I stand corrected

So I emailed back and forth with the man who located our water pipe a year ago when we excavated the foundations, and sure enough, he said there wasn't a tracing wire on the pipe, and it was too deep to detect by metal detector, so he did indeed "witch" it. He said it wasn't a reliable way to guarantee where the pipe was, though. 

Well. So last year when we excavated, no one told us we were relying on witching. Luckily it all went okay and we didn't hit the pipe. But shouldn't someone have told us at that time that the marked location was unreliable? I suppose in the end it doesn't matter, because the children next door made off with the little blue flags anyway, and we had to rely on a little hand-drawn diagram stuck to the utility room wall.

So this brings me to the next question: if they witched it last year, can't they witch it this year? According to the Township, Bill 93 prohibits them from locating utilities on private property, but I've looked at Bill 93 and I don't see that in there. And isn't the whole purpose of locating in the first place to locate on private property? 

In the end, we're left with no resolution at all. We'll have to dig blind. I can't afford to do the septic this year anyway, as it turns out, since we're having to do the roof instead, so we'll go through this whole location fiasco again next year, I suppose.

Still, witching ... Am I the only one who feels it's so 17th century?

Raising the roof, in more ways than one

The guys are reshingling the vast roof between rain showers. Doing it in such a way that the bare wood isn't exposed to the storms. I am afraid of heights, so I greatly admire their bravery on those ladders! We will keep the lightning rods, even though we're told they're not necessary, because they maintain the historic look.

Meanwhile, we are plugging away at other projects that don't require zoning/permits, as that seems to have stalled. We are writing to the Mayor and local politicians to voice our concern about the level of bureaucracy that throws up barriers to prevent people from investing in this community. All we want to do is put a bed in the basement and join the village. Why is it taking a year and tens of thousands of dollars in paperwork?

I had the idea that our current institutional zoning permits us to run a school. Could it be a boarding school? Can the caretaker live on site? We could totally do a school. I'd put up a sign out front that said "Warwick School of..." and then change the board every week to something different. School of Piping. School of Weaving. School of Writing. School of Guitar and Banjo. School of Painting. School of Home Arts and Gardening. We could make it work.

The absurdity of local bureaucracy

I have a doozy for you today, folks! As part of getting ready to install a new septic system, the septic company needs to come out and dig a six-foot test hole to see what kind of soil we have so they know what to design for us. Before they can dig that hold, they asked us to have all utilities located and marked. Perfectly reasonable request.

I made a OneCall request as I'm supposed to, and they notified a bunch of utility companies to do locates, plus the township, which is responsible for marking the water lines. All good. We heard back from Brooke Telecom and Eastlink almost immediately. We haven't heard from Hydro One yet, but we know the lines are above ground in this area, so no worries there. And there is no natural gas in this area, so no worries there either. We know where the propane line is because we installed it. So that just leaves the water line.

Today the water locator came out and marked out the water main that runs in front of the property and drew a circle around the valve, which was already marked by a couple of cinder blocks. But then he left again without indicating where the pipe runs from the valve to the building. So I called the township. Andrew at Warwick Township kindly agreed to check with the company they contract with to do the locates, and then he called us back.

This is where it all veers off into a surreal parallel universe. It seems they've recently passed a regulation that prohibits them from doing any locates on private property. They're simply not allowed to do it. My husband pointed out that they did it for us last year when we had the foundations waterproofed, but Andrew said they've passed the regulation since then. My husband asked how we're supposed to dig on private property (how anyone is supposed to) without being able to locate the water lines. Andrew basically said we're on our own, and if we hit a line, good luck. He then added that the locators aren't very reliable anyway, as they "witch" for water with two metal dousing rods.

Stunned silence. Um...no. They use a metal detector. The water pipe is metal, and they scan with a detector to mark out where it runs. What century did we stumble into?

So...no ability to identify the location of the water pipe unless someone out there has a metal detector and is willing to come find it for us. Just one more example of how local government and common sense run in opposite directions. What's the septic guy supposed to do from now on, evermore, world without end? How does he safely do his job?

I need to go lie down.

Let there be light!

Electrician today, installing outlets and lights in the lower level. Except we apparently bought the wrong kind of light fixtures and have to take them back (drat! They were on sale) and find something else. I'm in Mississauga while my husband is at the church, but I trust him completely to make a great design choice without my input. Our taste is the same, he knows the functionality we're looking for, and I know he'll make a great decision about the lights.

When we were fairly early on in our marriage, I came home from work once to find he had painted and wallpapered the apartment. And it was beautiful and perfect and what I would have chosen. We used to play a game where we'd take a flyer or sales brochure and each flip through it and choose the one thing we liked the most. And inevitably we would choose the same thing. One year at Christmas, he handed me the thick Consumer's catalogue and said to pick my favourite thing. I did -- a terra cotta statue of a woman holding a baby. I showed my selection to my husband. He turned and picked up a box from under the Christmas tree and handed it to me. And it was the statue. He'd known what I would pick, and he'd already purchased it for me. It stands in our room today.

That kind of compatibility. So I have no qualms at all leaving design choices in his capable hands.

Shelves and more shelves

We found the perfect "church" bookshelves for the book nook at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They are either made from an old piano or else designed to look like they are.

We are repurposing the old pie shelves from the kitchen into windowsills for the basement windows. The thick old varnish needs to be stripped off and the wood (we think it may be cedar) restained. We must have spent two hours debating which colour stain to use, and I'm now convinced I have no sense of colour at all. We set up a table outside to do the sanding until heavy rain and lightning sent us scurrying back indoors. It's going to take a lot of sandpaper to remove the thick layers. It was lovely working out there with my husband, each with our own sander, the sawdust powdering everything and drifting gently down on Brio, who lay contentedly underfoot. I did the bulk of the rough removal and my husband did the fine detail work. At one point he stopped to take my picture lest readers think I sit around reading while everyone else does the work on this place...

Carrying on

We may have hit some roadblocks with the rezoning and so can't carry forward with activities that require permits, such as plumbing/septic, but we are still plugging away at the things we can do without the zoning change. This week we are repurposing the old pie shelves as windowsills in the basement. (Sanding off the thick varnish is using up a lot of sandpaper!) In the interest of time, we hired someone to frame in the pillars in the rec room to encase the ducts that bring the heat down to the floor. Monday the electrician comes, and also next week the roofer begins replacing the roof. And yesterday I painted the outside lower sills with a thick white paint like yogurt to fill in all the water-catching pores in the stone/cement. Next I need to set up scaffolding to paint the upper sills.

Last night I went out with a flashlight to remove the blue painter's tape, and you should have seen the size of the crickets that scattered from the light. Humongous! They say crickets are good luck. In that case, I guess we are very lucky indeed!