The Long Road

If you don’t know, “wanigan” is a first nations word for food box. When we first paddled with Patty and Richard, we marveled at the one Richard had made to fit his canoe.

So, before we decided to move to China, about 8 years ago I decided, with Richard and Stuart to take on the task of making a few more as our next “shop night” project. The design was much the same as Richard’s original, cedar strip and fiberglass. We got the basic woodworking done, as well as some of the glass work before winter ended, shop nights were used for other, warmer weather activities and thus the projects were shelved until the next fall. Or so we thought.

Instead, Mich and I moved to China, the four partially finished wanigans stayed stored in Richard’s shop (shop night continued I think, but with other projects) and we returned to live in Canada again after 3 years. I took two of them to Kamloops with me (one had originally be intended as a gift for Kev N, here in the Loops) and proceeded to store them in our garage for close to 4 more years. Wow.

Kev and I worked on them a bit during a few of our shop nights here last winter, but didn’t make too much progress (though we did the the drawers built). And then Mich and I agreed to do the paddling trip to the Broken Group Islands with Tod and Catherine. At that point I knew I wanted to finish at least one wanigan to take on the trip. Kev helped me with advice on further fiberglass work and I set to it.

Happily, eight years later, with the help of Richard, Stuart, and Kevin (possibly Chris too), the wanigan is complete and has made its maiden voyage with fantastic results. Acting as our kitchen box, and beautifully fitting the contour of our canoe, it also was quite the hit at the campsites. People often came over to investigate just what we had and how it was made. Some knew what it was, a few even knew what it was called. One fella gushed over it to Michelle and insisted on taking a pic! Pretty cool.

We’re looking forward to lots of use from this box for years to come! Thanks to all you guys for your help and shop space!

**Updated July 7 **

We are back! The trip was absolutely awesome. I’ll update with some details later today - for now I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do!

Tomorrow we set out on the first trip of the summer - The Broken Islands Group, Pacific Rim National Park. We’re very excited about this as it’s been a while since we’ve done a multi-day paddling trip, we’ve yet to paddle on the ocean, this is our first trip of that sort with Tod and Catherine, and the weather forecast is getting better each day! As a bonus, this trip got me to get my butt in gear on a project that was started BEFORE we moved to China! It’ll be done today, so more on that later.

Not sure what to call this thing. Perhaps it’s a privacy screen, but we wanted it more as a trellis for support for the grape vines and morning shade. Anyway, pretty cool that we now have a second summer project finished and it’s still April!

Before:
You can see the spindly little grape vines just calling out for some support. Hopefully they will continue to grow up and over, providing nice cool shade from above.

After:

Earth Day is tomorrow, April 22. Just like it is every year. This year by happy coincidence I get to go to a worm composting seminar at TRU. I started with red wigglers last year, but didn’t really give them the attention they needed early on so lost most of my population. This year, it was too good of a deal to pass up. For $20 I get the seminar and $60 worth of worms, worm bedding and the composter. Awesome.

There are LOTS of other things I’m interested in as far as keeping our organic garden going and finding other ways to improve our footprint by decreasing it!

Anyway, happy Earth Day everyone.

Yuck!

It’s early in the outdoor project season, but we’ve got one under our belt already. Way back when we stained the siding on the house I remember Craig commenting that the fence is gonna have to be next. Honestly, at that point the fence wasn’t even on the radar. It looked lousy, but I guess we’d just gotten used to it. Time ticked away and the fence got to looking even worse. We didn’t get to it in time last spring - seemed like we blinked and all the plants were up against it. Too late!

Yum!

Determined not to fall into that trap this year, we started early. We began with a good pressure wash. The results? Astounding. It looked like we just built the thing.

Sparkle!

Next step - protect the wood. Now we had a lot of time to consider this. In the end we decided on a product that is all natural, water based, non toxic and mixed on site from a powder. So, no cans, so nasty chemical stain and TINY cardboard packaging. It’s called LifeTime Wood Treatment. Basically it helps the wood quickly take on the grey patina finish that weathered wood naturally gets to after a few years in the elements. I’ve always liked that look, so this stuff is perfect for us. Also it’s a one time deal. It won’t crack and flake off the wood after a few years in the Kamloops sun. Parks Canada has been using this product for years. I think BC Parks might use it too.

So, after treating the fence today, it looks a bit grey, and will hopefully get better and better over time. It is a bit risky as I’ve not used this stuff before, but I’m happy with the results so far. Time will tell.

Before and After

Next up… replacing the eve troughs and installing our rain barrels.

Thanks to Craig. No, HUGE thanks to Craig. He did a few cool things for me that included:

1. Commissioning the construction of a Crokinole board for me by one of his minions of Chinese craftsmen .

2. Bringing it back to Canada for me. And this was no small feat in that he CARRIED IT ON. This of course included fighting vigorously with Chinese, Japanese and Canadian security and airline staff. Craig felt fully comfortable and reasonable in these struggles knowing full well that one Adrian Conradi had in the past brought home MULTIPLE boards in the same manner. Only later did he realize the folly of his ways after speaking to Adrian and finding out that he had actually bubble wrapped them and stuck ‘em in carg0.

Upon this information I think Craig said something like, “Oh.”

3. Not only would he NOT allow me to pay him for his trouble or the board itself (which is absolutely beautiful by the way), he threw in a package of crokinole discs. Solid.

Tonight Craig, we drank to you. And it was locally craft-brewed suds to boot!

