The Straw House Blog - Home of Glen, Gil and Declan Hunter

Rainy Tuesday

Mom finished the taping and priming. Dad worked on the conduit and wiring. I did a whole bunch of different stuff. Tomorrow Pete and Tina are back and we’ll get that last wall done. Bell comes tomorrow, we should have a working phone.

Just three pictures today.

When I got in this morning the turkeys had surrounded the hill and were gobbling away like nobody’s business. I don’t know what the deal was but those turkeys were definately ticked off about something.

Maybe it was foreshadowing. We had an afternoon guest who would like to hunt the turkeys on our land. Turkey hunting facts: the season runs from April 25th to May 31st, each hunter may take a total of 2 birds for the whole season, wild turkeys are actually good eating. We also found out that somebody might already be hunting our land; apparently there are some guys who travel around in trucks, park on the road, walk across people’s land and leave. Hunting without permission is a problem up here, even though our land (and most land) is posted. The Morton’s have exclusive privileges during deer season, they’ve been instructed to chase anybody else off the land. Brent now has the same authority during turkey season. Oh, and he promised not to shoot towards the house, that was nice of him, dontcha think?

Basically I’m a Hunter by proxy.

Posted by: Glen: May, 13, 2003

Very long day

Long day, I just want to watch the West Wing finale and go to bed. Here are some pictures.

Posted by: Glen: May, 14, 2003

What happened Wednesday

I knew things were going too smoothly with Bell. But we’ll get to that.

Pete and Tina were in the house again, and I was helping them out with the stucco. We completed the living room wall and fixed cracks on some of the others. Tina spent some time scraping stucco off the posts and beams, they have a special tool that seems to be made for just that task.

Dad worked on the conduit, and we ran some cable from the mechanical room up across the back and through to the front part of the house. So we have all of the phone and electrical wire run around most of the front part of the house. Once we have a working phone line we’ll start connecting the various jacks. We’ve strung Cat-5 networking cable along the outer perimeter as well, but it is my intention to use 802.11 for my main networking needs.

So everybody left around 4:30pm, but I had to hang around because Bell was supposed to come and hook up my phone lines. I waited until 5:30pm and then I went back to my parents. No sooner had I sat down and started into my email than my cel rang. Of course it was the tech, and of course he wanted me to meet him at the house. So back I went, with some reheated lasagna and my book.

By 7:30pm there was still no sign of the tech, so I drove out to the road to look for him. I found him at the main box for the line, cursing. Seems there was no dial-tone and he couldn’t get a test pulse from our road box to the line box. That was the result of mis-numbering. With that resolved he had to wire from the road box to the house. They’d already run a line in alongside the driveway with 5 test boxes. The line had to be connected from box to box and then connected to the house. By the time he had wired the line from box to box to the house it was 9:00pm. He finally left at 10:00am, and I still didn’t have a dial tone. He said to call if I didn’t have a dial-tone by 2pm Thursday.

Posted by: Glen: May, 15, 2003

Another annoyed Bell customer

So the afternoon rolled around and still no dial-tone. So I called Bell. It seems that I’m now considered a repair, even though the line only got installed yesterday and it’s never worked. So they managed to book a tech to come out and ‘repair’ the problem tomorrow. Sometime between 8am and 12pm. Nice. It took me a while to convince the rep at Bell that it couldn’t be my inside wiring.

Rep: “Now if it’s your inside wiring we’ll have to charge you.”

Me: “There is no inside wiring. I’m connecting my phone directly to the demarcation point.”

Rep: “OK, but if the tech finds that the problem is with your inside wiring that isn’t covered.”

Me: “There. Is. No. Inside. Wiring. I haven’t run it yet.”

Rep: “Oh, I see they installed the line yesterday, well then it’s covered under the 30 day warranty.”

Me: “It’s never worked.”

*sigh*

Pete, Tina and I did crack repair on the interior walls, yesterday Pete demonstrated crack repair on the exterior walls. Dad continued his work on the conduit, but until we have a dial-tome we can’t hook up the phone jacks.

Just before lunchtime Nick (my father-in-law) arrived to continue the fine Sokolowski tradition of sanding paralams. We finally dragged him away at 5:30pm. He’s coming back with me tomorrow at 8am.

In other notable events today: Simon (Generation Solar) stopped by for a visit, we connected the clothes washer and did a load of laundry, and the dishwasher was delivered.

A big hello to visitors who have come here by way of Dwell Magazine, seems they printed a letter from me, and included the blog URL. Enjoy the site, please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Sorry Jeff, no pictures today.

