Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch... 1 - A whole new checklist

And in case we didn't have enough to do already, we are initiating a facelift on our condo as well.  Figured we may as well go nuts and just get all of this stuff done at the same time, so that once we're through it all, we really will be through it all.  Yes, we are nuts.

We live on the ground floor of a duplex, and we have the 2nd floor rented out to tenants.  This place was a fixer upper when we bought it 3 years ago (almost), and it's still a fixer upper today.  It's a beautiful old building, circa 1890 with 10 foot ceilings and beautiful plastered crown moldings everywhere. 2 large plaster columns sit at the center line that separates the living room area in half, and a killer old stone facade graces the front of the building.

Before we moved in 2 years ago we did a whole bunch of work.  The old plaster walls were cracked from floor to ceiling in almost every room, and it's probably why this place sat on the market for so long - it looked really bad, but in fact it was in great shape.  Plaster will crack after 100 years, no big deal - we just took it all down and replaced it with new gyprock.

We also took advantage at that time to lay all new electric, and we drilled holes all over the ceilings and installed recessed halogen lighting everywhere.  In the living room/office we took out the actual wood frame of the house (leaving the vertical posts in position, of course, so that the house wouldn't tumble down) in order to expose the brick firewall that sits between us and our neighbour.  We repainted every room, and hacked away the jungle of vines that had taken over the back yard - then we moved in.  That was phase 1.

2 years later, and we're moving onto phase 2.  This time we're taking on some of the biggies, but the necessaries:

1 - Replace the kitchen cabinets, new floors, new counters.

2- Remove the bathtub and install a large walk in shower; retile the floors and walls.

3- Sand the front doors, fix the rotting front deck and repaint everything to match.

4 - Remove section of hallway wall to reveal the staircase that leads to the 2nd floor apartment so that we can build  a storage space underneath it, and install a coat closet against it.

5- Create a built in linen/storage closet in the hallway near the dining room (the space exists, and has been left open and unused for 2 years now!)

6- Build a large built in clothes closet in the bedroom by reversing the storage closet that currently opens into the office (and separates the office from the bedroom).

The issue with our condo has always been one of size and storage.  It is a one bedroom condo, with virtually no storage.  So essentially we have been living amongst piles of clutter for years now, and it's always been really hard to keep the place looking clean and organized because we've never had anywhere to hide our junk.

During these hectic times, it sucks to have to come home to a mess all the time.  It makes unwinding and relaxing really difficult because the clutter is a constant reminder that we have so much more work to do.  Living in a messy environment makes it virtually impossible to stay organized and focused, or have friends over and entertain etc etc...

So we need to get on top of this to-do list ASAP.  Most of it will result in new storage possibilities and cleaner appearances.  I know that this is all we need in order to really enjoy our home, instead of sitting around resenting it.  

First up will be the closet reversal into the bedroom.  That room is relatively small, and loaded with wardrobes and drawer sets to keep our clothes in.  All of it can go once we build in 1 large closet, and the extra space will be a huge relief on my head.

And so it begins...

My September

Admittedly September has been a really hard month. Not only did we start it with a huge kick to the head from the city, but I'm also on crunch time for a delivery deadline on my film, so my mind has been on overdrive for weeks. I'm not sure how much more I can handle, and I'm hoping the chaos level will not raise any more than it's current peak.

My dad was pretty speechless when I had told him the city architect's initial reactions to his plans. He just told me that he was going to "fix this", and that never in his 35 years in construction had someone referred to his work as being "amateur".   After we got that bad news on the 4th, I knew the only way I'd ever sleep again is if we got a new plan into action - and fast.

There has been almost no time to think, only time "to do". I hate working this way, but when one plan failed another needed to begin. It's been exhausting, and it isn't over yet.

Thursday September 4th
After being completely floored by the city architect, I called my dad to let him know we appeared to be f*cked. That evening I put a call into my friend Debbie who studied architecture and works as a project manager at a firm here in the city. She agreed to take a look at the drafts that my dad had prepared to see if she could help us somehow get them up to par.

Friday September 5th
Dropped off the plans at Debbie's office. Will have to wait until Monday until we touch base again to discuss them.

