Day 132: Mistakes Were Made

We have, at best, one more week on site before Carla’s family starts to get offended by our absence during the holidays. I’m still hopeful that we’ll get a lot finished in the time left – though every night I’m forced to revise my expectations when I realize that we can never work as fast or as efficiently as I imagine. In architecture school when a deadline was looming, one of our design profs used to tell us to decide how much we wanted to get done, estimate how long it was to take, then cut the amount of work in half and double the time estimate. It was good advice then, more so now.

The replacement glass for our big south window arrived intact on Tuesday afternoon (only seven weeks late). The delivery truck could get no closer than the snow bank at the end of the driveway, so we rigged up a sled from leftover 2x4s and plywood in order to drag it to the building. The snow, at that time, was 20” deep. We were suitably impressed by our own ingenuity. (This was solely Geoff’s idea…I accept no credit - Carla)

Today we installed the glass. Carla’s cousin Donald drove an hour from Belle Cote to give me a hand lifting it into place, and everything went well until I cracked it.

The tragedy happened when I was trying to insert the neoprene gasket against the bottom interior edge. It wouldn’t fit, and I could see the glass wasn’t sitting tight against the exterior of the frame at that point. So I tried to tap it into place with my hammer, using a block and striking at the very edge, where the metal spacer between glazing layers should, in theory, offer some strength. In my rush, I figured I couldn’t possibly do any damage. I was, of course, mistaken.

The good news is that the crack is fairly minor as these things go. It’s about six inches, spanning edge to edge at the corner and on the interior face only. So it shouldn’t affect the performance of the unit… I hope.

I’ve been pretty crabby with others on site when they’ve made mistakes, but I have to admit that no one else has done anything quite this stupid. I will forevermore be a humble and patient boss.

- Geoff

Day 117: The End Has No Beginning, the Beginning Never Ends*

Winter has hit Cape Breton and the snow is slowing us down. I’d hoped to be finished with shingling by now, but it will take at least one more week. Carla is afraid of heights so, as we climb higher, there’s less and less for her to do, and her dad’s going back to Halifax tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve yet to start the plywood cladding on the crow’s nest, or the custom front door, or the cap flashings for the roof parapet, or the handful of other things I can’t remember right now. Listing all of it reminds me that it’s pretty doubtful we’ll finish what we’d like to in the two and a half weeks left before Christmas.

BUT the shingles on the north and east facades are complete and look pretty cool. I love the monolithic quality of the building seen from that corner.

- Geoff

* apologies to Jason Starnes

Day 116

We had some help this weekend from an unexpected place. Last Friday I stopped in at Brian MacKay-Lyons’s office in Halifax to catch up with my old bosses and give a presentation on the artspace over a few beers. The office has really densified over the past couple of years – it looked to me like there were about 15 employees, crammed in every available space, and a whole new menagerie of gorgeous wood models on display. The presentation went well --people seemed excited about what we’re doing and Brian had some kind things to say about the design.

Anyhow, it turns out that Matt, briefly my coworker at Busby Perkins + Will in Vancouver, now works for Brian. After the presentation he told me that he wanted to learn the delicate and zen-like art of shingling. With my grateful blessing, he decided to drive down early Saturday morning and work here for two days. At 8:00 AM on Saturday, Matt called from Antigonish (about 90 minutes from here), where the season’s first snowstorm was in full swing. ‘The driving’s pretty bad here. Everyone’s pulled off the road…Should I keep going?’ I told him that things looked great in our backyard. It was a calm, clear day so far. He elected to soldier on. But when he arrived, the gods got angry.

We managed to work for about two hours, cowering on the high scaffolding, with the winds and snow whipping around our ears and throwing loose shingles across the valley. Then we packed it in. We spent the rest of the day talking stereo electronics and holding a music listening party on our laptops. (Matt is now a fan of the Chills, The Clipse, Dean & Britta, Field Music, and Chad VanGaalen.) Sunday morning the weather was even worse, so we made some farewell scrambled eggs and he headed back to Halifax at 10:00 in the morning to try and salvage the remnants of his weekend.

- Geoff

Day 114

Our move to Toronto is finally getting sorted out. I’ve accepted a job with RDH architects, starting on January 2. Carla and I made a great apartment find – a live/work loft conversion in Corktown. It is, as they say in real estate parlance, a ‘true’ loft, with 14-foot ceilings, enormous industrial windows and lots of raw concrete. Our friend Graham checked it out for us in person and gave his official thumbs up, so Carla drove an hour to Port Hawkesbury to FedEx the deposit to the landlord by the next day. No one in ‘Hawkesb’ry’ could tell her where to find the Fedex box, not even the post office workers, but eventually she tried the mall with the giant Wal-Mart and, sure enough, there it was. Now the only thing left to work out is how to move all our shit from Vancouver.

- Geoff