Whining About Wine

Boo Manor will have a wine room. This is pretty much a given with any of our houses, of course. In our last house in Edmonton, we went through two different rooms before we were done. We started with a smaller room, built into the north-west corner, that was only controlled by being built into a concrete corner of an underground room in a city in a cold climate. In other words, the temperature varied considerably, which wine doesn’t necessarily like. And our collection grew enough that we eventually started shoving cases in, shutting the door, and pretending that we were organized.

This led us to turning our storage room into our wine room, our wine room into our storage room, and using the storage room as the exhaust point for an actual climate control system. In doing so, we learned a lot about the dynamics of controlling temperature in wine rooms, and how climate control systems work (and don’t work). This subsequently led to us excavating a six-inch duct in our newly poured foundation, and hooking up an exhaust system from the climate control unit to the outside (as all we had done prior to that was turn the ‘storage’ room into a sauna, while cooling the wines not at all).

Building Boo Manor, therefore, we are determined to do it right. This involves finding an appropriate control system to incorporate into a basement that won’t support our previous system, and finding shelving that will work for our new collection. Prior to this, we’ve used Gorm shelving from Ikea, which used to come with shelves that were specifically designed to hold wine bottles. Our previous cellar, which held close to 1,000 bottles, cost all of $400 for the shelving. Now, you need to buy normal Gorm shelves at $5 a pop, and then spend an additional $3.50 on a metal rack that goes on top of the shelf. While this will still get you there from here, it’s starting to drive the costs up considerably.

At the same time, custom-built wine cellars generally scale into the thousands-of-dollars, and I have no interest in going there. I am far less fussed about what my wine cellar looks like than the wine going in it, and if I’m going to spend a few thousand dollars then it’s going to be on wine, not on the shelving. This means that it is necessary to look at some different options, and cost out what makes sense.

I had already selected a vendor for the cooling unit, Rosehill Wine Cellars of Toronto. They had provided the previous cooling unit when we were in Edmonton, and now that we are in Ontario they even count as a local vendor. They also stock any number of other bits of paraphernalia for the wine connoisseur, from wine glasses and decanters (definitely overpriced) to shelving (which ranges from the spectacularly expensive to the surprisingly-not-bad). While talking to them about our plans for a new cooling unit for Boo Manor’s cellar, Dianne noticed that their display racking was configured to hold 700+ bottles in what still constituted a reasonably priced arrangement. And so we think we have found a solution.

The great thing about the shelving in question in that it is infinitely configurable. It is designed to hold normal bottles, small bottles and slightly-larger-than-normal burgundy and champagne bottles (which otherwise defiantly refuse to be stored in any reasonable quantity). Even better, it more efficiently uses space than the Ikea shelving that we have used in the past, meaning that we can get the numbers of bottles we have previously stored into a much smaller space, and (given that our cellar is larger) ultimately have the capacity for a much, much larger number of bottles down the road (which is also no bad thing).

What remains now is to measure and plot, and to figure out a configuration that will work for now and provide expansion possibilities into the future. This also means that Ikea has lost one of its last footholds into our house. After the wine shelving, there is only Billy bookshelves left. And they had better not stop making those. If they do, there will be hell to pay.

To Ikea or Not to Ikea? That Really Is A Question

So we’re building a kitchen. A very big kitchen. A very big kitchen with lots of cabinets.

Having already built a house once, Dianne and I both know full well that one of the largest expenses in a kitchen is cabinetry. Our previous kitchen was built from custom cabinetry, and the price tag was impressive. So we already had some idea of what we were getting into as we considered taking on a brand new kitchen project, especially one that will now require as much cabinetry as is now being planned.

Many people swear by custom cabinetry, of course. Partly that’s practical: when you are dealing with a design that needs to fit within pre-existing walls, especially walls that are not necessarily completely square, fitting perfectly uniform boxes can be extremely awkward. Custom means that the cabinet will be tailored to fit regardless of the realities of the room. At the same time, some people insist on custom cabinets for the simple reason that they can.

Others will tell you that going the custom cabinetry route is a waste, and that you can get perfectly viable options much more cost effectively. What is considered one of the highest quality options, at a much more affordable price, is Ikea. Yes, that Ikea. The home of flat pack, Swedish meatballs and do-it-yourself hernias.

Ikea – Home of flat-pack, meatballs and do-it-yourself hernias (Photo Credit: North America Retail Architects Inc.)

While frequently snubbed as down-market, many renovators and designers have positive things to say about the quality of Ikea kitchen materials. Extremely positive things. One designer and renovator provides a detailed deconstruction of their kitchen materials, and why he has used them in more than 20 renovations to date. Another designer extols her love of Ikea kitchens, and explains why they are her preferred go to option.

The points they make are significant. The quality of their boxes are good, and often as good as you will get from a semi-custom kitchen manufacturer. Go to an Ikea showroom and open one of their cabinets, and you are faced with extremely solid 5/8″ thick MDF. Their hardware is also (mostly) excellent, and on par with custom installs, right down to soft-close drawers and doors. Their options in terms of drawer and door designs aren’t stellar, but are certainly competent. And if you do it right, and particularly if you install it yourself, you can get the same quality kitchen for as much as half the price. All of which are compelling arguments in favour of Ikea.

