Creative Questions: Episode 6

Episode Transcript

Desiree: Welcome to Creative Questions. The podcast where we attempt to review various creative projects we ourselves are part of and, or other people’s unique creations in an attempt to celebrate the creative inspiration in all of us. I am Desiree Silver, your host and owner of New Nerd Novelties and #Own Your Weird lifestyle brand.

Liam: And I’m her co-hosts Liam Hewlett back at it again, after a little hiatus, due to some construction with our first ever guest on the show. Dad, would you like to introduce yourself a little bit?

Howard: Well, my name is Howard Hewlett and I guess what, I’m dad, the bones of these guys. And I’m not quite sure what you want in an introduction. I’m just the dad guy.

Liam: Right. Well, that’s gives us a little bit of who you are, but how about why we brought you onto the podcast, which is a specifically, we wanted to talk about some of the renovations that you’ve done around the family home and just how much work that you’ve put into it. And some of the amazing results that you’ve gotten out of the amount of effort that you’ve put into this place.

So that’s kind of what I wanted to bring you on here today to talk about is just the. Amount of stuff that you’ve done on the house. It’s quite staggering. And I guess my first question would be like, where did you start? Cause that’s something I don’t think I actually really quite know is what, what would have been like one of your first renovations that you can remember?

Howard: The first renovation.

Liam: Yeah.

Howard: Good heavens you know, I’m a little long in the tooth. Your mom and I own a condominium or a townhouse in port moody way back BC, before children. And that’s kind of where I started. We had an unfinished basement and I wasn’t happy with this little kitchen stuck in a nook in the corner.

So I started tearing out walls and renovating the basement or trying to, at any event, I was kind of a neophyte at the time. This was back in the early 80s. That’s where I started anyways,

Desiree: I don’t think we heard about that before. Did you manage to finish it?.

Howard: I finish it. No, we wound up with, uh I wound up on strike where I worked. Well then the strata fee and the mortgage, wasn’t all that onerous. I was the only one working at any sort of a job that would support us. So I had to sell the house. So I did finish up a little bit.

And your mom did a bunch of creative work, making macrame hangers and stuff like that. I cleaned up and was going to the main living area and we wallpaper the walls in the bedrooms with stuff like that, just to make it pretty for sale, but I never did finish the basement reno..

Liam: Yeah, that’s that is cause I’ve never actually asked that question. I don’t think I’ve never know what would be the first thing that you did housewise. That’s definitely not the first thing that you ever did. Creative wise though. We’d definitely have some stuff lying around the house from your high school days that you worked on in like metalworking and woodworking.

Howard: Well, that sort of thing I was always interested in. I’d like to say I’m pretty smart, but ain’t that smart and. Uh, the academic program in high school at the time was pretty much just a little much for me, you know, I wasn’t into way into mathematics or physics or chemistry or biology. I wasn’t really good at that, but I love to work with my hands.

And I, I learned that from my grandfather, he built three houses that I I’m aware of when I was a kid and he built them from scratch. He had some friends help him out, basically. That’s, that’s what he did when I was growing up. He was kind of the only. Real male mentor I had and I admired my grandpa’s work.

So when I got into high school, I went into an academic technical program, which required me to do a bit of basic math and so on. But I had a pick and sort of a mix and match of metal work, electrical automotive, woodworking, that sort of thing. And I was always interested in, but being high school level, of course I wasn’t all that good at it.

Liam: That’s the thing, right? Nobody’s ever good when they start out. But I’ve definitely, I think both of us Desiree and I have gotten that desire to work with our hands. I always have to have something to do with my hands, even if I’m just watching something, I have to be doing something

Desiree: I am currently crocheting. Otherwise it will make noise and I will ruin the podcast

Liam: Right.

Desiree: I have to do something with my hands too. So.

Liam: Well, and it’s, because of the construction around your place, we haven’t got together for over a week. What have you been doing during that time sis?

Desiree: Well, besides wanting to murder the neighbors, which is very much frowned upon. I hear, well, we’re on the west coast here. It’s very wet. So like it’s raining.. So this is just going to take forever. They have to do their whole roof. And my husband goes outside for a cigarette all the time and it looks like that damn thing was leaking over five or six or seven places.

Like it’s, it’s bad. They’re redoing the whole roof anyway.

Liam: They have to take that long, working on a roof in Vancouver, of course, it’s going to leak

Desiree: Well, they probably didn’t notice till the first rainfall and then something really bad leaked. And then they’re like, oh, we need to change the roof. Now that it’s raining. Uh, anyway, did a generator and the hammers may or may not kick in. And there’s no way I can filter those out. Sorry guys.

Liam: Yeah, I can’t hear him at the moment.

Desiree: Not at the moment.

Thank goodness. It’s still raining off and on. That’s why I didn’t think those guys might fall off the roof. They’re not careful, but I

Liam: Generally it doesn’t stop roofers, but

Desiree: No, it really doesn’t. There are a bunch of crazies. I went to a market called spooktacular, which is actually a market done by the head oncology nurse at Surrey Memorial cancer ward.

