Quick Kitchen Update....

I just wanted to post a quick update on the kitchen.Our contractor and his helper were at the house yesterday finishing the kitchen floor.I have to say we are really happy with the way the floor looks.The kitchen looks so much better and once we get it repainted and the hardware on the cupboards updated,it will look great.

Here are some pictures of the kitchen....

The new floor in the kitchen.Ignore the mess on the counter.

There is a quick look at the new kitchen floor.I wanted to post some before and after pictures for you,but I can't find the before pictures at the moment.When or if I do I will post them on here so you can see the difference.

But for now your just going to have to trust me that the old kitchen floor was really,really, crappy looking!!

The State Of The Kitchen And A Few Random Pictures.....

I thought for fun I would post a few pictures of the new kitchen floor, even though it is not in yet.I figured since nothing else was going on(and you might be bored)this was a good time to show you the floor.Not all of it of course,just a few pieces.

Also a picture of the completed bathroom and some funky colored mats in our son Sam's room,liked it needed more color.All this today for your viewing pleasure.

Sit back and enjoy the wonderful world of home reno's......

Here is the new kitchen floor.This is a laminate floor,which as you can tell is meant to look like tile. 

A close up of the kitchen floor.This stuff feels almost like cardboard type material.From what the guy at the store told us,this stuff is really durable,which makes it great for a kitchen floor.To do our whole kitchen it cost us $750 for the floor.

One more look at the kitchen floor.We were originally going to do the kitchen floor with the same laminate we used in all the bedrooms.We thought it would flow nice if all the floors looked the same, but unfortunately we ran short on that type of floor.I think we needed about 13 more boxes of that floor.We went back to where we bought the floor but they only had 6 boxes.This floor was a special order floor and it would have taken between 4-6 weeks to get here.Well we didn't want this to hold us up from getting in the house, so we figured it would be quicker if we just bought a different type of floor.We did.All this happened about 6 weeks ago.

This would be the colored mats in Sam's room.These colors match the colors on the wall which I think happened by luck.This room doesn't look as crazy as we thought it would when Sam first told us what colors he wanted on his walls.The mats give the room that extra color kick.

The completed bathroom.Note how the toilet sticks out just a little(we wanted it more even with the vaniety).Why is this you might ask? Well I guess there was a floor joist where the toilet was supposed to go,so they had to move it up a little.It looks off at first, but once you get use to the look it's not that bad.

OK,you have seen the incomplete kitchen floor,the colorful room and the bathroom with the toilet that sticks out.

That's all I have for now!!

Still Not In.........

I just thought I would post a quick update and let you know that, NO we are not in the house yet.

You probably might have thought otherwise since I have not posted an update in well over a week.But the truth is it was flu that kept me from updating the blog and not the fact that I was busy moving things into the house.

And don't worry I would at least tell you when we were moved in.

So how close are we you might ask?

Well we are really close to the end.There is just the kitchen floor left to go in and some small little odd jobs here and there.

Then after all that is done we need to pass a final inspection and then we will have the green light to move in.Our contractor figures he has maybe another day of work left to do.

Now you might think that with only having a day left of work we would be in the house this week sometime.

You would be wrong to think that though.

Our contractor has other jobs on the go and can only squeeze us in on the week-ends,thus dragging the last little bit of work out even longer.

In all fairness to our contractor he was not supposed to be putting the floors in our house as we had somebody else lined up for this.Unfortunately that fell through and we had to ask our contractor if he could fit this into his work load.That's the reason this last bit is taking longer than it should.

Had we asked him to do our floors right from the start of the job, we would probably be living in the house by now.But we thought we were saving money going with someone that was cheaper or so we thought.We all know how that turned out.

If there is one thing that I have learned from this whole thing,it is that cheaper is not always better.In fact what we thought was cheaper ended up costing us time and extra money.

So that's all I have report for now.I will update with some more pictures I promise!!

Ever So Close......

Well,we are getting there.After almost five months out of the house, the end of the home renovation is in sight.

OK,so everything will not been done.We still have a lot of small projects to do, but these are projects that can be completed while we are living in the house.Besides,if we waited until everything was done before we moved in,we would be out of the house for the next decade.

That might be a stretch,but you get what I am saying.

Lets look at some pictures....

Our son Sam decided he wanted his room four different colours.This would be the green and the yellow walls

And this would be the red and blue walls.To tell you the truth the room doesn't look as crazy as we thought it would. 

These would be the closet doors in our room.You can see our contractor put in a shelf,with a rod(that would be the white thing) to hang some clothes.

