Fixing Up an Old Garage

I have begun renovations on a 1950 house in Crofton, Vancouver Island. I plan to cover some of the projects on this blog.

House from the front - Note the enormous satellite dish on the roof and the wisteria covered roofed over deck. We will come back to those later, but first the garage, which can just be seen on the far right of this picture behind the house.

The garage just needed a lick of paint? Nope! The sills were rotting or missing altogether, siding missing, roofing boards rotted and the whole roof covered in tattered plastic wrap. If one was a perfectionist one would start from scratch...

This side wall was held up by the siding - the sill entirely gone and the studs either hanging in the air or resting on the concrete, rotted at the ends

The first step was to jack up this side of the garage to make it level with the other slightly less damaged side.  To do this, I used an old screw jack and a 4 by 4 post bearing on a 2 by 6 board screwed into the studs. The ratchet tie down strap pulls the 'floating' wall into place over the foundation.

Next step was to drill and use tapcon concrete anchors to hold down a new pressure treated 2 by 4 sill. Then each stud was cut away and replaced with a sister piece to reinforce it. Everything was screwed together with deck screws. Note that I used left over 2 by 4s from various projects so nothing is the same length... 

The tongue and groove siding was also missing or rotted in places. I could not find a match locally for the siding profile so I made tongue and groove planks from local 1 by 6 spf using a table saw.

The roof was next now that the structure under it was roughly level and more solid. Stripping off the plastic and removing the tarps I nailed up temporarily to keep out the rain, I found several rotted boards in the roof deck. 

The roof is patched. I replaced rotted boards with SPF 1 by 8 planks and cut off the tongues on the old planks to make them fit. Note the plywood patches on the wall and door. I have not tackled these areas yet

30 pound roofing felt stapled in place.

This is my first metal roof. One lesson learned is that I should either have sheathed the roof in plywood or used strapping under the metal because it telegraphs the uneven boards right through the metal if you kneel or walk on it! I learned after the first sheet to put it on without doing that. A bit tricky especially going back to put on the ridge cap...

Roof on and mostly level - a small sag in the middle from the underlying structure. Note the open gable ends that still need filling in.

Gable ends framed up and filled in with ranch board - a 3/8 inch textured plywood. I also added flashing to finish off the fascia. One side the garage is primed. Note the doors need trim replacing that must have been torn off when the hinges were replaced.

Garage painted. Side door still needs paint

Main doors are trimmed out to hide ragged bottom edges and frame pieces replaced too.  

 

I thought this would make the garage watertight but the first rainfall came and I found a lake inside. The water was flowing over the concrete foundation. A little digging and redirecting of run-off and the place is now dry and reasonably sound.

Replacing mooring chain

 We have kept our sailboats on a mooring in Maple Bay for the last 5 years or so. When I bought the mooring, it had 30 feet of 1/2 inch long link chain running from heavier chain that was attached to the concrete mooring block. I had a diver inspect the mooring that year and he gave it another year before I would need to replace the chain. The next year I did so, replacing it with new galvanized 1/2 inch long link chain. Each link in this chain is 4 inches long and 2 inches wide - the half inch referring to the thickness of the metal that makes up each link. The old chain was quite wasted away in the portion that rubbed along the bottom - the rest was in pretty good shape.

Thirty feet of old 1/2 inch long link chain - not the galvanizing still left on some links at the upper end

Four years later and it was time to take a look again. The half inch chain I put down had held, for 2 1/2 years, a 26 foot (5500 lb) sailboat and for the remainder of that time, a 3500 lb 24 foot sailboat. When I snorkelled on it earlier this year after bringing our new 32 foot 15,000 lb boat to Maple Bay, I realized that the chain was clearly in need of replacement before the winter storms arrive!

As in the earlier chain, it was only the portion that had dragged along the bottom that is in really poor shape, with about half the link thickness worn away in the worst places. See the following pictures for details.

Links nearer the surface are in excellent shape after four years

These are the worst links and have lost half the metal thickness and about 3/4 of their strength

Good and bad compared

This year, I replaced the bottom 25 feet of chain (below the swivel) with new 3/4 inch chain that has twice the strength of the 1/2 inch chain and should take longer to wear out. I also buoyed the bottom 10 feet to try to reduce its wear in rubbing the bottom. I used a cluster of milk jugs to do this but this was not overly successful as they compressed with depth and do not provide enough lift. Some sort of hard shelled float would be required to make this work.

One downside of the heavier chain is the increased cost (about 35% more expensive or $10 Canadian a foot including taxes when purchased in small lengths). Another downside is its weight of more than 5 pounds per foot, which makes it harder to place. Twenty five feet was about as much as I could carry from the car to the dinghy and I should probably have used a dolly to move it. I also dropped it too far from the mooring block and had to dive and drag it along the bottom to get it into position. It was heavy to move along the bottom and took me 5 extra dives to place it correctly. Fortunately the mooring is only in about 15 feet at low tide.

Frugal couple's retirement questions

I came across a recent article in the Financial Post that tried to answer questions around the retirement of a couple whom the article billed as 'frugal'.The couple who live in our province (British Columbia) only have 2.5 million dollars in assets. When they both retire, their pensions (both private and government) will be around $70,000 a year. Even if they keep their fully paid off million dollar house, they should still be able to draw down on over a million in savings at say 3-4 % to give them about $100,000 a year in pre-tax income. I am sorry, but I really cannot see how one is living frugally if one spends approaching $100,000 per year!