Monday September 8th
Debbie emails me to let me know that she has given the plans to her colleague, one of the architects at the firm, to get his feedback. Her initial feeling is that the plans are not that bad, just jarring that they are drawn by hand, and are not entirely clear as to the work to be done. More news to come tomorrow.

Tuesday September 9th
The feedback from Debbie's colleague is mainly about clarity of details. They are not presented in a way that makes our work plan immediately clear. The answers are there, but are hard to find... It gives the impression that we are not prepared to take on the job, and so obviously this would raise concerns with the city. Debbie recommends that we call the McGill School of Architecture to place a help wanted ad amongst the Masters Students so that we can get our plans drawn into AutoCad - once in the computer, she may be able to help us along by working with them herself. Got the info I needed from McGill and placed the ad that very day.

Wednesday September 10th
Received back 4 or 5 applications from interested students wanting to take my dad's hand drawn plans, and convert them to AutoCad.

Thursday September 11th
Decided on one student, Jie, who's CV and work looked rather impressive. A masters student in town from China who was the only applicant with the foresight to send me examples of his work, as proof that he could actually do what we needed done! Met with Jie that evening to show him the plans and walk through the house - gave him 3 days to get the drawings completed for us.

Sunday September 14th
Larysa and I met with Jie for a couple of hours to go over his first draft CAD plans. There were a lot of revisions to be made, and details that needed to be added amongst the 12 drawings that Jie had created. Gave him one more day to work in the details, with final drafts to be delivered next day.

Monday September 15th
Met with Jie for 3 hours after work to get as much detail into the CAD drawings as possible. There were obvious problems to be fixed that I could not properly advise him on because I am not an architect. No worries, we'll leave that stuff for Debbie! Wrapped up work with Jie and emailed all the CAD files to Debbie.

Tuesday September 16
Met with Debbie at her office in the evening. A review of Jie's work revealed certain problems and issues that would require ample time to correct. Main issue was that there was little consistency in his presentation of dimensions and fonts amongst the drawings. Debbie goes through the plans with a red pen and recommends returning to Jie to fix many, many things before we proceed further in getting them stamped and sent back to the city. Debbie also delivers the bad news that her firm would not be willing to take us on as clients. We would have had to work with them from the start, and before construction had gotten underway. Busted. Still no news from my dad, who had claimed he was going to "fix this" - stress levels high.

Wednesday September 17th
TODAY SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE DAY OUR ORIGINAL PLANS WENT TO CITY COUNCIL. Spoke to my dad in the morning to let him know that the revised plans will be ready in a day or so, and can his architect be ready to stamp them so that we can get ourselves in line for the next City Council meeting on October 1st. My dad breaks the news that his "guy" has disappeared out of the country again on another job. Brilliant, another deadline is going to come and go. I'd have a heart attack over this, if I had the energy. Later that day Larysa calls my dad's guy's office and gets confirmation from the secretary that he will be back in town on Friday. This will be to little, to late.

Thursday September 18th
No longer trusting or believing that this will ever work out, Larysa places a call to Gina, the architect that we wanted to work with right from the start. No more messing about with my dad's nonsense. Turns out Gina has just finished a major job, and can take us on right away and agrees to meet us at the house on Friday. Larysa calls my dad and informs him that "his guy" is officially fired. That plan is dead in the water, and we are bringing our architect on board to see what she can do. I don't think I've had a good night's sleep in over 2 weeks - the stress is killing me.

Friday September 19
Gina meets us at the house for a walk through. She has already sketched some ideas out, and after a lot of back and forth we determine the best layout for her to use. She will work from scratch in AutoCad, essentially rendering all of Jie's work useless. A shame that we paid several hundred dollars for work that won't be used. Gina confirms that draft 1 will be delivered to us October 1st, and that the final draft will follow 1 week later after the city architect sends his feedback on revisions. This means we are now going to aim to get this all finalized and ready for the city's October 15th meeting on permit approvals. Completely ridiculous that we are so far behind, but comforting to have an actual architect who is physically present to take on the work, and alleviate our burden of having to micro-manage the whole ordeal.

