After Christmas Break - Kitchen electrical

December 29th, 2007

We were away for Christmas (a whole week) visiting Lianne's family & friends in Ottawa and Andreas' family in Guelph.

However, believe it or not there was still some work happening at the house. We know because Andreas kept getting calls!

First day back from our Christmas travels and we've got a To Do list from the electrician. One thing is to go through the house & look at what he's done to see if it's right or not. Unfortunately the electrician went ahead with some wiring against instructions to wait for our approval. We will need to move some things, and Andreas is hell bent on doing it himself so he unscrewed some electrical outlet boxes and placed them where we actually want them.

Most things are good but there are some that we needed to 'adjust'. Then again there is only 1/2 the electrics done at this point.

Our other to do list was to decide where all the kitchen lighting is to go. I put on my Kitchen Imagination Hat & we set to work. Some two hours later we've pointed and drawn sketches and used 2x4's to lay out the 'kitchen' so that we at least have some idea of where the counters will be. This is not an easy chore! The last thing we needed to also do was to mark 'exactly' on the ceiling where the lights above the island would be. Okay I say & then practically bend over backwards for another hour or so while Andreas climbs up and down and up and down and up and down the ladder.

Here is one of the 'approved' electrical parts - after this we moved it! Master Bedroom the plugs and light switches on either side of the bed.


'X' marks the spot! Andreas marking the over island pendant lights. Hopefully in the right place!

More Power

December 20th, 2007

Marat warned us the Electrician would be coming, so earlier this week Andreas met Marat and Gena (like henna) at the house to talk about electrics. Surprise, he's a little Russian Latvian. :)

Although Andreas and I had spent a couple hours looking over the house plans and placing outlets and lights, seems Gena was not particularly interested however between Marat's experience, Gena's electrician's eye and Andreas waving around our drawings, they did manage to come up with a electrical installation plan.

Thursday (today) was the start date and since there were still some questions, I accompanied Andreas over first thing in the morning to see Gena. He was pleased to see us and we started with some lights in the master bath (I never knew there could be so many in a bathroom!) and then moved on to the upstairs hall. Despite stomping around and back and forth and saying no no no, I did get the switch configuration I preferred. That was Gena stomping and say no, not me! He's very excitable.

Then we looked at some lights in the rest of the upstairs, and the master. In the middle of this Gena got a call and he packed up in a flash and dashed out the door! He left his doodle of our light layout, and said Marat needed him. We just shrugged and placed X's on the wall for the kitchen outlets, then off I went to work.

Later that day Andreas stopped in as Gena had more questions. We're not sure what, if anything, is next but apparently Marat is away for two weeks and we are also out of town for a few days. We were worried about not being able to be available and check in on the progress so Gena has been told to just put in all the boxes, no wires, until after Christmas. We'll be back to have a look between Christmas and New Years.

A couple of pictures of some electrical work



A few other pictures of some work done recently.

Storage closed under the stairs


View through from the kitchen/dining to the living room/front hall


A talented Sergei the carpenter, boxing in a duct in the basement rec room.


We had a little snow in the master bath!


Front door, from the inside.

Elmsdale's Got Gas!

December 16th, 2007

'Dan the Gas Man' , actually Daniel has been a few days at the house last week and finished up this week. He is highly recommended. ~ Andgio Gas Services.

Daniel did a great job (and our first 's non-Russian trade).

We're glad to now have gas for the kitchen stove, backyard BBQ and the 2 fireplaces. Of course, the furnace and water as well.



Daniel even left a note for the A/C guy.

The rest of the week saw busy workers coming and going, but nothing too exciting to relate a story about!

Here are some pictures of the week of December 9th - 15, 2007

Duct boxed in at the front corner of the living room


Frame 'arch' made around the opening from the living room to the front hall. We hadn't thought of it but when Sergei got up on a ladder and waved around a plank, we saw his vision and agreed wholeheartedly with it!


Andreas has been buggging Marat to get the crap out of the backyard, so Igor was hauling away this stuff. There was also a dirt pile that was left from excavation that was actually in the way, so for a couple of days one of Marat's random mexican workers was there with a jackhammer (it was frozen solid).


Here is the future location of the master bedroom fireplace - there is the gas pipe! (Behind it the master bath)



Master Shower


Finally the 2 side windows over the stairs!


Ducts boxed up in the basement guest room, and this little guy is the future location of my stove!

A chilled out Saturday morning

Saturday December 8, 2007

We need measure the kitchen space a little more accurately, now that ducts have been boxed in. We take some time Saturday morning, around 10:00am, thinking we would have at least a couple of hours to figure this out.

Since it *is* winter and all, I dig out my toque and ski jacket along with a measureing tape in anticipation of standing around a drafty house. We also brought along some empty cardboard boxes to place around like cabinets. I am really a visual-type so having actual items in place is good for me to design a kitchen.

