The Horse Down the Road

We drive past a few farms on our roadway to get to our house, but past us is all residential which dead-ends in a small sub-division. We are zoned rural, and one of the houses just past us now has a horse. A large horse which comes out and stomps his foot and snorts at our dog. Sure livens up the dog walk.
But a neighbor across from the horse said the owners bring the horse over to his place to graze on his lawn as theirs is all eaten up. I'm seriously considering offering them the back yard which is still quite high with alfalfa and timothy that we seeded early this year to stop erosion. Why not? How cool would that be?? Maybe the dog would learn to love the horse...

The Yard Cleanup

Finally, Andre has been able to get at the yard before the snow arrives. The driveway has received a good grading and layer of crushed screening, so it will be easy to maintain through the winter. It's much nicer to drive up on already. The remnants of construction waste have been sorted, donated or disposed of. The overhang of the garage has been cleared and will provide shelter for a vehicle.
The trees that were whacked by the excavator during the site-work have been all cleaned up, so no more dead or ugly broken branches hanging around. (And coincidentally just in-time for Christmas decor as I now have large piles of pine and cedar boughs at my disposal.)
The screened gazebo has been dismantled and moved from down by the trailer and the trailer is expected to leave in the next few days, so in the next couple of weeks it will almost be normal around here. Yeah! And tomorrow we retrieve his father's snow blower which has been kindly donated to the cause. This is a welcome gift as we had a small single car city driveway that our plastic shovel could handle.

Nigglie Pigglie Time

Just realized it has been a while since we posted anything and that's because the stuff we are working at is small and doesn't really have much visual impact. We are still missing pieces for the kitchen, so drawers have no faces and the sink cabinet has no doors. Counter tops are still being shopped for. One of the local companies wanted as much for laminate as we would pay for beautiful concrete counters, so we are still looking.
On the accomplishment side of things, the cabinets that have doors or drawers are all hung or installed. The bathroom vanity is installed with handles and all, but no counter-top. The kick plates in the kitchen are installed. Two built in closets are completed in the master bedroom and the front entrance. Actually the front entrance is the only room nearing completion. It just needs the trim to be painted.
Interior doors are hung but need trim. Paint is complete in the front entrance, master bedroom and bath, kitchen and den and a huge test patch is on the longest wall which is 42', so it has to be a color we love. Some new lighting has been installed. So the list of things to do is smaller than before, but we have given ourselves until next week to have the major things all done as our furniture is expected the end of the week.

The Almost Final Look

All that's left on the outside is the eaves-troughing, which we will have done in the near future and then paint the stucco in the spring, but that's it on the exterior for now. Whew. So nice not to have to think about it. We are blessed with unseasonably warm weather, so today I was caulking around the window and door on the front porch, but the rest can wait until spring.

Finished on the Outside

D. and Justin returned for one last day to finish up the siding and the soffit and fascia on the front porch. And like that they were gone! It's gonna be strange not seeing their happy shiney faces around here anymore.

GAK!

I'm not sure if I should call this a failed experiment or what, but my light tubes in the wall are breaking. So now I have this "Alice in Wonderland" hole in my wall, well on one side anyway.

Could be the heat/cold thing, warm inside and cold outside. Could be expansion/contraction of the plaster. Could be that the glass was just too old and frail for this use, as the manufacturer never expected these things to be plastered into walls. Regardless, I now have to come up with a fix. Thinking, thinking, thinking...

Goodbye Laundromat

Yes the day has finally arrived. We purchased and took delivery of a new fridge and stove and washer and dryer. The little bar fridge can go back down to the garage as we are livin' large now! I haven't used the stove yet as I am still admiring it! But the washer and dryer rock!! We will have to amend our social lives yet again to fill the void left by no longer frequenting the suds-o-matic, which I feel could have been much more enjoyable had they had wireless capability.

Getting Ahead of Oneself

We haven't been sitting around waiting for kitchen stuff. We decided to paint the walls where the cabinets and built-ins are going, so we have been busy painting and installing trim. The problem is, I can't install trim until Andre paints, or he would prefer I didn't. So I have also been doing a little painting and am getting better at it. Now we have the master bathroom painted, ceiling and walls, the shower is completely tiled and caulked, the tub is now connected to the plumbing and Andre hung my little chandelier over the tub. Vanity is one third built.
The kitchen and den have been painted, well at least the drywall walls are painted. Then we fabricated and installed trim along the tongue and groove ceiling before we installed the kitchen cabinets.
The master bedroom closet has been painted and trimmed, as we have started the built-in in there. And the front door and window in the porch have been trimmed ahead of the paint. Oops!
It's difficult choosing paint without your furnishings. We chose a brown for the kitchen, as the cabinets will be creamy white, and while we weren't sure about it, everyone who has seen it loves it. Go figure.
Might I add that there are a couple of spots on the wall which have had to have been touched up due to fur.

