Semblance of a Real Place

Remember that wetted and warped hardwood floor in the proto-library? It's all fixed now as you can see. The truck is back from Crown Collision looking good as new. Phase II will be to actually put in the library shelving and a small bar/tea station, but, hey this is okay for now.

Remembrance Day

Nov. 11, the scaffolding is down, and for the first time since mid-June, we have been able to park in our driveway. We couldn't be happier with the colour and with the wonderful job that Sunset Stucco has done. Flashings, soffits, and eavestroughs yet to come.

Suddenly a Break in the Weather

Woohoo! A flurry of activity and the stucco-ing is drawing to a close. Look, the green garbage bin is gone. A hit-and-run backed into our red pickup while it was parked on the street, scraping and denting the driver's side door. Sigh... something else to fix. But still, the house looks great.

Oh No! Snow.

October 31, Hallowe'en, and the first snow fall has arrived -- well just a dusting, but still. The weather has turned against us and some days are going by now with little progress on the exterior. The west (left) side of the house has been tarped again to help move things along.

Colour

The stucco guys are working hard. After having spent some time driving about looking at stucco'd houses and painstakingly finally choosing the house colour, the first guys who were going to do the stucco (and didn't) lost the colour chip so we started all over again. There was then some confusion about what colours were 'designer' (and would therefore take a really long time to arrive) and what were 'standard'. We finally went with what we think (but still aren't sure) is a standard colour. Actually, Richard took about 5 seconds looking at two chips that were shown to us on the way to work one day and pointed to the colour that you see. It looks brilliant next to the brightly coloured trees of fall. On-the-fly decisions sometimes work like a charm!

Endless Summer

Well at the suggestion of our friends, Sandra & Juergen, Mary-Lynn & John, in lieu of renaming the blog, summerandautumnrenovation.com, we will just say that we are living in an Endless Summer.
In the mean time, take a look at the gorgeous main floor with painting all done and floor finished. The picture of the outside was taken today (October 17, 2010). The grey `cement' goes on both underneath and overtop of the white styrofoam.

Raindrops keep falling on our heads..

What's wrong with these pictures? The left one, with the hardwood completed under the protective paper, was taken earlier than the one at right. The plumber, unfortunately, did not close off the small hose on the left wall (destined to be a `tea station' -- or `bar', depending on whether you are female or male, respectively). The result was a flood all over the hardwood, which then warped and had to be ripped up again. At the time of writing, we are waiting for new hardwood, since the replacement batch that was sent didn't match exactly.

In the mean time, we can now use the kitchen on the main floor again (woo-hoo!). Slight problem in that the plumber forgot to connect the dishwasher, resulting in a flood -- the indoor rain fell into the downstairs bathroom through the door jamb and the closet ceiling. No permanent harm done (we think) and the dishwasher is now happily connected again.