Author: Mike

Remember when you were a kid, and you got some awesome toy, but you had to leave it at home when you went to school? That’s what today was like. After spending every day for the last two weeks at the church, it was very hard to be away all day, and not be able to watch everything progress.

That being said, it was also kind of cool to show up and see all the changes. After work we rushed home to grab some things, then straight to Fingal. Lake Excavating began working today, and it looks like they got a lot done. They dug out the old septic tank, as well as putting in the new one, and they started preparing the raised bed. Its going to change the look of the property quite a bit, but it should be worth it.

The guys from Construct 3 did more work on the bathroom. They took off the old shed door, and framed the roof extension. I’m excited to see this room come together.

By the time we got there, all the workers had gone, so we worked on prepping the dining room hall for the painting of the ceiling, which will be done with a sprayer. Leah’s brother Dan came by with some friends to drop of the sprayer and check out the place. He’s going to come back and help us get it working. Hopefully it makes quick work of the job.

After that Leah and I started working in the kitchen, getting an idea of what was there as far as dishes and what we might use or not. We managed to get a few boxes unpacked and put in place, but there is still quite a bit to go.

We also had our internet connection moved from the apartment to the church, so I got us setup with wifi. That way we can have some level of connectivity while in the building, which will be nice. I also used the wifi to have a “facetime” conversation with my parents back in Sudbury, and gave them a video tour of the place.

Today we are going to pick up more paint, and try to get some packing of the apartment done. We have two weeks before we have to be moved out, so we should be able to get everything done in the van, a little at a time.

Well here we are, the last day of our holidays. Two weeks sure flies by when you are in renovation mode. Tomorrow we head back to our 9 to 5’s, then straight back to the church to see what progress has been done.

Today it was just Leah and me, and we managed to get through a lot.

We started with a trip to the laundromat, as we are in dire need of clothes for work. Afterwards we headed to the church.

I started by taking down the lighting fixtures in the dining room area, getting ready to paint the ceiling and whiten it up. Afterwards I tried to tidy up a bit, moving things out of the room that didn’t need to be there.

Meanwhile, Leah was upstairs painting the doors in the office, and cleaning up the painters tape from the now completed paint job there.

After a quick break for lunch, we both worked downstairs, covering the windows and the wainscoting. We are going to be using a paint sprayer, so we don’t want any to go where it isn’t supposed to. That means covering up pretty much everything we don’t want to be white. It apparently makes the painting go much faster, but there is a lot more prep and cleanup.

Once we finished that up I went upstairs to survey the boxes, getting re-acquainted with our stuff that has been locked away in storage for the last six months. I’m glad I did. I found a Christmas gift I had gotten Leah in 2010, specifically for when we finally moved into the church. While Leah was still downstairs I assembled her gifts and placed them on the stage then went to get her. She’s pretty clever, and had a good idea as to what I was up to. She liked them just the same. It was nice to see something from what seems like a long time ago put into the place it was intended.

After that we locked up and headed back to the apartment. We will likely both have pretty long days at work tomorrow, and hopefully progress is fast at the church. They are starting on the septic system tomorrow, so maybe we can have our occupancy permit by the end of the week. Also, our internet is supposed to be getting hooked up, which means we will have some connectivity, other than holding our phones in the air hoping to catch a 3G signal.

 

 

Today was easily one of the busiest days for us so far. There aren’t many pictures, mostly because I was as busy as everybody else, and also because people don’t like to get their picture taken when they have been lifting boxes for several hours.

We picked up our 26 foot uhaul truck at 10 am and headed to city centre storage. We got there early enough that we were able to use one of the docks designed for uhaul trucks. The emptying of the storage unit went pretty quickly, considering how much was in there. The storage facility has been very well designed, with making moving easy in mind. Lots of carts, freight elevators and big loading docks.

With our three helpers, Lionel, Juanita and Jeff, we were able to get the whole thing emptied in about two and a half hours. A big improvement, as it took Leah and I several weeks to fill it using the minivan.

