Power post, Hey-yo!

As temperatures begin to warm, replacing the cold spring chill in the air we continue to chip away at the renos--inside and out.

Once the floors were done and we discovered our much-coveted wine fridge was about 1/4 inch too tall for the opening *&*%%###!
I talked to Home Hardware plus the guy who installed our kitchen and we were able to work out a deal. Adrian, our installer had been looking for a wine fridge so he bought ours for what we paid for it and we found this one. Things worked out well. It's a dual-zone fridge so good for whites and reds and it fits very nicely under the counter so we're very happy. Too bad it's kinda empty right now :(

Our loveseat was delivered a couple weeks ago and we had our cable connected. We also spent about two hours trying to hang our TV onto the stand we'd fixed to the wall earlier. We though it would be a snap as the hardest part - hanging the stand - was done. It was hanging crooked and we couldn't seem to fix it and were resigned to taking the entire stand off or somehow propping up the TV so it would be level. In desperation I moved the swivle part of the stand to the other side and, voila! T'was straight!
I was feeling quite insignificant until we heard from a neighbour they spent several hours doing the exact same thing except they had three people working on it, and then Neal told me he had the same problem with getting it level until he moved the swivel in the other direction like I did.
So, long story short, manhood, for the most part, remains in tact.
Oh, yeah, the loveseat and cushions look great, don't they?

With the living room area somewhat intact and liveable (Sarah swears she'll never watch TV downstairs again ) we tackled installing closet organizers. Not too bad but not easy either. I tried to drill into the drywall but lucky me, I somehow managed to drill dead centre into one of the drywall screws so we were forced to move the shelf and try again. :/
The most difficult part was using a hacksaw to cut the shelving. The payoff: we were able to hang nearly all of our clothes in the closet. We also finished the shelves in the other rooms, one of which nearly sent me into the asylum, not kidding. Sarah pinch hit for me and got the job done.
If you'll excuse Sarah's clothes sitting on the floor here's a closet shot of the almost complete project:

And speaking of hanging, we no longer have to sneak around our bedroom if we're in our birthday suits or getting changed because we got our curtains hung. Again, this wasn't an easy endeavour. After spending the better part of an hour marking and drilling holes to hang the curtain rod, we removed the curtains from the box to discover we'd purchased only one. Sooo, we zipped to the store, bought two curtains we like better and brought 'em home. But these were considerably shorter in length so now we had to spend another couple hours removing, and installing the curtain rod lower on the wall and leaving us with some nice little holes to fill.
What do you think of them?

Wait! There's more.

Our outside decor has also undergone some fairly extreme changes. I lopped off all the tall branches so they sit below the wires running to our house. In doing so, I probably saved us a hefty bill from the city's arborist.
Additionally, I was able to trim down the juniper trees in front of the house and then, with the help of our neighbour who took some pics and used photoshop to show us how the front of our house would appear we removed them. I was up at 7 the next day getting rid of them. So much nicer (see future posts for pics of this).
Today we worked on pulling all the weeds that had sprouted up in the backyard and I disassembled what was left of the gazebo to make way for a new one. I plan to spend tomorrow slopping a coat of primer on the wall I patched last week in preparation for the stair installation speaking of, we're still waiting for a call as to when he's going to start. We're excited about having the stairs and ralings because then we can invite our friends with children over and not have to worry about them getting too close to the edge and falling down the stairwell.
Look for another post very soon! The Trudeaus.

we were FLOORED

Its been awhile in getting to this point but our hardwood is finally laid. All along we were committed to doing them ourselves but, with the clock ticking on our patience and our stress levels about to explode, we hired professionals. The floor was really unlevel, it turned out, and the guys had to spend more than a day building up the floor to get it level (or at least flat).
To help us usher in the new floor and our pending move upstairs, Neal and Kelly came for a visit.



When I arrived home from work, Sarah and Kelly were relaxing on our new leather sofa. They spent the afternoon wining, but somewhere in the mix, they managed to install our new toilet in the bathroom.
More on that later.



