A Christmas Cruise

The renovations are going fairly well but I needed a break, so decided on a week long sailing cruise up to Jedediah Island over Christmas. This island, which is north of Nanaimo and immediately across the Sabine Channel from Texada island is a provincial park. It is home to herds of sheep and goats and has some lovely hiking trails and a varied terrain of old pastures, rocky bluffs and many small bays.

I stopped on the way there and back at De Courcy island.

Under way just north of Maple Bay

The paper mill at Crofton

Crofton after the recent snowfall. The house I am renovating is under one of those little white roofs near the right side of the frame.

A peaceful anchorage at Pirates Cove on De Courcy island.  This cove is usually packed in the summer season. The mountains in the background are near Vancouver

One of the lovely lots on De Courcy Island

The video above is taken just north of Nanaimo rolling north to Jedediah with a following SE breeze.

Goats - these guys are hard to photograph, scattering as soon as they spot you. The video below gives a better idea.  

Farm house on Jedediah 

The island was purchased to become a park from its owners about 25 years ago. Daniel Culver's estate paid about 1/4 of the 4 million dollar + price tag.

Swamp Angel at anchor in Deep Bay at the north end of the island. This anchorage is peaceful even in near gale force SE winds

Make and Break one cylinder engine found near the farmhouse

A good name for this open air diner

The diner itself

I spent nearly 4 days on Jedediah, trying half way through to leave but getting my butt kicked back into the anchorage by high winds and unpleasant seas. I must have spent nearly 20 hours walking the trails and exploring goat and sheep tracks. I climbed to the highest point (Mt. Gibraltar) via three routes and found some stands of old growth firs and cedars I had not seen on any of my previous visits. 

Jedediah has a fine population of mosses

The goats and sheep appear to leave the moss alone although they eat pretty much everything else

These mosses are like miniature trees

And these mosses remind me of tiny ferns

Panorama from Mt. Gibralter looking at Lasqueti to the west with Bull Island in the way

Bathroom Updates

Picture from realtor's website - everything looks OK from this angle

The bathroom in the house on Joan avenue does not look too bad in the realtor's picture, but when we looked at things up close, we quickly saw rot in the floor from leaking galvanized iron toilet supply line, a wet wall behind the sink from the same issue with rusty galvanized pipes in the walls, damaged plaster and paint, a badly cracked marble vanity top, and flooring clearly past its best-by date. The room is small and the lamps on either side of the mirror also projected too far out from the wall. There was no electrical outlet in the room.

On the positive side, the cast iron tub is salvageable with some elbow grease to repair damage from a sliding shower door and the tub surround while a bit yellowed is also in decent shape. The window is newer and functional although missing some trim.

Yummy looking toilet flange and rotted flooring - note also the galvanized iron pipe on the far right

The vanity was quite attractive but the marble top had 4 large cracks in it and the cold water faucet was broken, so out it came 

The first thing was to remove the old vanity and old fashioned 4 gallon a flush toilet. This and tearing up the vinyl flooring exposed a broken cast iron toilet flange and considerable rot in the douglas fir flooring. The plaster was wet behind the sink from leaks in the supply lines. 

First I tackled the floor issues and toilet plumbing, removing the baseboards and rotted flooring and screwing and gluing down 3/4 inch plywood patches. I cut off the old cast iron flange and installed a costly but effective toilet flange that has a tapered, screw threaded base and rubber gasket. When you screw this down into the old lead pipe, the rubber expands and seals the gap. I had to cut back the plastic flange a bit because the lead pipe was not straight. I shut off the water and used an angle grinder to cut the old galvanized piping away in the basement.

Patch and a fancy new renovation flange that has an expanding  rubber gasket that seals against the old lead pipe.  

Next job was to install a new supply line. I initially brazed a copper to Pex adapter but my joints weren't any good as I could not get the solder to adhere to the brass fitting for some reason so I resorted to sharkbite fittings that are expensive but very simple and reliable requiring no soldering.

