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.