Farewell to the garbage container?

Saturday morning I got out the shop vacuum and started to get to work on cleaning up the dust from the demolition.  I have cleared all the old plaster off the majority of the walls, leaving only the plaster intact on interior walls in the little room that will house an attic bathroom, and in the staircase.  There is still steel brush work required, but as we had guests over yesterday I wanted to get things a little more shipshape for showing them around the place.

Fortunately the shop vacuum has a nice long hose, and a very long rigid handle, plus attachments that have scrubbing brushes on them, so while standing on the scaffolding I was able to reach all the way up to the very top of the attic space, and get that black dust and soot and cobwebs that was stuck to them.  The difference isn't all that apparent from the floor, but I can see that the wood now looks a nice warm red-brown colour, and isn't charcoal grey any longer, and there are no more cobwebs.

One interesting item that turned up during the attic clean is this crate: it's labelled as having come from the Nobel factory in Sweden, and originally seems to have held 25 kg of dynamite!  I wonder how it made its way to our attic?

We had the Edwardses over for raclette last night; they came in the mid-afternoon, and we had a drink upstairs in the attic to celebrate its opening before heading back downstairs for snacks and then dinner.  The original plan was to go run our 8-10km route with Lawrence and Tiffany, but the weather was really bad; freezing with slushy snow, so we opted instead to light the woodstove and just stay in.  Malcolm wasn't here this weekend, so Maggie and I took his double bed in the third bedroom; Lawrence and Tiffany took our queen-size bed and put Eden's travel crib in the same room; Duncan gave his double bed to Laila and Thalia, and slept himself on the hotel folding cot in the living room.  Eight people is definitely most we've had stay overnight, and it worked out just fine.

We had two visits with the Edwardses in as many days, as on Friday Kiana and Bryan and I went out to their new house in Jodoigne and we had a go at using the jointer/planer.  Kiana has a large slice of tree trunk that she wants to use as a countertop in their powder room, and since it was cut with a chainsaw from the green log it has dried out, and changed shape considerably.  Our mutual friend Jan has moved in with Claire in Brussels centre, so his wood shop machines are now making their home with Tiffany and Lawrence in Jodoigne.  Tiffany has been wanting to explore wood work for many years and now happily has access to so many large floor machines, and I hope to make use of them myself in the future.

This evening we are heading into Brussels to have a last beer with Gediminas and Rasa before they leave tomorrow to drive to Vilnius.  His appointment as ambassador from Lithuania to Japan (and to Australia, New Zealand, and a few other countries) has been confirmed, and they move out of their house in Brussels tomorrow morning.  They will spend a little time in Lithuania, and then fly to Tokyo in a couple of weeks.  We are of course thrilled for them both; it will be difficult I am sure to adapt to the new language (especially the kanji icons) but it's really a marvellous opportunity for them.  Simon will be staying to continue school in Maastricht, so we will see him frequently, we hope.  And who knows?  Perhaps a Japanese vacation might be in order in a little while?

Maggie has been doing some sewing recently; she made a lovely black dress from the same pattern book that produced her white and purple NYE dress.  Here she is standing on a table, asking me to mark the hem; as it turned out the dress hem was fine the first time, so it needed no further adjustment.

Duncan is feeling better now; he missed three days of school last week, as he fell ill with (I suspect) the same bug that laid me low the week before.  He was feeling well enough on Saturday to make it to karate, so I'm sure he'll be back at school tomorrow.  I will be wire brushing the walls and vacuuming up more dust, and dumping it in the container.  As well there is the matter of the coal that we found in the little front room of the cellar; it is full of dirt and dust, so I'll be using a riddle screen to separate out the dust and dirt from the usable coal.  Our stove won't burn it but our friend Benoit has a coal stove in his guitar showroom so I'll give it to him.

Here's wishing you a happy and productive week!

Some more photos

I was taking some photos of the attic today and realised that I had a number of photographs still on my Fuji camera that I had not yet imported that I wanted to share with you.

Here are a couple more Christmas shots and some photos of the attic taken this morning.  No flash, no lights on upstairs, but you can see already that there is a lot of light now, coming from many different directions. It's going to be a really lovely space, once the drywall is up.

Today I am going to remove the last few bits of plaster, and then use steel bristle brushes to try to clean the powdery debris off the brick.  It is extremely soft and crumbly, and so muratic acid will be too strong; instead I'm just going to use a standard all-purpose cleaner to finish it up, and then I'll seal it with a matte transparent waterproofing liquid.

Maggie and Malcolm sewing together in the back verandah.

The piano candelabra in our front hallway, lit up for our Christmas celebration

The south side (street) of the attic at around 11h today.  You can see that I've already cleaned off the wall in the foreground and the wall to the left in this photo.  The large skylight is just visible in the upper left corner, and the smaller one is near the far wall; it will serve to illuminate the staircase.  Even without any electric lights it's already a very luminous space.