Wednesday September 24th
Gina emails initial drawings to reveal spatial issues with the stairs leading to the 2nd floor, and to the basement. We are asked to choose our preference before she moves on. Her first sketch gets us a little nervous though because half of what we had discussed and sketched together last week is nowhere to be seen here. We reply by giving our preference of stair placements, along with a list of details as a reminder of what we need her to change based on last week's pow-wow.

Thursday September 25th
The revisions arrive from Gina... All is looking good with the plans now. We will meet this coming Saturday to review them in person as it will be easier to discuss all the detail changes we'd like to make. But still, this is only 2 of the 12 drawings that need to get done. Time is ticking, and so much of this is out of our hands right now.

By Wednesday October 1st we will need all 12 drawings in hand to email to the city. I hope the city architect will be more receptive to our presentation this time - Gina is a bit of a bulldog, so if he has problems with her plans it is quite probable that she will bark back. I have a sneaking suspicion that she doesn't take sh*t from anyone. But at least it doesn't have to be me this time... Better to leave the arguing to the pros, as long as this whole ordeal ends with that beautiful permit dropping into our laps.

I'm still a wreck, because if this doesn't work out I am not sure what we will do. But I have to admit that it feels good to have the right people in our corner again.  This is how it should have been from the start...

Reality Check

I usually write as though this reno project is some sort of movie, and that it's not much to worry about... But the honest truth is that I lose a lot of sleep at night.  I'm a nervous wreck these days.

It's fun to give the play by play of tearing a place down, and putting it back together - but what I don't always weave into the fold is the incredible pressure and stress on my shoulders, the feeling of butterflies that lands in my stomach when things go wrong, the frustration that comes along with checking in on the work just to see that almost nothing has changed - yet we're pumping out cash for labour at the end of every week.  Knowing that we are having so much trouble with the city to get permits to build the extension, and we are already into the fall - many weeks behind schedule.  

I really worry when I reflect on how much work we are doing, and will have to do for the foreseeable future.  On top of that we are paying for the project with a whole lot of borrowed money, and even at that we know we'll be  short on cash flow in the near future - so how will we deal with that when the time comes?  

The juggling act of having to handle EVERYTHING that is happening now, while trying to properly plan for EVERYTHING that is coming up is enough to do my head in most of the time. 

And this nonsense with the city is horrible because it all revolves around the fact that we tried to take a shortcut - my dad, a draftsman by trade, was to draw all the plans in consultation with his architect friend,  who would then sign off on the plans and stamp them with his architectural seal of approval.  But as I last posted, that plan went belly up and now we're scrambling on Plan B.  

Right now we are focusing all our energy on trying to tiptoe around a minefield of architecture... A field that we admittedly know very little about.  We need to get a stronger architect on board ASAP to take this part of the project over because it's a terrible waste of energy for Larysa and I to be attempting to micro-manage it.  And we need these plans drawn properly, stamped and approved more than anything else at this very moment.

And it doesn't help that I also work a full time job, and have been producing/directing a documentary film outside of work for the last 3 years.  Making a film is already a double full time job - a huge undertaking that requires so much effort (and money - of which we have none!).  That project is approaching the end now, and it's a real handful with a to-do list as long as the house.  All this to say - I feel as though I am working 4-5 full time jobs simultaneously, and each one of them is a major project that can not afford to slip.  And it's wearing me thin.  

Really thin.

Imagine what runs through my head when the lights go out at night and I'm lying in bed.   Trying to figure out how I will get everything done in the very little time that I have to spread around.  How will I pay for all of these things?  How will we convince the city to let us begin with the huge work that should have been COMPLETED by now?  When my dad said "he had a guy" to handle the architecture, why on earth did we think it would have been a better course of action than just starting months ago with the architect we had originally wanted on board?

Oh my God, our schedule is falling further and further behind... This is getting more and more expensive... We've made mistakes, and if only we had known then what we know now...  I have a thousand things to do to finish the film, and I keep neglecting them... I need to wake up early for work, but how will I even be able to focus when I get there?  

And so it goes, on and on.

And the less I sleep, the grumpier I become.  And the grumpier I am, the shittier I become at staying organized, and then things start to fall behind and I feel like catching up is impossible, and then panic sets in, and then my sleep worsens because my mind is so crowded.  I don't have an off switch, and it's a vicious circle.  