Here is the vanity and the linen tower.I tried to get the whole linen tower in the picture but it just didn't work.In case you were wondering the linen tower does go a little bit higher than the picture shows.Also I forgot to mention the medicine cabinet in the introduction to this picture,not that you couldn't see it without me telling you.

There it is,the house in all it's glory.Once they finish the bathroom,get the floors in the other two bedrooms and get the plumbing hooked up and running we will be able to move in.This could happen within the week.

The kitchen floors I am told will be done after we move in.Our contractor told my brother he didn't want to keep us out of the house any longer which is good to hear.

Hopefully it is not much longer.

It's Been Awhile

I know it's been awhile since the last update,(about a week or so)I figured it was about time to get you up to speed.

Now you may be thinking that a lot has gone on in that week,but that's not the case.Our contractor is finishing up on another job so he can only get to our place on the week-end.Thus during the week not much happens.That's OK though because we know he is doing what he can for us to get the house ready as soon as he can. 

Let's look at some pictures...

The finished tile.Well sort of, it still needs to be grouted. 

Here you can see the tile border which we think looks really good.

The stairs going up to the new part.These were done with the same flooring that we used in the rest of the house.We were going to do the stairs with the tile, but we changed our mind and went with this instead.

Here is another look at the stairs.

As you can see here this ledge on the side of the stairs was done with the flooring we used in the house.Our contractor came with this idea because we really had no idea what to do there and we didn't really think to much about it.So this was a nice surprise when we seen this.

Another look at the ledge.That long brown thing on the stairs is a piece of rubber that is going to go on the edge of the ledge.

The new pot lights in the kitchen.

That gets you all up to date on the house.I will post updates as things move along.

Floor Update

We had a surprise today when we looked out the window and seen our contractor at the house.

Yes on a Sunday.

We thought maybe he was just dropping something off and would carry on with his day,but he did stay for a few hours.After he left, we went over to sneak a peak to see what was done.

Here are a few pictures of today's events...

Here is the bathroom floor.

A close up of the barthroom floor.

A look at the tile in the entrance.As you can see there is just a little bit left to do.

Another view of the tile.We can't wait to see how this will look against the kitchen floor.

A close up of the tile.

That concludes the days work,which for us was not expected so it was a nice surprise.We know he is doing his best to try and balance everything out with his other jobs and this one.

It's been a long haul for everybody involved no doubt.I know the people helping us want to see us in the house, as much as we want to be in there.And I am sure our contractor wants to get this job off his plate and get on with his life.We wouldn't mind getting on with ours as well.

We are getting closer......I think??

Trim

It's been a few days since the last update so I thought I would get you up to speed on the house.

Now it's not too say that a lot has gone on this week.Well actually not much has happened until today that is.

Our contractor was there today doing the trim.He usually doesn't work Saturday but because he is down a man he has to try to squeeze us in when he can.

This usually can only happen on Saturday since he is tied up during the work on his other job,which we understand.

Anyway enough of that lets look at the pictures....

Our closet with the trim around it and the doors ready to be installed.

More trim in our room.

And more trim in our room.

OK we are going to switch rooms.This is our son Alexs' room.

And one final picture of Alexs' room.

So you are all caught up for now.I will post pictures as things move along.

Floor Update

I know I promised about 3 or 4 days ago that I would update the site with hopefully pictures of our nice new floor.As you can tell this didn't happen.

Our contractor came to my work on Friday morning and breaks the news to me that our floors were not done properly.

DAMN.....was my first thought.Why would they be done right by somebody who apparently knows what he is doing.That would only make things easier.

So our contractor tells me that he can't hang the doors or do the trim with the floors the way they were.He also tells me that once we start to put furniture and some weight on the floor,the boards will start to pop and crack.

Not good I thought.

He then tells me that he would pull up the floors and put them back in at no charge.Which was great because he saved me from having to tell the other guy that it was done wrong and he had to redo it.Since the other guy who was doing our floors really hates our contractor,this probably would not have gone over too well I am thinking.

Anyway our contractor returned on Saturday and pulled up all the floors in the new part and then re-did them the correct way.

And what a difference.You can really tell from when they were first done to what they look like now.It just looks totally different.

I did take some pictures, but you can't tell in the pictures because I would have had to take some close ups of the floor at both stages.The incorrect way and the correct way.I didn't do that because I didn't think anything was wrong in the first place.

So that is were we sit right now and we also have a couple of doors hung and some trim up.

Now all that is left is the floors in the old part,which our contractor will do and the rest of the trim as well.Also the new bathroom needs to be done and then we can move in.

