The House That Peter Built Photos

My brother Mac, he did a tremendous amount of work with me on the house. He helped me more than all the other volunteers put together. There were about 5 other people that provided assistance. My thanks to them as well. Here we are setting up the custom router table we built. When set up this time, it was used to put the decorative edge on the chair-rails, crown moulding and baseboard.

The roof of the house is metal sheathing. 32' long pieces (about 10 metres). Many 1000's of 3/8" screws are in the roof.

Our entrance in Spring 1998. Wettest year on record. (Note, my area is technically a "Prairie Desert") Some DAYS we had more rain than the 100+ year record for the MONTH! For days on end I couldn't get into the site. See next picture as well.

So I bought the above 1 ton truck. This lets me bring in 3.7 English tons per trip of Asphalt Shingle chips. (Oops, maybe not, I broke the axle. OK, when I get the new rear-end on, I'll keep it down to 3 tons per load).

The Asphalt shingle chips are the "punch outs" that result when companies (IKO in my case) make shingles. In Calgary, they have to pay a lot of money to dispose of these in local dumps, so, if you haul them, they give them away for free. The chips then heat up in the sun and glue together. A 2" thick level made it possible for me to get in with even a 1ton truck. After all the work is done, I will be building up an 8" thick asphalt road with it.

How? Every morning I drive to work in my truck & pick up 3 tons (now) Then I drive home & dump the load. Eventually I'll have an 8" thick road. Currently it is 1" thick and in most places, this is fantastic. I think I'll stop now when I hit 4" thick.

Update 2010.04 Unfortunately, this is no longer a good idea. The government changed the rules on how shingles are required to be made, and now they won't bind together anymore, I understand that it is a lot of fiberglass, but I don't know for sure, just that the company told me the change was due to the government regulations and so they don't work nearly as good as they did 10 years ago - so it isn't worth the shipping cost anymore. So ... all the shingle punch outs need to go to the landfill instead of being used in driveways.

Note to those that emulate me: Don't let tracked vehicles (like Cat D-9's) drive on it - they do serious damage.

I have a rule. I only use torx, hex or square head screws. I refuse to use slot screws, especially with my power screwdrivers. Although (in Canada) electrical boxes , switches, duplex's etc.., all use square headed screws, the plates do not! So .... I bought a few hundred square head #6/32, 1/2" screws had my kids line them up in a piece of wood that I cut slots, then I painted them white to match the plates . The only time I use + (Star) heads is when drywalling, 'cuz there's a tool that will hold them magnetically and drive them to the correct depth.

It took 20 minutes to put on over 100 plates throughout the house. And when I had to fix mistakes (remember, I've never done any handyman stuff before I started building the house) it was real quick and easy to take off all the plates on a circuit to find the problem.

The septic tank

A couple shots on tiling.

Hmm. I STILL don't have any "overall" shots. I'll have to see if I took any of those! Basically, it is a 56x96' metal building, white metal sides, blue metal roof .