People lived here?

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Our house in the winter! We've been getting tons of snow already in mid-December.
And we got some lights to put on our very own (hole-of-a) house! We actually found the last three sets of large blue LED's in town, which was very exciting. But then R discovered one was broken (even though they say they're unbreakable). And you can't replace any if they break or burn out. So back to the store they went. We ended up getting some regular old blue lights for the roof. I also found a whole bunch of green and blue strands on Freecycle that will go great with these ones. But those won't be going up until next year (assuming we still live here!).

Not a good day!

A short video clip from home renos in the summer...

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Normally we get lots of birds in the trees around our balcony. But now and then we see some other kinds of critters. A few weeks ago we found a young raccoon in one of the trees. And every now and then this little critter stops by to hang out for a while. Last night he was up high on a branch and barely noticeable. When we opened the patio door to get a closer look, Luigi came running out. Well that got the owl's attention! He flew over to a much closer tree and sat on a low branch hanging very close to the balcony. He must have been thinking Luigi would make a nice tasty evening snack. Even with us there, lights on, and camera flashing at him he wasn't budging. Eventually we got Lui back inside. We're not sure if the owl is quite big enough to drag him off the deck. But he sure could have done some damage.

The downstairs bathroom is finally starting to look a little bit like a bathroom. The many, many hours of plumbing are finally complete and the shower stall is fully installed. We've also got some drywall up and the vanity is sitting in place, though not attached quiet yet. Looking so much better already!!

It's probably hard to imagine that a sweet, adorable little kitten like this could grow up to be such a nightmare. But I can assure you, he has. He's already destroyed a number of things that were very important to us, including a glass piece from our wedding. And remember those wonderful new carpets we just had installed? Well it seems he found a long string of mesh from the bottom of one and ATE it. So now it's slowly working its way through his system. And as that process started he spent Friday night leaving skid marks all over our new carpet in effort to remove the string from his behind. (No pictures available for obvious reasons). I was out of town (oh, darn!), so R was in charge of clean up. We now own a nice new carpet cleaner. It does do a nice job, I'm happy to report. As for what we are going to do with this menace of a cat (if he survives the string fiasco) is very much up for debate.

We decided to put carpet in the bedrooms and hallway downstairs. So at the same time we decided that it would be a good plan to replace the fake wood vinyl in the upstairs living room with carpet and put the vinyl in the downstairs kitchen instead. It's good vinyl, but looks funny next to the old hardwood flooring upstairs. In addition we decided to cover the hardwood in the bedroom with carpet. The hardwood would clean up very nicely, but we wanted to have the extra sound barrier between our room and the downstairs. Having rented basement suites in the past, we both know how frustrating it can be hearing every little noise upstairs. So it was a tough decision because the original hardwood is so nice. But we think it will be worth it in the end. And one day when we sell, the new owners can still take out the carpet and clean up the hardwood easily.

The carpet guy came Monday to do the upstairs. We're very happy with his work.

Living room after! Our wonderful thick new carpet. We love it! And so do the cats!

The bedroom hardwood flooring



And the new carpet in the bedroom

Well we've come to a point where we need to submit our receipts to our lender so that we can have the cheque for the renos. After adding up everything we've spent so far we found we still had some things that needed to be purchased in order to make our pre-approved total. So we've been running all over town buying the bulk of the remaining items. We've ordered the carpet, purchased our kitchen tap, toilet, toilet seat, light fixtures, wall mount for the downstairs bathroom, an electric fireplace for downstairs, and a whole bunch of smaller items. Tomorrow will be for picking up drywall and wood, and Monday we will be getting our kitchen sink and upstairs bath fixtures. We're basically on budget. Our time budget is way off though. We had hoped to have renters by September 1st, but right now it's looking like we might be able to aim for December 1. It's been quite a learning process! It's been exhausting. But this part of the project is finally a little fun as we get to start planning how the rooms will look. We're really looking forward to seeing how everything looks when it's installed.

The downstairs bathroom is still gutted and R has about eight more hours of work to do on the plumbing before reassembly can begin.

The fountain from Karel and Ayu:



Us in Coombs:




The downstairs bathroom gutted!



R pulling out some of the frame in the downstaris bathroom:




Me starting demo on the downstaris bathroom/hallway wall:




The downstairs bathroom after all the plumbing work R did:



R cut and reconnected the copper drainage pipe so it didn't stick out past the wall anymore

Lots has been going on in the past few weeks!