After we finished there we pulled the truck down the street to our apartment, so we could load a few of the difficult items in the remaining space on the truck. We got the kitchen table and chairs, the loveseat, and the bikes loaded in. We were all ready to head to Fingal, with a stop for lunch and gas on the way.

That’s when things stopped moving smoothly. When we tried to get the “EZ-Load” ramp back into the truck, we could not budge it. It seems that at some point, a plate designed to stop the ramp from coming off its track stopped being attached to the truck. We could see the holes where it went, but there was no plate to be found. If I had my tools handy it wouldn’t have been difficult to fix, but they were in Fingal. So we had to call the roadside assistance number. They told us it would be about an hour, so we decided it was time for lunch, and walked to a nearby diner.

Right after lunch we got a call that the mechanic was there and we eventually got the ramp back in, though it still doesn’t go all the way in, it was enough for us to continue our journey. Juanita and Lionel took the uhaul and Leah, Jeff and I took the van. After a quick stop to fuel up, we were there, only a few hours behind schedule.

The unloading experience was a little more exhausting, to say the least. As we don’t have completed rooms yet,almost everything went upstairs, into the pews to be organized later. That meant many trips up stairs with heavy boxes.

Did I mention how awesome our friends are? Cause they are.

We took many breaks, and it was very relaxing to sit on the front step telling stories and making jokes. It’s really starting to feel like home, and we can see many great gatherings in our future.

After we finished the last boxes, we chatted for a while then headed back to town to drop off the truck. We all stopped at Harvey’s for dinner, as we didn’t feel like we were dressed (or clean enough) to go for dinner at a more sit down establishment.

After dropping everyone at home, we went back to the apartment and crashed. We are heading back to the church today to do more sorting and painting, but as this is the last day of our holidays, we slept in a little – until 8:30. That’s what sleeping in is now. I am writing this post from a laundromat, as we also are in dire need of laundry before heading back to day-job-land tomorrow. Hopefully progress will continue as quickly as it has over the last few weeks, and we are able to complete phase two of the move as the month progresses.

Thanks again to Lionel, Juanita and Jeff, your help was invaluable, and we appreciate you working so hard.

Today was another day bustling with activity.

After a night of drying, Leah’s painted light fixtures look great! You can’t even tell they were painted. Especially when they are up on the walls and ceiling. I spent the morning re-installing them.

While I was up a ladder with my hands jammed in a bundle of wires, the electrical inspector came in. Luckily he wasn’t here to reprimand me for not wearing safety glasses. I took him through the rooms Peter had worked in and he gave it the green light. That means that they can start finishing the drywall! Based on how quick the framing went up, I’m excited to see how quickly the rooms start to look more like actual rooms.

We had some other visitors drop by today too. Tony and Dora, two members of the congregation of Fingal United Church stopped by to have a look at our progress, and Bridget, a friend of mine from work, stopped in too. It’s nice to have people call and ask if we are “home”.

The progress on the bathrooms continues. They framed the floor today, and roughed in the drains for our new tub and shower. It involved cutting into the existing concrete, which made a lot of dust. We are expecting the inspector tomorrow morning, once he signs off on it they can start putting up walls!

Leah and I continued working on the office, touching up the green paint in some blotchy spots, and Leah started on the trim. While she did that I took my bundle of 400 feet of network cable and started untangling. After that I straightened it out, using the ample space in the aisles upstairs for the task. I got them assembled into a 70 foot long bundle of four cables, and went to work fishing them through the holes the electrician helped me with. Leah finished most of the trim, and the two colours together look great!

The other big milestone today was the powering on of the second furnace. (our friend Jim calls them Furnii) With both furnaces up and running, the fine folks from COAD cleaned up and after a quick run though of the thermostats, said their goodbyes. I know I’ve already plugged this company, but if every company I dealt with was as good as them, life would be a lot smoother.

