Day 93: November Rain

Obviously Carla and I are losing some of our drive to update this site regularly. The novelty of blogging has worn off, but a few people have asked for updates and I hate to think of you all getting up every morning and sitting down at your computer with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, ready to be regaled by tales of construction derring-do, only to be disappointed again and again. Well, today’s your lucky day.

We’ve started shingling, as you may have guessed. Regarding the correct way to nail a shingle so that it can expand and contract freely in the weather, there is some confusion and debate (admittedly most of this debate is in my own head). Most commonly you use two nails, each about halfway up the shingle’s length and an inch or so from the edge. But it was pointed out to me a few years ago that this actually restricts the cedar from expanding when wet and can cause cupping (the expansion forces the center of the shingle away from the wall surface). So what do you do? I still don’t know. We’ve experimented with a few different nailing patterns but the problem seems to have no right or established answer.

Windows remain an annoyance. The replacement glass for the big south-facing unit, which arrived cracked the first time, still hasn’t shown up. On top of that water is getting in around all of the operators. This seemed like a disaster, probably caused by my inexperience at window installation, until the manufacturer told me that those mysterious bits of aluminum that arrived with the order are drip strips and meant to be screwed to the frame cap above each operator. And to think I’d been using them to pry the tops off paint cans.

The Saturday after Hallowe’en, the dregs of a hurricane swept through the province -- if 140kph winds can be called dregs. We were lucky to have already nailed strapping over most of the tar paper joints – those areas we didn’t get to were thoroughly ravaged and had to be re-covered. But really, as long as you don’t lose your electricity, experiencing a storm in the country is actually kind of calming. The pounding rain and wind put me in a deep sleep, and the next day I took a break to drive down to the Mabou Coal Mines beach and look at the massive waves being thrown back from the tail of the storm as it headed off to northern New Brunswick to die.

Next to the beach there’s a long, grassy peninsula edged by high cliffs; I climbed over a fence and headed to the top for better wave-watching. After a few minutes of staring out to sea, I turned around to find a herd of bulls surrounding me. A few horses wandered among them. Behind me was a five-story drop to the beach. I’m badly scared of anything with sharp teeth, claws, hooves or horns, and I have a vague memory of hearing on the radio that, while rare, it’s not unheard of for a person to be trampled by cows. This seemed unlikely for the moment as the animals probably wouldn’t run at a person standing in front of a cliff, but I was certain it would be the logical outcome if I tried to walk through the herd.

After a few minutes, the bulls lost interest in the strange man frozen with terror, and I was able to sneak past them back to the car. But while I was trapped in that pasture I was sure that they would trample and eat me (going carnivore for the special occasion), and no one would ever know what had happened to that city architect building his fancy box out at Hawley’s Hill.

- Geoff

Crawlspaces and Sudoku

So I spent last week UNDER the cottage. The whole week, flat on my back inside a crawlspace, stuffing squares of toxic insulation between 2x4s and then sealing them in place with chicken wire and staples. Funny pictures to come. Geoff finished the skirting.

Shingling started on Monday, with help from Geoff's Dad. He's a retired high school math teacher and a perfect pro at angles and straight lines. Things are looking good. But it's slow work, especially now that it gets dark at five.

The nights are long and quiet. Except for the Freshmart, one family restaurant and the post office, everything in Mabou is closed for the winter. We can't even steal Internet anymore. And the Aliant guy says the nearest telephone access spot is 1km away, too far for him to connect us. We're so far into the woods that we can't have a phone. I'm going to check with Eastlink.

Our nights are filled with Sudoku and New York Times crosswords. By now, we can almost handle the Thursday puzzle.

We watched The Host the other night. Geoff had seen it before and told me I'd be terrified but I wasn't. Still, it was pretty good.

xo Carla.

Day 77: Get Back to Where You Once Belonged (Thank God I’m a Country Boy)

So.

