Help! So much stuff!

July 23rd, 2008

With a little help from family and friends, over the last couple of weekes we've managed to take some boxes from the piles...and make more piles other places.

Rediscovering your 'stuff' after almost a year with out it is both fun and a curse!

Thanks to Erin, Goodwill is that much richer!

Thanks to Donna, who sat diligently day after day on the basement and sorted Andreas' stuff from his things. There is still a long way to go but at least the office phone list from 1987 found it's way to the recycle bin. :)

This is what our dining room/living room looked like after Hurricane Erin came through


This stack is waiting until later (in the upstairs hall)

Donna amongst the boxes. Brave woman!

DIY Soapstone Part 2

July 19, 2008

While we wait for our granite on the kitchen island and other parts of the house, we tackle the soapstone that has been waiting in our garage since we picked it up.

The royal "we" of course, as I watched and offered opinions - as well as looked up the instructions for this type of thing.

Using the cutting skills of our carpenter friend Lewis and the tips from the soapstone people there are now two handsome pieces of soapstone fit to the counter on either side of the stove.

It looks harder than in these pictures and took several hours of careful measuring, remeasuring and adjusting before commiting to a cut. However it was well worth the effort. Next on the list is to sand and polish these two hunks of rock.

Not sure when that will get done but it's "on the list". Really it is.

Here is one of the slabs set up for cutting



Lewis and the saw - with a masonary blade.

Dry fit...looks pretty good!

Close up of the left side

Living like Gypsies

July 16th, 2008

Since the granite/soapstone counters are not installed yet we actually have no sinks either. We are laughing but with irriation as all the bathrooms have none of all the right things you need.

One bathroom has a toilet with bathtub for hands & teeth washing but cannot be used for showering. That one has no light so can only be used during daylight hours. One bathroom has toilet, lights, and mirror; no sink and the bathtub taps are really awkward to reach. It's shower is also out of commission. Another bathroom has a great shower, but no sink or mirror.

Needless to say, one of Andreas' first jobs was to install a temporary kitchen sink. It works well with the melamine shelving that is being put to use as counter top.

Our builder keeps asking when the counters will be ready (a couple of weeks) and then he rolls his eyes and shrugs "So you will live like gypsies for a while".

Lights! or maybe not

July 12th, 2008.

The first night was a laugh...with some of the electrical wonkyness we went to bed dead tired only to discover not a single light in the master bedroom worked. After 20 minutes of switching breakers on and off and yelling through two floors, Andreas had a flash of inspiration. He came upstairs, switched on the middle bedroom light switch (there is no actual light in there at the moment) and voila! the master pot lights were now functioning.

Thank goodness the electricians are here today!

Move-in Completed

Thursday July 10th, 2008...

New bed, more boxes...we sleep at the Estates tonight!

Here are some shots of the moving action..the truck, the workers, the boxes...

Move-in Stage I complete!

Tuesday July 8th, 2008

We paid movers this time to empty 2 storage lockers. They were really great, took care and are all very personable even after the 10th hour. http://www.tendertouchmoving.com

Locker full

Getting there

Almost empty!
Elvis loading the truck


Wayne wrapping up a dresser

Truck being unloaded at the Estates

We still have a third locker plus the contents of the house where we live to move. Some of that will happen on Thursday.

Then Where Do We Put Everything??

This week at Elmsdale

June 30th - July 7th

Hardwood floors finished
Venthood installed over stove
Unpacking the dishwasher
We've got lights! Well, sort of.
Granite decisions reversed and now we added soapstone. DIY soapstone, that is.
Closet Organizers, Cleaning Ladies and Testing out the Tub

Clean? What you mean clean?

July 6, 2008

First I had to vacuum before the hardwood finishing, and now the builder tells me that 'no' he never cleans his houses for people to move in to. Grrrrrrrr. Andreas made a big stink about it on our behalf so we ended up with a $10/hr cleaning 'helper'. She was very nice and considering the control freak in me, it probably was for the better!

After we cleaned everything from top to bottom, I asked Andreas if it was possible to see the master bath tub in action. We purchased it way back in November and it's been installed since January! Although our electrical is not quite complete he did wire it up for me and we filled it up part way. It's very cool - you can't turn the bubbles on until the water is at an appropriate level, and it has that chromatherapy option. I was dying to try it out however, despite the warm summer day it was still just a little too cold to hop on in. We have not yet got a hot water tank.

Here I am watching the bubbles and the lights



One Toe Only! Note the temp of the water 63F or 17C - it may not sound cold, but it was!