Ikea kitchens can indeed be funky, well designed and appealing spaces (Photo Credit: Carol Reed Designs)

So, to Ikea or not to Ikea? That is the question. For us, there are some drawbacks, and they are worth taking into consideration. For starters, the door styles tend towards the more modern. Based upon their catalogue, we thought they had a more traditional bead-board styling, which is what we are looking for, but it turns out to be a high gloss door with two inch strips of laminate positioned closely together to suggest bead-board. In the catalogue, it looked promising; in real life, sadly, it looks cheap. Their drawers have also changed since the two articles above; they are now exclusively plastic frames inside. I have no idea what their wear will be, but I’m enough of a snob to want real wood in my drawers, thank you very much.

We thought Ikea did bead-board. Less bead, more board, and not liking the final result (Photo Credit: Ikea)

The largest argument against, however, has to do with the size of the boxes. They are only sold in standard widths, meaning that if you are running the full length between two walls, there is a very good likelihood of leaving gaps at the end. More importantly, however, the height of all their cabinet boxes are standard, and designed to result in a uniform 36″ cabinet height once a counter is added. For my height, a counter of at least 39″ is a minimum; any shorter, and I can’t work for more than a half-an-hour in the kitchen without massive lower back pain. Meaning that our out-of-the-box Ikea kitchen would need about 35 linear feet of custom footings to raise the standard boxes to an appropriate height. The possible savings quickly start to disappear.

If you are trying to save money on your renovation, and in particular if you are going for a more modern look and feel to your kitchen, Ikea is certainly going to save you some money without sacrificing too much on quality. When it comes time to renovate the kitchen in the condo (and that day is certainly out there somewhere in the future) we full expect that Ikea will be our source of supply. For Boo Manor, however, we’re going the custom route. It will cost us more, certainly, but we get exactly the cabinets we need, at exactly the height we need them at. That is an investment that will quickly pay off.

Knobs & Tubes & Angst. Oh My.

As mentioned in the post about our house inspection, our lovely new home has a minor infestation of knob and tube wiring. Very minor. Hardly noticeable. Negligible, in fact.

Sadly, however, the words ‘knob and tube’ strike fear into an insurer’s heart faster than almost any other words on the planet, save, perhaps “bayou”, “levee”, “Brownie” and “it’s a little breezy today, don’t you think?”

To put what we are dealing with in context. As we’ve already established, we are buying a very old house. Old enough that Canada wasn’t even a country in short pants when it was built. And old enough that electricity was yet a twinkle in Thomas Edison’s eye (or whatever other bodypart first got the twinkle and buzz). So wiring wasn’t something that was ever even considered.

Around the turn of the century, however, it was fashionable to install this new-fangled electric-light-thingy that everyone was going on about. And so plaster was fussed with, wires were run, switches were installed, and people got very stern warnings about what to plug into where. (Even a few decades on, for example, guests of the Empress Hotel in Victoria were encouraged to let the building electrician plug in their hairdryer for them. Honest).

The wiring that was installed was called ‘knob and tube’. Mostly because the wires (copper insulated wires, I might add) were periodically wrapped around ceramic knobs when strung for long distances, and when they had to pass through a beam a ceramic tube was first inserted in the hole and the wire then passed through it. A few other odd conventions were occasionally employed, like fusing the hot and the ground wires, which meant that a blown fuse didn’t mean there wasn’t power to the circuit. But these were early days, and people were still experimenting. As people will do. So we shall forgive them their youthful transgressions.

Of course, back when this wiring was originally installed, people didn’t normally have computers, multiple cell phones, bread makers, fridges and hairdryers all vying for the juice. People eased into their addiction to all things electrical with just a few lights at first. But then, of course, they upped their demands. In time, more and more things with plugs entered the house. And eventually people discovered that if you plug too many things into one circuit then bad things can happen. And so we evolved to our current state of 200 amp panels, plugs every six feet and a well-populated double row of circuit breakers.

Find an old house, however, and chances are there is still some old wiring in it somewhere. And so there is in ours. In one room. On one circuit. We know, because we checked. The light in the dining room is fed by knob and tube wiring. It eventually merges in a junction box in the basement to modern wiring, connected to a shiny new circuit breaker, in an impressively immaculate panel. But that one stretch of the dining room wall and ceiling? Yup. Knob and tube.

Looking at where the switch of the dining room is installed, it is easy to understand why this wasn’t replaced when the rest of the house was rewired. Below the wall in question is the stone foundation of the house, so there is no way into the wall from below. The only way to replace the wiring would be to rip through the plaster of the dining room wall and ceiling, which is not something that is easy to do without the subsequent repairs to the plaster being blindingly obvious. At which point, a small problem would become a very, very large mess indeed. Far easier to just leave that one stretch of wire safely where it is.