I think????

More Flooring

The work continued on getting the flooring installed and the new part of the house is almost done.There is just a little bit in the master bedroom left.

Here are a few pictures from today.....

The floor in the master bedroom with all the dusty foot prints and all. 

Here you can see part of the floor that still needs to be done.That will be done tomorrow and then porcelain tile will be started on Saturday.


There was just a few pictures from today of the flooring part of the renovation.It seems like each step closer we get to being done it goes by painfully slow.The painting seemed like it took forever and now the flooring seems to be dragging on.Of course it doesn't really help that our floor guy can only work at night, thus making this drag even worse.

We were starting to doubt ourselves tonight on getting somebody else to do the floors for us because we thought this might have been the cheaper route.After talking to my brother tonight, we found out that maybe that wasn't the case. Apparently he was talking with our contractor and he was telling my brother what he charges to put in flooring,which turned out to be not that bad.The other plus to that would have been that he would be able to do it during the day,for the whole day because that is his job.The other guy we have doing it right now can only come at night after he gets off work,which makes this whole thing drag even more.

You know I tell you if it's not one thing it's another with this whole renovation thing.We have held up pretty good up until this point.I know for myself now it is starting to really get to me...big time!! I think with Christmas coming up I just want to get into the house and get settled before the holiday season starts.And that's the part that is starting to get to me.You know it's going to be rush,rush to get the house cleaned and sorted out and before we can really get settled in,it will be Christmas.With Christmas it will be rush,rush again and it seems like there will not be any downtime to get into a routine and settled down.

Anyway that is my little rant for now!!

Part two will come tomorrow........

Sorry........

OK, I know it has been awhile since I have posted any updated pictures of the house.For some reason, it has been a challenge to find the time to post anything lately.I know, it is no excuse and I will try to get my act together.

I know I have not posted in a week, but I still have been taking pictures so do not worry.Since some of my dedicated readers are going through withdrawals, lets get on with the pictures. 

Here is a picture of the bathroom. 

Here is another picture of the bathroom with the light.This picture looks a little darker than the first one,which is not what the actual color looks like,so just focus on the light.

This is a picture of the hallway.The picture makes the paint look just a little darker than it really is.  

Another picture of the hallway.This is closer to what the color is.It is lighter than the first picture shows.It is hard to get the right pictures of the paint colors with the limited lighting in the house. 

Our son Sam hard at work painting. 

Sam displaying his painting talents.

The new floors in our in our son Alex`s room.The floors are a little dusty right now,so just picture them all nice and clean.

This is a picture of the porcelain tile that is going into our entrance way. We were going to use ceramic tile, but the guy at Home Depot told us that porcelain tile is more durable and better for high traffic area.

There you are all up to date on the house.They will continue with the flooring tomorrow, working in our bedroom next.It still looks like we are a few weeks from getting in the house,which is such a disaster right now with stuff everywhere.Whenever I go over to take pictures it seems like more stuff piles up from out of nowhere. There is about an inch of dust on everything,so that will need to be taken care of before we move in.

We just need to remind ourselves it will all be worth it in the end.

I promise the next update will be a little sooner than the last one!!

Some Paint Pictures For Your Pleasure...............

So we have a couple of rooms painted.The baby's room and our room are painted so far.Up next is the bathroom and then the hallway.After all that, the floor will go in.

We hope to have the floor started by the beginning of next week.After the floor is in, our contractor will come back and do the trim and hang the doors.Then we can move in. 

But lets not get ahead of ourselves.It doesn't seem like a lot when I type it, but it actually is still probably a few weeks before we can move in.

Here are a couple of pictures.....

This is a wall in the baby's room.The green is a lot brighter than the picture shows.But with the dark floors,crib and dresser it will look really good.

Here is our bedroom.

Another picture of our bedroom.i tried to do a close up so you  could see the color but it still didn't show the color very well. 

There it is a quick painting update.

More to come...........

Let The Painting Begin

As you can probably tell by the title of the post we are ready for paint.Our contractor will be there in the morning to clean up and then after that we can start to paint.

This gets us one step closer to moving back into the house.There are a lot of little things that still need to be done.Even though the painting is about to start,I still think we will be out of the house a few more weeks at least.

Our floor guy is coming tomorrow night and is going to help paint to get things going along a little faster, as he wants to start putting the floors in this week-end.I really don't see that happening, but maybe a few late nights of painting and who knows.I know I am just not going to get my hopes up on the floor part starting this week-end just yet.I am just thankful the painting is starting. 