The downstairs bathroom is gutted, including all drywall removed, the back wall pulled out to be rebuilt back a little, and the side wall (and door) removed so it can be pushed out a little bit. It looks like a cave these days! Both the plumbing and electrical needed a fair amount of work as well, so that has been holding up the process. The plumbing is done and looks great. The existing circuit was badly overloaded, so R's working on fixing that before we start reconstruction.

Carolee came for a week-long visit. While in town she caught up with the owner of Atlas Windows (who we've known for years) and sweet-talked him into giving us a free patio door from their boneyard. AND she paid for installation! Very nice of both of them! It was installed this week (not installed correctly, mind you. But that will be fixed up tomorrow morning).

R replaced the damaged part in the furnace, and a fellow from Blue Flame came out a couple of days ago to clean the ducts and did a FANTASTIC job. It was absolutely incredible how much garbage came out of those vents.

Yesterday a couple of guys from Clearview Glass came out to replace glass in the broken windows. Most of them are OK, but the work was a little sloppy and one window was done wrong. So that will have to be fixed. So while we're glad to finally have the glass fixed, we're really not impressed with the company.

Last weekend Karel and Ayu came for a short visit. We took them up to Coombs for Saturday afternoon. They bought us a really nice stone fountain for a housewarming gift. Very kind of them!!

Lots of pictures to come when I get time...

Here's some of what we've been working on lately.

Mowing the lawn is a bit of a workout, which I really don't mind. What I hate is running into snakes along the way. Yes, they're just garter snakes, and no they're not very big. But they still creep me out. Today I came across three of them. Two were scared by the mower and I was able to coax them into the gutter pretty easily. But the third was not scared and I could have easily mowed right over him. I didn't, cuz, well that's just gross. I guess they made a home somewhere in the yard back when the previous owners let the grass grow several feet high. Perfect for critters. Now, even though we keep the grass short, those little buggers are still living here!

We've been working away on a few projects lately. We made screens for the whole upstairs. It was our first time making them, so you can see the progression as we got better and better at it. The first ones started off with the little handles on the wrong side and so tight that they bow a bit in the middle. But the later ones actually look pretty good! It is so nice to have those done.

R is slowly grinding away at the cement shower pan downstairs. It's very labour intensive and not good for his back. But it's coming along. We've also started pulling out some of the backsplash tiles in the upstairs kitchen where water has seeped in behind the sink. The wall is in decent shape, but there was some mold growing around the tiles. And it's a traffic area for the silverfish. I'll be glad when we pull out the cabinets and clean it up in there.

R has installed make-shift shelving around the spare rooms so we can unpack all of our boxes. Silverfish love to live in boxes, so they all have to go. We would have prefered to keep some things boxed up for now, but that's no longer an option.

We found out how the basement floods. It's when the carport fills up with too much water. Then it leaks in through the laundry room door. There are some thing we can do to improve the drainage so that won't have to be such a worry in the winter.

This whole week is much cooler than last week, which is a HUGE help!

We're praying for R's sister Tamara who is overdue to give birth to her son, and being induced today. We're also praying for her anxious family (Dan and Roma in particular!) who are very concerned about her right now.

What to do on a sweltering hot Saturday? Spend it at Home Depot, of course!
They had another sale on this weekend that we just had to take advantage of. And boy did it pay off. We've ordered the bathroom vanity for downstairs, purchased the shower surround for downstairs, and the bath and surround for upstairs. We had planned to do tile on the upstairs bath originally, but this surround is quite nice and was a good deal. We used that exact model in the last place we rented before we bought this house, and it was great. Plus it will really speed installation up, which is becoming more and more of an issue. We also picked up a part for the toilet, a faucet for the new vanity (hugely on sale!), and screen parts. Now we get to make screens, yay! lol. But in the end we'll appreciate having them. Ru jumped out the dining room window again last night, so that window will not be opened again until it's got a screen in it now. That may not be for a few days as we now have to find a place that sells decent screen clips. Anyway, we're very happy because our purchases qualified us for a nice big rebate, which will really help things. We've now purchased the most expensive items for the renos. We still have flooring left for the downstairs (and the upstairs bathroom), cabinets, a sink, and a counter top for the upstairs bathroom, faucets for the upstairs sink and the bath and tub, glass for the broken windows, a used fridge for the downstairs kitchen, trim for the new exterior door R installed, the rest of the paint, and possibly new lower cabinets (just basic ones) for the upstairs kitchen. The current ones are real wood and in good shape. But we're concerned about the silverfish living in the walls behind them and the moisture behind the sink. So they'll have to come out. And if they have any rot they'll have to be replaced. Plus that will allow us to pull up the rest of the subfloor that will have to go eventually. Down the road we'll be putting proper flooring in the kitchen. But that's not a priority.