And she’s been doing it for a couple of years and I’ve been there once before. This is the only market that survived COVID this year, I was going to do three Halloween based markets. This is the only one that survived.

Liam: And you already did it, or you looking forward to it?

Desiree: It was on, it was on Saturday and, uh, five hours. It was only five hours and we did pretty good.

We did almost as good as the previous market, which was a full eight to 10 hours. And it was by donation, they made like $1,600 for the cancer society. And this one’s a family friendly. So they had face painting and balloon animals and a giant bouncy castle that were all older.

They had those giant skeletons, the 12 foot ones that everybody covets there was a couple of those. And they were all donated for, for the decorations. Really. My friend Teela and I went and we were put beside a little girl that made and sold slime, who was 10. She did, she made a killing and she kept asking me about all this stuff that I make because she sews too.

I’m like, well, the vinyl that I do is a bit more care, more complicated than regular sewing. And so it was kind of nice to talk to her. And it was a very first people that bought something from me, paid for my table. So the amount of. Bought equaled out to my table payment. And that was, that was the Lindhs Cassandra and

Liam: Oh, really?

Desiree: And Gunnar came.

Yeah. Then they bought some of my coffin wallet and stuff. So that was really nice.

Liam: Well, it sounds like you’ve had a productive week then dispite irritations at home.

Desiree: I made a probably on another one of these podcasts. We’ll talk about it, but I made a display on a lazy Susan for my necklaces and stuff, because I’ve been wanting to get a little more professional in my packaging. So I got pictures there of my packaging. I’ve got a little cardboard.

Then I put my necklaces in the cardboard that I put them in the plastic. And I’ve got my, my little QR code there in the QR code, leads to my Popl website that has my networking. All of my social media, Facebook, Twitter website.

Liam: Yeah. That’s something else that you, did during the last week as well. Right? You got the podcast up on some other platforms.

Desiree: Yeah. I’ve got it up on pod bean and pod bean connects to a whole bunch of others and I just finished uploading all five episodes.

So we’re also on Google and a couple others there. If you go to Podbean. We’re New Nerd Novelties Creative Questions. Cause it’s a channel, on New Nerd Novelties. And then we’ve got all five episodes up that way. You don’t have to view it through YouTube with the video. It’s just audio only and you can download it.

Yeah. And I was pretty happy with the market because I stayed up all night making those QR codes and stuff and packaging. Cause my friend has a scanner, so we can just scan the item and then we have the square and you can tap it with your visa or your debit card and go. It’s great.

Liam: Very convenient.

Desiree: Unfortunately, it’s a lot of work on the backend for me though, because I have to manually enter it all.

So I was up till like five in the morning when the market started at 10. So I got three hours of sleep and had an energy drink in that. It was good though. It was really nice to get back to. I spend two years since we did a market of any kind, particularly Halloween ones. Cause those ones make my little dark heart healthy. What were you doing in the last two weeks there, bro?

Liam: Well, I had my D and D session. We kept pushing it back because the Thanksgiving up here in Canada, we’ve had our Thanksgiving and just other conflicting like schedule arrangements. So I did have my D and D session last weekend, which allowed me to use some of my snow terrain. And we’re getting to an interesting point in this campaign where there, um, I had to ask the guys, cause this is probably something I should have done near the start of the campaign, but again, I never really knew how long or if at all this campaign would last.

So I, one of the things I did ask the guys over the last session was how, what their tolerance was for explicit content. Like on the scale of family-friendly to grim dark, how much do I need to, Circumvent or talk around events for anybody that might be squeamish and all the guys were universally on the grim dark side.

So I don’t have to pull any of my punches.

Desiree: Does that mean like losing limbs and stuff? Cause it’s winter or.

Liam: Well the, the reason why it would be relevant in a coming scenarios is that they’re like starting to engage on large in large scale. Right. As they get to be more powerful and influential people in this world, there, they have their choices matter basically. And they can affect a lot of people.

So for example, they were chasing after a group of people during the session that had kidnapped some people for whatever means they did not know. They also didn’t really know whether or not they had kidnapped them alive. But, that’s a rather moot point now because they’re all charred corpses when they, ambushed the people that had kidnapped these people, by throwing fireballs at them.

So no more civilians. Um, yeah,

Desiree: So friendly fire, huh?

Liam: No, I’m certainly not. If you are a civilian, but they took out the bad guys, you know, that’s the important part.

Howard: That’s probably did called a target rich environment with no restrictions.

Liam: Yeah. But it is relevant to, like especially stuff coming up because a lot of the enemies that they’re going to be fighting. Kurt, uh, like up to this point in the campaign, a lot of it has been, circumstantial stuff and especially like a lot of wild animals or things like that, but they’re starting to deal with people that actually are legitimately evil and don’t like them.

