The House & other Arctic musings

Inching closer

We took a drive out to the new airport today and its good to see the work on the airport terminal coming along. Perhaps by the end of the summer flights will be coming into Arctic Bay instead of a half an hour away at the airport that was built in a cloud.

The plane on the apron belongs to the construction company. Essentially, until the airport gets taken over by the government it is a private strip operated by the company, and they can use it as such.  The runway and lights etc. have been completed, and I believe that they are waiting on the completion of the terminal and the approval of Nav Canada before opening it officially.

Like spring, it is slowly coming.

This is a photoblog right?

So, a while back, Teepe's Weblog and Way Way Up tagged me with a meme. I don't know why but memes have lost their lustre to me. Way back, I was frustrated at not being tagged and practically begged someone to tag me. In fact I may have just tagged myself, this is so sad. But I digress. Here then are the rules that govern this 6th photo meme.

1) Open your Pictures folder (or documents)
2) Open the sixth folder there
3) Post the sixth photo in that folder
4) Blog about it
5) Tag six friends.

The original rules said open your Documents folder, but that's not where my photos are held, and my sixth folder contains other people's photos, so I decided to skip that and go to the seventh folder in Pictures. I should have picked the fifth.

This folder contains the photo records of some damaged doors. Back when we were building the House everything, of course, arrived in crates. Despite our tarping most of the crates that had to sit for any length of time, the crate containing our interior doors and bi-fold doors for closets leaked. Causing water damage to every door.  Several of the bi-folds were beyond saving, while most of the interior ones suffered some sort of water staining at the minimum. The amount of damage is difficult to quantify.  Its not so much the physical damage as the cost in time and delays because all of the doors had to be cleaned, sealed and painted. The time spent doing that added to the time it takes to complete construction.  Partially as the result of this only four closets have any doors on them, the one at the client entrance, both doors on the laundry chute, and the laundry space under the stairs. In the case of the space under the stairs those doors were ordered later and came on our second sealift.

I won't tag anyone. If you feel like playing along and haven't yet been tagged have at her. Saves begging someone.

Because you are clambering for it...

(Okay one person asked)

... pictures of the House in winter.

Friday construction post - Prettyfied

Here is the (almost) complete Gas Box from the last Friday Construction Post. On Saturday I sided most of the box, but it was a slow process, or slower than it should have been. Because the box doesn't have consistent dimensions each siding board had to be individually measured, and then the end cuts painted. Temperature was around 1 above so even the super amazing stain that Cape Cod Siding supplies took a little while to dry. So it was almost a one board at a time affair.  I got a little smarter after doing the one side and worked on the two remaining sides at the same time, but still it was slow going for the size of the project.  Thursday evening saw me haul out the table saw to rip down the last remaining three boards and the front piece of trim. 

While I was waiting for those to dry I built Travis a rough little wooden skidoo to pull around (they are everywhere up here). It's an Alpine as it has one ski.

All that remains to do on the Gas Box is paint the doors and the end cuts of the trim when it is nicer and put in a small shelf for oil and naptha bottles.

So here is the pretty version....

Friday Construction Post - The gas box edition

Today I finally got to a project that I had been ignoring for too long, a gas box for the House. You see up here we tend to keep a jerry can or eight kicking around for the snowmobiles and ATV's, with sufficient jerry cans that if we do want to go for a trip out on the land they are there. I've probably bought twenty-five jerry cans since I've been up here.  They have a habit of being borrowed and never returning. Locking them up won't prevent that from happening, but it is a good idea anyway. It is safer, discourages theft, and although it isn't a big problem up here solvent abuse does occur and this just makes it a little harder.

Considerations were that it would have to be lockable, able to hold at least six jerry cans, solid, weatherproof, and fit in with the house.  Oh, and cheap.  Thinking ahead, I kept one of the crates that held construction materials for this very purpose.

But apparently I didn't think too far ahead. One thing I learned very early on in my construction instruction was that square, straight, plumb and true are good things. This crate is none of the above. Starting the project I quickly found that the bottom of the crate is a full inch wider than the top, and this crate is only about a metre tall.  I sat there an pondered how I was going to fix this dreadful unsquaredness and eventually I came to the conclusion "this is a box for holding jerry cans for crumbs sakes, live with it!" Living with it meant that making things like doors would be a little more difficult, but nothing was impossible.

Living with my construction sensei's dictum "Always think plan ahead" the first thing I did was add extra 2X4's in the corners to have something to nail the siding to at the end of the project.  Yes, siding. Remember it must look like it belongs with the house, besides I've got a good pile of siding left over.  Hmm, another discovery, none of the four corners are the same height. Not major differences, but my god what did they thing they were making... a crate? Oh, yeah.

At this point I began making the doors from a scrap piece of 1/2" plywood and some scrap 2X4's. Because of the odd shape of the crate I took one piece of plywood, cut it to the height I wanted, put it in place, scribed the sides direct from the crate and then cut it in half.  Leaving me with something like this....

Friday Construction Post

It has been a long time since I had one of these posts.  I've gotten the construction bug of late and have been siding the shed as a means of satisfying it.  I started to work on the project some time ago by putting Tyvek on the outside of the shed.  Tyvek is a windproof paper that will both seal the shed from the wind and protect the wood from any moisture that builds up underneath the siding.