The roofers came bright and early this morning to start on the roof. One of our neighbours was very unhappy about that as it was his day off and he did not like hearing all the noise at 7am. So he came over to let the guys know. He didn't yell or anything, but it wasn't the best start! But man did those guys hustle! They were completely done by 2:30 and just had a bit of clean-up to do in the yard. R came home early from work so he got to check things out as they were cleaning up. Looks great! We're very glad that is taken care of now. The roof was in such bad shape before that every time it rained we were a little on edge. Now we can relax. Actually with the current heat wave we're really looking forward to a little rain. As I type this it's nearly 8PM and it's still just below 30 degrees out. I don't know how the guys can survive being up on roofs all day in that kind of heat. And tomorrow is supposed to be hotter.

Last week was a heat wave, but we're getting a little break from it this weekend. Yay!

The downstairs bathroom is almost completely gutted now, so we can start looking at flooring and a shower surround. Exciting stuff! There was a fair amount of rot and mold, but it's out now.

R also took down the rest of the branches in preparation for the new roof. That should be going on this coming Friday, depending on weather. We were very sad to discover our trusses are not wide enough to allow for skylights. We had already found a great deal on them from a family friend at Sunburst Skylights, and were ready to go pick them up. But now it doesn't look like that will happen. So we've decided that whenever we're ready to replace the windows, we'll try to add a couple of new ones to the living room to get that extra light we were hoping for.

Some pictures of our adventures:

We did renos!!

R removed the old door from the carport/laundry room entrance and replaced it with a new frame and custom fit door, and I started demo on the downstairs bathroom. It was a long day!

Here is a before picture of the shower:

Here is the shower after the first layer of tile was removed from the floor. Unfortunately, with most demo work, surprises are rarely good. Our first surprise with the shower was that they never removed the original layer of tile (which was wet, of course). They just tiled over it and let mold and rot develop underneath. I'm sure they left the original tiles because they're those little ones that take hours and hours of painstaking work to remove.

Here you can see the threshold, which is badly rotted out. The baseboard fell off when I grabbed it. Moisture makes some of this work easier, but it's really sad to see the state the place is in!

Next surprise. I pulled the trim off around the shower, and discovered wood behind it, not proper bathroom drywall. Of course it's totally rotted at the bottom from all the water that has leaked through.

And the last big surprise for the day. I pulled out some of the rotten wood at the bottom of the wall. And what did I find behind it? More of the original tile!! I think Mike Holmes would have a thing or two to say about this reno job. I wonder if it was done by a contractor or the previous owners.

Close-up of the tile behind the wood, behind the tile. Here you can see on the left some of the top level of white tile. Then on the top the wood wall with mold and glue. And near the bottom the original tile behind the wood.

Door pictures to follow. We need trim first, and then we'll post before and after pictures. It already looks a lot better! And we feel a lot more secure having a proper door and lock in place down there.

Cleaning, unpacking, lots of laundry to get rid of bugs... the usual!

R also took down quite a few branches that hang over our roof. He reeeeeeeaaaaly likes his new chainsaw!

Ripped off the baseboards in the bedrooms downstairs and vacuumed all the spiders and webs off the ceilings. Also vacuumed the dirt and grime out of the window sills downstairs.

Cleaned out the gutters in the evening. It was quite a mess as they haven't been touched in quite a long time and we also have a lot of tree branches hanging over the roof. The gutters are in surprisingly good shape, though! It was very good timing too because we've got rain in the forecast for the next few days. And the roofer should be coming in the next week or two.

Home Depot again.
Today was our first big shopping day and we actually got some reno stuff, including drain pipes for the gutters, paint, a chainsaw, flooring, cabinetry for the downstairs kitchen, and some other odds and ends. It took us hours to go through the store and find everything we were looking for.

We got some stick on tiles to put over the makeshift subfloor in front of the fridge. We had tried putting a small piece of carpeting there, but that didn't work out so well. The stick on tiles work much better and only cost about $3. Well worth it to avoid slivers in the feet!

R also started digging out the planter area in front of the house to see if we can see where any leaky spots might be.

Trip to Home Depot! (and only one today, yay!)

