A Mad Update

Well David has stayed very busy since last spring.

One of his talents is in swinging a good deal and he made quite a few this year. He has aquired another 200 feet of concrete docks and 900 feet of wooden docks.
He traded a guy a case of beer for a forklift. Its an ugly old beast but runs well. A coat of spray paint to spiff it up and its been put to good use rearranging Davids ever expanding pile of material.
Another welder with an 8500 watt genset has been added to the workshop along with a slew of handtools.I think we have just about every kind of tool here now you can think of.

David bringing home his new docks,while working on new deals via cell phone



The new forklift



The 40x40 barge finally recovered in new material ready to have something built on it



The barge with some new docks stored on it parked behind Davids house




David has secured the water lease and the large workshop here at our marina on Mitchell Island. Right now its mostly home to a whole lot of docks and another large 30x66 foot floathome that he picked up in October. It was listed for free on craigslist and just after he made arrangements to pick it up, a bidding war started with a few other interested parties. After the fur stopped flying David got his house for the grand sum of $5000. Not bad at all for a huge floathome in great condition,all insulated and heated to boot. He has it tied up behind his house and has been busy doing renos on it to get it ready for the Olympics.The idea is to build a bunch of rooms, tow it up to Squamish and rent it out to tourists for the Games.

The new floathome at its original location



And in its new home behind Davids red(now Black) house



The workshop now houses the first of the mobile homes to be renovated.This winter work will start on refitting it with all the gear neccesary to make it off the grid.Once its ready it will be placed on a float to make a self-sustaining floathome. The shop is also home to my 1933 wood Rum Runner that David is helping me restore.

The empty (for one whole minute) workshop



The first mobile home in the workshop waiting for refitting.



The mobile home and the two forklifts stored in the shop



The Rumrunner in the workshop





Last year,David was given a tug boat that had been salvaged by his friend Steve Garrity for the price of the tow to get it there.
He spent the winter cleaning it up and working on the engine. It was up and running for a day, then inadvertantly sunk when it was left in shallow water at low tide. Although they managed to get it right back up, the damage was done and the motor had to be rebuilt again.

This September the tug was hauled out and stored at Shelter Island Marina.Over the next two months much was done to it at a cost of $14,000. The engine was rebuilt,the shaft and wheel repaired,the electrical work done and new paint and zincs applied.A survey was done and the boat dropped back in the water and brought home.The wheelhouse was in really rough shape so David cut it off and now is planning to install a new one. Once thats done,the electrical hooked up and some new rubber put on the bumpers, she will be ready to go to work.

The tugboat before the refit









A huge rubber tire that was going to go on the tug until we got it home and found out its ten times bigger than anything we need



The tug getting painted



The finished paint job



David admiring the new paint job



The wheelhouse has been cut off



The red house finally got some of Davids attention again recently. He added another layer of 3/4 inch plywood over the whole floor to make it less bouncy.That was covered with a coat of paint to seal it all. The rest of the walls got covered with doorskins over a good layer of insulation.New beams have been added in the kitchen area so as to add a lower roof and a closet by the entrance way. A few repairs have been done to the roof to the last of the leaky spots and the house is finally dry as a bone. The last few days he has been laying hardwood floor in the kitchen and placing the cabinets and sink in place ready for hooking up.

A bedroom and the kitchen starting to take shape



The kitchen with its newly laid hardwood floors and tile behind the stove




The insulated walls



The walls covered with doorskins



The back bedroom and bathroom walls finished



David working on the new flooring





David bought an awesome huge soaker tub that was left in the workshop and is going to expand the bathroom area to accomadate it and a stacking washer/dryer.

The soaker tub






Time for some live music and good food





The last big chores to be done to the house is to insulate the ceiling,build the upstairs bedroom and put some siding on the place.It already looks a hundred percent better than when he got it last year and it wont be long now before its an awesome house ready to live in.

David's Mad May Shopping Spree

I always thought I was pretty good at spending money , but this boy puts me to shame.In the last month he has acquired:
-a flat-bed one ton truck
-a forklift
-massive piles of wood for docks and decking
-a huge8500 watts/8.6kw generater/welding machine with a nice utility trailer
-a 40ft by 40ft barge
-a 2 story steel building to put on the barge
-100 feet of concrete breakwater

And now he is looking at buying a spudbarge ( for pile-driving) and a link-belt cable crane with a clamshell bucket for dredging . It will go on the 40ftx40ft barge and will be capable of earning a hundred thousand dollars a day on the river, whoohoo!Hope he takes me shopping!