Unfortunately, putting the Tyvek on coincided with some wet miserable weather, so this was as far as the project got for awhile. However, after awhile nice weather returned and the project moved forward in dribs and drabs since then.  I've found that having two small children to look after, and the B&B is not conducive to getting a lot done. Most of the siding has been done while Hilary naps, or Leah is home for lunch.

The trim that I put on was left over window trim from the house, as we didn't trim out the windows, feeling that they looked better with out them. 

When we originally built the shed there was no thought on putting siding on it, so the next step was to attach lumber inside to provide the nails something to grab on to.  This was needed around the doors and in the corners of the non-gable walls.

Normally the walls should be strapped out with 1 by material, and the siding nailed into this. This provides a space for moisture to move down and not collect underneath the siding. However I decided to attach the siding directly to the walls because 1) I had no 1 by material left and 2) well, its a shed.

Then it was simply a matter of cutting the siding to length, painting the cuts and attaching the siding directly to the wall.  The ends cuts are painted to protect the lumber but in this case it is more a matter of asthetics.  Because the window trim material is thin (5/8") the edge of the siding sticks past the trim. If the ends weren't painted it would look stripy and unfinished.

It is pretty straight forward, the only trickier spots are under the eaves of the gable ends where the siding has to be cut at an angle to fit.

I'm now about 3/4s of the way done, and if a little nice weather comes I should be able to finish in a day or two.  I'm not sure how I'm going to finish the doors, or the soffets  but that will probably wait until next year anyway.

Ah, the sweet smell of a frozen vent

Those of you who live where the mercury doesn't regularily hang out in the minus 20's and below, probably never get to experience the joy of a frozen sewer vent, something that happens up here several times over the course of the winter.  Sewer systems usually have a vent up on the roof, letting all of the noxious gases escape out of the house, rather than in the washroom or elsewhere. Of course these gases are nice and warm and moist, and when they hit cold winter air they freeze, usually building up over time and eventually capping off the vent. That means that the sewer gas (and remember in our case it is a nice warm sewer tank below the house that is generating the gas) has no where to go and soon the house smells like, well, like a sewer tank.

Normally the solution is to get out a ladder and crawl up on to the roof with a kettle of boiling water and/or something to chip away the ice and open up the vent that way. But our roof is way too dangerous for that method.  The sewer vent is probably about 35 feet up, and the roof is slippery metal, pitched at almost 30 degrees (28.41 degrees to be a little more precise).

Our solution is quite elegant actually, (and when I say "our" I mean I nodded enthusiastically when Gary and Dale thought about it). First of all the roof where the vent is located is uninsulated around the pipe.  This allows heat from the house to warm the vent stack and keep ice from forming in it. This is only a partial solution as the gas still freezes when it meets the cold air and the ice forms outside the vent, still building up and blocking. The second part of the solution was to bring the stack straight down into a clean out and branching the stack off from there.  This clean out is in the attic.

So when the vent freezes over, as it did again today for about the fifth time this winter, I simply go up into attic and take the cap off the clean out (holding a bucket underneath to collect the condensed, er, water).  I then use a long stick to punch out the ice from below, opening the vent once more.  The technique still needs some refinement, I need to come up with a better "chisel", as frequently I just punch a small hole in the ice, which quickly freezes up again, but all in all it sure beats climbing up onto that roof in -35 degree weather, hoping I'd hit a snowbank on the way down.

A grand Grand Opening

We had our official opening last Thursday, for a couple hours in the afternoon. I chained myself to the oven on Wednesday and baked (in addition to feeding clients), cookies, cake, scones, bannock etc. We cleaned and made sure the word got out.  We decided to keep it short and simple, an opening prayer (everything opens with a prayer up here) and the local MLA, Levi Barnabas (his wife gave the prayer) said a few words and cut the ribbon along with my father and mother-in-law.  Then people toured around the building, and scarfed down coffee, tea and baking.  Everyone had positive things to say.

There were quite a number of kids there, and I had to reign in my inner curmudgeon as they were climbing up the outside of the stair case and sliding down the maple treads, taking Travis toys for a tour and a couple of them kept pulling his bike out from the water tank room and trying to ride it. (Breath, breath. Go to your happy place, go to your happy place, go to... GET OFF THE GOD DAMN STAIRCASE!!... ahh my happy place)

All the baking went, and people left with their hunger and curiosity satiated. All in all, a grand Opening. And as a bonus, we had a family picture taken....

Well we're movin' on up.

We spent our first night in the House last night. At long long last.  Of course apart from the beds and a few other small things nothing is moved in yet.  We've still alot of packing and moving to do.  So, not that the posts have been coming at a furious rate anyway, posts are probably going to be fairly slow for the next while as we move, get settled and look after clients.

No rest for the wicked, or the weary. But finally sleeping  there after 19 months feels good. Really good.

Almost there

I know that the posts have been rather far apart, but well, things at the house are getting close... no time no time.  And we've had our first paying customers.  Woo hoo, we're a business.  We aren't quite ready for people as there are a number little details to get there but...Ian and Jennifer of Nunablog asked.  Friends and  fellow teachers from Iglulik were snowmobiling here this week and needed a place, so how could we say no.  We've  also had two sport hunters here, before they headed out on the land.

So to tide you over for a couple of days, here are some photos of the dining room...

And client room number two...