Fun with Boxes

I should probably have named this post differently as I suspect the real fun with boxes won't occur until the moving van arrives with our stuff. Anyway, we have continued on with our kitchen construction. After three weeks of waiting for parts to arrive that are still not in stock and can therefore not even be ordered, we decided to fabricate our own cover panels and move ahead. We needed to get this kitchen on the wall as the appliances were arriving at any minute. (They arrived Friday).

To complicate things, I have been nursing a useless right arm. My left arm has always been useless, so now I feel totally helpless. A trip into the doc and he diagnosed a repetitive strain injury from too much screwing. Not that kind!! Actually it might be from from chopping wood for the back yard fire-pit, or even from lifting too much. Don't know how I got it, but it really has me gibbled, so now I can only give instructions and hand tools to Andre, who must be loving his life right about now!!

Just kidding. He had been a very good sport and has basically installed this kitchen on his own with my coaching and has done a fantastic job. Those big boxes are not easy to hoist and fasten at the same time.

The Front Entrance

I had been given the name of a carpenter when I was trying to find someone who could frame the garage. I was told he was young, hungry and very good. When I found his business card pinned to the bulletin board at the pizza joint we frequent, I felt it was meant to be, so called him up to see about building us some stairs up to the door of the house. The deal was, he could build whatever struck his fancy, so long as it was in keeping with the house. He came back to us with a couple of sketches of his ideas and once we selected one, he set to work. We decided to use pressure treated wood, which is kind of a compromise, as I have been trying to keep it eco-friendly, but we don't have an unlimited budget so will paint or stain it come the spring when the rest of the exterior painting gets done.

Here is what he came up with and we love it. The attention to detail in outstanding. The skilled young mans name is Ben Elliott.

Another lifestyle change

The weather has definitely changed and aside from the noticeable chill in the air, we have had a few hard frosts now. It's one thing to have to scrape the windshields, but now that we have a dog and are trying to fit dog-walks into our building schedule, we are even more aware of our natural surroundings. We have discovered the beaver-dam which is just up a little road to some cottages which isn't far from our place. This is it one frosty morning.

So now the daily routine once again involves going outside early in the morning to pee, only this time its the dogs turn. Feed the dog, walk the dog, build some stuff, play with the dog, build some more stuff, walk the dog. We have been walking her in town and taking her almost everywhere we go, to try to get her more comfortable and hopefully change the way she greets people, which is very loudly. Another work in progress shall we say!

The Biggest News

We have a dog. Not just any dog, but Andres dream dog. She is a rescue from Bytown Animal Rescue of Canines ("Kanine" so the acronym would work)
We picked her up today and she is lovely. That anyone could part with her is sad. We are really looking forward to our life with her in it.

So dream house, dream dog, it's just keeps getting better and better.

Oh yah, she came named - "Loki" - norse god of mischief

Indoor Progress

We have been moving forward and backwards on the interior work. Started the kitchen but have to wait for parts, so while it is assembled sort of, it awaits installation. The shower is awaiting some caulk and the tub is not installed, but it can wait. I think it's caused enough hernias already. So we have placed the cabinets against the walls. D. left us her hot-plate to use, Doug and Doris loaned a microwave and the bar fridge from the garage got moved up. How nice to have space to move around and a little warmth.

We have been shopping, returning things and shopping some more. This week I found light fixtures at the Habitat for Humanity Restore that cost me the same for five fixtures as it might have for one of them new, so it's been a good week.

Tanks a Lot

These are the tanks in the utility room. They are the pressure tank for the well, the water softener and its brine tank, the hot water tank, and behind it the relief tank for the flooring controls (I think that's what its called). Anyway, they are now all working and we had heat in the house Thursday of last week. The electricians finished everything they needed to to get the plumber connected to fire up the floors, and the HRV was installed and balanced. So when we left the house Thursday evening, all systems were go.

We headed into Ottawa to run a series of appointments that night and were expecting to return Friday afternoon. But we stayed over Friday night and had dinner with friends and a warm big bed as it was a miserable rainy night. We returned Saturday morning to find the thermostat at 88 degrees!!! Someone must have forgotten to set it. Talk about feast or famine. We went from freezing in our little trailer to sweltering in our new house. So after a day of all the doors and windows open, it finally got down to 68 degrees and we really slept in there on Saturday night. By Sunday evening, it was a little chilly, so we thought we would attempt a little heat. Set the thermostat again and woke up to a warm 77 degrees. Hhmmm. A call to the electrician who returned and replaced the thermostat which was not recognising the signals from the boiler so we should be good to go now.