A bit of progress

Joel was here on his own yesterday and got through a few items on the to-do list. No one came today though. I'm expecting both him and Sean tomorrow.

So, we now have bolt caps on the toilet, and the window sill is finished in the bathroom; the downstairs hall closet door closes, the laundry room door opens (although noisily and with a bit of resistance, it's still not hung quite right) and the drain in that room has a cover on it so we won't lose things down it so easily. The TV room has a door knob.

The electrician was here yesterday and the day before as well, so now the control panel for the in-floor heating works, there's a timer for the fan in the bathroom, the doorbell works, and the light switch that was located in the middle of the hall is now at the end where it belongs. This last, though, means the drywaller has to come back, of course, but he had some other patches to make anyway, such as repairing the two holes in the wall in the laundry room where the cable and phone wires were left hanging out, and several outlets have too-big holes cut around them that the face plates can't cover, etc.

We had a lady come out to our place a couple of days ago from the blinds company and measured the windows and helped me pick out the blinds, and I gave them the go-ahead to order them today. I wanted to have a couple of days to change my mind, and didn't change it. So those should arrive in their store in 3-4 weeks, and then they'll schedule the installation date.

I think we're okay again

Sounds like things are going to be okay after all, whew! Except for the fact that they're out of town this week so only Joel will be here on Thursday and both him and Sean on Friday. So not too much will be happening this week! The electrician is coming tomorrow, though, to finish off his stuff.

Everything's gone sideways suddenly

Not much has been done this week. They painted on Tuesday outside, and at the end of the day told me they'd be back Wednesday to finish. No one came by at all on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, Joel measured the closet in the bathroom in order to build the drawers, said they'd be making them at Sean's place, and that they'd return in the afternoon. I gave Joel a list of everything that still needs doing -- about 40 items -- and included a statement that we're not happy with the paint job so far and want to split the cost of hiring a professional painter to come in and fix it. Sometime later that day they dropped off the fence gate, but didn't install it and didn't come in or announce themselves or anything. On Thursday afternoon, Sean sent an email (which I didn't see until today) stating in part that he just thinks the paint job needs touch ups and that he "will not participate in hiring another painting company." In one part of the letter he says they will get to the to-do list "once the balance of our materials arrive" and in another part that he wants to "resolve these issues before the balance of the work is completed."

Judging by the fact that they didn't show up today, either, I'm a little worried. We're at 95% complete here, and he's already been paid (slightly) more than the original quote. We started a letter in response to his but haven't sent it yet. I'm getting the impression that his nose is out of joint over the paint issue, which is kind of silly.

Yesterday, before receiving his note, I called three paint companies to come in and give me a quote on how much it'll be to fix it. One came over right away and quoted $2500 on the spot, the second came today and will deliver a quote this weekend but says to expect it to be in the $5000 range. The third company hasn't phoned me back yet. The two that came in were both pretty much on the same page - it can't be fixed with touchups, it needs to be fully repainted to look good.

We're home!

We are finally home. The reno isn't totally complete, but it's close enough. Our first night back was Sunday, August 3.

We spent most of Saturday afternoon making a big dent in the pile o' stuff in the dining/living room, including moving the dining room table into the new "TV" room. Since we haven't ordered blinds yet, we don't want to put the TV in there just yet. It looks quite nice with the table -- coordinates very well with the laminate. There is also one arm chair in there at the moment, though I think we'll probably move that back out eventually.

On Sunday we realized we couldn't do too much more with the pile until we got some shelves in our storage areas, so we went to Rona and bought some pre-fab, and also had a 4x8 foot board cut into a bunch (eight?) more shelves. On Monday (holiday) we got the hardware to hang them up with, but we haven't actually done that yet. Brooke spent a lot of time setting up the closet organizer in the walk-through closet, so that's now ready to be loaded up with all our clothes.

Since I'm going to be here now while they're working, I'm going to ask them to concentrate on the upstairs now and make sure it's 100% done so I don't have to worry about them wanting to come in there to work if we've had a rough night and want to sleep in.

P.S. Today they are finally putting the second coat of paint on the outside of the house.

Getting there!

We now have a sink in the bathroom, complete with taps and everything. Apparently as of today the bedroom is all painted, except for the walls still needing drywall touchups, so there's just that and the glass blocks to go into that room. I think the TV room is completely done. The outside of the house is going to be painted tomorrow.

The lino people still have to come back -- they didn't put lino under the stairs as Brooke requested, and one patch is poorly done.

I told the builder yesterday that we're moving in this weekend, and several days ago Brooke gave him a prioritized list of what's left to be done (high/medium/low) and it sounds like all of the high priority things are done. We'll probably go over tonight to check.

Carpet at last!

WE HAVE CARPET! Oh, sorry, I got a little excited there.