We had not planned on getting our floor guy to help with the painting, as we are trying to keep the costs down.But I think it would be just too hard with us trying to do it with the two kids.One of whom is a baby and keeps us pretty busy on his own.So we decided to bring in some extra help to get this done faster.

We will worry about how we are going to pay him after....

And after all that is done,the painting and the floors we still need to furnish the house.Hopefully by this time we will have some of our government grant money so we can actually buy some furniture.We have never owed new furniture before so we are really looking forward to this experience.

With the renovations and the new furniture we won't be embarrassed anymore when people come over,this feeling on it's own will be great.

The painting begins tomorrow and I don't think I will get a chance to get pictures up as after we are done painting for the evening around 9ish,I have to race to the rink to play hockey.

But I will see what I can do...

Energy Audit And More Mud........

The drywall work continues with the third coat of mud being put on.Now from what I have been told this will be the last coat of mud.Then they will sand it once it is dry and then we can start priming and painting.

As for when we can start painting,well....I am hopefully that maybe this week-end.That is a big maybe though.

We had our second assessment for the Government grants for the energy rebates.That would be federal and provincial and I think the max is about five thousand from each if I remember correctly.We are lucky we did our first assessment when we did, because now they have cut some of the money you can get back.Good old government realized they had too many people taking advantage of the rebates and decided to cut it off.

The guy who did the audit was pretty cool about everything and gave us the max score we could get on everything.Which I am not surprised about because we did redo everything and it's all energy star stuff. He even got my brother and the contractor to take the toilet we bought out of the box set it up so he could take a picture of it so we could get money back for that as well.He also gave us credit for 9 windows instead of 7 because he counted the 4 new ones we have on the new part of the house.I thought he could only give us credit for what we had before not the new part.We are not complaining though, at $80 dollars a window that's a few hundred dollars worth of windows.

He said we should hear in about a month how much we will be getting back and the first cheque should come within sixty days.By the looks of things we should be getting a good amount of money back.This money will go towards new furniture and finishing the basement.

I didn't take any pictures today because, I went over to the house and then realized that I had no battery in the camera.....oops!! And I was to lazy to walk back over to put the battery in and then go back to the house again.

Tomorrow I will remember the battery and hopefully not be as lazy......

Mud and Tape

Things are not too exciting on the home front right now.All that is happening is mudding and taping.So there is no real drastic changes as of now.

I am going to post a couple of pictures just for fun anyway...

This is a wall in our son Alex's room.

A wall in the soon to be rec room. 

There you go.Like I said nothing to wild or exciting or life changing. This pretty much will be the rest of the week in terms of happenings on the home front.Once they are done sanding it,then we are up with the paint.

That could be interesting.........

I have tried to think back to the last time I had painted a room or anything for that matter.Well maybe some art in art class,but that is about the extent of my painting career.
I am reyling on my wife to give me some pointers.Painting seems to be her thing.

That's all I have for now!!!

Mud And Tape Up Next!

We are getting there...... 

I shouldn't really say that yet.We still have painting to do and floors to put in.But we are getting ever so close,although there is still a LOT of little things that need to be done after we move in.

Are contractor is set to mud and tape next week,which he will do by himself as his other two guys are moving on to start another job.Now we have been told by a few people that doing the mud and tape is what he is really known for.

It should be good and it should go pretty quick.So we have been told.

Here are some pictures from the last few days....

Here is our new bathtub. 

Instead of a stair rail our contractor built this half wall which we like better than a railing.

Another view of the wall that goes along side the stairs. 

This is a view of under the stairs which our son Sam has claimed as his office space.

Sump pump room which we will also use for storage.

There you have it all the picture from the last couple of days.The house looks really good and most people who know us can't even believe it is the same house.And even though the wait has been long our contractor has done a really great job and the wait will be worth it.

The Drywall Continues

The drywall work continued today and they are almost done putting it up.Next they will mud and tape.Once that drys then we can paint.

Here are some pictures from today....  

The new hallway upstairs.This is where our old kitchen window and master bedroom window where.   

The basement.

More of the basement.

This room is just to cover up the sump pump.

There are just a few pictures from today.I did have the chance to chat with our contractor and it looks like we will be about $6000 over budget,which is better than the 10% he told me we would be over.He also didn't charge us for the porch he built off the door for us and he was going to get us a new tub which was his gift too us.This is a really nice gesture on his part.

For what its worth and all the waiting we have gone through,he really has done a great job on the house.He also has been great to us because has not once asked or chased us for money.He just continued on with the job.

The wait will be worth it.