It was such a warm day that it was a shame we had to work inside so much.
Although it was something the siding guys are happy with.  Their progress is still a little slow but Ely is pretty much mentoring these young guys.  He has to show them how to do everything so his time is spent teaching and not installing siding.
He will bring in another guy on Monday who is more skilled so it should move quickly then.  Still getting a lot of positive comments from the neighbours which makes Brian really happy with his choice.  I thought the trim might be too dark but it looks good.

Two more coats of varnish on the floor with one more to go before we are through.  It will have plenty of time to sit before the appliances arrive on Monday.  I guess we should make a path through all the wood in the garage for the delivery.

I think we will take a few days to visit with friends who are coming down and relax a little.
Because Monday we still have a few bathroom items to take care of, like installing a toilet and sink.
E/B

Second coat of varnish.

Still needing that third coat.

Looking to the door into the garage.

Third coat of varnish.

Getting the shine I want.

Brian being a good neighbour and sweeping up the dirt left by Drew.

This is as high as they will go up the wall and we will but up a  frieze board later.  It was what the old house had with crown moulding.

Today was another day without too many trials and tribulations so it is a good day.

The guys are moving along quite quickly with the siding but there are a lot of little cuts around the windows and doors.  It should be much faster once they are at the side of the house.

Bill and I stained the family room floor but we had to sand it first since the mop I used to damp mop it must have had some wax residue on it so it left marks on the floor where the stain went in deeper in some spots.
Bills first response was to rent the sander again and redo the whole floor.  I would not allow that so we just hand sanded it and carried on.  The thought of the mess and another full day lost was way to much for me and in the end it worked out really well.
Bill and I also carried a toilet up from the shed so it can be installed soon.  It just about killed me though it was so heavy and awkward to carry.
The town showed up to fill in the holes at the street and boats were going by as well.  With all cars we have with our trades it was a busy congested street.

E/B

My side walk after they filled in the dirt.

Looking good.

It was nice to have a coffee break and watch the boats go by.

More mess with another drywall job.  The ceiling in the old dining room.

I did not need a gym today.  I had a real workout laying bricks in the front yard.  They look awful but since it is temporary and before today it was only half a pathway with bricks and half with mud it is better than what was there and Mom and the kids should be able to get to the door without tripping.

The sanding took the full day again.  I did manage to get it vacuumed and wiped down for staining tomorrow.  It is too dark in the room to do it at night.  None of the lights are installed yet.
I could not wait to test my new mixture so did the pantry tonight and I am really happy with the new mix.

Siding guys had a hell of a time changing the roofline at the side of the garage.  Brian did not like the straight edge that was put on so he had them do a cottage end.  That meant sawing through concrete to put that end on.  Lucky the guy doing it was on scaffolding because his saw caught some steel in the wall and he was lucky to stay on the scaffold.  That was a full day job just the concrete.

As they are doing the siding they have discovered the windows are not level so the top of a board is two inches under one window but level with the other.  What can you do?  Not much so it will have to go on anyway.

E/B

More work than anyone thought it needed.

It is a puzzle alright Ely.

Yellow house with dark trim.  Neighbours stopped by to say how much they like it and much improved the house will look.

This was a very productive day.  It seems like we are finally getting ahead of the mess and are claiming more of the house as clean living space and not workrooms.
To have the floor in the kitchen done will make it all living space.  I am happy.
The floor sanding is almost finished so I can start staining tomorrow afternoon.

Today I finished grouting the main bath and had hoped with a white grout in it would look okay but that is not the case at all.  We will live with it for now but it will have to change.

Drew was in to put gravel around the back of the house where the clay was the worst.  He and Brian decided there will be very little landscaping for the rest of the year and we will continue in the spring.
Whatever dudes.
It was a shame that Drew was using the street because it is now a muddy mess so we will end up with a lot of dust again.  There is also no rain for the next while to wash the muck away.  If we could find the power washer we could clean it.

There should not be as much of this when we leave the sunroom for the backyard.

Four truck loads of gravel.

This will be patio someday.

I guess we will not get the hill levelled this year, sigh.

Look at the mess it is a lot worse now.

AHH!  Monday!