So there’s a lot of potential for nastiness in the future. I just wanted to know what their w how much censoring I would have to do basically. And unanimous. They were against it, like censorship. That is so it’s fine by me. I’ll just, I’ve never wanted to err on the side of gratuitous. That’s not what I’m looking for, but I won’t have to be shy either.

So.

Desiree: Yeah, I wouldn’t purposely go to gratuitous, but if, you know, occasionally it happens, it happens right.

Liam: Yeah, I’m very much. I like to create the world, create the characters and then those characters in that world will make whatever actions is appropriate for that character. So they’ll still have done those actions in the family-friendly version. I would just like not focus on the more gruesome parts of their actions or.

They’re heinous acts, but as it is now, they’ll just have to deal with it. But I also, I did make some stuff. I made some snow terrain. I had those trees that had made a while back. I put a little bit of effort, not that much into it to, make some more snowy terrain, but other than that, I’ve got more stuff on my plate for the next session of painting and like designing and model.

Desiree: So it looks like snowy rocks from what I could see.

Liam: Mostly. Yeah. Like the snow rocks and like an ice shelf and stuff like that. Just things I could use to represent a more barren landscape. I’ve got a whole bunch of verdant trees and on a lot of barren stuff. So besides craters and craters don’t fit every situation.

Desiree: No.

Liam: So that’s all I’ve been up. But, getting back to our main topic for today, which specifically since, our, our dad has done renovations across this entire house, like basically every inch of it.

And it’s still ongoing. For many years, but the most recent project that he’s fully completed was the laundry room. And I don’t think even Desiree has seen all of the pictures of the completed laundry room yet. So I’ve got them uploaded into a gallery here in the link dump.

Desiree: Yeah. I took a sneak peek look. Great.

Liam: So, yeah, dad’s put a lot of effort into this house over the years, and I’d love to hear a little bit of the story of that.

Howard: Okay. Is it, is it my

Desiree: Yeah, it’s your

Liam: Sure. Yeah.

Howard: Well, there’s a little

Liam: Take us into it.

Howard: I was saying that there was a little bit more to it than just a hallway or a door or a pussycat on the foreground. I mean, aside from my high school experience and then sort of stumbling about, as I explained to you a little while ago on our first house.

It was while I was working down in Burnaby, I went to school full time and the carpenter school in BCIT at Willingdon for seven months. I worked full time as well. And, I think I counted 53, 19 hour days. I had one day off in seven months. So, That was a little bit grueling. I did that because I wanted to learn carpentry.

And, so it isn’t just instantly, you know, stuff. You, you gotta learn the stuff too.

Liam: I definitely remember that time.

Howard: Yeah. Well sort of why I was,

Desiree: And you also, weren’t a young chicken. When did you do that? Dad.

Howard: you went, oh, I was 47. Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, it’s really sad that I’m saying I was 47 in the past. I mean, what’s with that anyways.

Liam: Yeah. Not an insignificant amount of time either.

Howard: Well, seven months without a day off, one day off, I had one day off in seven months. I was pretty grueling. Anyhow, it was because I wanted to either build a house or do exactly this renovate my own house and.

So I started renovating this house after we bought it, but we started, I mean, we I’m including you and Desiree and whatever, teenage friends, you had to knock walls out and tear out a tear out, really moldy shag rugs, and pick up dog manure around the house, you know, all that sort of stuff. So this house needed a lot of work when they bought it. now looking at our first photograph there with a pussy cat in the foreground, she wants to get into everything.

Liam: Yeah, I was standing right in front of the door that leads to the laundry room, which is a beautiful Suzanne Door.

Howard: Yeah, we picked that up, because it was a, it was a floor model that already had stain on it. And, the box store wanted to just throw it out, but your mom wouldn’t have that. So we bought, bought it for 15 bucks and it sat around here for probably two years before I finally got around to fixing that part of the stairs and no.

And, the entrance to the laundry room. And now if you look on the left side of the photo where the coats and hats are hung, that was a doorway into the down stairs bathroom. Also a little bit further back out of this photograph was a hallway into the downstairs bedroom that, Desiree first stayed in when we first moved up here and that’s all closed off now.

Liam: Yeah, it’s all closed up. Yeah.

Howard: Yeah.

And that’s an entrance way to the house itself. So, that was kind of that space kind of evolved over the years. And it was

Liam: Many times.

Howard: Yeah, many times over the years and I had to decide what I was going to do and what it wasn’t going to do. And there was electrical and plumbing in behind those walls that all had to be sorted out.

So there’s a little bit more to it than just a pretty tour.

Liam: Um, so just hanging that door itself.

Desiree: Yeah. Why is it called the Suzanne door? We haven’t told people that.

Howard: That’s because with that’s what they called it at the box store. It was called. That was the type of door. It was a Suzanne that’s your, that’s your mom’s first name? So she said, I gotta have it. I gotta have it. Well, who’s going to argue with your wife. Come on. She had it.

Well, and I was going to say hanging that thing, must’ve been a bit of a chore because it’s heavy as hell.