We arrive, it's quite chilly and isn't there an large pile of lumber right in the kitchen. No worries though, with a little moving around it became the base of the bottom cabinets! Half-way through the lumber- shifting, who should show up but Sergei, the carpenter. He looked a little possesive, seeing as we were moving the wood pile, but was ok when we explained we would make sure it was all laid flat when we were done. We also saw that one of the upstairs bathtubs is installed, yay!

Done being the operative word...I did have a theatre tickets for a matinee show that afternoon and not two minutes after Sergei arrives did he drag us around the house pointing at things and asking opinions. Of course, never an issue since this is our house and all, but then when Slava the plumber showed up soon after it was a free-for-all! Ok, maybe not quite but in the end it was a funny moment of the four of us standing in the master bathroom, weaving around tools, being asked in broken english if we want 'dis ting five eenches or seven eenches'. This loosely tranlates to a question on the spacing of the shower fixture handles.

Eventually we got to the boxes and the measuring, here are the pics of the future kitchen, ain't it grand?

That's the view from the living room, with the (future) island on the left




View from the family room, slight overhead shot


The view from the back sliding doors, stove on the left, island on the right


And,yes I am the dorky one who has to have a picture taken in the only tub in the house so far!

The stairs are here the stairs are here

Thursday December 6th

bzzzzz,bzzzzz, bzzzzzz my little crackberry messenger goes off while I am at my desk at the office.

"the stairs have arrived"

ooooooh I am SO exited about a set of stairs it's almost abnormal. I start saying out loud, to anyone who is within earshot "my stairs are here! this is SO exciting"

I practically skip over to the next set of cubicles to ask a question of someone, and of course tell them that my stairs have arrived! I am practically giddy for at least an hour until

bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz

'"'Sergei needs to know what size the kitchen bulkhead is"

oh damn, I was supposed to figure that out, wasn't I. I completely forgot. So for the next 20 minutes, Andreas and I exchange text messages about cabinets, floor to ceiling measurements, bulkheads while I surf the web looking for some standard dimensions and some specs on cabinets. Eventually I say "12 inches, but 11 or 10 would be good". Then he starts messaging back so I just pick up the phone and we have a big old conversation about bulkhead dimensions that I am sure the rest of the office is so interested to hear! I work in cubicleville so nothing is sacred.

I am still not sure I know what was decided on but hopefully it will work out ok in the end!

Now to box in the ducts

Tuesday, December 4th

Andreas has been at the house So much I think HE should be named the General Contractor!

I took a couple of hours this morning to go to the house with him to talk to Sergei about 'stuff'. Turns out the 'stuff' was all the framing to box around the duct work and pipes, etc. Also known as bulkheads.

Sergei is always asking the questions of 'how you want this' an Andreas' usual answers is 'I don't know, how would you do it?' men, no imagination

So I was glad to be there, and Sergei gave me a big grin when he saw I was there. That's always nice...even though it was freezing cold and we stood around a lot pointing at things and trying to figure out what he was saying, I think we decided a good numbner of things so he could work this week without waiting on us. I have to still come back with the kitchen details...you don't want to have the box too low and you also don't want it too high or you could end up with a weird gap above your cabinets that collects nothing but dust.

I also got the meet the plumber Slava finally (he looks a little like Borat in a fuzzy hat). He has less of a grasp on english but is a very nice man. We even had to run out to Home Depot to get some plumbing bits (tub drain units). Andreas wonders why Slava doesn't buy them and he tries to explain they can be $20 - $150 and I nod as I know this but Andreas doesn't agree, until we go to buy it! You can get the everyday piece for $20, which we have at the crackhouse and we'll use on the second tub here, however the master is all 'brushed nickel' and the everyday piece is chrome. On a somewhat cool note, the HD was all out of the expensive packages we wanted for the master bath but they had some ripped open boxes with only partial contents. Luckily for us, the week day staff at HD are not 16 years old and the guy said just take that one part because all we do it write it off as an incomplete set. Very cool.

We still have seen no sign of the duct guys, they are supposed to be fixing some outstanding things but then we heard the boss is having a baby so I think we can excuse the tardiness a little!

We had a little snow

Sunday December 2nd, 2007

Andreas and I popped by, as usual on the weekend...we had been working on the crackhouse & decidecd we better go over to this house - there was a significant amount of snow on the ground and we needed to shovel the sidewalk (city rules, otherwise you can be held responsible if anyone gets injured - yes, that would be the sidewalk that is city property...but I digress...).



We went inside first and discovered the snow had blown in, it was quite entertaining to see one's living room with a big snowdrift inside it!

Looking from front door in...as you can see there is still a hole where our dining room window used to be.



Looking towards the front of the house. We squeeze in and out of the gap between the door and the wall.



Here's the basement and me, acting silly, in the master bedroom.