portion of the front lawn.

The tiller. The work.

This tiller was not really up to the job, pushed back into me when it hit a root or a rock, and made fumes that stank. But in the end, we got it done.


Step 2: Plant the stuff


We transplanted some baby trees from around our lot (including 3 small spruce and a scotch pine), plus picked up some bigger dudes (2 larch and a amur maple) and a couple of shrub/bushes (junipers and columbine) from the local garden centre, then covered it with mulch.

All planted. But we ran out of mulch

Step 3: Scatter the seeds


Turn up the soil and pretty much every seed in there -- from dandelions to thistles -- will germinate. So to beat them out, Karen scattered seeds. Lots of seeds. Eight packs of daisies and violets. And she only covered about half the space.


Step 4: Mount the sculpture


Finally, we took our giant, welded, junk metal sculptured hand (a very cool piece of art) and mounted it to the tree stump in the yard.

The hand stands

We have a lot that's one third of an acre in size. We have now got ~500 sq. ft landscaped. It's the small victories we have have to celebrate.