The end is in sight. There is a lot of finishing that still needs to be done, lots of paint retouching and a few screwups need fixing. (Like the light switch in the middle of the hall, instead of at the end of the hall.) But almost all of the major stuff is in place now. The only major thing missing is the bathroom sink.

We have a lovely railing in the stairwell. (Needs to be painted still.) And the door to the TV room is really pretty.

Carpet explanation

Brooke phoned the carpet supplier today to find out what's going on and it turns out the carpet was held up at customs, so it is legitimately taking much longer than usual to arrive. It arrived in Victoria this morning and they're going to try to free up someone today to install it, and if not today then tomorrow for sure.

No idea why the builder hasn't used this week to finish the painting, though.

Lack of progress

Brooke went by the house tonight and he said it didn't look like anything has been done except installing the toilet. Certainly no carpet has been installed, and that was supposed to have been done Monday & Tuesday. (Well, actually last Friday. And before that, July 15. And before that, July 9th.) Getting a bit frustrated here...

Getting closer

Quite a lot has been done in the past week. Not quite ENOUGH as it was supposed to be move-inable on Friday (with carpet installed) but that didn't happen so we're still not back in the house. However, the end is in sight, I think.

The laminate and linoleum flooring are installed downstairs, mostly. There is one section of the laminate that looks odd (right in the doorway to the TV room) so they're going to fix the joints on that, and the lino didn't get put into the storage space under the stairs. For some reason we have a heck of a lot of left over lino, so apparently they thought they were going to be replacing some of the existing stuff, and then didn't, so that's quite a waste of lino and money. The baseboards are in place, but the quarter-round edging isn't, so there are gaps between the flooring and the baseboard at the moment. The paint needs retouching now, too, because they spray-painted the baseboards after installing them, and over-sprayed onto the walls, which had previously been finished. Hopefully in fixing the walls, they don't over-spray back onto the baseboards, or we'll be back and forth forever!

Upstairs, the tile in the bathroom is done and it looks great. The toilet has been purchased but not yet installed, so it's still in the box in the bathroom. We haven't fully selected a cabinet yet -- we know what sort of thing we want, but haven't found/ordered it. What we want is pretty basic -- just standard cabinets with a either a drawer above cupboards, or a stack of drawers on one side (or in the middle) and a cupboard on the other (or both) side(s). We already know which counter top we want.

In the bedroom, the underlay for the carpet is in place, and it sounds like the carpet guy is coming tomorrow (Tuesday) to install the actual carpet.

Most of the light fixtures have been installed. I had offered to tell the builder which ones belonged where back when we first bought them, but he wasn't ready to know that yet... so when he was ready, he didn't ask and a couple got put into the wrong spots. We were there tonight and put up some post-it notes to say which ones need changing.

We did notice a couple of odd things tonight. One is that the light switch for the hallway downstairs is in the middle of the hall, rather than at the end where you'd normally find it! There's another switch at the far end of the hall, so it's not like it needed to be there so you could get to it from either end. We're going to ask for that to be moved, but it might be a bit of a job since the wall is already completed. *Sigh* The other thing that Brooke just noticed is there is a bit of wall that was supposed to be removed (it even shows it as being removed on the original plans) but it's still there. I hadn't noticed it before, but now that he's pointed it out, I agree it does look rather odd. We're going to check the photos we took earlier to see if there's a beam there, which might be why it was left in.

Bedroom paint colour

I meant to upload a picture of the bedroom's paint colour yesterday, not the living room.... so here it is now. You can see the lighter colour in the hallway and the darker colour in the bedroom itself.

I was talking to Sean today and he said the plumber installed the bathtub taps oddly. The on and off positions were reversed, so it was turned on when they are in the position shown in the previous post. So he's going to have the plumber come back and fix that!

First coat of paint and bathroom progress

We've now been locked out of the house TWICE. We went by on Friday on our way to a friend's house and couldn't get in so just left it as the builder had said they'd be working through the weekend. We went over today and no one was there, so Brooke broke in again, this time using a convenient ladder and an upstairs window. We've asked for a key to the other lock so it doesn't happen again!

The entire new section has all been primed and the first coat of paint applied. The shower drain pan is in place (cement, not tiled yet) and the taps are on the tub. Jody will be tiling the bathroom floor tomorrow -- it's a good thing we were still there when he came by today as the message that we wanted 8x10 tiles on the wall didn't sink in to the builder's brain and he was going to have Jody do the entire bathroom in 12x12 tiles (which were just supposed to be on the floor).

And mud!

Tonight when we went to the house we found that the drywall has all been taped & mudded. Not yet sanded though, as it's still wet, so I guess they just did that today. We know it's wet because Brooke ended up with it all over him... the workers locked us out of the house and he had to go in a window. Good to know how easy it is to get in that window, though, so we'll have to be sure to keep it locked once we're living there again!

More drywall!

There is now drywall upstairs and down!

Drywall!