Here we are back in Nova Scotia. What gives, you ask? Isn’t this project supposed to be wrapped up until next year? And why no picture this time?

From the beginning of this project we had intended to spend only ten weeks or so in Cape Breton before moving to Toronto. But while we were preparing to drive there last week we started asking ourselves why we were rushing to return to city life – our money hasn’t run out yet, we’re enjoying ourselves in Mabou and the project could definitely use another month or two of work before winter hits. And Carla is getting lots of work done on her book in the peace and quiet of our rural retreat. In light of all that we decided to stay for another two and a half months, and hold off on “goin’ down the road” until January. I guess I’ll need to buy some warmer clothes now since I left most of mine in storage in Vancouver.

This last-second decision made our week in Toronto much less stressful – more like a vacation from a vacation, really. No need to find an apartment right away, and less pressure on me to nail down a job immediately. However, we did use some of our time to explore the city and visit some open houses – and to find with some relief that we can actually afford a house in Toronto, which is a refreshing change from Vancouver and its housing bubble. I also had some job interviews. No final decision on where I will work yet, but I expect to know in a few days once a formal offer or two floats in. There is plenty of work in Toronto right now and it looks like I’ll have my choice of firms. Good timing.

Bells Clanging played a show at the Tiger Bar on Thursday night (a ‘secret’ venue in the basement of a College Street diner) to a decent crowd. Despite our lack of practice things came off well, and I’m told I sang my few backup lines in tune. We were sandwiched on the bill between Tin Can Telephone System Switch Board Operator (or something like that), a very young band with a bass player who looked just like a very young Burton Cummings; and Brigitte, who were, to use some rock crit-math, like Devo + the Feelies + They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – in other words, completely spastic but tuneful.

In the week before our Upper Canada jaunt, Jeremy, our carpenter friend from Vancouver, came by Mabou to help for a few days. Jeremy is a whirlwind and doesn’t need much supervision since he runs his own construction business. In three days he and Robert strapped the tar paper joints, made a temporary door, helped install all of the window frames and about half of the glazing, and began working on the skirting. I think I did something too, but it didn’t amount to much by comparison. Thanks Jeremy! And, of course, thanks to Robert too, who we won’t be seeing in Cape Breton for a while.

Installing the big window unit in the crow’s nest was very nearly a disaster. I knew the glass would be heavy but I figured four people could bring it up via the scaffolding since it was too large to fit through the floor opening inside. Jeremy rightly pointed out that this approach was a tad unrealistic given the fragility of the material (even just tilting it up off the ground you have to be careful it doesn’t crack under its own weight) and the 70 KPH winds gusting outside (an hour up the coast in Cheticamp, they call the winds 'les souetes' and they’re known to pull houses right out of the ground). Instead we cut a sort of giant mail slot in the floor and lifted the glass through it. The four of us were just barely able to accomplish the task, and for a few terrifying seconds as my grasp faltered and my arms shook uncontrollably, I really thought it was lost – afterwards we estimated the thing weighed between 350 and 400 pounds.

To make matters worse, this window angles outward by about ten degrees and the moment we leaned the glass into its frame I fully expected the entire unit to detach itself and drop 16 feet to the ground, maybe taking out some foundations posts when it hit. With a bit of bad luck, I imagined, the whole building might come down (this is a vision I have a lot, and it’s usually accompanied by some vague thought that I’ll try to jump out one of the windows as it falls – a logical plan to be sure). It didn’t. Or hasn’t, yet. Then again, I’ve been away for a week now, so I can’t say for sure.

- Geoff

PS the reason there's no picture for this entry is that Blogger is a piece of crap and takes hours to upload a 400KB image. I don't have the patience for it today.

If Tyra Banks Saw Our Artspace, She'd Declare It Fierce.

Hello lovely readers.

