Moral-Flexibility.Net

I owe everyone an apology. It seems we never took any real “before” photos when embarking on this project, so instead I’ve posted a picture of the living room of our house as it was when we bought the place.

The floors were one of the big features of the house when we first looked at it. The wide pine floors looked beautiful, but after settling in we discovered that there was no subfloor, and every step we took caused a bounce in our step that seemed genuinely bad from a structural perspective.

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We’re in the home stretch. Here’s the project so far;

Day 1 (Saturday): Cleared our basement of debris, acquired new flooring (we went with Bamboo in the end) and assorted supplies (2×8s and so forth).

Day 2 (Sunday): Reinforced the living room floor boxing in joists from below and screwing down the floor from above.

Day 3 (Monday): Plastering and painting the living room.

Day 4 (Tuesday): Install the new flooring.

Day 5: (Wednesday): Install trim, paint shelving units and begin moving everything back into the living room.

Day 6 (Thursday): Complete moving everything back and occasionally whine about aching muscles.

Pictures will be forthcoming but as I took this opportunity to re-wire our computer network and telco connections in the living room I have to finish crimping connectors on the various lines before things start working the way they are supposed to.

Nice vacation, no?

Our living room and den stand empty (except for the couch…for now), paint has been dripped all over the floor, power tools have been flung around with great abandon and despite the fact that the place looks like the “after” picture from a explosive incident, we’re on schedule and under budget for our re-flooring project.

Pictures are going to be scarce (and low quality as I seem to have packed my digital camera away somewhere in the basement) but at the end our floor should not only be much more attractive than the ancient pine floors we have, but should be much more stable.

If you were expecting to reach either of us online then please excuse our enforced absence… it’s not how we typically spend our vacations, but it’s actually working out pretty good so far.

Ok, I’m a little obsessive about my credit report. If you’re a Canadian then you likely keep coming across US information on credit reporting that (while similar) is different than the way things are done up here.

For instance, here in Canada you can request practically unlimited free copies of your credit report (last year I ordered 12 credit reports from Equifax,11 from Transunion and 2 from Northern Credit/Experian).

Lets talk about your credit “report” for a moment here. The bureaus are required to provide you a copy of your credit report on demand (following sufficient proof that you are who you claim you are), and that report includes information on your previous (and current) addresses, former and present employers, credit extended (credit lines) and bad credit (collections) activity. Also included are a history of inquiries, which we’ll talk more about in a second.

Your credit “score” on the other hand is a number (between 400 and 900 depending on the formula used) that provides a quick reference as to the risk involved in extending you credit. The score is NOT provided for free, and must be paid for (although you can use your credit “report” to guesstimate your score through one of the online Credit Score Calculators.

Back to your credit report for a moment. The easiest way of ordering your credit report is to call into either Equifax or Transunion (or both preferably) and request a credit report through their automated service. A number of questions will be asked (based on your credit report - ie previous addresses, cities of residence on specific dates etc etc) and if they are answered correctly a report will be mailed to your most current address (they confirm your address before completing the call) within a week.

Equifax: 1-800-465-7166
Transunion: 1-800-663-9980

If you fail the verification then you have to go about this the old fashioned way my mailing in a request along with copies of some ID and a utility bill showing your present address. Turnaround time on this sort of submission is typically in the 3-5 week range.

Equifax Canada
Credit Report Dispute Form (Direct link to PDF file)
P.O. Box 190
Station Jean-Talon
Montreal, PQ H1S2Z2

Transunion Canada
Credit Report Dispute Form (Direct link to PDF file)
P.O. Box 338 LCD1
Hamilton, Ontario L8L7W2

You also receive an updated credit report after each disputed item on your report is changed (the new report shows the changes) so if you’ve the time then sending in your disputes one at a time would mean a steady flow of current credit reports.

Now quit making excuses and order your credit report. How are you going to know what they’re saying about you if you don’t keep them honest?

I suppose it would have been easiest to just go with an HP branded DVR system, but then that would be far too easy to be one of my projects wouldn’t it? I figured as long as I was spending time sitting around waiting for various components to be delivered by the mailman I’d take the time to spruce up the computer just a bit, and give it a “custom” appearance.

(Looks kinda official, no?)

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