I’m writing this, the last entry for phase one of the both the Studio project and the blog, from a borrowed futon on the floor of our new apartment in Toronto. As with most moves to an unfamiliar city, the new surroundings seem mean and inhospitable. We don’t know our way around, and parking is a bitch. Apparently the threats of towing are serious and everyone I know here who owns a car has been burned by the parking authority on numerous occasions. And the radiators in our new place – it’s in a converted factory, complete with primitive single-glazed curtain wall that lets in the cold like nobody’s business – have been inexplicably shut down all day (the landlord controls them). We’ll have to talk to the landlord in the morning and make sure this isn’t some kind of cruel scheme to save money by rationing heat. Maybe, like my Dad, he’ll just tell me to put on a sweater.
We’ve been in Toronto about a week, and already Mabou seems distant and half-forgotten.
Carla left Cape Breton on December 21 to spend the remainder of the month in Halifax with her family. I stayed on site for a few more days to try and finish as much work as I could. I was able to complete the shingling and fastened the strapping to the Crow’s Nest – which will later be clad in plywood – but couldn’t quite find time to install the cap flashings at the top of the shingled walls. Instead I built some makeshift plywood caps that should last the winter. The finished front door never got built or installed, but I made some repairs to a couple of the operator window units, which should hopefully eliminate the leaks we’ve been experiencing, especially through the angled operator at the southwest corner. If you ever have to assemble and install aluminum windows, make sure to find out from a contractor exactly what kind of shim tape to use.
Those last three days, alone on site and working in two feet of wet, heavy snow, were easily the most physically grueling of my life. For one thing, the eighteen borrowed ends of scaffolding, with attendant bracing, jackposts, pins and platforms, had to be returned to my uncles in River Denys, about 50 km away. The only problem was that, because of the snow, there was no way to get the pickup truck any closer to the work site than about three hundred feet. That meant walking each piece of equipment from site to truck individually. My immune system must have been working overtime to keep me going for those few days, because within hours of finishing all the cleanup and moving all the tools and scaffolding off site, I was in bed with a fever.
So this is me signing off for a few months. Despite all my complaining on this blog, I have to admit that I’m pleased with how far we’ve come. Maybe we didn’t accomplish as much as we thought we would, but in hindsight I can see that we worked as hard as anyone could have and made consistent progress. And I didn’t have to make too many compromises or sacrifices.
We hope to make it back to Cape Breton in the summer to spend a few weeks on wiring, plumbing and insulation, as well as installing a door and an entry ramp, and finishing the plywood cladding. Until then…
- Geoff
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