It was so nice having Evan here.  We got some furniture(Brian's shelving) moved which gives us a pathway to boxes in the workshop.  Before all we could do is look from above and say "there it is in the far corner" and not be able to reach it.

Once the inspection is done today and if he passes it Brian can start setting up his media room in between us drywalling the main level, putting a closet system together and tiling.

It will be so nice to start the main floor because once the drywall is done we can put down flooring and start a serious design of the kitchen.  Most of our designs are fluid and we change once we see a space almost finished or we see a different product.

I had an interesting conversation with our builder yesterday about drywalling and when I mentioned that Brian and I are going to do the main floor his comment was "You can't do that honey it's too hard for you"  Really? I'm still mad about him billing us for 30 hours when we were not here to paint three rooms.  But they were not finished when we got back I had to finish them and he taped the ceilings and now I have to touch up the ceilings where the paint ripped off.
The lesson we are learning is never leave a contractor alone in your house.  They need supervision.

The laundry room floor was my project and the tiling went pretty well.  Grouting is also way easier than it looks.  I had fun doing the floor so now I will be doing more when it comes to tiling and grouting the bathrooms.

E/B

My laundry room floor.

Trying to uncover the vent.

Replacing the light fixture because of improper labelling on the boxes.

Shelving ready to be installed after the inspection.

The heating is in the floors so now they are ready to be tiled.

We are not tiling the walls so it should go quickly once we start.

We are back.

There has been so little progress I did not want to sound like I was whining by writing about things not getting done.

We were distracted for a while by the big move from our other home.  That took weeks of packing.  It was a very large house to get done.  Lucky we had some help.
It took the moving company three trips with a small 25 foot truck the last one was not very full but had things like lumber  in it.

Now we are back at it and have pretty much let our last guy go and will only call him if we need help.
We are looking to parcel out work now and not pay by the hour anymore.  Some of the big stuff is the siding and gutters which are better done when you have a crew doing it.  With supervision of course.

The floors upstairs are stained and finished but still taking quite a beating.  That should make them look old right.
There is just one light to replace upstairs and that should be done today so we hope to get the last electrical inspection for upstairs next week.

Brian and Evan are getting the bathrooms ready for tiling.  Why such overkill in bathrooms?  Remember when blue board was such a great big deal.  Now you need blue board and waterproof membrane as well.  You used to get away with doing a good tiling job to keep water from wrecking the place.  No matter we are doing both and heating the floors as well, nothing worse than cold tile floors in the winter.

We are making good progress but will slow down now and try to finish one job well and not have to re-work it.  The fireplace surround is in it's fourth re-build, we'll do it this time.

If anyone is looking to buy for a reno there is one web site I would encourage you to have a look at.
Build.com and Build.ca have great products and we have used them a lot.  Build.ca does not have as many products but is much cheaper than the american site.

Bathroom cabinets still in the master bedroom.

Tile material in the exercise room.

What will be the library with temporary furniture. Still no trim.

Media room with temporary furniture.

Where Brian and I cook and wash dishes.

This is all the prep space we have.

This will be the family room.  After three tries we still have not got the surround we want and there will be one more framing attempt to finish up the rough work for the fireplace.

This is still the main area for working, cooking, tool storage and such.  I can't wait till we can drywall this area and keep the mud out of the house.

The  floor in Brian's media room.  We are now waiting for trim to be made by a friend of Evans who lives here.   Interesting guy who collects major tools like women collect shoes.  Although none of my shoes cost 10,000.