The view from the northwest corner of the attic, looking east into Maggie's planned sewing room.  The are where I am standing to take the photo will likely be made up as a storage or desk area, probably with a guest bed for occasional use.

Another photo from the same location.  You can see that the light is coming from many different directions, which is great if one is doing embroidery or sewing work.

The reverse view of that smaller "third" room with a small skylight to the right opening onto the garden, and the wall of the staircase to the left.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year one and all!

It's been a busy month since my last blog post, so forgive me if this is a long one...

My last concert of the year was a bit unsettled: I received word on Wednesday preceding the concert on December 17th that the tenor was sick, and also a request that I learn the tenor recit; Thursday brought an inquiry if I might be able to also do one of the tenor arias in addition to my bass parts.  It seemed probable that I could manage it, carefully, so I agreed... Bruce helped me out quite a bit by sight-reading the piano partition, and I managed to get it all learned in time...

All ended up going rather well in fact, and I was happy to help the Minimes Choir and Orchestra, as they have given me many great opportunities to explore Bach's music in a very hospitable and collegial setting.  Julius the Artistic Director was thrilled to death, and the conductor made a speech to the audience ahead of time about "Matthew Zadow's amazingly solid vocal technique, that allows him to sing not only in his normal register, but also to successfully perform pieces that would be beyond the ability of most other singers".  It was quite flattering and I was happy that Bruce and Malcolm were there to see it. Here's a photo or two from the raccord before the performance:

After my Minimes concert, Bruce and Malcolm and I met Maggie and Duncan at St. Andrews, where Duncan was doing one of the readings for the Nine Lessons and Carols service.  After the service we enjoyed some mulled wine and mince pies, and then went home.  It was the beginning of the holiday for real, as school had ended for everyone, and I had sung my last concert, so Duncan and I took a brief detour to go pick up the Christmas tree from a vendor about a kilometer down the road, and we found a very tall one that only just fit.  We brought it home in our convertible with the top down, and brought it in, placing it in the bay window of the living room.

After we had been waiting since the beginning of October, the roofers finally showed up on Monday the 18th, and started to demolish the old roofing tiles.

I left them with a key, and on Tuesday Bruce and I hit the road to drive to Glons.  The Cloes family lost two members in 2017: Jean, the father, and Christophe, the youngest son of the seven adult children.  We made a visit with Jean's widow first, and had a nice lunch there, before going up the hill to the old cemetery where Jean and Christophe are buried.

Despite the sombre tone of the trip we still had a warm welcome and social time with the extended family.  The building that we stayed in as a family the first two weeks in Belgium back in 2007 is a converted brick barn redeveloped by Michel Cloes.  It comprises the main loft, where Michel now lives, as well as a number of apartments of various sizes that Michel rents out as Air BNB residences.  Bruce and I stayed over Tuesday night in one of the larger ones, and had dinner with the extended family and friends, and left the next morning after breakfast.

Our ride was interrupted by a phone call from the roofer; the police had determined that the roofers' construction elevator was blocking the sidewalk to such an extent that pedestrians had to walk in the roadway, and this was determined to be a safety risk.  They shut down work pending a permit for a partial blockage of one lane of the road.  Frustratingly this meant that work was shut down from December 21st, and we had to make do with nothing but a thin blue roofing membrane and wooden lattices for the next eighteen days.  These were to prove to be the windiest and rainiest couple of weeks of 2017, and every gust of wind would keep us awake at night.

But there was nothing to be done about it, we just had to wait and trust that things would work out, and instead concentrate on celebrating Christmas and the New Year.  Andrew came over for a nice lunch date and had look at the situation of the attic...

Bruce and I had a trip into town to explore the Christmas market, and enjoy Chimay Bleu on tap at Place St. Catharine!

with Duncan and Bruce, Christmas shopping for Maggie at the fabric store in Leuven

on our way to Craig and Deborah's Christmas Eve bash

Bruce enjoying conversation with the lovely Isabelle Boucher

None of us really needed big presents this year; after all we did get a house in 2017!  The wood stove and other improvements are more than enough.  But some of the things that we gave or received are reciprocal gifts.  Duncan bought some quilting fabrics for his mother, and she suggested that he choose ones he would like used in the upcoming quilt she's making him.  As well, Maggie's gift to Malcolm was a tutorial in sewing a waistcoat.  They didn't waste (haha) much time in getting started, and Malcolm ended up cutting out and sewing it pretty much entirely himself.  There's not much difference between working with wood or with tissue, when you get down to it... 

laying out and pinning

cutting the lining

pieces ready for sewing

Maggie pattern making for her own project, a party dress

Christmas morning with each happy at their own enthusiasm:

LEGO, guitar pedal electronics, and embroidery

Farewell raclette dinner with the Varvuolis family and Bruce

Gediminas and Rasa are posted next to Japan, and we had them over for a big raclette meal in between Christmas and New Year's Eve.  We will really miss them a lot, but will stay in touch, as Simon is going to school in Maastricht, which is not too far away.  This coming Thursday the 18th January will be the formal farewell reception at the embassy, so we will see them again before the departure.