Leah and I finished the day with yet another trip to Rona to pick out out bathtub faucet, and get some white paint to do more trim and doors. We are looking forward to another busy day tomorrow, the last official day of our holidays. If you want your two weeks off to fly by, plan a renovation, it feels like I left my office 20 minutes ago. I’ll be hard to be at work next week thinking about all that is going on, as there is still A LOT left to do. Not to mention packing the apartment and moving all our stuff to the new place. Before August.

No problem.

 

On Wednesday we were back into the full swing of things.

The bathroom tear-out is in full swing, which is very cool to see. It’s too bad we will be back at work when it all comes together, but it will be neat to come to it at the end of the day and see how much got done. Today they tore out the wall separating the shed from, well, outside. It the bathroom was open concept before, I don’t know what to call it now. They also dug and poured the footings for the extended floor; that will hold our shower and tub.

We finally got to open the box for the tub today, and it was a relief to see that what we ordered was in the box, and man does it look big and comfy. I am tempted to fill it with a hose, if not for the aforementioned privacy issues in the current bathroom. We also went to Rona and picked up our shower today. It was a stock item, but it comes in two parts, the glass and the base. Somehow they were out of stock of the base at the first store, but they had the glass. The store across town had the base, but no glass. So another 45 minutes to go there and get the complete set.

On the furnace front, Dave and Philip got the sheet metal pretty much ready for the cold air returns in our livingroom and bedroom, as well as piping heat and a/c to the new bathrooms. With all this fancy furnace tech, there is no way we are using baseboard heaters in there. The Coad guys were back to begin hooking up the second furnace, but we missed them while we were in town. There is a bit more for them to do Thursday, but everything looks good.

I had to make a run to my old workplace, Superior Computers to get some ethernet cable as what I had wasn’t long enough. I got the lengths I needed measured out, but by the time I was done that, I was far too tired to attempt untangling the mess I created.

Leah, genius that she is, spent some of the day spray painting the shiny gold light fixtures to a nice rubbed bronze finish. Bronze fixtures are often $40 to $60 more than the shiny gold, and a can of spray paint is much cheaper. We are going to let them dry overnight and see how they do.

All in all, a pretty productive day, even with the extra trip across town.

Sorry there haven’t been any updates in the last few days. We have been up at 7 every morning and at the church till 11 or 12 midnight. By the time we get back in range of technology, we have both been too wiped for posting.

Day 8 was a comparatively quiet day. There wasn’t a lot of new things started, but a lot of stuff in progress. Our electrician, Peter was back finishing his rough in for the inspection on Thursday. The guys from construct 3 started digging out the area for the bathroom expansion, and Dave completed more of the sheet metal work for the second furnace.

While all this was going on, Leah and I were working away in the office. We got two coats of our new color on the walls, and it is looking good. Peter also helped me fish a path for my network cables from the office to the living room.

Other than that, not too much to say about Tuesday. I mean, it is probably an enormous amount of work for a day, but we are living in extreme times here.

 

Mike here with another quick update.

Sunday, or day 6, was a day of rest of sorts. We had a family picnic on Leah’s side, and since we have missed it for a couple years due to being on tour, we figured we had to make the trip. It was a fun day on the shore of the St. Clair river. We had a great lunch, and played games and enjoyed sitting down for a change.

On Monday Day 7, it was back to the grind, so to speak. We were up early, loaded up some of the stuff from the apartment that we needed to take with us, and stopped off to pick up some of our helpers for the day. We got some coffee and hit the road.

When we arrived we were greeted by our electrician, our crew from Construct 3, and our sheet metal worker, already plugging away. We also received a big delivery of drywall. Shortly after two more helpers arrived.

A lot of stuff got done today. The guys from Construct 3 broke through the main bathroom wall into the shed area. That whole wall will be pushed back a few feet, and they started digging the footings for that too. While they were digging they found an old pile of coal that must have been spilled when the place was still heated by a coal furnace. You can see the door they shoveled it in from in side the shed. The men’s bathroom is now a more open air experience if the shed door is open. It kind of feels like a TV studio, with the fourth wall removed when you look at it from the other side.

