A response to Justin Ling’s Sept 28/24 article in The Toronto Star
September 28, 2024
Justin:
This is a fine article except that, like every other journalist I have read, you do not tell the correct story of the three-year eco tax holiday on home heating fuel for rural residents of the maritimes, and then Ontario and points west, I believe. The prevailing narrative is that Trudeau caved to the polls and tried to buy back some votes. Please allow me to offer a counterpoint.
When I emailed the office of Minister Terry Beech, an old friend, and chuckled about the $89 saving on each oil bill since the program began, his communications guy was quick to point out that this is a three-year holiday to make it easier for Canadians to get a heat pump installed. It had never occurred to me that a heat pump would have a place in the heating of a 200 year old stone house, but on the strength of this comment I inquired of a local contractor and he explained that our house is in fact well situated for an installation. He provided a quote which was reasonable, but my accountant just laughed when I asked about the government program to fund the heating upgrades. On the other hand, I was in the process of selling my fourteen-year-old fishing boat and the proceeds from one more than paid the cost of the other.
If not for the holiday on the levy on fuel oil I would never have considered the heat pump which has produced immediate benefits for life in our house. I’m told we’ll still run the oil furnace in February, and it would require several years (or one unwanted boat) to offset the financial outlay, but of course we are saving the environment a little bit and keeping ourselves cool in summer, which is a real benefit to our health as we grow older, and there is more space in the shed with the boat gone.
Floor Refinishing: Day 2
August 7, 2015
What more do you need? That’s the story.
Update, 21 August, 2015:
We moved the sofas, kitchen table and the rest back in this afternoon. A contractor who happened to pass through at the start of the process had told me that it would be tight to get the job done in two weeks. It was.
Stone House Reno 5: moving the tools out
June 25, 2009
The end of June
All my life the end of June has been the time to say goodbye, take a rest, and start on a new project. I suppose it’s fitting, then, that today I moved the tools out of the stone house we’ve been renovating since my retirement in the fall of 2004. My shop, refuge, and storehouse for the last thirty-five years has now officially become a dwelling. One floor still needs some sanding and the whole thing needs varnish, but the days of muddy boot tracks to the bathroom have now come to an end.
I’ll miss the time I could put visitors at ease by chiming the house rule as they came in through the door: “No boots in the shower, but they’re optional in bed.”
Bet’s done her best to remain tolerant of my mess for the last few months, but I tend to believe actions more than words, and the two hours of frantic vacuuming upon each arrival at the farm for a weekend sent a clear message: it was time to get on with it.
She even helped me move the tenon cutter out of the living room. It’s a heavy relic from a pre-war factory, and the only way to move it without destroying the floor turned out to be by winching it up to one of the timbers I had installed as a room divider. Once I set it on a heavy plywood dolly with a chain hoist, it was pretty easy to move around. We managed to wiggle it out through the front doors (weeks of work on those doors) and into the bucket of the waiting loader.
Today two saws, a jointer, and my prized Poitras shaper made the trip to the barn. This made me sad. It was like leaving the comfort and security of my childhood home. Funny, the beds, the food, two computers and a television are still there, but it’s the shaper I miss. And I haven’t even had the thing for that long, only about three years. But it’s had a hand in everything good or interesting I have done in this renovation: the flooring, the cabinets, those muntined glass doors Bet insisted upon, the passage and entrance doors, the windows, the baseboards, the stairs, the crown moulding over the doors and windows, even the ceiling and window paneling – it all came off that shaper.
So now I face the grueling task of cleanup. The floor is littered with scraps of walnut from the stair-railing project and a lot of pine shavings from the final door casing in the bathroom which went on this morning.
Oh well, once that’s done I get to drive my floor sander around for a day or two. The old Clark drum sander is far from my favourite tool, but it’s heavy, loud and powerful, so it should stave off nostalgia for a little while until the varnished-floors regime becomes oppressive and I lay out the foundations for a new shop.
For other articles in this series check:
https://rodcroskery.wordpress.com/category/renovating-a-stone-house/
Stone House Reno 4: Making a railing
June 18, 2009
Soggy, but a good day for staircase-building. I’m putting a railing 56″ long along the hall next to the stairs. 1.3″ square plain balusters are fitting into the flooring and up into the rail at 34″. After much thought I decided to cut 1″ dowels into the ends of the balusters, then drill and glue. Surprisingly, the dowel-cutting went very well in the walnut stock: a 1″ diameter plug cutter mounted in the drill press machined the stock secured in the vice so as to cut between the jaws to get the end grain without splitting it. No problem, virtually an instant 5/8″ tenon, so little remained to do but cut the pieces to length and try the same thing on the other end of the 11 pieces. No extras. I missed one measurement by an inch, but caught the goof on the check before sawing. Whew!
To clear the cuts I set up a jig on the band saw to allow only a 5/8″ cut. Then I just sorta circumcised the ends, leaving the dowels exposed.
Then I hit the spreadsheet to calculate the distance between the posts so that I could lay out the floor for drilling. That went well, except that after layout I had a need for 13 posts. Hmmmm. Better not drill yet.
Turns out for each station I had added by 1/2 the post’s width when I should have added by the whole thing. Ready to start drilling 1″ holes in the floor now, but am feeling a bit lazy, so I checked mail instead, and then wrote this.
“So, Rod, how good is the staircase?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Depends upon how good the story about it turns out to be.”
………
Back at it the following day. I had drilled the flooring for the balusters yesterday, using my trusty 6″ dial caliper to scratch arcs on the flooring to intersect a straight line down the middle of the planned railing. This time the count worked out, so I firmed up the marks with a marker pen and transferred them to the railing to run above. Just to be safe I did a rough set of marks with a pencil by laying the railing alongside the floor marks and roughly scribed them across. Then I established the one most likely to be correct and measured the other marks for holes in the railing off it with the caliper. Not surprisingly, these marks corresponded quite well with the rough measurements, but this precaution left me confident throughout the drilling that I hadn’t done the whole thing backwards.
The drill press is much steadier than my arm, but that advantage disappeared as soon as I rounded the top of the railing. Instead I clamped the railing firmly to the bench and had at it with a hand drill and a 1″ Forstener bit. While the hole depth isn’t critical with shouldered tenons, it’s still vital that there be adequate space for the tenon itself and any glue accumulated in the bottom of the hole. Several of the holes needed more drilling to provide adequate clearance. The holes, while not perfectly vertical, seemed to work adequately. None of the posts fell out when I glued them in.
Realizing the risks of gluing above a long run of wood to be stained, I left the balusters upturned in the railing for as long as I dared before moving them to the hall for installation. I still needed to be able to manipulate them a little bit in their sockets before they set hard. With an assistant I nervously flopped the eleven posts and their rail onto the hall floor, grinned hopefully when the whole thing did not fall apart, and then slid the assembly into the glued holes provided for it in the upstairs hall. In it went. No drips, no spills, no fuss.
Huh???
Next up, fabricating a hollow newel post.
For other articles in this series check:
https://rodcroskery.wordpress.com/category/renovating-a-stone-house/
the Walnut Diary 