Bruce departure from Zaventem

Just before the year ended I took Bruce to the airport and bid him a fond farewell... it was really great having him here, and I know he had a great time.  Hopefully we will have more living space with the attic insulated and wired up for the next time he passes this way again.

Malcolm with a DICTUM jack plane

I spotted a used plane at one of the Cash Express stores in Ottignies, and nabbed it for about a third of the retail cost.  Malcolm was really happy and as I expected he wanted it, so he spent some of his Christmas money on it.  He has since sharpened the blade and got it humming along very smoothly.

Christmas bluegrass jam at the Welter's

Maggie needed to stay home at work on her party dress on the evening of the 30th, and Duncan was at a friend's, so Malcolm and I went to the Welter family home, for a Hawaiian dinner of poke, a marinated fish dish, and a bluegrass jam.  It was Malcolm's first chance to introduce the boys to his new bass, and to play with them since the summer.  Corbyn, the eldest, is attending Berklee college of music in Boston, and soon the remaining Welters will be moving to Hawaii.  The father Adam is a captain in the US Navy, so they have travelled quite a lot over the years, and have already lived in Hawaii before.

party dress finished at noon on NYE, ready for the evening

We spent NYE at Lawrence and Tiffany's new house near Jodoigne... it was too wet and rainy for us to have many fireworks but we did manage a few on the terrace.  I bought the family a disco ball, multicoloured pinspot light, and a rotor to make the ball spin, as our housewarming present, and Bryan and I installed it in the afternoon, and we made good use of it as we celebrated the end of 2017 and welcomed 2018 in the door.  The next morning Maggie made good on a birthday present gift to make some skirts for Laila and Thalia, while Claire looked on.

January 1st run

We also geared up and went out for a morning run on January 1st of about 10km, with a beer stop at the 5km mark.

some guitars on the wall in Malcolm's room

The third bedroom is been being considered as the site of a large new bathroom, but for Bruce's visit we arranged it as a bedroom, and that configuration has persisted since then, as Malcolm's bedroom when he is visiting.  For easy storage we dug out the guitar hooks from our old place and he put them up, so that the mixed collection of instruments can be out of their cases and safely stored, yet easily accessible.  (Left-to-right: 2017 Rosado fretless bass, 1993 Gibson SG Special, 2017 Zadowcaster, 2014 Gibson Les Paul.)

galettes des rois at Epiphany

Bryan and Kiana and their kids came skating at the outdoor artificial rink just down the street from us in Wavre, meeting some of their friends from the Le Verseau school that they attend.  It turns out that the dad lived for twenty years in Montreal, and so he and his four children are all Belgian-Canadian, just like Maggie and the boys!  We invited them over for an impromptu soup and bread and cheese lunch, and they brought two delicious galettes des rois to share.  Duncan found the fêve in the first one, and the youngest child from their family found the second one.  Kiki refused to accept this, and claimed the crown for herself...

Finally on Monday the 8th the roofers came back, this time with some lights and barriers to block off part of the roadway so that pedestrians could cross.  The Christmas tree had been put out by that time ahead of pickup by the trash collectors, so they used it as well to encourage motorists to move over.

After three days of work they were finally finished with the roof and the skylights...

North side (garden)

south side (street)

The workers left a large yellow plastic chute hanging from the front window, which will be used to remove the construction debris and place it easily in the container that is still in our driveway.  Duncan and I got to work stripping the plasterboard from the brick walls.  It is slow and very dusty work, requiring goggles, masks, gloves, and coveralls...

We are only about a third of the way done, and so I aim to get back at that work today and tomorrow, and try to remove the rest of the plaster so that the workers can take it out along with the rest of the debris.  The roofers will come on Wednesday to take all of the rubble out and remove the garbage chute.  Then we'll have lots of vacuuming to do, and then it will be electrical and insulation next...

Musically there's a lot of planning going on.  I haven't bought my ticket yet for Canada as I am being considered for another project there in April.  I can't say more about it yet as it isn't confirmed, but it would be nice if I can add that to the other two projects already on the books for May. 

On this side of the pond, I have already written about the many passion performances I have coming in March.  As well, I have recently received contracts for four performances of the Mozart Requiem for December 2018 in Flanders, and a concert with a Luxembourg orchestra for NYE 2019.  I have an important audition in Amsterdam in February, and I have just this week received two requests for sending my CV along to two different orchestra/choir organisations, one in the Netherlands and one in Lausanne, Switzerland.  I'm encouraged by their interest and am hoping that they will lead to new projects, expanding my career outwards into other European countries...

Best wishes to all of you in 2018!