Posted by: Glen: May, 15, 2003

8 days and counting

We have a dial-tone!! Just one line works, but it’s a start. In the end the problem had to be handed up to a higher order of technician - the so-called “Cable Guy”. He was utterly unlike Jim Carrey, but, as has become a tradition in this project, he knew our land. In fact he had hunted coyotes on our land and killed his first one in the south field. I did the nod and smile thing.

On the hunting vein, I ventured out to get some gas and came across two fellows parked in front of my property, both looking across my fields with binoculars. I stopped to ask them if they required any assistance (being such a helpful fellow). Apparently they’re just avid bird watchers, not hunters. No sir. Being a rude city person I proceeded (despite their protestations) to make it abundantly clear, in no uncertain terms, that they DID NOT have permission to hunt on my land. One of them finally asked, in a rather nasty tone, “Don’t you like hunters?” I like hunters just fine, I don’t like poachers, and anybody hunting my land without my permission is a poacher. I told them that there already was one fellow hunting the turkeys, and a crew hunting deer, people who had the decency to come up to the house, meet me, talk to me, and ASK PERMISSION. They shut up after that and I drove on. Sheesh.

On the drive back there was a white tailed deer just wandering up the road. I got within about 30 feet before she saw me and took off into the bush.

Lots of small jobs got done today, some painting, some drywalling, Nick sanding and sanding and sanding. The man is a sanding machine. He said he’s coming back next week for a few more days of fun.

Just for Jeff, here are the pictures…

Posted by: Glen: May, 17, 2003

Blogging from the new house

Excuse me while I geek out for a moment. This entry is coming to you from what will be my living room. So the phone lines are in and working, Dad’s wiring up the jacks, and I’m very excited.

What am I doing? Caulking seams and joins way up in the top of the gallery/cupola. It’s 20C, the sun’s out and the White Stripes are on the iPod.

Life is good.

Posted by: Glen: May, 18, 2003

Damn fine day

Here’s the rundown: 2 working phone lines, 2 house guests, 2 bays caulked, the bathroom and kitchen painted, and some drywalling done.

As an added bonus Eric came by to check out the state of the road back to the gravel pit. It seems to be OK, and so he’s coming out to dig the septic bed next week. In addition he’ll be grading the ground around the house, digging the trench for the wind generator power line, and fixing up our driveway. The driveway is bad enough right now that Joanne figures we can use it later to induce labour if necessary.

Gator had to be hosed down again after he rolled in something unspeakably foul. Fortunately he loves it when you spray him with the hose, so it makes the job much easier.

I spent a good part of the morning just relaxing and reading a book. With the windows open and a breeze coming in, the sunlight outside, it was just perfect. Both Joanne and I had a hard time getting a start on house work.

7 days to go.

Want pictures? We’ve got pictures.

Posted by: Glen: May, 18, 2003

Another stunning day

20C, sunny, couldn’t ask for better. Dad worked on the window casements. We’re doing them in maple harvested from our land. Each has to be custom made since each window frame is slightly different. I spent most of the day up in the gallery caulking seams and cutting off window spacers.

We’ve been cleaning out the front part of the house in preparation for the move. Mom and Jo moved some of the scrap wood out to the back. Jo sanded posts for a good part of the afternoon.

Dad and I are going to start fibreglassing the shower stall tomorrow since we don’t want Joanne to be around those fumes, mask or no mask that wouldn’t be good.

We’ve determined that with construction going on we get about three days backup with the batteries. That means that we can last three days with virtually no sun before we have to run the generator. When we have a good sunny day like yesterday we actually gain a bit of charge. At noon yesterday we were generating 8 amps of power from the panels, our record is 12 amps which we got sometime in February. The discrepancy seems to be due to haze, the cold sunny days in February are crystal clear, but the sun’s out for much less time. Right now we have long sunny days but they aren’t nearly as clear.

Posted by: Glen: May, 20, 2003

My Dad & music

Just when you think you’ve got them pegged, they surprise you. We’ve had the iPod hooked up to an old stereo at the house for a while now, and we listen to music most of the day. The challenge as I’ve talked about before is finding stuff that has some giddy-up to it (for working) and remains acceptable to my parents.

Today after lunch Dad wandered over to the iPod and started fiddling with it; the first time he’s really showed much interest in the thing. Next thing I know Steve Earle is singing “John Walker’s Blues”. I suggested to my Dad that that particular album might not be totally to his liking, but he said, “This sounds OK to me.”

Then as we were working on the fibreglass we had a discussion about Steve Earle, and country music. Colour me freaked out. I wonder what would have happened if he’d hit on the Jurassic 5, or the Black Keys?

Posted by: Glen: May, 22, 2003

The shower stall

On Thursday Dad and I worked on fibreglassing the back of the shower stall. Rather than describe it, I’ve annotated the pictures, check it out.

Posted by: Glen: May, 23, 2003