**Note** Much as it pains me to say so, my brother in-law Jamie went undefeated tonight. Doh!

I posted about beginning our new pergola a while back. I said then that I’d update when progress has been made. It has. In fact the thing is basically finished. I have a few more slats to put up on the far end, but other than that, it’s complete! And I have to say, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. Also cool is that the slats are made from wood I reclaimed when I did the original deck expansion last summer. My buddy Kev helped that process out (he has a planer and a router table). Tod came by and donated a LOT of his time to the construction, as did Heidi. It’s so cool to have generous friends.

Anyway…

Before

After

If you’d like to see pics of the process… click here.

Thanks again to Tod, Kev and Heidi!!

The true work was started today on the next project - the pergola. I think this will be the last of the summer. Yesterday was spend procuring wood which was cut and partially stained today. It was a nice surprise when Tod turned up after work ready to help too! We spent the evening puttering around, cutting, planning, re-planning and, happily, not re-cutting!

Anyway, here is a “before” picture. The pergola will cover the right half of the deck. The grapes (in the background, and much bigger now than when this pic was taken) will grow over top and provide additional shade.

I’ll report on the progress as it comes.

OK, this is an update on my stump battle. It’s over. I won. I told you I would.

Doug believed in me (see previous post)

The cool thing is that I made it happen with human power only! That’s right - and axe, shovels, saws, a come-along, a wrecking bar and a whole lot of sweat!

The pics don’t really show it, but the real complication of the whole thing is that the stump was up against the concrete retaining wall - actually, it was jammed into the corner. I’m glad I got it out when I did as I was just about ready to rustle up some dynamite and that could have opened a whole new can of worms!

I spent MUCH of my day today doing great battle with the stump in our yard. The stump is still there. I will be back stump, oh yes, I will be back.

Very happy to announce that even though my “contractor” kinda sucked; he was always on holidays, entertaining people, off at weddings etc. (I’d think twice before hiring him again!), the deck is finished!

I’ll remind you of…

Before:

After:

And I used a kick-ass stain on it so that hopefully for a LONG time, this will be the result when it rains...

Special thanks must go out to Richard,Jamie, Todd, Grant, Christian and Michelle for their direct help at various times. And to my dad who lent out a bunch a tools that made my life much easier. Thanks guys!

For a retrospective on the whole deal, click here

Now, of course, when I say the deck is “finished”, I mean that I still have to build a pergola on it!

Well it is cooking once more in Kamloops. I woke up to the voice on the radio promising me 37 degrees today. We reached that by 10 am. I worked on the deck until about noon before I figured it was too damn hot! At that point I cooled off with a nice cool shower before heading out to take Mich for a picnic on campus. I was reminded of Thailand in that while there you just cook in the sun and humidity. The little bungalos that you rent on the beach tend not to have hot water - and that is cool because you get into the shower and couldn’t even imagine using that “H” tap. Now Darren, before you comment with a “cold shower” comment… I was HOT, but not that kind of hot!

Anyway, I felt fine about stopping for the day because the second phase of construction is well underway with the beams and joists all in place. Now I just need to pick up the rest of the decking boards and start sucking stain fumes again!

Darren’s been complaining about the lack of posts. Sorry dude!

People have been asking me how the deck is coming. My standard “smart assed” answer has been that I’m never hiring that contractor again - he’s always doing something else, camping, eating, travelling, fishing… you name it. Ha

Anyway, other than the stair, phase one is pretty much in. And it looks pretty darn good if I do say so myself. Things are about to kick into action for the next phase(s). Tomorrow should be good as I’m not going into work, and looks like the weather is gonna be grand. I should be hanging joists in the morning. Of course “the contractor” also has to do some packing and prep for camping/fishing/hiking this weekend…

Well, I’ve been getting grief from blog readers about the lack of progress reports. So, yes, there has been a forward move or two.

Jamie came down from PG to help. I dug some holes in anticipation of his arrival. We then promptly cut about 7 feet off the existing deck and poured concrete footings in the holes.

That’s all Jamie had time for, so I pressed on without his awesome help. I got the header put back on the existing deck portion, built and installed the front beam, boxed in the first section and hung the joists.

So seeing as I had this nice frame ready to go, I figured it was time to cover it with something! So I started staining boards. Next step will be installing them as this thing starts to take shape!

One thing Mich and I have been planning for a while has been to revamp and expand the deck on the back of the house. Wheels are now in motion. I enjoyed Craig’s chronicles of his summer projects last year on The Engleson Files. So I plan to track our progress on this project in a similar way. Below is Stage One, beginning with the “before” pic.

Before As you can see, the deck area is rather tight!

So we rented this kick ass sod cutter. With it we removed sod from the footprint of the future deck as well as lots more sod to make way for garden spaces. This machine is super cool - it reminds me of some kind of a medieval torture device (though gas powered!)

Here’s what it looked like after cutting out the sod and pulling out the old gravel and landscape cloth that was completely grown through with crab grass. Go figure.

And then we had two trees to deal with. One we chopped down and pulled the stump out of the ground. The second was too beautiful to kill outright so we are attempting the transplant. And yes, I helped Mich pull after taking this shot!

It is tough to transplant a mature tree of this size, especially when it is flowering as it currently is. It may not live, but we’re gonna try our hardest to help it…

About the same time as the tree was moved, a load of gravel arrived. I took out a fence panel, but because of the tight alley access it could only be dumped partly into the yard. So it had to be moved before we could reinstall the fence.

So we laid down some fabric and some gravel and here is what we have so far…

Looks good! Next are 4 foot deep holes for the footings to be poured into.

I’ll update again when that is finished.