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 ...;

A Kamloops country Christmas at The Huston Ranch (With reno photos and bonus materials too)

We spent our first holiday at Sarah's parents at the ranch on Campbell Creek. With no Internet, telephone and ver-r-r-ry limited cell phone service it was homey, old-fashioned and Waltonesque for sure.

"T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a ...

Stella!

Every home should have a staircase something like this ...

And now, for some reno pics shot Jan. 4th, 2011!

Here's the patchjob in the bathroom (this is where the vanity mirror will be placed)

And these white squares are the after-look of where the illegal bathroom lights had to be removed cuz they were IN the shower.

Our "Office" will not feature Dwight Schrute or Michael Scott but it will feature Scott and Sarah Trudeau with the occassional guest appearance--and the walls and ceiling will look first class.

These next series of four photos show the various sections (wall, ceiling and closet) in the master bedroom. Believe it or not, it looks much better following the second coat of mud:

Although they're probably looking the same, this is the 2nd bedroom and definitely the lowest maintenance of the three upstairs rooms.

Congratulations if you've made it this far, here's some experimental vid clips of my journey to the ranch, Christmas day and the ride home on a snow-filled Coquihalla. (first time I've ever shot video on my phone so, could've used a heavy dose of post-editing).

We're baa-aack, and the counter's look great!

While the Missus and I were away in Toronto for a week, Dale worked on our concrete countertops putting the finishing touches on them on Monday and left this caveat posted upon our return ...


Sarah (a.k.a. "Mudder) gave the work a thorough inspection, envisioning herself in the kitchen once it's completed.

I have to say, as pleased as she was with the counterwork and the colour, she was more anxious to get home to see Stella, the dog. the sink looks great, as does the finish. We think the colour is enough of a different shade of grey to compliment the grey walls, brown ceiling and espresso-flooring.

We walked around the upstairs tonight and as we watched the snowflakes drifting downwards illuminated by the streetlight, we lamented not being upstairs right now, and, most likely, not in time for Christmas.

We had a terrif time in TO and I'll admit that knowing the mountain of work that awaits us, made it a little more difficult to come home. Still need to get an estimate for the railings and stairway, do the finishing work and tiling and then lay down that damn hardward flooring. (sigh)

Ah well, it's just what we need to do and, thinking back to the layout when we moved in, it looks a lot better and I know it will be capable of hosting many episodic dinner parties among friends and family and that makes it all worthwhile.

Cementing our kitchen design or It's a concrete situation at our house or they did everything ... including the kitchen sink

Just a quick hit with a few pics of our concrete kitchen countertops, courtesy of ScottsDale concrete... Nice work guys!




The counter along the kitchen sink ....

And the wine, bevy and glass area ...

Long shot looking inwards ....

This is our kitchen sink, at least the pink-coloured part is our sink and the future nesting and bathing area for pots, pans and an assortment of cooking utensils. Best part is, the cement will be fully set and sealed by the time we return from TO next week.