But I did need your help. Yes, it is very heavy. It needs three hinges to keep it from, uh, yanking, the hinges loose and all that. And that takes well hanging on a door is one of those things that I learned in carpentry school while sort of when I had trouble hanging a door of my instructor, Luigi, like get in there, he’d hang the door and say, see piece of cake.

He does that, but it was, I could see was his back. So it took a little bit of practice hanging doors before I got the hang of it. And, uh,

Liam: You’ve definitely said that in the past that like you’ve gotten a lot better at hanging doors and, uh, it was the same thing with, uh, putting in toilets too nowadays.

Howard: No. Yeah. In and out nowadays. Uh, but, uh, yeah, well, you know how it, red greens says there’s, if you do the math, there’s 20,000 way wrong ways to hang a door. Only six are right ways. And the secret is do one of the six ways first.

Desiree: I think people don’t understand that hanging a door is hard because houses aren’t perfectly square.

Howard: Well, no, they never know.

Liam: And neither are the floors.

Howard: Even brand new ones. The doors are more close to square, but you know, there’s a there’s is it, is it plum? Is it level, is it leaning forward? Is it leaning back? Will the doors swing closed with the doors swing open? You gotta be really careful. I hang on a drawer at a, it takes practice.

Yeah.

Liam: Well, if we go, into the laundry room past there, one of the major things that a mom wanted as a directive for the laundry room was alot of shelving. There was a, that was kind of the goal of this space, I believe, was to be able to store as much stuff as physically possible besides being also a place to do.

Howard: It’s more than laundry as you can see, it’s a bit of a pantry as well. That’s a fridge freezer there. You can see beside it the laundry sink. I moved that one, three times and it’s we bought the house and that’s its final resting place there. And the plumbing involved in that, it’s pretty complex, but I managed to get her done.

There’s more shelving going in there by the way. I haven’t finished it quite yet.

Desiree: Above.

Liam: Yeah, There’ve been a few like, additional shelves that I have voted against just cause, as it is, I have somewhat broad shoulders and I’m, it’s basically like a Liam shaped entryway at this point. Any more shelving and I’ll have to stop step sideways. So a mom has a limit on how many boots she’s allowed to get.

Howard: Yes, there’ll be a yard sale soon. I’m sure.

Liam: Hmm, but one, while the other things, and this has been a part of the house since close to when we first got it, that mom really wanted. And I think both of you have found incredibly useful over the years has been a laundry shoot. And you see that here in one of these pictures at the top left corner of one of these. One of the room corners and it’s directly, now built into one of your, cabinets upstairs in the master bedroom.

Howard: Uh, that wall was mum’shoes.
Next that wall is, is Liam’s closet now into his room.

Desiree: Yeah.

Howard: That was open. Uh, it has that pocket door in it, and it was opened for years when I, after I’d renovated Liams’ room.
So finally, he’s got a closet.

Desiree: And then the next one next arrow.

Howard: Cause the next one is, the laundry shoot.
There we go. The laundry chute. Yes. And that goes up upstairs to the master bedroom, that long wall. That’s the side of our house. You can see, the washing machine is pushed against it. That was all concrete. That was bare concrete when they bought their house. So I had to throw that out with two by fours and put in.

Extruded foam insulation. Cause we’re pretty cold downstairs Desiree can attest to that when you’ve lived here. So that had to be insulated and sorted out. And there was a, both electrical and plumbing in behind that wall as well. So that was hidden in there. I can see a great big tapeline my, uh, it’s a laundry room.

Okay. So my mudding and taping was kind of rudimentary.

Desiree: It has walls and insulation. It’s good.

Liam: Yeah, it’s actually fantastic. Because the whole point of the room. It has absolutely accomplished and more it’s. One of the things that when dad renovated my room that I most wanted, especially being a painter is I needed light i needed a lot of light and, the remainder of that house for the longest time, my room was by far the best lit room in the house.

And, the laundry room now has Amazing amount of lights and on multiple different switches. There’s some right over the laundry tub, some just for the pantry. There’s selective lighting throughout all of the house that has become a more reoccurring theme as more renovations have been done. But, at one point I was the one person that was like, no, I need light. And, it’s become more of a heavy focus as you’ve gone throughout the house.

Howard: Now there’s technology. It takes us further forward. All of those puck lights up in the drop ceiling are led and low, low wattage. Low amperage, they don’t draw a lot of power. And so I can put as many of those as I want onto a single circuit and it just counts as one appliance and that’s pretty cool.

I can get carried away. And, uh, and, uh, wire in a whole load of those without worrying about going, uh, blown, the circuits overloading my, uh, my breaker

Desiree: Well, your brain, your breaker box is also a thing of beauty. I must say.

Howard: Well, we’re not gonna talk about that shit or, or, or, uh, show it, so.

Desiree: No, but honestly, mom used to keep flipping the switch all the time. Cause she likes her pretty pretty’s and her decorations for Christmas and Halloween. And you’ve managed that she barely ever flips that switch. Don’t worry. So we appreciate it. Cause she plugs in a lot of stuff.

