WASTE

     The house next door to me is being renovated. I have a ring side seat to see the action. The waste is appalling.

     The house was built in 1963 ...so not old. It was well built and has a brick exterior. Very few houses here have any brick on them. Brick is very expensive here. Wood is very cheap so our houses are mostly built of wood.

    The house next door was sold on Oct. 31. The buyers were reported to be planning to spend $100000.00 on renovations. The next day two women showed up and started taking things out of the house... kitchen cupboards and anything that would move. It's just gone on. Attic insulation was removed. Then gyproc went out to the dumpster. The last two days all the interior studding was hauled out. Now the studding is perfectly good wood. It is a crying shame to throw good would into the landfill site.

    I'm afraid more of this house will go into the garbage before they are finished. and start rebuilding. So all electrical and plumbing will be ripped out and thrown away. 

    Now I admit that this house needed some work on it. The people who lived in it did not do regular up keep and it was not very clean. However, a little elbow grease and cleaning would have made a big difference. Then a good paint job. I think the windows may be rotten so they need to be replaced.

    So I think we are very wasteful. Where I live there's lots of good wood so why not throw good would away? I think it's a shame to throw usable material away.

    Why destroy a perfectly habitable building away?

   

OUR MUSEUM JUST BECAME MORE ATTRACTIVE.

      Our small city built a very attractive museum in the early 1970s. A collection had been slowly accumulating so a good place to exhibit things was needed.

     This area has grown quickly from 25000 to 100000 less than 50 years. So a new museum was needed a long time ago.

    A proposal was drawn up to construct a new museum for about $30000000.00. This would allow for much more exhibit space and the collection would be under one roof.

   Well, a section of the community was strongly against a new museum. They had every excuse in the book for not building a museum and criticized all the points for a museum.

    So the project was abandoned.

    So plan B. Well, renovate the building we have. Renovations are very expensive and you always find some very expensive surprises. One surprise was to find that the entire north wall was not insulated. You could not regulate the temperature and humidity for proper storage and display of the collection.

    So to make the story shorter, almost $300000000.00 spent over ten years and we have the same footprint.

    So a few weeks ago finishing touches were done to the exterior. So here's part of the exterior.. 

  
     These 5 designs are on the south wall. They were made by putting photos of people together to make the design. 

  
     I think it's very attractive.

My Do It Your Selfer Mentor.

     My daughter is a confirmed do it your selfer. I was surprised to find out that she was a do it your selfer as I hadn't included her with much of what I did in the home. I did show her how to take the wheel off her car in case she ever had a flat tire. I don't think I ever had her cut the grass.

    So how did she become such an avid do it your selfer? Before she bought her first condo she had been watching home improvement shows on HGTV. As soon as she got into the condo, the first thing she did was to paint the thing from top to bottom. Now she had been fairly artistic, so she could pick super colors. She lived in another city, so Dad couldn't just drop over to help or give advice.


    She moved again and bought a townhouse which was only 3 kms from me. According to her, the "Pepto Bismol" pink carpet had to go, along with the matching pink walls and counter tops. The carpet and other items were the popular rose color from the late eighties. Before she moved into the townhouse she pulled out the main floor carpet and painted the place from top to bottom. Again she had super taste when it came to color. She painted the plywood sub floor and kitchen vinyl floor because she didn't have enough money to cover it with anything. All of this she did on her own.


    The next summer she bought laminate flooring and Dad helped her install it. She had the mitre saw and Dad held the boards. This project worked out quite well. She then got the idea to cover up the pink marble on the fireplace, so framed it over with MDF and painted it. She replaced toilets. Then I accidentally showed her how to take out a light fixture and wire it back in. That sent her on a trip to Ikea where she bought new light fixtures and installed them herself. After that she had some rotten parts on the deck, so she bought the lumber and enlisted Dad to tear the deck apart and haul it to the dump. Then the new deck was put together.


    My daughter likes renovations and redecorating. She used to have a small business on the side where she consulted, giving people plans to redecorate a room, or a whole house. Sometimes she did part of the work. She liked it when people came to her house and complimented her on how nice it looked.


    When she bought her first detached house (this time with her husband) she again started up with the renovations, but contracted some of the major things out. Her mother warned the new husband that "Oh, it never ends!" when it comes to his bride's desire for fix-it and improvement projects, big or small.

Still creative with Lego!

    Now when I look back, the only sign of her being a DIY type was her continuously playing with Lego. I always thought Lego was more for boys, but my daughter certainly spent much of her play time with it. And ya, she still has Lego - her husband got her a set for Christmas!