We stopped by our house briefly yesterday (Saturday) evening and almost the entire upstairs had been drywalled! Not taped, but it was up! There was one section, right beside where the glass blocks are going that wasn't done, so not sure if that was an oversight or what, but that's good progress. I imagine that they were going to do the downstairs today.

I've misplaced the cable for the camera so can't upload any pictures for this post or the previous one. As soon as it turns up I'll update these posts. Update: found the cable! :)

Fenced in

We now have a new fence -- unfortunately it's a bit longer than we wanted it. It was supposed to stop at the edge of the paving stones, but it goes right past that to the edge of the garden. (We wanted to leave a walkway between our house and the neighbour's house.)

There is still no drywall up. It was supposed to have been started on Wednesday according to the builder on Tuesday. We went to the house last night (Friday) and there had been no work done since we were there last, which I think was on Tuesday. Brooke phoned him today and was assured that they were going to be working through the weekend to put up the drywall. We shall see!

Insulation

We went by the house on Saturday and took a bunch more pictures, so here they are.

Here's our new patio area along the side of the house. There is a wooden frame on the ground behind the rhodo which I believe is going to be placed around it to contain the dirt.

The insulation is in place now and it looks really good. Here's a picture of Brooke checking out how it is sealed around the window in the TV room.

The hole in the wall of the landing is framed off, but they apparently forgot to remove the heater. I think that'll be fixed, but if it ends up staying the way it is now, I think it'll look okay.

And just in case I didn't include a photo of it previously, here's my awesome new bathtub. There is a hole in the outside wall above it where the windows haven't yet been installed.

Tele-update

I just had a long conversation with the builder about the state of the renovations (he's a bit of a talker, but then so am I!) although I haven't been there today. He said the framing and plumbing inspections have been passed, and the guy doing the insulation was in there today (and will be tomorrow as well) and the inspection for that is scheduled for Monday. The drywall will go up after that -- originally (early last week) he had said the drywall would have been done late last week, so we've slipped by about a week. Once the drywall is in place, he figures there will be about seven 10-hour days worth of work to do all the painting and other finishing, so that sounds like two work weeks to me. I think he said the outside pavers were put down today (or will be done tomorrow?) and he's picking up the fence tomorrow, so that might get installed tomorrow as well.

When we were there yesterday we saw that the little seat between shower and tub has been framed, which led us to change our minds on where the lip of the shower should be. Originally we were going to have it go straight across, continuing the wall of the shower, but now we're going to angle it from the corner of the wall to the corner of the seat. The bathtub is in place, and the plumbing is all roughed in for the shower and tub. I imagine the toilet and sink are roughed in as well if the plumbing inspection has already been done, but I didn't notice that specifically.

The beam that goes through the middle of the skylight in the closet won't be able to be removed, but Brooke mentioned that we could put opaque glass at the level of the ceiling to just let the light through, and not actually see the beam.

Siding

When we were at the house yesterday, the siding was nearly complete. We haven't gone over there yet today but I wouldn't be too surprised if it's done now. The electrician had just finished installing the in-floor heating in the bathroom when we were there... and luckily Brooke noticed that he'd continued it right through under what is supposed to be the shower, so some of it had to come out again.

Our snazzy new bathtub has been delivered, I'm very excited about that! Too bad I won't be able to use it for quite a long time yet! It's just sitting in the TV room at the moment. We still need to pick out our faucets and such. Oh yeah, and then have it all installed and tiled.

We were originally planning to tile the shower and around the tub and then have lino on the floor, but the flooring guy said that he's seen that done, and it doesn't work so well, so recommended we tile the entire floor, so that's what we're doing. (And I know he really meant it because we would have bought the lino from him, but are buying the tile from someone else so he talked us out of a portion of our purchase from him!)

Photos!

First of all, here is our new daughter, Charlotte!


Here's the front of the house as of a couple of days ago. When we were there yesterday, the siding was starting to go on, so it's already changing.


This is what our roof looks like when viewed from above -- so it's not really V-shaped as it looks from the ground!


Brooke took this picture of me checking out the window in the new bedroom, shot through the wall of the walk-though closet.


When they first put in the skylight, there was a ceiling beam going right through the middle of it.

Then they fixed it.

I'm alive!

In case you were wondering :) Charlotte was born on May 28th and this is only the second time I've found any time to be on the computer since then.

The reno is coming along nicely! The windows are in, the roof is finished, the two skylights are in (there's a story about one of the skylights which I'll share later!) and the paper that goes under the siding is on. The siding is in the driveway, painted & covered with a tarp to dry, and will be attached soon. Inside, the interior walls have been framed, and the electrician has put in the wiring for the lights, outlets, etc. We're still waiting for the plumber -- the original plumber backed out, and I'm not sure if Sean has a new one lined up or if he's still looking. As soon as the plumber has plumbed the bathroom and moved the water tank, I believe the insulation and drywall can go up, so we're getting there!

I've got to go feed the baby, will try to get on again soon to post some photos!