Liam: Uh, for sure.

Howard: Yeah, that took a lot of work and it’s, I’m still at it in the suite that I’m preparing for you and Doron and it continues a pace.

Liam: Has installed the puck lights you put into the drop ceiling. You also installed the drop ceiling and, um, my room and in this laundry room too,

Howard: Yeah, the drop ceiling has got a T-bar ceiling. They call it a drop ceiling and it’s going to go into the suit as well. Yeah. ’cause I just got too much electrical and plumbing up there that, uh, it’s too much trouble to close it off and it needs to be accessible. If there’s a problem, I’ve got to be able to get at it now.

Drop ceilings. Perfect. For that. You move a couple of panels side and work on it. If you did two,

Desiree: I think it’s a good solution. And then a lot of people are probably curious about your, your, your shoot there, because for a time there was just a hole in the floor and the cats actually went into it a couple of times.

Liam: I had the cat still go into it. If you don’t close the door.

Howard: Well, that’s not fair. That shoot was always there. It just wasn’t finished because a it’s connected to, the cabinets upstairs in the master bedroom. And that, so that was an engineering project and a half just to make that look like a cupboard door. And the problem is as I was left at open, because I’m a slob, like all men are and whatever. Stripped down from my bath or get ready for bed instead of throwing my clothes on the floor, mom says I want the laundry shoot. So she got one and I toss it into the laundry. Shoot it winds up downstairs by the laundry and it’s out of sight out of mind, but the kitties got curious. And so there was my dirty underwear and a cat down there as well.

Liam: Yeah. Well, if we try to like, if we’re moving stuff in and out, because most of our cats are indoor cats, at least like two of the three. And so if we’re moving stuff in, out to the, of the suite or whatever we might be doing, we’ll put them in the master bedroom and go about our business. So that they don’t run outside and we have to try to chase them or get them to come back.

But one of our cats, the master escapee that just refuses to be pinned down. You put her in the line, you put her in the master bedroom, but you don’t close the laundry shoot. She’ll be out in a few seconds.

Howard: I think she’s just having fun. She thinks this is an amusement park.

Desiree: and

Liam: It’s all made to entertain her.

Desiree: Yeah, just her.

Howard: Which photo, which photo are you guys on? I haven’t figured out how to make us like a small,

Desiree: The pantry pictures now.

Howard: There’s uh, pantry to the left side of the photo and a washer dryer. Yeah. Okay. I got that one. Yeah.

Liam: Yep. Right. Uh, the pantry that wraps around the hot water tank.

Desiree: Yeah.

Liam: More storage as it is. And, yeah, we’re going to have a lot of people in the house. And even with the people that we do currently have in the house, mom could fill it all by herself as it is. So

Desiree: Yes, it takes a certain amount of restraint, which seems to be lacking and some people in this household. Um, I I’ve not me. Just don’t have pictures of the shop there that

Liam: I do have pictures

Desiree: Just the corridor.

Liam: I have pictures of the shop, but I won’t share them unless I, unless I have to

Howard: Exactly.

Liam: The shop is the cleanest it’s ever been, in recent memory.

Howard: Yeah.

Liam: Well, it’s actually looking very good right now.

Howard: So I can work in there.

Desiree: So the shop is actually the garage. That dad converted and actually put an insullation cause it wasn’t insulated in there either. It’s quite

Liam: Yup.

Howard: Never had a car in it.

Desiree: No, no cars.

Liam: What a waste. Yeah. And it’s got more benches and cabinetry that you’ve custom made in that in that shop as well as a very nice working space.

Howard: Well, that was my practice work. I’d never made a cabinets to that level before. So actually the shop was my very first project, other than tearing out the walls upstairs and, getting rid of those dirty rugs and all that sort of stuff.

Liam: Yeah, it had to be the first thing that was done on the house to work on the rest.

Howard: All the work comes out of that shop. So, and like I say, I, I practiced on making cabinet carcasses and putting on cabinet doors and making drawers and stuff like that on in the shops.

And if I made a mistake, so what is the shop?

Desiree: Yeah. And so the pantry, we’re trying to keep like a good stock up of stuff just in case we can’t get it. Cause we all have dietary needs. So I’m pretty sure that’s mostly why, anytime you take something out of the pantry, you just buy another one and it’s great. Cause there’ll be five of us in five cats at one point.

So that’s a lot of people to feed.

Liam: Yeah. And that’s been our, like a relatively new thing of like, if you take a thing, put it on a list. Yeah. We’ve got two or three more of it, but it’s never, especially for all the lactose free and vegan stuff that we have, it’s never guaranteed that it’s going to be there the next time you actually need it. Plus Mom does a lot of growing her, her own Herb’s and spices and drying those and canning them and keeping them organized and well like preserved and stored is necessary.