After lunch, they started hanging the drywall inside. It is amazing how quickly these rooms are taking shape, I can almost see pictures hanging on them!

Our electrician, Peter, met with us and went over our plans. After checking out the existing building we came up with some solutions to challenges and he started mounting electrical boxes and running wire. As easy as the steel studs look to put up, they must be a pain for electricians. He was running BX shielded cable (the stuff with the steel casing over it) and it makes one heck of a racket when it gets pulled through.

Dave managed to get the second furnace in place and most of the sheet metal ready for them to complete its installation on Wednesday!

Meanwhile our friends Lionel, Juan, Jen and Paul helped us by priming the upstairs office and most of the west entryway. Leah and I played a supervisory role, as we often had to go and answer questions form the different crews working.

At one point in the afternoon I discovered that there was a full unopened can of coffee and decided to try and make a pot. It appears the drip coffee machine was just there for decoration, even though the light lit up, not much else happened. We decided to try the big aluminium coffee maker they use for social functions, but we don’t seem to have the knack for that one, and the coffee came out undrinkable.

Even though we didn’t get a lot of paint put down ourselves today (we will tomorrow!), we are both pretty wiped. Hopefully this will be a busy week, as we are back to work next Monday, and will have to fit the remaining renovations into our daily work schedules!

P.S. Thanks again to our friends who came out to help us paint today! For those of you wanting to come and help, there is A LOT of wall to go around! 😉

 

 

 

 

 

Today was a comparatively quiet (and cooler) day in our new home. Being Saturday, all the contractors were hopefully getting a much deserved break, so it was just Leah and I.

We got up early, and started tidying up the space, moved some stacks of tables and chairs out of the way, and started taping all the trim. I took down some of the wall lights, and did some “electrical” work, essentially tracing a wire though the old walls to make sure we didn’t need it.

Once that was done it was lunch time. Leah asked me what I would like for lunch and I suggested sandwiches. Even in a kitchen that big, your choices are limited when the only food in the place is bread, lunch meat and mr. freezees.

After lunch we put our giant drum of primer in the middle of the floor and tried to figure out how to get it from the pail into our trays, without accidentally priming the hardwood floor.

Leah made her way across the room doing the edges and I used the roller. We got about halfway done the room before we decided to call it quits and head into town to pick up our paint and some extra supplies. And non sandwich food.

Even though it is just a first coat of primer, not even paint, it is making a huge difference in the room. I am excited to see what happens to the space when we get some of our colours up there!

We will likely do more prepping, painting next week. It will be a bit more challenging as we have the electrician coming Monday, and at some point a new septic bed has to be installed outside, in addition to the drywall, west furnace and getting the fireplace assembled.

There is something else, too. What was it again? Oh right, we just have to move into the building. Before the end of the month. Wheee!

Mike and Leah here. Writing a post from our temporary living room in our new home. One of the challenges we didn’t think of was the fact that in a triple brick building, our iPhones (which we use now exclusively in lieu of a land line) lose at least two bars of reception. it often cuts out for an hour at a time, missing calls from people like the building inspector. We will have to find a solution to this.

Today was another e-a-r-l-y morning. I drove today, a morning rarity. We were the first to arrive and were happy to see the east furnace comfortably nestled in its new home beside the ovens.

We also noticed that it was hotter and more humid than a sauna when we got out of the van, at 7:45AM. Another humidex advisory day ahead. Luckily, Rob, one of the contractors had brought an industrial floor drying fan. Very effective at moving air around. Many cans of pop and jumbo freezees were consumed today.

Even with all the heat, much was accomplished. (there are pictures, but they are on my camera, and until I have proper Internet access, I can’t make them go from there to here. Trust me. It’s very technical)

The fireplace guys from Elmira stoveworks arrived with our new fireplace. It is gonna look
good, however the humor of the fireplace getting installed on the hottest day of construction is not lost on us. It is a very unique gas fireplace, that reminds me of something you would see in an old Victorian home. We also found light fixtures that matched the design for the living room. The firebox is in place, but the drywall needs to go up before the mantel and hearth (we own a hearth!).