New toilet supply line

Supply line in place - you can see I have also started plaster repairs

The sink supply lines were next, and were a bit tricky to get in place as they come up through the walls and make a right angle bend. I had to open up quite a bit of wall to remove the old pipes and install the new ones. I used Pex plastic lines and a tool that installs what look like tiny hose clamps - very reliable crimped fittings.

Sink supply lines

  

  

Wall plaster repairs in progress - lots of fiberglass tape, drywall compound and pieces of drywall to patch

Painting was next - I picked a light blue grey from a paint collection at Home Hardware

Painted walls

New lights arrived in the mail from Home Depot. I kept the old medicine cabinet and repainted the inside. Note also the GFI electrical outlet added below the left light.

Before I could put back in the toilet, I had to install flooring. I chose Turkish porcelain tile because this was the least expensive and hardest wearing option. Less than a dollar a square foot, the total cost for installation including buying a tile cutter was under a hundred dollars. I already had some grout and a tile saw and angle grinder...

Flooring laid and freshly grouted

The toilet was a low flush Toto that, along with the vanity, I found for free on UsedCowichan.com. The owners were upgrading to a higher seated toilet and putting in granite counters. 

Happy to have a toilet back - it is a long walk down the hill to the public washrooms in the senior's center.

The next job was to install the freebie vanity and a sink I bought from an old home in Victoria. The sink was 18 inches deep and the vanity about 22. There was also a heat vent that I did not want to cover, so I had to do a lot of cutting and patching back together of the vanity in order to make things work. It took about half a day just for this, not even hooking up the plumbing.

New customized vanity and porcelain sink - note cut out at bottom right to allow heat vent to work

Drain pipes don't line up - I had to extend the drain tailpiece and cut back the plastic and other pipes

Today I finished off the under-sink plumbing, which required an extender to lengthen the sink drain tailpiece. I still need to paint and reinstall baseboards and make up new baseboards for the closet and where the old ones were damaged or missing. I also had to replace the hot water tank, when the old one leaked after I turned back on the water supply (it was a truly venerable tank). The house pressure reducing valve also required replacing.

The deck project

The house in Crofton had a covered deck facing north onto the street and covered by a large wisteria bush that had wound its way through the roof, gutter, rails and decking. Portions of the deck and railing were rotted and the roof was also damaged near the eaves and blocked much of the light to the living room.

Deck is obscured by wisteria and in rough shape. The previous owners place a loose board over the rotted decking to stop viewers from falling through.

My initial inclination was to remove the deck entirely and I planned a deck removal party with my friend Ian who helped me on a similarly destructive project a few years back. However I had a change of heart, realizing that there was no other suitable outdoor space accessible by a doorway that could be used for barbequing or just sitting out. I thought instead I would repair the decking, replace the railings and tear down the old roof. I checked the substructure and found much of it was still in reasonable shape although it would need additional supporting posts. 

When Ian arrived, he convinced me to keep the roof because he had a similar covered area at his house and found it very useful in our damp climate.

Deck railing mostly removed, roof cut back, and new decking boards in place. The original roof came right to the edge of the deck

We ended up tearing off the rotted railing and cutting the roofline back so that it was in line with the house roof to open things up a bit. We replaced some rotted deck boards and then retired to the local pub for a self congratulatory meal. 

The old lattice was in rough shape and missing entirely on the other side

The next step was to remove the old lattice from the front, and build a new railing using the same type of roofing panels I had put on the garage as infill. 

All old railings and lattice removed - new deck rails and posts in place

New railing infill completed - still need to fix those supporting posts

View from the living room. The back of the roofing panels used for infill is off-white

I used the same type of ranch board I had used on the garage to fill where the lattice had been and trimmed it with 1 by 6 pine.  I also replaced the rotted front supporting beam with a piece of cedar that was cut from a tree on our property a couple of years ago, and replaced some dubious support posts.

New supporting beam across the front, new corner post, and other posts mounted on concrete pads

Infill in place under the deck

I had to wait for good weather to paint the infill and to clean up, repair, and paint the existing stair railing as well as patch and paint the concrete. I also removed the old roofing and replaced it with new clear PVC roofing and added a new gutter that runs off into the city storm sewer.