Then I will occasionally start to pity myself - why me?  Why can't I just go to work and come home and relax like everyone else?  When will I be allowed to have time to myself to just read a book or play some tennis without feeling worried that I am neglecting more important issues?

Usually around this time I can begin to crawl out of my mood because it's around now that I can remind myself that I am experienced in this juggling act, and I know there are always solutions, and I know how to be patient, and I know that these projects will end in the months to come.  This situation is extreme, but it is only temporary - at the end of this very busy phase in my life I will have built a home, and I will have released a film, and I will have survived the process once again. 

But more importantly, I am not in this alone.  Larysa is right there with me going through the same thing (though admittedly she is better at shutting it off at night so she can get some sleep).  Yes, we do bicker and fight over renovation and money issues.  Doing this type of work is exhausting on the head, and because there is no one else around we usually aim our frustrations at each other.  It sucks that we do it, but we always survive because we know that none of it is ever personal - it's just us blowing off steam, and at the end of the day we both know we're working towards the same goals together.  Bad days are only bad days, and we always come out of them together.   It's true what they say: If you can survive building a house together, you can survive anything - and this is why I never worry about us.

I do all of this work because I believe that it's so important.  Sometimes the risk and the sacrifice is necessary because good opportunities don't always present themselves a second time.  I want to take on the most that I can while I am able to do so - blow out as much energy as I can afford, and one day look back at a job well done, and be proud of some pretty major accomplishments.  Yes, I may walk around like a zombie sometimes, and the burn out does set in hard - but this is what beaches and vacations are for, and that type of medicine usually sets me straight for the next round upon return.  

As long as I can find time for a little balance, I know that I will somehow pull through.  I reckon that by spring I will be looking back on all of this as a memory.  I will be free of major projects, and having that break on my horizon is all the fuel I am going to need to get through this right now...

Shoddy Plans = Crisis Mode!!!

My dad is a draftsman by trade, so the plan was that he would handle all the technical drawings required by the city, and that his licensed architect friend would handle the final review/revisions to the drawings before signing off and stamping them.   We originally had an architect that we wanted to work with, but my dad insisted on his route because "he had a guy". 

The goal here was to save time and money in landing the permit for building an extension.

Well, earlier this week we had made our deadline to submit the "near final" draft of our renovation/extension plans to the city.  This was already several weeks later than we had wanted to submit (see earlier posts about that whole ordeal).  I had dropped them off the same morning that the city architect was due to return from his vacation.  This would allow 1 week for him to review and make recommendations on our "final draft" submission that he would be taking to the City Council in order to land us a permit in 2 weeks from now.  The plans looked pretty sweet, and it was nice to see the whole project finally laid out on paper.

As we need to submit our FINAL plans next Wednesday (1 week before the City Council meeting on permit approvals) I figured I'd better call into the city architect to get some feedback on the plans so that we could hurry through the final revisions.  We need this permit to go through at their September 17th meeting so that we can get on with this extension already.  We are already to far behind schedule, and that is making me really uneasy.

To my surprise, the architect at the city actually picked up his phone when I called.  Great, I thought, this is going to be my lucky day! 

"Hi, I'm calling to follow up on our design plans that I submitted for the permit extension"

I didn't see it coming - and maybe that's why I went into an immediate panic - but when he heard it was me calling he launched into some spiel and proceeded to shit really hard all over the plans that we had submitted:

"Mr. Emery, I have to tell you that I am having extreme difficulties in understanding your plans.  And it's not so much that they were drawn in hand as opposed to standard AutoCad design, but it is very clear that these plans were drafted by someone who knows construction, but knows very little about architectural design and presentation.  You are supposed to be working with a licensed architect who will stamp these plans... Who is your architect? Where is all the architectural language?  Why don't the legends make any sense, where are all the details on materials and execution of the work plan?  The composition of your elevations don't make sense... It's sloppy and lacks in good aesthetic design.  These plans are so far from ready that I can't even offer proper commentary on revisions.  You simply need to be working with an architect who will know how to use standard language and presentation so that we can evaluate this properly.  