Howard: Yeah, the hard part was I had to, had to leave the furnace and the hot water heater accessible for when they need maintenance and repair switching out. So

Liam: Yeah, the air conditioning is over, in that area too, which we’ve definitely had to access the summer. We had to get to both sides of it, which we wouldn’t been able to do. If it wasn’t for how you design the pantry,

Howard: Yeah. Well, I designed those shelves. You can move them out of the way. So we’ve been acting.

Desiree: We’re thankful for that. Most places that I’ve seen always have this little closet, which I imagine isn’t so great for accessibility.

Howard: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of places, they got us doing a renovate and doesn’t think about, you know, okay. So what’s next.

Liam: Yeah. Or the guy doing the renovating isn’t the guy that was living there.

Howard: Exactly. And he’s not going to the guy that’s going to be living near 10 years from now when the water heater craps out. So, you know, that’s all part and parcel of, of the thinking of, of trying to make a house a home is that, for example, I wasn’t quite that clued in about the HVAC, the heating and ventilation when I renovated your room.

Cause the downstairs in your room only has one heater. But it has no, cool cold air intake and it’s a large space and it needs that. So now I’m looking at it years later saying, shit, I got to retrofit it

Desiree: Is that Liam’s?

Howard: I’ll figure it out. Yeah. I’ll figure it out. Now. You’re a suite also has to have a, a return because it wasn’t thought out when the house was initially built.

You know, the whole basement was pretty much renovated by the demented home handyman. So it was a, it was a mess. And I certainly didn’t give any sort of thought whatsoever to basic things like,

Desiree: Insulation.

Howard: Uh, yeah, the installation was sort of a rudimentary thing on the outside of the house. It wasn’t very good. I mean all of the, all of the plumbing leak, um, and so they get out that well, what was the point in them putting up a drywall on the ceiling, if, uh, you know, if you can’t get out the plumbing. You know, that sort of saying there’s a bathroom downstairs was vented the, the

Liam: I was just going to say the venting cause they all of the plumbing in the house at like all of the bathrooms are all literally in the exact center of the house, including the one that was downstairs and all of the venting was just non-existent

Howard: Well, yeah. I mean, they, they put a dryer hose from the vent over the bathtub, into the laundry

Liam: Into the laundry room. That’s right. Oh,

Howard:That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Let’s move to stinky air from in here into the laundry room that’s no,

Desiree: No.

Howard: So that’s the sort of thing that, you know, I have to think of before I even get started on this is okay.

Liam: Well, and the bathroom upstairs was vented into just insulation.

Howard: The attic?

Desiree: Oh,

Liam: Yeah.

Howard: That was a pain, but while I’ve rectified that since, but you know, it’s taken years to get to it. And I finally managed to. And there was a certain amount of army language happening after that crawl space in the attic. I’ll tell you. So, you know, I mean,

Desiree: I remember there was a time when you were up in that crawl space in between your bedroom and the kitchen, and you just stuck your head out like a skeleton. You guys put a decoration up there because that was how big the crawlspace was a person sized. She struck one of mom’s full-sized skeletons sticking inside of the crawlspace into the kitchen because it wasn’t finished at the moment.

It was so funny.

Howard: As a small person, it was a pretty claustrophobic up there. It’s not the worst crawlspace I’ve had to work in. When I was down on the coast doing my first renovations, in a, in a friend’s house, it was an ancient house. It must’ve been forties. And he had me up in the ceiling redoing wiring while th wiring wasold too, but it was just bloody.

Desiree: My God.

Howard: And, and the ceiling of course is last and plaster. And, uh, no, actually I think it was one of the very first,, drywall boards when it had this popcorn insulation blown into it. It was full of mouse. And ah, man, they sent my sister, uh, my, uh, flashlight down between the rafters I was spread out on and the whole ceiling fell in which I mean up there, I’m looking down to the rafters.

And, you know, the extra weight of my flashlight collapsed the ceiling down into the bedroom I was working on and all that icky popcorn installation was all over the floors and just what a zoo.

I swear I didn’t do it on purpose, but it needed it.

Desiree: Yeah.

Howard: Sure. It needed it. Yeah. Yeah. And then I had to spend a week putting the drywall back up and trying to mug that it was just a pain. So where are we?

Liam: Going towards the shop there.

Howard: Oh towards the shop. Okay.

Liam: So, this hallway, which actually got done before the laundry room did, but now it’s fully completed. It’s got its own ceiling lighting and, it’s several S like specially made storage, hangers and, shelves and stuff like that. That whole space is all being used.

Howard: Yeah. That’s that goes through your bedroom when I was renovating your bedrooms. And you said, no, he can’t have an entrance to the shop there, dad, that’s my bedroom.

Liam: I don’t want you to walking back and forth.

Howard: There’s a side door to the garage so you can get in and out of there. And I said, what in the wintertime are you insane? So you got a bit smaller bedroom and I got a hallway to get in and out of their shop.

Liam: Yep. This hall goes directly behind my bedroom. When previously it was just one large room, a big empty space.

