I haven’t been blogging much lately. So much going on, including some things with the house.
Last Thursday Fred had a day off his other job and so he came over and we finally put the subfloor in on the 3rd floor. it was a long day, and a lot of hard work, but it’s finally ready for hardwood. The whole floor is pretty much level – albeit about 2-3 inches above the old hardwood floor. It’s looking much cleaner up there.
I then went and picked up more trim at Central Fairbank Lumber and set up another painting process over the weekend, both priming and putting down a first layer of paint.
Another little project I took care of was installing a shelf and coat rack in the main floor closet. It looks good.
Over the weekend we also purchased – or put the deposit down on – a light for over the kitchen island. We thought it looked good in the store, and hopefully it’ll look good over the island in the kitchen.
While driving downtown we also came across a bankruptcy sale from a store called UpCountry. We ended up seeing a bedroom set which we bought, cash, from one of the creditors who seemed to be there selling the inventory off. Great price and nice stuff! Today i picked up the bureau and nightstand, which were very heavy and barely fit into the back of the Hyundai.
So on my list of things to do is to take some pictures and post them up here. It’s been too long. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll take some time to get some shots of all the new baseboards and post them up on the dot mac site. It’s probably been 4-5 months since the last post.
Last Friday we did a little trip to Buffalo to do some shopping. Among some other things we picked up, we got a compressor and nail gun. Fred had left a chop saw from some work we did on the trim earlier in the week so over the weekend I finished the baseboards on the first floor, which was mostly the little strips on the edges. On Sunday Aman came over and helped.
There’s still some window trim to do, both on the first floor and in the master bedroom, and, of course, the third floor. I’ll need to get some more at Fairbank to do the master bedroom, as I had forgotten those windows when I purchased the last round of trim.
More to come.
So I learned something new today. I learned how to cope. (if that’s what they call it).
Fred and I worked mainly on baseboards for the day and now we have most of the first floor done, except for a little built-out piece that’s going to go on the bottom of the baseboards. It’s looking much more elegant in the main area of the house now.
More pictures coming soon.
Well Bernie’s getting a bit of a bad rap around here. It’s been a few times now he hasn’t shown up when he said he would, and it’s been hot again and we still don’t have our air conditioner going.
Fred, however, showed up this morning and we started working on some door casings. We got almost all the main floor door casings and backbands on and Fred’s coming back tomorrow for doing a little more trim. Hopefully we’ll get some of the baseboards done and get the first floor looking more finished than it is.
Here’s the back door with casings:
So… it’s a day off from solar panels and so both Fred and Bernie are coming here to do some work. We’ll have some updates and some pictures when it’s done, but we should have A/C working by tomorrow night and maybe some door frames and baseboards.
Today I put a dimmer on the back room and connected up the plug outside the back door so we have the light working in the BBQ. Exciting stuff!
Our lumber arrived yesterday – baseboards and door casings. This afternoon I started priming them outside, but realized quickly that the rain was coming.
We moved everything to the 3rd floor where we could work protected from the elements.
I’m up late painting in the confined space of the back room. Lots of pieces of wood around, drying and getting prepped for painting.
Yesterday I took a trip to Central Fairbank Lumber up on Steeles, who, I’ve been told, are the Toronto specialists in trim. When I got there and talked to the sales rep I realized it was very true. They guy I dealt with was great and gave me a lot of good ideas. I placed an order for the main floor trim including all the baseboards, windows and doorframes.
I also ordered extra subfloor so we can level the 3rd floor before putting down more hardwood.
It’s possible this weekend we could finally finish off some of the electrical work. Fred might come by and we’ll do some of the trim. It does need to be primed and painted first, but we should be able to do that also.
Got a bit of time on my hands these days due to some total lunacy. Long, insane story.
Ed Calder was supposed to come and finish our kitchen this morning, but as we suspected there was some excuse about paint drying – well stain drying to be precise. His wife phone and said he’d be there tomorrow morning. We’ll see. We had issues in the past.
On other issues, we’ve got John finishing off our HVAC system on Friday, and we’ve had to get a new electrician to change our permit so we can get our AC going, but that should happen in the next week.
Perhaps this weekend we’ll take a look at some trim for downstairs and maybe Fred can get that started in the next week or so. Things are moving again.
In the last little bit, we have started making more improvements on the house, and purchasing more accessories! For example, last weekend we bought a beautiful gas grill at The Home Depot and got it connected to our gas two days later. We have already had several meals cooked on the barbecue and expect many more. It is a really nice grill, with side burners, a temperature gauge and a rotisserie. As it is nearing the end of summer, all the grills were on sale so we were able to get a nicer one than we’d planned. Sometimes waiting has advantages! We took some photos of our grill, so we’ll link soon!
In addition to getting the grill hooked up, we finally got our stove hooked up too last weekend. What a change to be able to bake and use the stove top! It cooks so fast! I cannot believe we lived for 8 months without a proper stove or oven. The things you get used to…
We have also had some fixes to our kitchen. The Calders came this week and retreated the butcher block so it looks even better now. They also replaced the glass in the cabinets to the ribbed glass which we love. We will take more pictures and post. It isn’t easy because we destoyed our digital camera on our canoeing trip and are using the video camera to take stills. We’ll get there.
Anyway, my parents are coming today and they will see our house for the first time. It sure looks different from when we bought it!
We have to thank all those who came by last Friday for our housewarming party. I was a fun night. It’s too bad we don’t have any pictures for it as we lost our camera a few days earlier in a Canoing incident in Temagami.
We are almost ready for a next burst of activity on the house now that we are very close (we hope) to having this financing behind us. All the things that need doing … main floor trim, gas lines, venting, stove hood, vanities, lights, 3rd floor hardwood. All coming to this site soon.
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