Are you still out there? Apologies for my complete and total disappearance from this blog during the past month or so. During that time, I completed my MFA in Creative Writing. Good boy yourself, as my grandma used to say. As Geoff mentioned, now I'm in Banff, trying to finish the second half of the manuscript. I would love to post a photo of the pretty deer that I found munching on leaves outside the theatre building this morning. Alas, I was only able to capture its image with my cheapo disposable camera. Who knows when I'll ever print those pictures, let alone scan them. (Update: My friend, Mike Kennedy, who graciously drove me from Calgary to Banff, took the above photo outside a place where we'd stopped to eat brunch. Postcard perfect, eh?)

Besides writing, I'm doing some Banff-y things like hiking. Honestly, I'm not doing much of that, although I did walk from the Banff Centre to downtown the other day. I was in search of vital toiletries, namely eye drops, moisturizers and hand creams because the air is so damn dry here. Today I attended a Pilates class and then a free classical concert in the Music and Sound building. Then tonight I'd organized an America's Next Top Model party in my room with some of my new female writer friends, but apparently this program doesn't exist in Banff. Which is probably a good thing. After all, we're here to write, not to get distracted by Tyra Banks.

Anyway, this blog is about our artspace so I'll quit with the tangents. I'll have you know that, despite Geoff's worries and lamentations, our artspace rocks. I mean, like, totally. While I was revising my thesis, it was so hard not to run down to the work site every five minutes and ogle the progress. It's completely beautiful. The second floor view is to die for. I even found the courage to climb up to the roof and it's utterly jaw-dropping up there. Geoff: take a picture of the roof and post it, would you?

Thanks for all of your comments and support. This has seriously been one of the best summers of my life.

xo Carla.

Day 50: Indian Summer

Carla has run off to the Wired Writing Workshop in Banff to spend two weeks working on her book and getting one on one mentoring from Lynn Coady, one of her favorite Canadian authors. It’s a big deal for her and she’s been waiting for this all summer, but her departure, along with the sudden cold weather, has made it abruptly clear to me that our time in Cape Breton is running out – only two weeks left.

It feels as though we’ve barely started. Not only has the novelty of the experience made time pass quickly, but we’re so far behind schedule that I’m now scrambling to finish just enough so that the cottage can stand up to the winter onslaught. The application of building paper is nearly finished, roofing is nearly complete and the windows will be installed next week, but shingles aren’t going to happen this year, and neither are plumbing or wiring or, obviously, any interior work whatsoever.

If I could stick around and keep working for another month I would, but with no income our money isn’t going to hold out too much longer. Luckily we’ve managed to stick closely to our budget, so we should be able to replenish our savings in time to do more work in the spring.

After dropping Carla off at the Halifax airport I picked up the skylight to bring back to Mabou, as well as the plywood we’ll use to clad the projecting porch and ‘crow’s nest’ volumes. It’s marine grade Merengi -- as exotic as that sounds the price per squre foot ends up comparable to that of regular old shingles, and the wood’s strong grain and rich red colour will contrast beautifully with the cedar shingles as they turn silver with age. Now the trick is to design the panel joints well enough so that it doesn’t meet the usual soggy, swollen and rot-ridden fate of plywood cladding after a season in the rain and snow.

I was lucky to make it back alive with the wood. As I pulled out of the warehouse parking lot, fully loaded with supplies, I felt the truck shudder and heard a crash. Looking in the rear view mirror and letting out a particularly nasty profanity, I saw the wood and the spare tire I’d used to weigh it down scattered in the middle of the busy intersection – the truck’s rear gate hadn’t latched properly and had let go at the first bump. The light changed and oncoming cars started honking in irritation as I ran across the intersection and began struggling with the heavy sheets and pulling them one by one back into the parking lot. To my amazement, despite the fact that there was plenty of room to maneuver around the mess, two cars drove right over it, leaving tire tracks on the wood and seeming completely oblivious to my plight. When I finished, I turned to head back into the warehouse to elicit help reloading the truck and saw that one of the workers was sitting on a nearby picnic table on his break, languidly smoking and staring at me with the faintly hostile, blank expression that backwoods hicks in horror movies always give to city folk who stop to ask for directions. I had the sense that he had been sitting there the whole time, watching. I hated him for a moment with great passion and stared back until he slowly turned, threw his butt on the ground and headed inside.