Howard: Again with a concrete wall against us, they look at the photographs, uh, looking into the, hallway that one on the left side where I’ve got my tools hanging was a concrete wall. It was not insulated or anything. It was just an ass.

Desiree: And then that one, I have a hard time going through. So I imagine Liam does too. It’s it’s it’s for you dad.

Howard: Well, it’s not, it’s not for them. It’s for me, I’m a little guy.

Liam: And for the cat because she’s always running in front of me.

Howard: She seems to be foremost in that next picture

Liam: Yeah,

Howard: Yeah, she has to be the star of the show. She’s up here right now, looking out the window, waiting for mom to come home, I guess.

Liam: Yeah, well, I was taking pictures and I wasn’t giving her attention, so she had to make sure. Yeah.But, it’s been really convenient. All of this extra storage space for me as well, because, now I know at least where a few things are, when I needed an Exacto knife or gloves, I can find them.

Desiree: Went looksing for a hammer in and, Measuring tape too. I’m like, Ooh, they’re right there. Yay.

Howard: Ah, I haven’t gotten quite that elaborate yet. I’m still working on that.

Desiree: Much better than going into the shop though. Cause it’s cold in there.

Howard: Well, the shopper’s insulated and it’s warmed.

Liam: Yeah, it is now.

Howard: Yeah, I’ve got one little, Convection heater in there that it keeps it really quite warm. Of course we haven’t gotten to the below zero temperatures yet. We’ll see,

Liam: Well, you’ve had that. You also have a heater that’s mounted in the top of the, um, is that working.

Howard: That crapped out that only lasted two years and

Desiree: I guess that’s on your Christmas list for this year. I’m guessing.

Howard: Yeah. You can do that. Keep it, keeping it from freezing to death.

Desiree: No dead Popsicle dad.

Howard: I would prefer not. Thank you.

Liam: But, well, one of the things I didn’t get a picture of here now that I’m thinking about it, his mom has a nook here by that laundry tub that we had talked about a little bit by a little bit back, that it has all of our paint supplies when you’re heading out to this hallway, going towards the shop, that laundry tub is right there on the left.

I didn’t get a picture of that, but that’s a lot of moms, easels and paints and stuff like that. I know cause I raid them often for terrain. so she’s got her own little nook there, besides the nook that’s for her boots or the nook that’s for the other things. but this this entire space is just like, it’s so well.

It’s so, much better insulated than the, the basement has historically been. Like once they, the suite gets fully done, it’s going to be a completely different space. Like it’s a night and day from, uh, I wish I had some photos of before, but, I didn’t think to take any of the laundry room, because it’s a completely different space.

Just transformed.

Howard: Yeah. I don’t know if I have pictures of the suite space before I got started, but I do have photos of before in your room. Uh, yeah, in my old phone and I sat thing is, you know, corroded away. So you might be able to, you know, switch them over.

Liam: Maybe I took some photos of the suite today. So I’ve got like some befores for the suite anyway. Cause that’s the next project that’s coming.

Howard: that one included replacing a bearing wall with a, with a beam and, you know, all sorts of stuff. So that’s quite an elaborate space. It’s the last space in the house, that needs renovating. And, there’s no point in me just being in a hurry and, jerking around with it and I want to finish it up properly the way I’ve started everything else.

Liam: Yeah. That, well, the quality of work throughout the entire house has always been exceptional. If we had to hire somebody to do the amount of work that you’ve done on the house, well, for one, we wouldn’t be able to find the quality, but for two, we would never have been able to afford it. Because when we, uh, if we were to have you on again, we could definitely go over some of the other projects for the upstairs, especially like the mom’s kitchen or the, the cabinetry that you’ve done in the master bedroom or all the work that you’ve done on the bathrooms or the hardwood floors that, went into both like the staircase and the upstairs.

There’s just so much work that you’ve put into this entire house throughout all of the years. And all of it is. Top quality stuff.

Howard: Except the outside, the outside, it looks kind of raggedy.

Liam: Yeah. Well, we haven’t touched that.

Desiree: That’s right. Yeah, we haven’t done that yet. When we do it’ll look good. We’ll pay someone to

Liam: It’s on the list.

Yeah. Yeah. At this point we’ll pay somebody to make it

Howard: Well, I think I’m going to hire somebody to do that. I’m getting too old, all around to put Hardy board up everywhere.

Desiree: Yeah. It’s a bit much.

Liam: I mean, we’ve got some beautiful like windows that we could just put in there, but who has the energy for that?

Howard: Well, the, the main window I want to get in weighs about 250 pounds. So

Liam: And it has to go up two stories.

Howard: Yeah. And it’s got to go in the living room, two stories up.

Desiree: Let’s pay someone who looks like a rock to do that.

Howard: I’ve already talked to somebody, sometime in the spring when it’s not so cold and a big hole in the wall is not going to be too bad.

Liam: Yeah. It’s a good plan.

Desiree: Much better than doing a roof right now.Shut up over there!

Howard: Doing a roof, anytime on the coast is a pain doing it here in the summertime. You’d roast to death.