He also just got a call from the guy that wants to give him free mobile homes and told him he has another 14 for him, that makes 24 in total, I see a city on the river in the near future!

The truck broke down the second time they drove it, so they used the forklift to push it back into the yard (it came in handy already!)A universal joint was replaced and a tuneup done on the truck.A clogged fuel line was discovered and repaired and its running well now.

It took 3 days of trying for them to get the 40x40 barge and the cement breakwaters here. They would go out to the mouth of the river and wait but the sea swells were so high they were swallowing the boat in the troughs.On the third night, things finally calmed down enough for them to go and get them.They left here at 3 in the afternoon and got back at 7 the next morning. Even with two tug boats they could'nt fight the freshet enough to move it all at once, so the docks were brought in first and the next night the Green Hornet brought in the barge.

When they were bringing in the docks, one was inadvertently cut completely loose and went swirling downstream in the raging freshet. The tugs quickly manovered into place and caught it between them and pushed it back to the house were it was securely moored.It was amazing to watch those tugs dance that dock back into place, I had no idea they were so nimble. They concrete docks will come in very handy at the new marina to protect us from boat wake.

The deck on the barge was in quite bad shape so David has hired a crew to strip off the old wood and lay down new wood.Its a huge job, they are about a third the way done now.

The generator/welder was taken off the utility trailer and will be installed in one of the containers here on the property. David is going to turn the container into a toolshop/welding shop. The trailer was hoisted by forklift and put on top of a container to keep the driveway clear.What a fun toy a forklift is, I even learned how to drive it. Never know when that will come in handy!

Davids Growing Empire

I always fancied myself a bit of a psychic, but when I wrote last year that David would be building several thousand feet of floating real estate, I had no idea how true that would turn out to be. I hadnt known him for very long at that point but was very impressed by his tremendous energy and ability to get things done. Silly me , I was just envisioning him getting his house finished and building something on top of the barge.It now looks like he may have his own floating CITY in the not too distant future.

Since the beginning of this year, he has been hard at work doing all the research and paperwork to aquire a large water lease just down the river from here.While he waits for city hall to process the application, he has been busy hunting down deals on material and tools to build the docks and floats he will need at the new marina. So far he has aquired the material for over 1400 feet of docks/floats. Some of the material is being stored at another marina for the moment, but alot of it has already been moved down here and stored on his barge ( meatlocker 17- so named as it's original purpose was as a live holding tank for fish).Work has begun on the dock building process and they should be making 2-3 a day.

The docks are wood over large pastic wrapped styrofoam with tubes built in underneath to carry water and electrical components.There is a guard-rail on the outside and they will have a lightpost added once they are in position.

While searching on craigslist one day he found a man that wanted to give away 10 mobile homes so he could redevelop his trailerpark. David is aquiring those and having them shipped down here and stored across the road. He is going to build floats for them and refit them with all they need to be floathomes off the grid.
The idea is to make them as self sufficient as possible and green.To that end he is looking at putting in water desalinaters, holding tanks for fresh water and black tanks for sewage, some form of macerator or composting toilet, propane hot water and heat and solar power for energy.As far as the energy thing is concerned there are many options to be considered and tested, so thats not in stone yet.

David found his barge last year, sunk at the bottom of the river. He pumped it out at low tide and got it floating.With the help of friends, he got it towed home and has been storing it here for the last year. The plan was to someday build a huge home/art studio on it. It has 8 huge rooms inside of it( used to be large fish holding rooms with pipes to flush water through each of the rooms)Several of the rooms are presently flooded due to holes punched in the sides. Since moving the barge to its new location beside his house, it ended up sitting on a piling at low tide which has done a fair amount of damage to it. David has been busy all week cutting and welding large patches over all the holes. Once he is finished, the tanks can be pumped out and it will finally sit straight in the water.In the meantime it is serving duty as a work platform to store material and build docks.

I cant wait to see whats next. David has about 5 projects on the go at once. He is working on the water lease deal. Buying, moving, storing material, getting his tugboat rebuilt so he can start using it, working on finishing his house and building docks and floats.Im exhausted just thinking about it all. He should be his own country by this time next year.