It's not like we took Sunday off we worked all day on the floor.  It is not easy trying to find the right board because of all the lengths to choose from and different widths within the pile.
We would be trying to fit a board in and find there would be spaces because not all the boards are 9 and a 1/4 inches wide.  If a narrower one had already been nailed down we would go to the pile to find one to match.  It was actually kinda fun since I like puzzles anyway.

Today just the Duradec guys showed up.  We put the landscaping off till Wed. so the yard can dry a little before he tackles moving so much dirt.
Did not hear from the siding guys but we are hopeful they will show up this week.

Brian and I finished up most of the flooring although he has done some of the smaller stuff on his own while I try and clean up the mess from the tiling and when we sprayed on the primer downstairs.  Not smart spraying without taping the doorways to the rest of the house.
I have also been grouting the main bath and found out that the ready mixed grout is much harder to clean up than the Ultra Colour dry mix we have been using.  It may not look so bad in there when I am done.  Just don't look too closely.

E/B

Letting the glue set before putting it down.

All done and we have already had a coffee out there.

This deck is 16 by 25 feet and no real maintenance certainly no staining or rotting wood.

Just the edges then we can sand.

I'm hoping we can sand tomorrow afternoon.

We did get that rain the weather man said would happen.  Why did he have to be right today?????

It has not slowed us down too much but the roof will now happen on Monday as well as the landscaping and the siding crew showing up.  That will be a fun day but I don't mind since there is progress being made.

Dave the heating guy and his trainee Marshall showed today to install the boiler but after a few hours left because the boiler was broken in the box.  It can be fixed with a replacement part or boxed up and sent back.  I really don't want to try and send it back because it is so heavy and trying to get it out of the basement will be tough.  It took Brian and I a while to wrestle it into the house then I asked Bill if he could help Brian take it down the basement steps.  Yea for muscle when you need it.

Bathroom still in progress but we are short on tiles now and after calling the store found out it can take one to two weeks to get the tiles.  ARGHHH!
So now we work on the floor.

E/B

When we started.

Last night when we finished up for the day.

I have been squaring up the edges of the boards on the compound mitre saw.  They are mostly 14-16 feet long now we are into shorter ones which will be easier for me to swing around the garage.

Where they ended today while we wait for new tile.

Another day and another row of tiles.  It will take some time to finish these since we want to do it right this time.

Brian is busy sanding the roof outside so the Duradec can be applied.  It looks like rain tomorrow and tonight so it may not be until Monday.  It will be beautiful and smooth though.

I finished off the servants stairway so that is another job that will not have to be tackled for a while.  I do say this about the stairways but most of the drywall on those has problems, screws popping and holes between it and the baseboards.  So there will be a mess again I'm just hoping it will not be for  a long time.

Everyone should be on floor duty when lunch is over.  In preparation for that we moved the freezer to the basement  and I hope to convince Brian we can do without the stove and sink for a week or so.  It would make it easier to finish the room.
We'll see I'll talk to him at happy hour on the porch.

E/B

It's nice enough to stain and party on it.

This is a really hot deck.  It needs a sail or umbrella.

The end result of the holes from yesterday.

Two days and three rows of tiles on now. Notice the use of spacers that have stayed on.  Yes, we have insisted on that.

Another nice green stairway courtesy of the painter in the  house(me) 

A day without doing trim work is a good day in my book.  We seem to be at a point where it needs to wait for the siding guys to come before anymore can be done,YEA!!!..

Today I got the back stairs painted or the servants stairway that is.  I painted it the same green as the front stairs because I now have a gallon of that paint since the store made me that instead of a quart.
I guess because I asked for another colour in that size they thought I wanted both in that size.
It's okay I like green, really I do like green.  It makes me happy.

I also got the family room kitchen ready for floor.  Which means using the shop-vac on it since nothing else will clean the floor.  One thing I would do differently if I was going to build anything where you needed a sub-floor is I would buy any old off tint paint I could find and paint the subfloor.  It would be so nice when it came to keeping the place clean and the dust down. All you would have to do to clean it would be sweep and a quick mop and we're done.

Also Brian and I prepared the sunroom roof for the Duradec covering that will be installed on Sat. if there is no rain.

My other fun job was clean the tiles to prepare for grout in the main bath.  Just made me sad and mad at the same time.  There was mortar everywhere on the ceiling the walls and the tiles. And the tiles are just so bad.

E/B

Maybe we can start the flooring tomorrow.

It needs to be level and nothing sticking up.

