One thing about living where a rain forest used to be, a little more than a century ago, is that there’s lots of lovely timber in the rarish number of buildings of this age. This tiny corner of east Vancouver was one of the three or so spots that survived the great fire of 1886. Fires being the other thing you’re likely to find if you’re stupid enough to try and clear the remaining bits of rainforest in your burgeoning town by burning, after the old growth has been felled.
Anyway, this is a heritage building, despite the fact that it’s a row of two storey, working-class ‘traincar’ flats, exactly like about 60% of Montreal. However, the douglas fir wainscotting is lovely, although I’m a little shy of lead to try and strip the paint*, and once I spent a very unpleasant three days on my knees lifting lino, I had old growth fir flooring from end to end. Except for a small part outside my bathroom door, where someone in the past went through the floor for something and patched it with plywood. I volunteered to do the demolition downstairs because I suspected - correctly - that I can harvest far more perfectly-matched flooring than I’d ever need to repair my floor. A couple of weeks ago I had plumbers go through my bathroom wall, which would have pissed me off a lot more, except that three years ago when I joined the kitchen and living room, I salvaged all the wainscotting apart from the two I had to cut, so I’ve been able to make an invisible repair and top it with a length of salvaged chair rail that’s also a perfect match. Sadly, all the good vintage trim was ripped out downstairs long ago and replaced with shite.
A year ago I had a friend stay in my spare room for a month, after he moved out here to take his first job after law school. My best friend (not the same person) lives below me (next door to where I’m working). Having a young gay yuppie’s sense of real estate, after a couple of weeks of apartment hunting, Peter asked me out of the blue, “how come your place has so much charm, and Lori’s has no charm at all?” Both the spaces below have been storefronts from time to time, and at some point both got gutted to make a big white box, but badly. Lori and her husband like a more industrial space, and love the high, high ceilings (there’s still four feet above them to the joists of my floor) so it suits them. Peter wasn’t impressed. Wow, that’s lot of typing for not much point. Oh well. I guess I’m in a rambling mood this evening. The world lost a fabulous fag when I grew up liking girls, I think. (I can sew, too, as well as decorate, although I mostly don’t). OTOH, mine was the AIDS generation, or rather I’m about 1/3 of a generation behind the first AIDS cohort. Being straight likely saved my life.
*If I did decide to go for it, I’d lift the chair rail, pop off the wainscotting, turn it over, plane the back smooth, and reinstall them rather than trying to strip the layers of old paint.
) the blade when the job is done. Carbide doesn’t handle ceramics well (really, only diamond does), so if there is any ceramic tile, work around it.