Skating in Motion

Emma now knows how to skate better than I do.

Skating

Though Emma doesn't always like to head to skating on Fridays after school. She does enjoy it when she gets there.
(Emma is the one in the white helmet, pink jacket & pants.)


This week she found a friend to skate with.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Emma was very happy to get flowers from her dad. He picked them up a day early to beat the rush.



She is all ready with her Valentine's to give at school and daycare. We settled on a butterfly (with a flavoured drink straw body) and a crazy straw cupid arrow.

Now if tomorrow would just come!

Testing

Test driving a new phone and seeing if I can update the blog from it. Very cool.
Now to work on taking pictures.

Workshop - Days 27-31

The replacement door finally arrived, and it wasn't built properly either. However, in this case the company was able to send someone to fix it on site.

Once the door was in place, I was able to get the last of the siding up and the outside of my workshop is complete!

I called for the final inspection, but I didn't pass on the first try. Since my workshop is so close to the back of our property, I am required to have 5/8" firecode gypsum board installed on the interior wall. Since I still have to do wiring, I hadn't done that yet.

After discussing it with the inspector, I have put up the gypsum board but have not taped and finished the seams. This was enough to pass my inspection as "substantially complete" with the understanding that I would be properly finishing the interior.

So, as of 10:30 am today, my workshop's building permit is closed. Now I can get started on the interior.

Drumming

When Emma's not playing, Leo thinks the bass drum is a wonderful kitty house.

Emma's been working hard, and she's finally getting to lessons that sound like music.

Workshop - Days 19-26

I've hit my first big roadblock on building the workshop: the door was not built properly. It's amazing that the door was able to get past quality control and out of the factory. Problems include:

• The installation hardware and instructions are missing.
• The frame isn't square. (The header is 3/16" longer than the sill.)
• The slabs aren't mounted square on the hinges.
• There is weather stripping missing.
• The brick mould was packed before the paint had fully cured and therefore the paint peeled when I separated the pieces.

The company is being good about it and is sending me a new door, but the replacement won't be here until the middle of December. So, for now I have the door just tacked in place to keep the snow and critters out. Until I get the proper door, however, I can't do much on the front of the workshop.

With the roof, the house wrap, and the temporary door in place, the workshop is now water tight and the electrician was able to come in and hook up the panel for me. So now I've got a couple lights and wall plug temporarily hooked up in the workshop. It's so much more convenient than stringing extension cords across the back yard.

While doing the electrical, I ordered the siding. Unfortunately, there were problems with the siding order too. The siding we chose for the house and workshop comes in random lengths, but I really don't want seams in my trim pieces. So I paid a premium to ensure that I only got 8' pieces of trim. Unfortunately, the shipper sent me pieces that were at least 8' long. So, I need four 8' lengths of 2x5 trim, but what I got was a 9', an 11', and a 12' piece. So I got the overall length I want, but not the pieces I need. Again, they were good about getting my the extra pieces of trim so that I wouldn't have seams, but it was another frustrating delay.

Anyhow, once I got my additional trim pieces, I started plugging away at getting the siding up, spending a couple hours each day at it. Unfortunately, I can't put the siding on the front wall until I have the new door installed. I was able, however, to put enough siding on the front wall to allow the aluminium guys to get started. They should be here later this week.