We moved the fridge into place and had the dishwasher wired in and we spent the week getting our kitchen organized. There was one small glitch however. The wine fridge - the one we took painstaking time measuring and double-checking to make sure it would fit - she don't fit. SO, we've made arrangements with the place that installed our kitchen (because it was kinda their error that caused the problem) and they're going to help make amends.

Have to say, I'm loving the fridge, nearly 26 cubic feet of awesomeness. You know you're getting old(er) when you get excited about something that keeps your veggies cold and your milk from turning sour. And after eight months of cooking in our makeshift kitchen, Sarah is loving the new convection oven. And, I swear the coffee tastes better.

Last weekend, Carmela (the monster-in-law) came for a visit. These pizzas were our inaugural dinner using the new stove.

Remember the new toilet? Yeah? Well, speaking of inaugural use see below.

Crowning Glory, or just a quick (hit)*

We've had little to post lately. Right now, we're laying the groundwork for laying the hardwood flooring

The crown moldings and valances have been installed and the kitchen is inching closer to becoming liveable.

And a view of the kitch from the south . . .

On Sunday, (yesterday) my friend, Tom came over, and, on a mere two hours of sleep helped me work through the house and drive screws into the sub-floor to tackle the squeaks.
You'll see on the far left beside Suzanne (left), and Sarah the bamboo hardwood. We laid it get a feel for how it'll sit and for how it'll look: Very nice.

Our electrician "The Gerry" has been doing a nice job at installing the lights and outlets. We bought these really neat digital dimmers for the pot lights in the dining and living rooms.

Here's a question: Sarah bought this light for above the sink. She's not sure how it looks. What do you think? Too big? Or juuuust right?

*Craigellachie (or, the laying of the final piece of stone)

Withered, dry hands and mortar-coated clothing. The result of about 30 hours of work, measuring, cutting, buttering and tiling. It was feeling like we'd never *finish.




Earlier in the weekend, Sarah, Kelly and Neal spent hours with the painstaking job of installing the tile in the main bathroom. When I left for work, they were starting; I come home and they`re all done. Perfect timing.

Kudos to Sarah and Kelly for coming up with a great pattern for the tile. If Neal and I had tried what we were thinking. Let`s just say, the ladies were right . . . yes, the ladies were right.

What could be more fun then capping off the afternoon and evening then continuing our work on the fireplace, right.

Shhhh! Silence. A drum roll, if you please-----------------------------And, we are done!

What follows is our first before and after photos of the kitchen and fireplace:

We`re very happy with how everything turned out to this point, in spite of the huuuge investment into the stone, including spending hours scrubbing the mortar and brushing on the glossy finish.

Here is my wife with the big reveal

And a bonus pic for any Sarah 101 fans. It`s Kelly and Sarah with Tommy Smythe, the design sidekick for Sarah Richardson. He was speaking at the home show in Kelowna on the weekend. He`s a cross between Leonard on The Big Bang Theory and Charlie Chaplin. Very funny guy. And, he made the girls`day.

Answer: "Laying glass tile and cultured stone." Question: "Name two ways of cementing a friendship?" (With bonus deleted pics)

I would like to begin by issuing a huuuuge thank you to our friends, newly christened Okanagan residents (Kelowna), Neal and Kelly who sacrificed their weekend to school us in the finer points of installing our kitchen backsplash and the stone on our fireplace.

They're excellent teachers because within a few minutes, Kelly put Sarah to work.

I was unable to participate in the "fun" but from what I understand, the tiling went quite well and it took only about three hours to get the backsplash completed. Notice the red T-shirt twins getting ready for the big reveal.

Tah-dah! Not too bad, hey?

We took a leisurely wine and cheese dinner break before Kelly and Neal were cracking the whip for us to get back to work and squeeze in a few hours of painting the bedrooms and bathroom. My suggestion for anyone with a fair amount of painting to do - if you plan on doing it yourself - I highly recommend enticing/bribing/begging a couple of friends to help out. It makes the work much more enjoyable and it's amazing how much gets done. Also we'd like to give a shout out to Kelly for her paint colour suggestions. They look fantastic!