The House is Coming Along

Daves world has been interesting of late. A few months ago, David found an ad on craigslist for some property nearby that had a water lease attached to it. He contacted the owner and started proceedings to aquire the water lease so he can have a place to run his Marine Salvage and Construction business. Its been a lot of logistal run-around to get this done. He found a wonderful woman who believes in his vision and has joined forces with him to make this happen.

The water lease is completly out of the water at low tide so dredging will be neccesary. To get that done he had to have an enviromental survey done, deal with Fisheries, the City of Richmond,and Enviroment Canada to name a few. He may have to wait until August to start dredging , so as not to impact the fish runs. In the meantime, he has rented space at a local shipyard and bought a ton of material to build docks and floats. He met a man who is getting rid of a bunch of mobile homes for free and is getting them hauled down here so he can build floats for them and turn them into floathomes.

While waiting for the wheels of city hall to move and give him the go ahead to start, he has taken advantage of our warmer weather of late to do some more work on his his own floathome. He covered all the outside walls in heavy black plastic to seal it up better. He is planning to put metal siding over that. Originally he wanted to use cedar cutoffs, but is realizing that he has a weight issue with the house and has to keep that in mind when adding heavy material.

He finally got some decking put in around the sides of the house, and got a nice big float for the front deck in place. The temporary interior walls have come down and the floors ripped up (AGAIN!!)so he can fix some of the stringers that cracked under the weight of the wood cookstove. He has put some doorskins on a few of the walls which helps to make it look more like a home and less like a garage. He had a few days of hard work ahead of him trying to level the rest of the floor in the bathroom and workshop, then the bathroom finally got built. He has most of the tiling done in the shower and we've installed a new on-demand propane hot water heater.

The workshop has been rebuilt and there is now organization of the tools happening. If all goes well, I think he should have the place done by fall. In the meantime it will be a good summertime place with all the space and decks to play on.

The House that David Built

Im sorry I havent kept up on this blog. Ive kind of blended Davids story with my own on my blog as I got discouraged when I couldnt get the video I took downloaded to add to this one. I also lost 100's of pictures that I had taken of Davids work on his house when my computer crashed and had nothing to show you.

Everything is going according to plan though. The metal doors got removed, a wall with sliding doors and huge windows got put up in its place. David spent weeks hauling in huge logs and building 40 foot stringers to provide support over the open area. Walls had to be taken down and put back up to get it all in( nothing easy about any of this). Looking at the scope of the job, I would have said it was impossible to do, but he made it happen with brute strength, lots of coffee and a small winch. There were a few scary moments when wall supports came crashing down around his head, but other than a few knocks of his hard noggin, all came out alright.

Next he put braces in between all the stringers and laid plywood flooring over top. He had an opportunity to get the bottom of the house spray foamed so pulled the house up onto shore, ripped all the flooring back up and spent a few tense days worrying whether it would split in half from all the force on it. The tides finally cooperated and Jeff was able to get his equipment down to the house. It took several days to complete but the huge support logs got a good pressure washing to remove tons of mud and the whole bottom got sprayed with foam. The house now has lots of floatation and is sitting much higher in the water.

The floors were replaced and furniture rearranged in the new living space. By this time we were getting into the rainy season, so the attention turned to the roof. It was leaking quite badly from all the stress of when it was on shore, so days were spent applying sealant, tarps and plastic to waterproof things. The walls were insullated with free styrofoam blocks salvaged from a roof demolition. Plastic vapour barrier was stapled over that to keep out the drafts.

The temperture was continuing to drop, so he ripped down the chimney and hauled the woodstove into the middle of the house. The chimney was rebuilt in the new location and a wall framed in and vapour barriered around the stove and main living area to provide some warmth. Some days were then spent chopping firewood to feed the beast. Alot of it came from cutting up a stack of pallets that had been lying around here, the rest floats down to us on the river.

The work is now focused on getting a bathroom and kitchen installed. David had to go back and redo the floors from the area that had been open, to the old apartment.Everything had to be raised to make the floor level from one end to the other. More stringers, more walls removed and replaced, more plastic and floor laying and it was finally done. He had dragged down all his huge heavy tools from the garage and they were weighing down the front of the house putting more stress on it. The old apartment area has been made smaller and will be the workshop area. All the tools and spare wood etc were dragged back into the shop.The house is now sitting staight and the stage is set for the rest of the job.

