Catching Up

It's amazing how much can change in the 6 weeks since we last posted. We lived with Marc's parents for about a month of that. But it was such a long commute (don't get me started on Montreal traffic...) with extremely early mornings and late nights, I'm just glad we survived it!

The next few blog posts will be postdated to try and give a sense of the timing of the highs and lows over the past few weeks.

And here's a few pics to show some of the progress over this Xmas/New Year holiday period.


Marc's brother is helping out with the drywall. He also helped put rebar on the walls (which gives Marc the willies coz he got a major cut on his finger handling the stuff) and ceilings, along with plastic sheeting in preparation for the insulation to be pumped there.



In the kitchen, we added all the cupboard doors, plus installed the drawers, so now everything is unpacked and in its place.




That last cupboard on the right is actually planned to be at 90° to make a bar area, but I'm quite liking the openness of the kitchen as is, so we'll see.





Marc finishing off the waterproof drywall and concrete

Xmas Cancelled

We've been working round the clock (but keeping to the official construction hours for the noisy stuff, to not P.O. neighbours/tenants unnecessarily) to be able to accommodate my sister and her family for Christmas. They were supposed to arrive in Montreal on Tuesday, but 2 cancelled flights later and no prospects of getting here until after xmas, we'll just have to try for another year :( This is due to Heathrow not being able to clear a few centimeters of snow in a week.

Despite the major disappointment here, we've had a really lovely xmas day with Marc's family. There were 12 of us for Xmas dejeun-ouper - my attempt at french for a lunch/supper meal :) But I'd bought a turkey big enough for at least 17, so lots of lovely leftover meals (brown rice turkey casserole and turkey lasagna). The huge dining table that I bought (I put delivery off until just a few days ago) fit everybody nicely around it, and I even had an extra section left over. I've not decided on dining room chairs yet, so we have cheap folding ones in black and white (from Ikea - quel surprise)!

Plus it's good we've had the pressure of visitors coming for Christmas, because it means that we've made a huge amount of progress that I'm sure would not have taken place otherwise! When we sat down for the turkey, I was so happy that Marc's children had been able to stay the night, and that I could actually cook the meal (with all the trimmings) and serve it on the best china (thank you, Grandad).


Gratuitous doggie shot to cheer me up

I can smell the pizza

The kitchen was delivered on Nov 27, but we've only be able to start putting it together the last week or so. The gas man was here a couple of days ago and hooked up our new stove, and the first thing I cooked in the oven was, naturally, pizza. Yum!

Last week Marc sent a pic to my sister of our kitchen with just the sink and tap hooked up. She was a little bit freaked out at how much we still need to do before their arrival. We've now got all the cupboards made (had to return one because it was the wrong colour) and the countertop on (it's a temporary one - but it looks pretty good and only about $5 more than the cost of plywood). I can't wait until we fix up the plumbing on the floor above so we can move that ugly pipe...


In Progress


Getting there


Not too far off

Of course, we're going to need to do something about the floor to level it before we finish that and can add the plinth to the bottom of the cupboards... then there's all the finishing pieces and backsplash... It would have been nice to properly finish the walls and level the floor before we added the kitchen, but we need to get this damn thing operational for Xmas. We're also planning on moving one of the cupboards to make a bar area, but I rather like it open as it is. So we'll see.

Home again!

After about 4 weeks with Marc's parents, we finally moved home today and I christened the bath. Yes, we have the ability to clean ourselves! We don't have a shower just yet, but that will come tomorrow when the plumber hooks it up.

It is soooo good to be able to get to work under my own steam (and just the metro), the commute had been sapping our energy dry.


Family Bathroom - before the shower


Family Bathroom - after the concrete has been covered with special blue waterproof coating and the shower has been installed (plastic added temporarily with red tape to make the shower usable until we have tiles).


Ground floor bathroom - getting there


Ground floor shower

I can see clearly now...

...the snow has come. And we have windows!

It's taken a couple of days to get them installed (and there's some finishing touches that can only be done in the spring) but we now have lots of natural light!


BEFORE


AFTER

And a few of the other windows:

Other kitchen window


Front right bedroom


Our bedroom - overlooking English courtyard


Basement patio doors and side window

Wet and Wild

Do you remember a couple of posts ago when I mentioned the issue with the lack of delta membrane in part of the basement?  So it got "fixed"; a special team came and injected some epoxy (or something like that) into the rock vein where there was no membrane. This would have probably been fine for average amounts of water, but a week or so later there was record rainfall in the region.

To be honest, if we had to run into this problem, we are extremely lucky that the weird weather happened when it did. We lost a mattress that had been against the wall where the water came in. Plus the drywall which Marc had just finished putting up in the front bedroom was ruined. Fabulous.




After mopping the floor

The basement team came back again and finally put the delta membrane around the rest of the basement area. Not a moment too soon.

Warm and cozy... almost

I was talking with my niece, and she said as long as the house was warm for Christmas, she could handle anything! So the long anticipated day finally came to turn the heat on in the basement. Room by room the underfloor pipes pressured up nicely. But then the front bedroom with all the pipes in the corner wouldn't cooperate. Thoughts of having to destroy our concrete floor came to mind... and we did have to break it in one area.



I have no idea how the plumbing/gas guys knew where the pipe was punctured, but I'm really glad they found it quickly, plus it was in the corner.

Of course, this was never supposed to happen because the concrete is supposed to be ~4 inches thick everywhere. But in this corner with all the sewage pipes etc, the rock had not been cut very effectively and so the framing screws punctured the pipe. Grrrrrr... You can see how thin the concrete is in the picture. We'll need to ask JF to come back and patch things up (and guarantee that the concrete really is the thickness required).

After the excitement of all this, we now have a wonderfully heated basement which also helps heat the rest of the house (although don't worry - we've got heaters on the ground floor too).