When Terry, one of the pipe fitters with COAD arrived, he excitedly showed us a valve manifold he built last night to control all the different gas appliances. He’s pretty good at what he does. It was a work of art.

With the manifold in place, gas lines were run to all the appropriate places, and we can really see things coming together.

After a nice relaxing lunch, Ed ( another of the contractors from COAD) walked by and said “hot waters on.” Leah and I looked at each other and ran to a sink to try it out.

With the outside area clear of trees, we got to see the air conditioning unit get put in place, and it looks great.

Whats even better is the feeling of the first burst of cold air from the registers. (yay, a thousand times, yay). Ed showed us how to work our new fancy thermostat, and we walked around to check all the registers. Did I mention that there was cold air coming out of the registers?!

Did I mention how awesome COAD is?!

So that’s the east furnace/air conditioner in place and working. They are coming back next week to get the west furnace working.

After they left Leah and I took a drive to St. Thomas to check out the home hardware store, and grab some dinner.

When we pulled into the driveway we saw a big red cardinal at the new bird feeder.

We aren’t exactly sure how to use our ovens yet, but the food was hot, so thats progress.

Into the evening, we finally got to spend some time here without lights. It’s way dark. And very quiet. But it was,very cool to be in the space, with the bare framed walls and sleeping construction tools.

Tomorrow will be Leah and my first day alone with the place (unless we can convince anybody to help paint, nudge nudge, wink wink).

Stay tuned for pictures. We may put them up in their own gallery, but we will figure that out when we have some time.

Update: now that we are back at the apartment with proper internet, here are some pics from Friday:

Mike here, with updates on our progress for days 2 and 3 of our little project.

Wednesday our construction contractors started, in addition to the fine folks from Coad Heating being there. They began framing the walls for our living room and bedrooms. We are using metal studs and it is amazing how quick those go up. My little injury from day one was acting up so I had to duck away to rest my eye, and when I came back downstairs you could clearly see how everything was going to be. It’s amazing to see the ideas we have been putting on paper for months fleshed out and coming together before our eyes.

 

Although we didn’t see any more bats, we did have one critter invasion, of a sort. After a quick run into town to pick up some eye-injury-relief medicine, we returned to a very amused construction crew. “Do you have a dog?” they asked. When we responded in the negative, they told us “You do now!”

It seems that in our absence, a very friendly old dog wandered into our yard and decided to check on the progress. Then he took a 4 hour nap in the kitchen. We figure he was afraid of the thunder and lightning that was happening. We tried to get him to go to the door but he was not having it, so we gave him some water and let him be. After the storm died down I lured him to the door with a slice of lunch meat. Once I got him close enough to the door that he could see the storm was over, he just trotted off home.

I prefer dogs to bats.

Thursday started with me opening my eyes and being happy for the simple things, like being able to open my eyes. Just as the doctor said, after two days, it is feeling much better.

Construction wise, we saw more framing put up (our closet is gonna be awesome!), including the framing for our fireplace! It should arrive Friday, and we are very excited. Some of the inner walls also got removed for the bathroom renovation. Leah and I did some work in the office area, and are getting ready to prime and paint in areas that aren’t being heavily worked on. We also cleared some brush for the air conditioning units.

The heating installation continues on track. Gas lines have been run, and our fancy new on-demand water heater is in place. It sounds like they will be able to get one of the units up and running Friday, and based on how hot it is, everybody is looking forward to it!

No unexpected visits from the animal kingdom today. And no injuries either!

It’s cool to watch these guys work. The place feels so busy it is going to be weird when it’s all done and it’s just Leah, me and any random animals that wander by. We will have to have lots of friends and family visit to make it seem right!

We knocked off a bit early, as our good friend Karyn Ellis was playing a house concert in town, and we needed some good ol’ music-recharge therapy! Well worth it!

 

Tomorrows gonna be another hot one, and we will be up early to get as much done as we can. Stay tuned!!