- Geoff

Day 45: Danny 'n' Me

Carla and I both have large extended families in Cape Breton (I’ve got about 15 aunts and uncles and somewhere around 30 cousins on my Mom’s side alone), and some of them like to stop by periodically to check out the project. None of them have much interest in contemporary architecture. Their reactions most commonly involve some variation on the phrase ‘it certainly is different!’ Some seem enthusiastic and impressed, though I always imagine they’re just trying to be supportive. Others don’t say much at all.

I haven’t had much direct contact with other designers of any stripe since we arrived in Nova Scotia, and it’s a strange experience to find myself in a place like Mabou trying to explain what I’m doing without recourse to the usual archi-speak terms or concepts. It’s useless to talk about wrappers and cores, or served and servant spaces, or all the other terms I can use when speaking to other designers. As a result I’ve been thinking about the way architects conceptualize things, and how closely those things should relate to the real process of building and making.

In my mind there’s a spectrum between, say, Daniel Libeskind and Louis Kahn. At one end is the purely formal, where abstraction is complete: a building is a crystal, and how it is made is, to the architect, almost literally immaterial. At the other end is the systems-based, where construction technology is illustrated in the form itself – the separations between building systems are fetishized and nothing is purely decorative.



Looking at my building as it is now, covered in OSB (and looking strangely more naked than it did a week ago), it seems closer to the former position than the latter – and, philosophically speaking, that is somewhere I never expected to find myself. I was trained to think of things in terms of systems, and to me this design is an assembly of three parts – the service core or ‘tower’, the plywood-clad ‘crow’s nest’, and the shingled ‘sleeve’. But they’re all made in exactly the same way as parts of the same inextricable mass of studs, joists and sheathing. The differences between them will be visible mainly in terms of finishes. Maybe that’s OK. To me, there is still something deeply satisfying about a space that can be seen clearly in terms of just a few constituent parts – even if it’s all just cosmetic.

- Geoff

Day 34: Burnout

If any of you are keeping track (and the depressing lack of comments on these pages suggests otherwise), you’ll have noticed that Carla and I have been a little slack lately with our blogging schedule. There are two reasons for this. One: I haven’t had a day off since the beginning of the month. Since Carla is swamped with her thesis and you need at least two people to work effectively on a project like this, so when people show up for short periods it seems foolish to take time off while they’re here. Carla’s dad left for Halifax last Wednesday, but was replaced the following day by my father, who was able to help until today. Then John Robert called to say he could come back Sunday night and work through Wednesday (he’s nothing if not eager to help, to a kind of scary degree). This would all be manageable, except our friend Scott arrives Thursday to help for a couple of days… will I be able keep up the pace, still without a day off? I’m feeling the burn.

Oh yeah, reason two for our lack of blog entries: as I alluded to above, Carla passes in her thesis on Wednesday. Needless to say she is more stressed than I, so I suppose I should quit complaining.

Today we framed the ‘crow’s nest’ – it’ll house the 12-foot writing desk with the prime view. It’s the most formally dramatic element of the design, and I’m pleased with it so far. We’ve been able to frame the roof in such a way that the necessary ventilation (which in a more traditional house would be through the eave soffit) will happen through a continuous slot vent just above that window. It should look pretty sharp.

Roof framing is over half complete, which means that roof cladding will come next… this will be the moment of truth. There are areas up there I’m terrified of, since as an architect I’ve learned to fear and loathe flashing and roof membrane details like wrathful gods. So why did I design this roof with internal corners and awkward angles galore? Lucky for me the parapet means no one will be able to see much of it, and if it leaks I won't be sued.

- Geoff