Reno project chapter 3 and a bit of painting

Here's my new best friends, an electrician and a builder, arriving today. Young people with good backs who can wrestle those floor joists into place that I was preparing 2 and 3 posts back.

Here's Misty organising some pot lights upstairs. Electricity and all its hidden wires is a complete mystery to me. When Ben gets the new ceiling in over the kitchen, she will install a couple of track lights down there.

Most of the joists are up, tomorrow I'll be excited to see the T&G floor/ceiling go on and the railing come out.
It's been hard to get any pictures painted with all this other stuff going on. Here is an old photo I thought I'd use as a reference for a watercolor.

1958, Canning , Nova Scotia, what a wonderful carefree time to have a childhood...nowadays those kids would have hemets on and safety harnesses... or more likely be on the couch in front of a screen. The 4th kid from the left is me at age 8. At another farm closer to home, I was usually the only kid around at haying time and I got to drive the tractor as the men forked up the hay and built the load.

I stretched a piece of watercolor paper, did my pencil drawing and washed in some sky, blotting out clouds with a tissue. I dabbed on bits of masking fluid here and there to protect areas I wanted to keep white as sun highlights, and most of the rest got a warm yellow ochre wash.

Next I made up some background, painting  each section more bluish towards the horizon to make the landscape recede. The tractor is going to be gray so I wet the area plus anything else that will be dark with plain water, and then dab in watery colors that will blend on their own to make a neutral gray, cobalt blue, aureolin, and rose madder. I left this alone knowing it would dry lighter .

 With a damp brush I loosened the color in the spots where the sun would make a highlight and blotted off most of the color with a tissue. Then came some darks for the underneath layers of the hay. Now it's at the ugly stage where it's easy to get discouraged and go do something else. More progress in the next post.

I really should be painting but...

A week ago I had an idea I'd do a simple little renovation in the bathroom, some tile perhaps, and get rid of the tired old wallpaper border. Hah! I should have known better, in an old house no reno is ever simple or straighforward and you have to work your way thru a, b, and c before you can get at d which is all you really wanted to do in the first place. The floor felt a little spongy in places so after the toilet and sink came out I pulled up the cushionfloor to have a look.

Yuck! Water that escaped the shower curtain had rotted down through 3 layers of wood. Nasty moldy mess.

I was muttering some uncomplimentary things about the person who had put down the decomposing plywood under the cushionfloor with nails instead of screws, til I remembered that was me 11 years ago.

But the worst rot was in the next layer down, a 2 foot square of half inch plywood around the toilet. Thats what a decade of dripping from the (insulated) toilet tank's summer condensation will do.

There's a wonderful gadget that can fix that problem, we have it in our rental cottage and there's no tank sweating there. A special valve and a pipe connection that lets a tiny bit of hot water into the cold water pipe to the toilet tank, so the water arrives in the tank at room temperature. Voila! No sweat.

Finally the holes filled in, and a new layer of plywood all over, screwed down this time.

Next a switch to some painting, with a little ballet in the shower. Trying to coordinate some colors.

Making a start on the tile design. Hopefully tomorrow this will all start coming together...