Renovation - Weeks 31 and 32

Things are starting to slow down now. The crews are pretty much done and the rest is up to Christine and I. (It's amazing how much time a job sucks up when you'd rather be finishing up the house.) The blog updates are likely going to slow down as well since I'll only be posting when there's something interesting to say.

A few important changes though over the last couple weeks. The big news is that the kitchen counter was installed, and that allowed us to get the gas and plumbing hooked up, so we finally have a real kitchen again. The gas hookup also means that we can use the BBQ again - YAY!

Ever since the foundation was poured for Christine's craft room, we've always had a water leak under the wall. (It was the fault of the project manager giving bad instructions to the concrete crew.) The builder has made it right by cutting a trench along the base of the wall so that water runs away from the wall rather than into the house. It was a miserable, dusty job, and I'm very glad that I didn't have to do it.

And since there's no longer water coming into the craft room every time it rains, we were finally able to get the vinyl flooring installed. To install the flooring, the crew removed the stairs into the craft room. Since it will be easier to paint the stairs and to install the trim under the stairs while they're out, we're once again using a ladder to get into the craft room. This means that the craft room will likely be the first room completely finished since we need to get the stairs re-installed so the house can pass its final inspection.

On our end of things,I've completed the flooring on the main floor of the house. All that's left to do now is the bedrooms, but we have to repaint our bedroom first. Since we're having a party in a couple weeks, I'll be pushing hard to get the floor done.

Renovation - Week 30

This was a pretty quiet week for the crews as they just did some touch up work on the kitchen. The exciting bit was having the guy come in to make templates for our counter tops. Hopefully the kitchen will be finished in a week or so!

While the guys were away, we got busy. I laid some more flooring and we finally got the den painted. So the only big painting that's left is to redo the bedroom since Christine really doesn't like the colour we chose.

Unfortunately, the kitchen crew pointed out that we were about to run into a problem. Before the walls were drywalled, we decided to relocate the pot filler more to the center of the stove, and to bring it up a bit to allow for some taller pots. What we hadn't realized was that the pot filler rises about 6" from the point where the pipe comes out of the wall. As things sat, we could either install the pot filler or the range hood, but not both.

So there was only one thing to do - open up the wall and move the rough-in for the pot filler down 4". Since we'd moved the rough-in, I decided to do the fix myself - it turned out to be surprisingly easy. (In any case, the look on Emma's face when I asked her to help me put "mud" on the walls made it all worthwhile.)

Renovation - Week 29

The big tasks for this week were to get the fascia and eavestroughing up and to start the kitchen install.

With the aluminum work done, the outside of the house is pretty much done. All that's left is the little details and the cleanup.

Getting the kitchen installed is one of the last big jobs the outside parties have to do for us. Unfortunately, it's still going to be a couple weeks until the kitchen is usable because we still have to get the counter made and the gas fittings hooked up for the stove.

I got a little more of the floor laid, but that's pretty much stalled at the moment because the den and our bedroom need painting. (Christine really doesn't like the colour we used in the bedroom.)