So the previous owner clearly thought. So we thought. So the home inspector thought, when it came to that. Our insurer? Our insurer, when we mentioned the fact, had other ideas. Now, you could argue that it would have been better to shut up about the whole thing. But failing to disclose material information can lead to a whole world of other issues I would have preferred to avoid. So yes, we told them. Their first, and least helpful, suggestion was to disconnect the light. And the discussion just proceeded from there.

To provide some perspective, knob and tube wiring is safe. At least, it is not inherently unsafe, provided certain basic (and really rather common sense) provisions are adhered to. In fact, a quick search of the internet reveals that Ontario’s Electrical Safety Authority, whose business it is to fuss about these sorts of things, is quite comfortable about the whole issue of knob and tube wiring. In fact, they’ve gone to some effort to publish a position paper on knob and tube wiring that not only provides clear reassurance that such installations are safe, but also that they meet current code and “…may still be installed to this day.”

So armed, I was fairly confident in negotiating with the insurance company. I had facts and knowledge on my side, and the Electrical Safety Authority at my back. What I didn’t count on, however, was the obstinancy of actuaries armed with large underwriting rule books. Despite my broker putting up a strong and sustained argument on our behalf (for which I am grateful), the closest we got to a compromise was an offer to accept the installation if we promised not to add any more switches or outlets on the line, and we got an inspection from the ESA verifying the installation was safe.

This was a victory of sorts, I suppose, but still required more work on our part (not to mention another day of my time, arranging another inspection with the vendor and a payout of about $266). All to inspect something that is already safe, and that the insurer would probably still get uppity about if there ever was a problem down the road.

And so how did we solve this little challenge? Well, in this particular instance, we simply took the high road and found another insurer. One familiar with rural properties, comfortable with the fact that older homes do have instances of knob and tube and happy to still insure the home in its current state. And, in fact, one who was already insuring the property.

Several weeks on, we finally have insurance. In another five days, the transaction will close. And then, we’ll own a house again. All rather exciting, really.

The One That Got Away (Well, Got Let Go…)

Faced with trying to make an objective selection, we considered the usual decision making techniques. We made plans to list the likes and the dislikes, to highlight the concerns and to summarize everything that we would want to change. Then we invited my mother along to do an objective review of both properties, and to check whether we were being completely insane about our choices.

There are probably many who would consider inviting their mother (or their mother-in-law) on a house hunting trip to be an activity normally confined to one of the outer circles of hell. We both actually quite like my mother, however, and she’s bought, renovated and sold many a house in her time – so we were quite happy and grateful to have her along.

The properties on our shortlist had a lot going for each of them. They were both acreages, they both had three car garages, they both had the potential for office space over the garage (and one was in fact finished) and they had both started life as stone farmhouses in the mid-1800s.

From there, the similarities began to diverge fairly quickly. The one with the finished office above the garage had an absolutely fantastic great room (that is arguably larger than our condo downtown) and a kitchen that could be made to work with a minimal amount of fuss; it might not be an optimal layout, but we could both at least live with it. There was space for a decent size pantry, a formal dining room and a den for me. Upstairs, though, was more of a challenge. The house was a 1.5 bungalow, which meant angled rooms where walls met roof, and little space for bookshelves or a canopy bed. Moreover, the en suite bath was quite small, as was the master bedroom. Some storage issues could be accommodated by taking over one bedroom as a walk-in-closet, and two additional bedrooms meant that we would be able to either have a guest room and a den for Dianne, or two guest rooms.

The other property had a lot going for it, although there would still need to be some work. The space above the garage was only partly finished, and would need a good deal of work before it could ultimately be used as an office. Dianne was not a fan of the kitchen, neither of us were overwhelmed by the master bathroom, and the guest bathroom needed a complete overhaul. On the other hand, it also had a large great room (not as big as house 1, but still spacious), a very nice sun porch, enough rooms that we could each have a den, there would still be two guest bedrooms, and we could build a very nice and quite large master suite. And the dining room was spectacular. There was also room for a media room downstairs, and space to consider building a wine cellar. On the downside, the house is close to a busy road, and traffic noise had the potential to be a show stopper.

So how to decide? One the one hand, there was property with a great great room and a number of other compromises. On the other hand, a property that ticked most of the boxes, but certainly would need renovations to make it ultimately work for us. Or there simply recognizing that we had just started our search, and we might want to find out what is behind Door No. 3.

On the drive home, however, we came to the difficult realization that the one with the finished office and the awesome great room simply wasn’t going to work for us. For all that we loved the great room (and Dianne really, really loved the great room) there were simply too many compromises to make it work. There was very little storage. The lawn needed significant work. Half the property was given over to a paddock and horse barn that we would never use (although there was brief consideration of storing the motorcycles in the barn, one per stall). And most importantly, the bedroom spaces would have been a significant compromise in terms of space, not to mention furniture.

And so, we were down to a shortlist of one. But one with some noise issues. We weren’t down to a decision yet.