*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.