Move to Sunday morning and we're prepping to begin stoning the fireplace. This is the before picture,

This is Neal performing the inaugural cut with the wet tile machine,

This is me setting the first section of stone, (what a messy, sloppy job)

A few hours later and not without a few glitches, setbacks, expletives and some re-cutting - and if you've used a tile saw, you know how messy they are - we were making slow progress.

By the end of a day's work, it turned out pretty, pretty good. We've got a considerable amount of work to do before the stone is finished but it's gonna look really nice. Credit my wife for her vision on this one.

*EDITOR'S CUTTING ROOM PICS, SEE BELOW

I suppose there area couple of ways to hang tile. Turns out Sarah found an entirely new method. Pilates, anyone?

Neal was the eternal optimist throughout the weekend and it was nice to have him around.

. . . He even talked me into installing a classy new porta-potty by the pool!

Happy Valentine's Day! What better way to spend the evening than to spend the evening with our first upstairs meal?

Two kinda pizza, deep dish and thin crust, Cedar Creek Merlot and the best company in the world. We're optimistic we'll actually be upstairs by this time next year.

It's "Prime Time" baby!

This past weekend, fuelled by the lingering effects of alcohol and energized by the special guest appearance of our friends, Lori and Dave, we set out with optimism in our hearts and an eye on our goal to get our upstairs walls primed.




Armed with rollers, Lori, right, and Sarah covered the living room walls while Dave attacked the bedrooms. I took on the meticulous task of lining the trim.

And new on the home renovation runways is the latest in painting footwear: Peter Pan swashbuckling boots! (tres chic)

While the ladies loved the social aspect of the work - Dave found his competitive stride, increased his intensity and shortly after this photo was taken, he snapped the handle of the roller.

Like any good work crew, we found our motivation from a couple of imports ...

It was great having help from our good friends. We laughed and we had fun--

And, we got TWO coats of primer on the walls. It really was a successful day. Now, the view out our front windows looks a little bit brighter, in spite of the snow.

Keeping up the frenetic pace, on Sunday, the "outlaws" arrived from Kamloops and Dean helped install the sliding glass doors by the dining room and in our bedroom. Dave and Dean formed kind of an alliance and really, I was just window dressing.

But in then end, they had both doors installed in about three hours and with no surprises or glitches to interrupt the process. We're grateful for the sacrifice and selflessness of friends and family for helping us inch one step closer to completing Renovations 101.

Go ahead, make me grey

Well, following the New Year, we decided to get back to work on our walls and broke out the drywall mud materials. A couple of hours later, Sarah, (formerly and affectionately known as "Mudder") said if we continued at our current pace, we'd still be mudding months down the road. Reluctantly, but understandably, I agreed, and we hired Handyman Al to finish mudding and repairing the upstairs...

Being an amateur mudder I didn't subscribe to the "less is more" theory and poor Al spent about a billion hours sanding my thick mud coats down to so they were flush with the rest of the walls.

Bringing the kitchen together has been a learning experience, and a process that I'll say nothing more about other than to say that experience is the best teacher, and it will look uh-mazing when it's complete.

You can see below the amount of patching required in our office but even more impressive was the white, sandy layer of what looked like soot layering the floor and hiding deep in the corners. We managed to get all the upstairs swept and tidied in preparation for this weekend when our friends Lori, Dave and l'il Nina come for a visit and help us begin the arduous task of priming and painting our walls and ceiling.

With my hair matted with a fresh dusting of drywall mud and my lungs screaming for fresh air, (yes, I used a mask but that shit gets into everything), I assessed "the situation."

I plan on closing out the week sanding and finishing up the closets, which I told Al to leave for us. You know, for extra practice.

Ihave to admit, it's been difficult to stay excited about the renos, esp. when (six months in) all we want to do is to be able to prepare, eat and clean up after a meal that hasn't been prepared on our makeshit* (not a typo) kitchen while using regular plates and nice cutlery.

In the meantime, I'm going to step outside and enjoy this nice Cohiba I got for my birthday from our friends Joe and Belinda ...;