I have 25 other submissions on my desk, and I have to honestly tell you that your plans are the most amateur of the entire bunch.  I will have to put them at the bottom of my pile here because I can't even consider bringing these to the Council Meeting in 2 weeks.  Do you really think I can show something like this to the council, it just isn't serious and they won't even look at them, let alone consider them... You'd better start aiming for October."

While trying my best to absorb the bomb shell, and restrain myself from falling to the ground in a heap, I attempted to defend the plans - saying that they were drawn by an experienced draftsman, in consultation with his licensed architect.   That this was the draft, not the final, so of course there would be issues to resolve.  

All the while I could see our project schedule tearing at the seams under the weight of what was going to be another inevitable delay to the permit process.

The fact that my dad's "architect" has barely been around did not help my argument. The city wants to speak to him directly, but he is never here because he works oversees so much.  And my dad always sticks by his excuse that it is not necessary for him to be around except when it comes time to review the final draft and approve it...  So I can't even let the city speak with my architect, and this makes me look shady.  

The suit at the other end of the phone basically said we need to get back to the drawing board, and that we should be doing so with an architect who is actually around to oversee the work.  He reminded me that I am not an ideal intermediary between the city and our plans because I simply don't have any experience to discuss them within a professional context, and he is right about that.  Believe me, I have much better things to do than micro-manage the most complex and least understood area of this reno project...  It's just way to stressful.

At this moment I am totally panicked.  Why on earth did I think it would be a good idea to listen to my dad when he told us "he had a guy" who could handle the architectural plans.  I should have known that this would have only created more problems, than solutions.  

And I thought the plans looked pretty damn good.  I understood them - but I guess that's not good enough.  I'm gonna have to call my dad, and figure out what the hell we're supposed to do now that our schedule has just crumbled to pieces, again.  I suspect he will have an excuse ready -  It's easy to make them when you're not the one paying for all the work.

Any chance we had of getting this project completed before winter has just disappeared, and along with it, my chance of getting a good night's sleep anytime soon.

This is not good.  Stress levels very high...

Adding Height, Losing Height

We knew this house was a disaster when we bought it, but we didn't really think that when we stripped it all to the bones that it would have turned out to be a soup bowl.

The subfloors on the main floor and 2nd floor are seriously f*cked.  They slope and bend in more simultaneous directions than I thought even existed.  The center of the house is essentially the deep end.  The grading slope from the highest corner, to the lowest point, is roughly 5-6 inches!!!  

We expected the levels to be bad, but this is ridiculous.  

Virtually every building in this part of town is crooked because the earth around here is made mostly of clay.  Over the last century, the houses have all shifted and sank in various ways simply because the ground holding them up is so soft. Some of the lucky ones have had basements put in which helped to stabilize the foundations and ensure many more decades of good standing.  Ours underwent this very operation about a year ago - but it's obvious that the previous owner had no choice - it was a "put in a basement" or "watch it collapse into the ground" scenario.

We were excited when we decided to rip open the ceilings and leave them exposed because, as I discussed in an earlier post, this would create an extra 8-9 inches of ceiling height.  And, as we certainly all agree, height is nice.

But now we have a situation where we are going to have to raise the floors substantially in order to straighten this box out.  We discussed the possibility of jacking up the beams from the basement, but this posed 2 problems.  The first is that it really isn't as simple as lifting from underneath when the floors are not simply sloping in one direction...  They appear to not only slope from left to right, but also from back to front in some places, and diagonally in others.

Have you ever seen Escher's "Relativity"?  Same Deal.

The second problem, as we found out, was that not even a 5-tonne lift jack could shift the underside of the supporting beams in the basement.  Those beams are nearly 135 years old, petrified and not moving anywhere fast.  My dad reckoned that if we continued to force them, there was a good chance that they would just splinter and crack, which would get us nowhere in our plight to make this house "good again".

So the decision was taken to just work on this from the top side, and build a new level frame out of 2x3's right ontop of the old crooked-ass subloor.  Once the framing is done, we can screw down some new sheets of 5/8" plywood on top, and voila, we'll have a new level subfloor to work with in eventually laying down the new hardwood floors.

And so they began...

