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.