David was given a natural gas water heater that he wants to convert to propane. Some parts are required for this but we cant seem to get a straight answer as to what exactly is involved. The last few days have been spent laying out the plumbing and pipes to get it all hooked up.Tile was considered for the bathroom floor but there is so much cutting involved, so going with linolium instead.

David found a free stove on Craigslist that runs on both wood or propane. Its a cool old beast that will be nice to have. Power down here is limited and sketchy at best so the more off the grid he can get , the better. There are some old kitchen cabinets at my old house that we will drag over here when the time is right. He wants to cover the tops with the tile he got.

The house is coming along beautifully. Its been a ton of work, 12-16 hours a day every day of the week. All of this was accomplished with many other distractions. David was building docks, rearranging his huge piles of material constantly, helping me with my boat, working at a welding job, fending off wildlife that wanted to move in with him and working on trying to get his new tugboat running. Its been frustrating and exhilarating at the same time. I had forgotten how much he has accomplished until I went back and looked at the pictures in the previous post. Way to go Superman, dont give up now, your almost there!!

It started like this

Well Im having some trouble getting the video editing sorted out, so in the meantime have decided to get started on this and will add the video links at a later date.

Meet David aka The Mad Canadian Artist

So as I mentioned in the last post, David was given a free 40x60 ft floating boathouse in late May by his boss Steve. They hooked it up to four tugboats and waited till late at night when the tide had dropped to haul it up to the shipyard on Mitchell Island. It looks like a big red barn. About one third of it is a long one- room apartment with a separate bathroom and the rest is a garage to store a boat.It is over 60 years old and had been hit by a deadhead that punched a hole through the floor of the apartment. Its basically a floating roof at this point, luckily the roof and supports are in excellent shape, leaving lots of room for creative building practices. The plan is to add more log stringers outside for stabalization and across the the open space that was the boat storage area so floors can be installed. The walls need to be raised and put on the new supports so the whole building will be straight and stabalized, then foam insulation sprayed throughout the whole thing. This will make it unsinkable and fireproof as well as toasty warm. The large garage doors will be removed and the back wall framed in with lots of windows and sliding glass doors which will go out to a deck that has yet to be built.The deck will wrap around the house with a large area in the front for a sunken woodfired hottub. The apartment wall will be moved back to double the space of the living room and kitchen. The bathroom is being enlarged to accomadate a double shower and some counter space. Two bedrooms are being added on the main floor, with the rest of the space to be used as an art studio with tons of windows for natural light. The loft above the apartment will be turned into a master bedroom with lots of storage under the eves.

David has his work cut out for him. He is doing all the work himself with the odd helping hand from roomates and friends. He is trying to do this for little or no cost, so time is spent looking online for free materials and organizing to go pick them up. Nothing about this is easy, its tons of work and determination, luckily David has the energy of ten men and is making this happen.

Here is some pictures of the floathouse when he first got it, as you can see its work in progress but if anyone can do this its David.

The Mad Canadian

Hi, My name is Cyberangel. I live in Vancouver BC, one of the most beautiful if not damp cities in the world. A few months ago I met David A. Labadie AKA " the Mad Canadian". He is an artist living on a floathome in the Fraser River. Check out his website to see his wonderful work. http://www.madcanadianartist.piczo.com/. He moved back to BC last December and found lodging on the MV Bowie http://www.mvbowie.com/ , a 140 foot US subchaser. Captain Grieg had a vision to start a floating cooperative comunity down on the Fraser River with a group of like -minded friends and has been building his dream over the last four years. Check out Bowiechicks blog about life on the water for more news about the happenings down here.

David was inspired by what he saw and decided to jump in with both feet. Within a month he had aquired a 30x40 foot barge that he salvaged from the bottom of the river and a 40x60 foot floating boathouse in some disreputable repair that was given to him. He dragged both of them up to the working shipyard here on Mitchell Island and has big plans for them. This blog is our record of the inspiration, perspiration and determanation of one man to build a empire for FREE!! Yes thats right FREE!

By scavenging, recycling, scouring craigslist http://www.craigslist.com/ for free stuff, and using his amazing ability to adapt,overcome and improvise , he will build several thousand feet of real estate on the Fraser River at a fraction of the cost that people paid for their condos on the other side. Stay tuned for updates on the progress of a dream by the "Lover of Life and Keeper of Dreams, the Mad Canadian"