The shocker was watching on from the sidelines as the framing went in, taking with it the height that we had so happily created just a couple weeks earlier when the ceilings came out.  Because not only are we building a frame over a 6" deep ravine in some areas - we also have to eventually add the 5/8" ply (ie: the new subfloor), and then on top of that the 3/4" hardwood floors.  So we can waive goodbye to another 1.5 inches of height once all that goes in.  

And at the most extreme point, where we will be installing the new structural beam across the center of the house, we will have the head clearance drop by another 10" because that is the depth of the beam.  I think we will have about 7'-8" (re: seven feet and eight inches) of clearance below that point in the center of the room where the new beam will run.   It's more than enough, but to the naked eye it may give the impression that the overall room height is pretty low.

But even though we built height, and will now lose height, we should be thankful that the whole equation is just balancing out.  It would have been worse if we were for some reason forced to close the ceiling back in, because then we'd feel really boxed in.  The second floor is no real issue because we gained several feet of new height up there with the ceiling removal, so the 5"-6" that we're losing from the floor will not make much difference.

Larysa is a little nervous about how this will all look when the frame gets closed in with the new plywood.  She's anxious to get to that point so that she can rest assured that the ground floor will not feel like some sort of squeeze cell.  I think the height will be a-ok in the end, especially when we paint the ceiling white and lighten it all up.

This is one of those necessary evils, and if we need to lose height in order to build in level flooring, than that's just the way we'll need to rock it out.

Windows and Doors Are Go!

It was a week ago today that we'd had the bomb dropped on our permit applications, and now Larysa is going to do something about it.  Just because the city says we have to wait forever, it doesn't necessarily mean we have to sit around twiddling our thumbs.

Larysa had the day off work today, so she decided that she was going to take another stab at landing us a permit to change the doors and windows.  We're not willing to wait until mid September's committee meeting on the extension permit to find out if they will grant us the facade permit as well.  The head architect at the city wanted to present both applications at the same time, yet we already know that window/door permits do not require committee approval - they can be approved and processed on the spot, so why wait?  We need that permit so we can order the material because it will take 5-6 weeks to arrive.

We already know that we can't change our bricks over to the nice old 1920's brick like our neighbors have on their facades (and that we've been removing from the back of the house and stockpiling in the yard in  preparation).  We also know we're not allowed to have standard casement windows like virtually EVERY other house in the borough, and we know we're not allowed to remove one of the front doors and replace it with a proper window.  No, no - all of that would look to nice, so obviously we can't have any of that!

However, despite all that bad news we did find out what we ARE allowed to do, and so we're just going to have to play ball and show the city that we will make all the changes as per their current codes and bylaws.  All it really means is that we will leave the brick as is, replace the 2 doors with 2 doors of the same style, but in black.  And as far as the casement windows are concerned, we just have to ensure that the new ones have aluminum cross strips on the front and back that will break the glass panels into thirds - as they did in 1885 (ours will be black though):

Larysa headed to the permit office, and of all the luck she was paired up to meet with the same guy who had shit all over a couple weeks earlier when she initially had gone in looking for basic information.  Not a good start...

Apparently though, today he was friendly and happy to take her seriously.  Go figure.  

Because the only real change that will be taking place is the windows, he basically told Larysa that he could issue a permit once we obtained a quote for the cost of the materials (with a technical description of the materials) as well as a quote for installation.  Larysa told the guy she'd be back in a bit with all of that, but he probably didn't believe her... Making things happen in one day is a concept that bureaucrats don't really understand, so he probably didn't think it was possible.

Sure enough, Larysa hopped on a bus across town to Verdun Windows and Doors and showed the guy a picture of the type of window we needed.  Luckily this was something they now carried (and sold a lot of) thanks in  part to the borough's new rules on Heritage Conservation.  

He laid out all the costs and technical details on paper for her and sent her packing back to the permit office.  This time, the bureaucrats were forced to admit defeat because Larysa had done everything exactly they way they had asked, so there was no more room for them to poke holes in our plans.  

The old rubber stamp was raised high above his head, and came crashing down with positive results onto the paper below.  The permit was ours! 

Windows and doors are go, and it's only lunch time.  Now, if only Larysa could find a way to get us a permit for the extension by the end of the day...

