Hi guys,
Tuesday night after a long weekend, Leafs game is on – they just traded Franson and Santorelli today – and instead of giving it my attention I figured it’s time to post an update on what’s happening with the renovations.
With this past weekend being a long weekend, I was able to make some progress on a few things. On Friday night, my electrician, Rich, was still here when I got home from work, so we spent a bit of time talking about the renovation to the kitchen, the island configuration, etc. Unfortunately, the way the ceiling and rafters are configured, when I have the wall removed between the kitchen and living room, there will be a need to add 3 posts. Between the posts, I’ll position the island, but openings between the posts need to be about 36 inches to be to current building code. That pretty much dictates that the island is going to have to sit up against the two posts on the fridge side. I think that’ll be okay. Lowe’s was advertising 20% off this week, for the cabinets that I’d picked out for the island, so I ordered them. I also ordered a new exterior door for the ground (lower) floor. The door that is there now is not an entry door – it has no insulation value and really isn’t safe – so I took advantage of the $75 off sale for that, too. Those were delivered on Saturday morning.
Saturday morning was Valentine’s Day. Since I don’t officially have a Valentine, I swapped a few texts with some friends (and my crush) and then set about smashing down the wall between the kitchen and living room. Well, more specifically, opening up the wall. It was all cement/plaster over gypsum board, so lots of layers of mess and filth. I grabbed Stanley and started smashing away – including smashing one of my fingers and actuallly breaking the skin. I then had to bag up the mess and take it out to the garage. I’m really excited about how it’ll all look once it is taken down, because as of now it is already much brighter and sunnier… 
I am not excited, however, by how much garbage is in my garage right now!
On Sunday morning, Rich showed up to finish up some loose ends. He also insulated the exterior wall of the kitchen – a very welcome task seeing as the temperature dropped to -40 that day with the wind chill. It was crazy cold. I actually headed over to the US (Buffalo) with my good friends Theresa and Rob for the day. Rich is going to come back another day and finish up installing a GFL plug for the washer, a new plug for my dryer (there wasn’t one) and also drilling a hole through the back of the house for the dryer vent. I can’t WAIT to have a dryer. It’s been almost 2 months since I’ve been able to do anything except hang dry my clothes! Then, he’ll have to come up for the final stage – switching over to the all new electrical panel.
Next step, hopefully tomorrow, Jim will have to put up the vapour barrier on the exterior wall and then start installing the new tile on the floors. I’m really thrilled with the tile choice… you never know for 100% sure how it’ll look when you’re just standing in a hardware store trying to imagine it with all of your other choices, but this one has lots of colour variations that will go great with my slate appliances and with the hardwood floors. It’s going to look great.
After the tile, Jim will do the drywall and then it’ll be time to actually start installing the cabinets, at which time I can take final measurements and order the countertop. Jimmy has a contact for that, so I might go to a little guy, instead of going through Home Depot. Oh, speaking of the Depot… I ordered my light for over the island and it was delivered today.
I’m planning to paint a red accent wall in the dining room, so this will coordinate well.
Ok, that’s about it for now. Leafs are already down 3-1 in the 2nd and it doesn’t look like they’re going to recover. Terrible! Time to go an fold some laundry. More in a few days!