Xmas Dinner and window blinds!

We had my family over for a Christmas lunch. It was the first time some

of them actually visited our house!  [They all live south fo the river, so 

convincing them to make the journey is like asking them to drive to

Fort Mac.  

And for Christmas, I got my dad to help me install the
cellular blinds on our living room windows!

House numbers and canopy decking installed!

With Rob's help, I was able to get all the carbonized wood for the main door canopy cut and installed!  And after the decking was in place, I was able to screw our house numbers down!  Yay!  We are now a known location in the world!

They even look great from the inside!

Carbonized Wood Colour Testing!

We have been using carbonized wood on our house with the help of Alberta Innovates Technology Futures. So, we are in full swing with the testing of workability, durability, and colour change over time. I made a couple of test-bed wood decking squares to see how certain finishes will take to the wood over the course of the year.  Robert from AITF has been extremely helpful in pulling all of this together and coming by to test the colours with a light spectrometer.  It only runs on Windows 95- and we only have a large, honkin' CPU and have to haul it all over the house where we are testing different locations for colour.  I think I sourced a laptop- which will hopefully make this a whole lot easier...

I used four different types of finish on the test bed.

From left to right: acrylic latex paint, Behr Super Spar clear varnish,
a board left natural, polyurethan, varathane finishes.

So far, I think I like the Behr finish.

Here's our testing set-up. It ain't fun haulin' this around the house.

Robert in action.

It's a tight squeeze on one of our stair landings.
We used carbonized wood for the landing since
construction and it hasvbeen in place for almost a year!

Robert in action, again!

Exterior wood decking - this one will see direct
sunlight.

This wood decking square will not see direct sunlight,
as it is shaded by the guardrail.

One of my new chores: brushing off the PV modules when the snow
sticks to it!