Taking Reclaimed Materials to New Heights (from old depths!)

We pulled out of the sawmill lot and I was stoked. Finding these amazing beams has really made my day, and now I will probably dream of them every night until they find there way into the city - and into the house.

Now we're on the road to Ile Perrot, just 20 minutes down the road, to visit Martin at Village Wordworks. I found out about this guy while doing my research on beams and reclaimed wood.

His shop was mentioned in an old Globe and Mail article about reclaiming old materials for use in new construction - but more specifically it was about Logs End a company in Ottawa that makes high end wide plank hardwood flooring exclusively from century old river run logs that they recover from the depths of the Ottawa River.  Village Woodworks handles all the distribution in Quebec.

Apparantly there are millions of old Oak, Pine and Birch logs that line the river beds from the 1800's when the river was used as a main through way for transporting the lumber from the lush forests out to the sawmills (and ports for shipping to England).  

The log jams would sometimes become so thick, that the wood would just sit there, become water logged, and sink down to the bottom.  As luck would have it, the lack of oxygen and sunlight at the river bed actually ended up being the perfect environment for the logs to remain perfectly preserved over the last 100 - 125 years.

The other great feature of these old river run logs is that they come from "slow growth trees" - from a time when the forests were really thick and lush, and the trees received a lot less sunlight.  As a result they grew really slowly, so the wood is much denser and, as I found out, much heavier than what you would find in todays wood that derives mostly from man made "tree farms" that give lots of room for the trees to soak up the sun and sprout faster.

The whole history of this lumber sounded pretty interesting so I decided to call Village Woodworks to get more information about this flooring.  Martin was immediately welcoming over the phone, and invited me out to his shop to see this stuff in person, and to talk a little more about our reno project.

We pulled on into the shop and met Martin, who stood in front of the most impressive display of hardwood flooring I've ever seen.  Huge display boards of Pine, Birch and Oak flooring, some with slats that were 7 1/4" wide were running up the wall almost to the ceilings...

I hadn't even said hi, and I was already sold - this stuff was seriously loaded with wow factor.

Larysa eyed a nice display board of the river-run Birch in 4 1/4" wide slats, and compared to the Pine and Oak, it was easily the nicest wood there - loaded with so many interesting variations of swirling grain, and each piece is almost like a little story unto itself.  Just beautiful.

But obviously this flooring doesn't come cheap because it's old wood, real superior quality, and loaded with fantastic history.  The flooring is delivered unfinished on top of that, so the extra cost of having to stain and finish the floors after installation also needs be factored into the budget.  

The millrun Birch at 4 1/4" wide runs roughly $6.05/square foot (unfinished), and the average price of staining and finishing floors will usually run another $1.50 - $2.00/square foot - So times that by roughly 1200 square feet of floors... Not cheap!!!  

Of course the process of sending divers down to scourer the Ottawa River bed to find it, and the process of painstakingly  recovering each log up onto boats is by no means a cheap one.  Also these logs have been soaking in water for a century, so Logs End has developed a very specific drying process that takes almost 10 months to accomplish, but keeps the logs from warping and cracking.

Martin very happily loaded our arms up with a bunch of unfinished Birch floor samples, and encouraged us to go buy a few different stains and get it on the wood so we could start to envision what our new floors would look like.  Damn this foul temptation!

We'll definitely give these floors some serious consideration, despite the cost.  There is an obvious difference in high quality materials that you can just see and feel immediately.  These are the type of floors that will forever pack a huge punch on whoever walks through those front doors.

Our trip out to the mill and Village Woodworks was really amazing.  It's great to spend time with guys (and gals, of course) who know there sh*t, and are passionate about there products, trade and craft. We learned so much about our different options, and got honest opinions and advice based on our needs and preferences around this particular project. 

It's a refreshing change to the usual "big box" reno store experience, where most often your questions are answered by some clerks finger pointing in some general direction, while they name off an aisle number that may or may not hold the answer to your question.

I love feeling well informed and I'm very excited about what I've seen. It was well worth the trip out there to meet these guys face to face, and to form new relationships with new experts who we will surely be consulting with again throughout this project, and likely others in the future.

Funny, I almost feel like we're getting back on track...