It was a good trip. After we pulled the gross stove out downstairs, we discovered the cabinet was in pretty bad shape on the bottom and needed to be replaced. We had not budgeted for a whole new cabinet there, so that was not good news. But we did discover that the existing lower cabinets are from Home Depot, and they have the exact models still in stock - and they're not expensive! That was a huge relief. This means we can keep the counter tops, drawers, and sink (which are in good shape), and just replace the base. We also found out that some of the things we need are on sale this weekend. So this is a good time to pick them up. In particular, flooring and paint. We've been debating back and forth whether to put carpet in the downstairs bedrooms or vinyl. The current decision is carpet, both because it's nicer for bedrooms, and it's actually cheaper than the vinyl. We weren't able to match the exisiting livingroom vinyl at any of the stores we've been to, which everyone assumes is actually hardwood flooring. So that's a shame. It would have been great to find more of that.

AND, our neighbours across the street both work at Home Depot, and offered us a 15% discount coupon (up to $500) that they won't be using because it expires in a few days. They are the nicest people, always offering us tips and telling us about things in the neighbourhood, and even offering to let us use their chainsaw, etc. I think they are just so happy to have owners here who are quiet and responsible, and want to fix the place up. We did find out today that the house floods sometimes in the winter if there is any ice. That was not disclosed to us even though the sellers knew about it. Not a pleasant surprise. For some reason, there was no flooding this past winter even though it was a very cold, snowy winter. Nonetheless we'll be doing everything we can to make sure that flooding doesn't happen again this year or in the future. One thing about the basement is that it is quite dry, and the storage/furnace room in particular is in great shape and doesn't smell musty at all. If flooding was a huge problem every year, there would be evidence of it.

So today was about picking paint colours, flooring styles and colours, measuring, pricing out things and deciding what to pick up for RENOS. Yay! That part was fun. R also took another load of garbage to the dump. We'll be doing that again soon, I'm sure.

Day 25 was different!
Annilee and Mom came up for the day, and R's uncle Mladen took us out on his boat so we could spread Dad's ashes out on the ocean. You would think it would be a somber event with a little ceremony, maybe a prayer, and a few tears. Nope, not for us. We're just not like that. In fact, we had ashes to spread from our family cat that we had cremated years ago too, so he went first. Then it was time to do Dad's. It started off fine, but about half way through, the whole bag fell into the water and Annilee had to grab it quick before we lost it, and dump the rest. Not exactly graceful of us! Needless to say it sent us all into giggles for quite some time. Poor Mladen must have though we were insane. And well, yes, we are, I suppose.

So after that, (and lunch out) there was not a lot of time for house stuff, though I did get a bit more unpacking and cleaning done.

Then in the evening, Lloyd, Martha, John, and Viola came over to see the place. It was really nice to catch up with them, since Bible study group is on hiatus for the summer. I really don't think they envy us for the work we have ahead of us!

More... you guessed it! UNPACKING!
Assembled some shelving today, found some much needed paperwork, cleaned out the fireplace so the cats won't drag ashes everywhere. Then decided to poly it off anyway because they could still potentially get into the ash and grease left behind in there and drag it around the house.

No bugs in any of the boxes I unpacked today, so that was really nice!

After some more unpacking we played some DDR on Wii. It's so nice to have something silly and athletic to unwind with, by just relaxing and having some fun!

Unpacking shouldn't be such a tedious, long process. But when you have to constantly look for bugs, kill 'em, and then wash everything to make sure there are no eggs left behind, it really does take much longer than it normally would. That's what we were up against on day 22. Unpacking, organizing, rearranging, and killing bugs. Seems like an endless task at this point.

We did have some fun stomping on all of my books to make sure anything between the pages was killed!

Day 21 was our two year wedding anniversary. So we just did some cleaning and tidying up and a little bit of unpacking. Then we ordered Chinese food and watched a cheesy '90's movie.

Day 19 was all about cleaning and unpacking (as usual!). R tackled cleaning the nasty kitchen downstairs and moved more boxes up to unpack, while I did loads and loads of laundry, unpacked some boxes, and cleaned the kitchen and livingroom. The floor gets dirty SO fast with no carpet!

R learned the hard way that it's a good idea to wear a mask when cleaning with bleach. He was kinda loopy for the rest of the day!

On day 20 we went to church and had a much needed day of rest.

Here is Luigi helping me unpack on Saturday. Yes he's just so helpful, as you can tell.

Luigi: "I caught the bug, and it was THIS big!"