Open sesame!

Click on the picture and experience the excitement of Olaf cutting the wall open between the kitchen and the dining room (and please excuse the plumber-butt!)

Cooking up a storm

Working part-time certainly has its advantages...Monday morning I emptied out the freezer and went over to my parents' place and did some cooking. Five hours later, I was ready to come home with waffles, mashed potatoes, sausages, macaroni, quiche, date squares and chicken curry. Not necessarily meant to be eaten in that order!

Wired!

Most of the weekend was spent planning out the electricity and then actually running the wiring. Here a weary-looking Tim can be seen comtemplating the possibility of an LCD TV.

When will the spending end?

Our credit cards are certainly sizzling after this week's purchases but hopefully most of the big expenditures have been take care of. Monday saw us ordering all our hardware from Lee Valley and we picked it up at the post office yesterday. Tuesday was Ikea for lighting. Wednesday was Coupal and Bois Franc Rive-Sud for wood. Part of it was so kindly picked up yesterday morning by Eric and then the rest got delivered this morning. Again, Eric was stellar and showed up around 7:30 this morning to help unload it.

Thursday we didn't spend any money as such but the plumber came to estimate the work to be done to move the gas pipe for the stove, move the plumbing, disconnect the kitchen radiator and we figured we'd go all out and might as well replace the remainder of the galvanized pipes in the basement. Youch! Quite a bit more than we expected but they've included coming back to connect the stove & sink and we hadn't planned on changing the galvanized. Westmount also requires that the drain pipes be copper so that added to the total too.

Weekend trip to the States

Tim took Friday off and we packed up the car in the pouring rain to go spend last weekend at my parents' cottage near Malone, NY. It is a somewhat yearly tradition to go down there to celebrate Stéphanie's birthday. We didn't get any skiing in this year though. Conditions were not favourable with the rain we had on Friday. We did go for a few long walks. And some of us tried a little snowshoeing on the way to High Falls (which you can view on Robbie's site - High Falls

We even gave everyone team sweaters for the event...we went down via Plattsburgh to go to Lowe's to buy our kitchen faucet then we went to browse at Old Navy. Tim was looking through a bargain rack and found a sporty top in men's size medium that he thought I might like. I did. I also like the price. $ 1.97! We then spotted another rack with many more of the same sweater, in various sizes. So we had the bright idea of buying one for all our friends who would be there for the weekend. They were a hit! We also found a zip up sweatshirt for the birthday girl at the ridiculous price of $ 0.97! And the salesguys at the cash didn't even bat an eye when we piled 13 sweaters on the counter!

Reno progress

Last week was quiet on the kitchen front. We did a little mudding but that was about it. More time was spent making a sign for my dad and Tim also designed an e-ticket for Cirque du Soleil.

We got final approval for our building permit with the conditions of installing an integrated AC/DC smoke detection system and obtaining a plumbing permit. We think the existing smoke detector installed upstairs with the alarm system should do though. But I still haven't put the permit in the window for all the nosy neighbours to see!

Sweep!

France, Dave, Eric & Tim played in a skins format bonspiel on the weekend at Mount Bruno where Eric is a member.
They didn't win but they sure were entertaining. Cathy & I are convinced they were trying to provide us with comic relief with all the tripping & slipping that was going on!
Mingo, the pink flamingo mascot, unfortunately, did not bring them luck this time...but we all had fun. (I think?!)

Sanitation engineering

We have come to the conclusion that we musn't have the same garbagemen on Mondays & Thursdays. We much prefer the Thursday crew...they actually pick up the bins with the long pieces of wood with protuding nails and the rather weighty boxes filled with chunks of plaster disguised as computer servers.

Today we should actually obtain our building permit. I love how they make you go through this whole process of applying for it and submtting plans and descriptions of the work and you don't even know if everything is accepted but they'll certainly cash your cheque to pay for the darn thing. Now all our nosy neighbours can officially know we are doing work on the house.

The floor scraping should be done today.

Dreams

Do you ever wake up in the morning and remember a dream and have it set your mood for the day or change the way you think of somebody?
I'm not good at retelling dreams as vividly as someone like Stéphanie so I won't try and describe what I dreamt about last night that brought this thought on but I do recount dreams rather well in my head sometimes.
And then I can't stop thinking about it. That is until the ADD kicks in and I move on to something else and then to something else and then to...!!!

My biggest muscle

Who knew you could get sore glutes from scraping a floor?!

Hardwood it shall be

After looking at our options for what to do for the kitchen floor, we had pretty much decided we would do laminate floating floor in a maple finish but upon ripping up the ugliness that was the linoleum and Armstrong tile underneath, we discovered hardwood in pretty good condition. It would be a shame to rip it up so Paul and I had the pleasure of scraping it down yesterday to uncover the beauty! Very labour intensive but definitely worth it. I get excited about how beautiful it will be everytime I step in the kitchen!

Jouni and Tim had the easier job of putting up plywood and drywall

Safety first

I decided with all the nails strewn about and the possibility of dropping heavy pieces of wood on my toes not being a pleasant experience, it would be best if I invested in a pair of safety shoes. So I headed off to L'Equipeur and found a pair of shoes in my size worth $109 discounted down to $30, score! And Caroline's family discount card was still accepted so that was another 20% off, bonus! Now if only my safety glasses would stop fogging up.

New basement door

Our access to the basement has now been moved with help from Eric and Jouni. We blocked off the doorway in the kitchen and made a hole from the hallway instead. It took some getting used to but is much more convenient!

More power to ya!

We acquired yet another power tool (will it ever end?!) We are now the proud owners of a high performance 18 gauge finish nailer. Unfortunately, it is not yellow. Yellow tools are apparently way cooler...

New appliances

We braved the pouring rain on Saturday the 14th and headed over to Sears Décor on the Shore to purchase our kitchen appliances. After doing some comparison shopping we found them to have the best prices (that is after getting an extra $10 off on the range as Corbeil had it cheaper and they do a price match thing.)
So we now have a new range, a FULL size dishwasher and a microwave/range hood.

The venue has moved back to Bishop St.

Pub night happened as regularly scheduled, the second Friday of the month, but we've decided to meet downtown again instead. Better service, better music and we can even walk home. But Ms. Organizer was absent this month...Better not make a habit of it!

Entschuldigung, mate?

Should the OLF be advised?!

And so it begins

The destruction has commenced!

Blood donation failure

I went and gave blood for the 44th time on Tuesday but I couldn't fill the bag. It stopped flowing before they had enough of my life juices to be able to use it. :(
But I do have quite an impressive bruise on my arm from the nurse playing around with the needle. I guess next time I will stick to the right arm as it seems to flow a bit better from that side.

Did the Earth move for you too?

Apparently we had 2 earthquakes this week. Well I didn't consciously feel either one. Monday morning's was at 10:30am so I probably though it was just a train going by. I guess I must have felt the one on Tuesday cos I did wake up around 4:30 and asked myself why the heck I was waking up at such an ungodly hour.