Desiree: Yeah.

Howard: But we managed to do that the second year we were in this house.

Liam: And it only took like what, two days,

Howard: A weekend.

Liam: Yahoos.

Howard: Yeah. Well, I had two friends and seven kids on the roof helping me. So

Liam: Yeah. So it was about two and a half people working onit.

Desiree: It was in the summer though, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it the summer.

Howard: No, it was in September.

Desiree: Good.

Liam: Yeah.

Howard: And when our friend came up on his motorcycle, he had to run it through a rainstorm. We sat out on the back porch, getting rained all over and I’m thinking, oh, this is not good.

Liam: That drive up.

Howard: He’s not gonna have any fun, but no, it is cleared up the next day. And we were good.

This is not like Vancouver up here will rain 285 days in a row. Uh, it’s not like that.

Desiree: No looking forward to it. Thanks so much for sharing dad. Did we have any closing notes before I close it?

Liam: Uh, no, I actually, I wanted to, I also wanted to thank dad for being our first guest here. And while we had some technical difficulties, it was actually less than I expected. So, that’s saying something. But it’s always great to hear about some of the, the work that goes into the stuff around us. And, well, I’m not particularly knowledgeable about any of the plumbing, electrical, or multitude of other facets that, dad is put effort into into making this house such a beautiful home.

I can definitely appreciate the work that he has done and I’d love to have him on again. Dad, I’d love to have you on again for. Other projects, not just renovations either. Cause there’s quite a few little, passion projects that you’ve done over the years. Craft stuff that we could talk about too.

And it was a, it was nice to have you on.

Desiree: Yeah.

Howard: Thank you kids. Uh, like I say, I look forward to standing up and receiving my Oscar at the academy, but I won’t hold my breath.

Desiree: Right.

Liam: No, probably best not to wait for it.

Desiree: Thanks for all the love and support dad. And yes, we do really love the house. We’re all going to go out and pine boxes from that house.

Howard: Yeah.

Desiree: So I’m just want to say that all of the different images that we talked about today are definitely on Liam’s web website on solo quest, creative questions. Six.

Yes. We’re on six now. Now you can get our podcast at pod bean and pod bean also shares to Google as well as, let me see what other ones we’ve got.

Liam: Yeah, you can find them on Google

Desiree: Yeah,

Liam: Uh, I think Spotify as well.

Desiree: We’ve got Amazon music. We’ve got Pandora and we’ve got pod bean. We’re working on a couple others there. They just take a bit of time each, but we’ve got all of those.

And then obviously on our YouTube. new nerd novelties creative questions.

Liam: So, there was one other thing that I wanted to actually ask you SIS, before we, completely wrap up. And, dad is, well, I guess it’s like, what would, um, what you’re going to be working on next week, coming up here? Most likely podcast stuff I would assume, but we’ve got mom’s Halloween party coming up and that’s a, generally a really big thing.

Desiree: I have to adjust the skirt for my costume. From the last time we did a podcast, I haven’t actually touched it because of the market. I’m adjusting my bride of Frankenstein skirt, and then I should hopefully be ready if not. Um, I have to tailor the coat. Well, uh,

Liam: yeah, I should probably put together a costume for the party that’s on for Saturday. or whatever.

Desiree: Dori’s actually figured out what he’s gonna do. So he’s doing a gender swap.

Liam: Oh, actually, no, I did. I did figure out what I was going to do. Okay. That’s right,
I just need to find some gauze.

Desiree: Gauze is good. Tell Mom.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: And Dori’s doing something gender swapped. We will share that with pictures probably next week.

Liam: Nice. Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do for the D and D campaign. Some miniatures, some terrain, some designing of a game. Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of stuff. I probably won’t have the energy to do all of

Desiree: Well just do what you can, Dad, his Mom made you a costume yet?

Howard: I, uh, I think my costume designer has something in mind. So come the event, I makeup artist and costume designer. We’ll just go right to work on me.

Desiree: Yeah. So moms that’s me as a makeup artist and mom is the costume designer by the way.

Howad: Yeah, listen, it’s nice to have a staff. Okay. And what I’m doing next week is working on more on the electrical and the suite, because it’s just enough to make my brain hurt.

Liam: Well, and, uh, the, the real thing I would like you to endeavor is this time, no accidents around Halloween,

Desiree: Yes, please.

Liam: Of any kind unrelated or not.

Desiree: We won’t. We won’t mention the time you got set on fire.

Liam: Yeah. Or

Howard: Hey, I didn’t set me on fire

Liam: Yeah.

Howad: Or broke two ribs. Yeah. Yeah. We won’t even talk about that.

Desiree: no.

Liam: no, no.

Desiree: So this is the brother sister pair bringing you creative questions with our father, our guest host. Very first one.

Howard: Howard Hewlett you a thank you very much.

Desiree: Have yourself a great night.

Howard: Thanks guys.

Desiree: Bye-bye.

Liam: Have a good night.