Closet Organizing

Friday July 4, 2008

Lianne has been on a mission to find a closet organizer. After several pre-trips and then a whole afternoon at IKEA and Lowes, she finally came home with some pieces. Not the whole closet, but it's a start.



Here she is starting the install...with my help of course.



Then taking a break in the future location our bed.



The finished piece, 'custom fit' to the small bulkhead in the closet. There's another one to go on top.

DIY...Soapstone!

Thursday July 3, 2008

After much discussion, and seeing several articles on the ease of DIY installation we decided to swap out the granite beside the stove for soapstone! Not that it was hard, we haven't even ordered the granite yet. Soapstone is a softer stone, often used for carving. The soapstone for countertops actually comes from Brazil and is harder than that. It never needs to be sealed and

"Unlike granite, marble, quartz or man-made composite surfaces, a soapstone countertop is chemically neutral, which makes it non-porous and virtually impervious to all types of products that may stain other surfaces. There’s no need to worry about spilt wine, olive oil, Soya sauce or a myriad of other culprits that will permeate many natural stones commonly used for countertops."

It is also highly heat resistant (used for fireplaces, wood stoves, etc) which is the main reason I like it.

We ventured to places I've never been...Uxbridge area to a soapstone place. I had contacted a few to find out if they sell small slabs and this one was the only one who replied back, and the closest to us. They are wonderful people and were very patient with us. We went out to their stone yard and looked at a bunch of small slabs. The large slabs are just as big as a granite slab & they will not sell those to random DIY-ers. It's too dangerous.

The stone yard


Our piece in it's raw or natural state. It's called Classic Original and is actually not available any more as the supply has run out.



How it will look once we treat it with mineral oil



Loading it up into the car



So there we were, taking home our two new small slabs and were very excited! So excited that we figured, what the heck, we should be ordering our granite as well. Since we had sourced out the granite slab last week at a different importer, we knew from the fabricator that the price would change as we were not using his granite. This is to be expected so we went over to his shop with our new plan that now included soapstone! It wasn't going to work out price-wise although he did try very hard. We did a lot of discussion and after about 3 hours went a different route with the granite. Out with the Giallo Ornamentale and in with Ghiblee. The name is not as exotic sounding but here is a picture of the new kitchen island granite, and the soapstone will be opposite the island on either side of the stove. We did also order our bathroom vanities - so the master bath will be in Giallo Ornamentale - the fabricator's slab worked for that room - and the guest bath will have a white hanstone countertop (quartz).



Oh yes, DIY soapstone is about 1/3 the price of fabiricated soapstone & about 1/2 the price of fabricated granite. "Fabricated" means slab plus cutting, finishing & installation.

We have The Power!

July 3, 2008

The electrical inspection was done, we'd called Hydro who said they would issue a work order on the 2nd of July.

We called on the 2nd (Wednesday) specifically to ask them to put a rush on it. We weren't holding out much hope, though.

Imagine our surprise when we found we'd been hooked up on Thursday morning!

Now the fun starts...because we had one electrician run the wires, and another one actually connect everything there are lights in the kitchen that turn on at the panel only. There are also several outlets that don't work and we discovered that the switch for the under cabinet lights in the kitchen actually turns on the oven light! This is entertaining and not to worry, 'everything can be fixed.' The electricians will be back!

We also had the guy come in for the hot water tank 'pre-visit'. He visited alright and told us that we have non-optimal conditions and we could have someone drill the hole for the water tank vent at $250 additional cost. In our case, Andreas just said he would do it himself! And he did.

Dishwasher

July 2nd, 2008

Just a bunch of miscellaneous errands and house things. I brought over the sample of granite and also we unpacked the dishwasher. It was the end of the day at that point so we never go any further than unwrapping it!



...in the morning I had been checking some email and one click led to another and i found an article about soapstone. This is nothing new to me, I had always loved soapstone for a countertop ever since seeing it at a home show a few years ago.

When I looked into it for our kitchen countertop it was just far too expensive as well as being a dark stone may not have worked as well with our kitchen. The article I found, and showed to Andreas was about buying a small slab of soapstone and cutting it yourselves. We found a place that would supply just such a small piece and this got the wheels churning...

Canada Day at Elmsdale

July 01, 2008...no red and white, no fireworks...but there was beer. Cousin Jordan offered some assistance so of course we say yes and voila, the venthood is now installed!

Andreas getting set up to install


Lifting the venthood into place


Ta-da!


Lianne having a look at the waist-high weeds in the backyward...