When they took out the niches it turns out they were glued to the drywall in this bathroom.  See the bumps under the hole?  They have to be cut out and filled with a patch as well.

Ready for tile.  Wish us luck.

The siding has finally arrived!!!

It may not be the colour I want but we will see how it all looks when it goes up.

Ely stopped by to make sure all the work is done so he can go ahead next week.  He keeps losing crew to other jobs so has a hard time keeping up with all the work he has to do.
Brian will be sure to be around when they are working to make sure it is installed properly.  Once he sees how Ely works he may leave him alone but The County has taught us to be very careful with contractors.

We still have not opened it to see if we like the colour still.

I'd love to open just a corner but Brian does not want it to get wet.  Bad thing I guess.

All the bundles have to be in separate piles so they can pull different lengths when they need them. 

The master bathroom is still being ripped out and I am still depressed that it has turned out so badly the other one makes me sadder.

Ah thank god for wine.

E/B

Yesterday was spent doing more drywall work and preparing to paint yet again.

I will do that this afternoon while Brian gets other things done like finish the trim around the patio doors.

The news on the bathroom was not good.  Yesterday he ground the mortar off the backs of the tiles and today was going to be the removal of one wall and rebuild the rest to make them square and plum.
It turns out in the shower anyway that was why the tiles were not fitting properly.  Today the decision is that the walls are so off all the walls will be removed and we start from scratch.  All the money spent on waterproofing will be lost plus the cost of the mortar etc already used.
In the other bathroom there was no excuse for how it turned out.  Just a bunch of very bad decisions on his part and there is nothing else but ripping out the tiles and starting again.

At least the front stairs are done now and except for some trim work it is the most done of all the rooms.
I just painted them a lighter colour because the dark brown was too dangerous.

E/B

I had wanted red but it reads just as dark as brown.  Besides it would take too many coats to cover.

All these walls need to be torn out.  Crying right now.

Okay to the drama I have been talking about,

When we hired our dry-waller who is also a handy man of sorts we were told by his wife how picky he was when they were tiling their home.  I was taking so long because he was such a perfectionist.  Okay we say we need help with some tiling because Brian and I are consumed with trim right now.

His drywall work is the best you will find but he is not a whiz at tiling.
The first bathroom looked okay from the door but because he had the tile saw in there and it was really dirty I just looked in the door.  I guess I should have gone in to take a good look because what a mess.
Because he did not leave the spacers in and he tiled the height of a wall all with large tiles within a day they began to move and over the next day they are now pretty much ALL off plum.  Corners do not match and some have large grout lines while others almost no grout line. Also tiles stick out from the wall.
He also stacked the tiles on the back wall and put a brick pattern on the ends, REALLY?????  Also something you don't immediately see when you walk by.
In this bathroom we will put on some grout and use it for a while and in a year or so we will have to rip all the tiles off the wall and start over again.  It just cannot be saved.

The shower he started we had to get him to take all the tiles off the wall and we will have to scrape as much mortar off the walls as we can the re-level the walls and do it ourselves.  This one we got to in time.

It was not easy talking to him as he is a very large man who talks like he is a real tough guy but he was completely silent for the longest time.  He was very upset but we have spent too much time and energy on this for it not to be done right.

What you see when you just walk by.

But this is the end of the shower. a different pattern.

See how some of the grout lines are large some almost not there.

What a mess.

At least we can do it right later.

E/B

You still have to wait for the drama that has happened because today I want to talk about the drywall.
We have finally painted the main floor walls but cannot finish the drywall in places because there is venting that needs to go into the pantry and a bulk head over the coffee centre.  Soo.. that means some walls have to be finished later and that means more mess later on.
You would think it should be straight forward but nooo.

We have the patches ready for sanding then I can finish the paint job.  But wait a sec.  could it be that easy?  I don't think so because when I mixed the paint this time I really mixed it well because it is a 5 gallon pail.  Turns out that the colour is now different from the other walls.  I guess when it was used the last time it was not mixed well and it is a much lighter colour, or Home Hardware just mixed the wrong colour.
So now I have to repaint a few walls to get an even paint colour.  I think I'm going to get a drink now.

E/B

I painted the 2 by 4 frame around the fireplace just to feel better about the whole room.

There was not much repairing to do after it was primed.

A very noticeable colour change.

Just to pretty things up I also painted the basement stairs.