Concrete patched and primed, stair railings cleaned and partly primed before it rained again

The way it looks now - Painted the same green and brown as the garage. The house stucco is also painted green. I will paint the window trim brown too eventually

To pretty up the entrance way, I found someone on Facebook marketplace selling a nice replacement half moon window. This saved replacing the door as the current window was broken and fogging up.

New door window - kind of Art Deco ish so in keeping with the house

The Septic Tank

 Here is what the backyard of the house in Crofton looked like when we took possession.

Backyard from the MLS listing

Note the concrete ' pad' on the left and an old oil tank on its side beyond this. The edge of the garage is just in frame to the right. That concrete pad turned out to be the top portion of a septic tank - a fact I discovered by excavating the sewer pipe from the house and part of the perimeter of the tank. We had an initial scare when we discovered that the cast iron sewer pipe coming from the house still entered the tank. Fortunately, it carried right on out the other side and joined into plastic pipe connected to the city sewer.

The septic tank is about 6 feet by 4 feet when viewed from above. We excavated one edge to more than a foot so knew it was fairly deep,

I probably should have just lived with this tank in place and maybe used it as a base for a patio or deck. The cast iron pipe seemed to be in OK condition although various sources give its life expectancy at 50-100 years and we were at 70. Anyway... I picked up a borescope on Amazon that is a tiny camera on the end of a flexible line. I drilled a hole in the tank to put down the borescope to see if it had been decommissioned properly. I learned that it had been filled with dirt. Naively I bought a diamond concrete cutting blade for my Makita skilsaw and set to to cut and break the tank apart. The concrete turned out to be 6 inches thick and my blade that cuts maybe 2-3 inches was no match for this task. A frustrating morning of cutting and sledge hammering only opened up the much thinner top. 

Tank with broken lid and the resulting concrete bits

Ed - an elder in the church next door walked by the yard while I was hammering away and gave me the name and contact info for a couple of local guys who do excavation. After chatting with them we decided we needed to use the big excavator to get the tank out. I dug out the sewer lines and cut the cast iron near the house and the plastic just past where it joined the iron.

Before we get into the destruction, here is a nice picture of what our backyard used to look like...

What a nice green looking yard. The oil tank was emptied of its load of garbage (2 trailer loads to the dump) and then recycled. The garage is looking better with its new roof and paint.

The excavator was difficult to bring into the yard. It slid sideways off the trailer and nearly pancaked the garage. We plan to take down some fence wire on the other boundary to get it out.

Chris Vale arrived this morning at 9 and set to work turning the yard into something resembling a battle scene from the first world war. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Chris is very very experienced having operated that machine for more than 20,000 hours over the last 20 years.

Chris Began by digging a hole into which he will put the tank once it is pulled out.

The pile will be used to level the yard so it slopes away from the house, filling a depression left by previous perimeter drain work

Next he turned to the tank and dug down 4 feet on one side. The tank did not budge.

After excavating 6 feet deep on the side toward the backhoe, Chris was able to pull the tank free. It took several goes and for a while all he accomplished was dragging the excavator across the lawn towards the tank.

The tank is free and upside down. It is six feet deep and has no concrete bottom - it was made of wood!

The tank must have been poured in two pieces because it split evenly when lifted.

One half is out and ready to bury. Chris dropped the other half a couple of times and it splashed into the water filled pit covering half the house with mud.

Overview from the back window - not much greenery left! The tank is buried in a shallow grave just behind the excavator. Note the mud splashed windows

New sewer line hooked up with flexible couplings to both the house cast iron and the plastic running to the city, which turned out to be a thinner walled pipe than modern ABS sewer pipe.

The destruction took only two hours and I spent the rest of the day installing the new sewer pipe and moving clay and rock around to fill in holes and cover the pipe. The pit where the septic tank is buried will serve as a rock pit to drain water runoff from the alley and neighboring uphill lot. I will bring in topsoil and level and seed the yard in the spring.