Next week I expect to read in the Financial Post something like this:

A recently divorced single man, we will call him Jeff, is head of a well known international technology company. Jeff hopes to retire in the next 5 years. His current net worth is around 200 billion dollars but he hopes to re-marry and is concerned about what will happen if he does so and then loses half of his net worth in an ensuing divorce. He is worried that he may be forced to live through more than 30 years of retirement on the remaining 100 billion dollars.

Our advice for Jeff is to get a good pre-nup in place to limit his exposure in the event of a divorce. Next, he will want to take a close look at his spending, in particular on discretionary items such as vacation mansions, private jets, and mega yachts. He may want to taper off this spending as he approaches retirement, perhaps limiting purchases to one or at the most two mansions in the penultimate year. 

One silver lining in Jeff's potentially cloudy retirement future is that social security will likely be there to help make up any shortfall in his income when he turns 67 (Jeff is American). However he will still need to make it through 5 or 6 years on his investment income alone before this kicks in...

Our new bidet

 One of the features of our older house (well older for the west coast of Canada anyway) that was built in 1933 is the split bathroom/toilet room. The toilet room contains only the toilet, the sink being in with the bath next door. Both rooms have doors, so if you want privacy and close the door, it is not possible to wash your hands after using the toilet before leaving the room touching the door knob - not an ideal situation.

My brother recently installed a fancy electric toilet seat by Toto, which provides a heated seat, an adjustable bidet wash for front and backsides with oscillating option, and even an air dryer to finish off the job. We were tempted to follow suit but it did seem a bit excessive (price in Canada is over $500 in most stores) and while searching for competitors we came across a much simpler option without the bells and whistles.

For around $50 (Canadian) we found what appears to be a well made 'ambient temperature' (aka cold) water unit that is fitted under your toilet seat and then plumbed into the toilet tank inlet via a provided 'T' fitting. The installation was simple and the quality of the fittings including the provided hose appears to be good. 

Biobidet fitted showing the pressure adjustment knob and valve and the nozzle unit. The actual nozzle drops down out of this unit when you open the valve.

The bidet works well in practise although because we are the first house on the Duncan water system, our 'ambient' water can be very cold even in the summer. If you have ever had an ice cream headache you can probably picture what I mean - ony transposed to a lower region of your body. One does get used to it and it is very nice to cut down on toilet paper and get really clean in a hands free way. However the heated seat and warm bidet wash of the Toto seat would certainly make trips to the bathroom more pleasurable!

Close up of the control unit - there are clicks for each position so you get feedback even if not looking at the dial.  

We found with our water pressure that the dial turned three clicks is about right and going to 4 gives a similar pressure but sprays a wider area. Going from 4 to 5 makes no difference. We bought our unit at Home Depot (online only order) but they can also be had on Amazon for a similar price. Do not test the unit without someone sitting on the seat. The pressurized jet soaked Rani and reached halfway down the hall when I did so.

Knight Inlet Bears

This May and June we sailed north to the Broughtons over a period of 5 weeks. One of our main purposes in this trip was to view bears at Glendale Cove in Knight Inlet. My brother kindly lent us a full frame digital SLR and 24-105 lens, which we used to capture the following pictures. We took these from our rowing dinghy while floating in 6 inches of water. Because of Covid-19 we had the place to ourselves with one shrimp boat anchored nearby getting ready for the season and a couple of wardens who were looking after the closed up bear watching lodge.

Because we did not bring a telephoto lens these images have all been cropped using RawTherapee (an open source raw photo editor). Apologies for the graininess of some, which, despite the full frame SLR, was not helped by low light (it was raining) and cropping. 

The bears photographed were a mother and 2 yearling cubs. At one point, one of the youngsters decided to chase off a nearby adult and the whole family eventually gave chase. The wardens told us that this female adult was the dominant bear out of the seven bears we saw in the estuary. 

Baby giving chase to adult who is out of frame to right

The bears mostly ignored us. Of the hundreds of photos I took, this is one of the few where the mother is looking at us.

Detail from above

Rani takes a movie of the family

The next day we saw the same family feeding on high protein grass in the meadows near the shore. The weather was better but we could not get as close in our dinghy.

 

New Zealand 2020 - part 2

We left Whangarei mid February and drove north, up the west side of the island to the north tip, returning via the east coast. We tented using our camping gear from our 2012 trip, which Roz and Holger had graciously allowed us to store at their farm.

A lovely walk at Ocean Beach north of Whangarei Heads

Sea weed cast on Ocean Beach

We came across these round boulders at Opononi. They are similar to the Moeraki Boulders we saw on the South Island

Boulders at Opononi

Cool patterns in the sand at Te Paki

Chris climbs the giant dunes at Te Paki

The dunes run back for kilometers and are great fun to run down. Some people use little surf boards to ski down the dunes.

We found several abalone shells and fragments on 90 mile beach

Rani checks to see if we packed a horse treat

No treats so a pat will have to do. Note the tire tacks - the entire beach is open to vehicle travel, which can be a bit unnerving.

Pohutukawa tree near Cape Reinga

Hiking to Cape Reinga - we swam at the beach below

Light at Cape Reinga

Another hiker snapped our picture near Cape Reinga

Beautiful light on this hill sacred to the Maori and off limits to hikers

Sea and shore make an abstract image at dusk at Spirits Bay - we were camped nearby.

Sand 'plants'

Jo Woollacott with friend Coral near Jo's B&B/retreat near Tokerau Beach.

A generous Maori woman lent us this paddleboard to try out at Rangiputa beach. Rani had no problem in the calm water

Coral, Chris, and Jo enjoy a peaceful afternoon at Rangiputa beach on the Kari Kari peninsula.