Days 1 to 5

It has been a bit boring to watch so far with little to show. It is all very important for sure, but not much to post about. So after 5 days, I think I've finally a story or two to tell.

First came the arrival of our hardwood, which has to sit in our house to acclimatize to the conditions. Not sure how though - we have had everything from frost, to hail, to severe thunderstorms, to Humidex values into the mid 30's - all within one week.

 

And they brought in lots of tools and equipment....

First they began setting up temporary lighting because during those thunderstorms, it got pretty dark without any lights! This one is in front our our greenhouse window in our kitchen.

 

And this is our dining room chandelier - do you like it?

They've added the boxes for our pot lights.

They've done quite a bit of re-routing of plumbing, sometimes needing changes to the joists and things holding up our upstairs floor!

 

 They had to reroute a cold air return from the other side of the wall we removed.

A lot of plumbing work as there was plumbing in the wall we took down. Unfortunately, a very large "outgoing" pipe went in that wall too. I gather it would have looked really bad running beside our breakfast bar so they are re-routing it to the other side of the dining room and will build a bulkhead.

The large copper pipe on the right is the bad one - now gone.

This black one is the new one - not yet fully strapped up - but it works!

The contractor assures me it will be "pretty" in the end.

 

They even had to open up Adam's bedroom wall to take out that bad boy...

 

And this is the basement end of it all coming back together in the middle of the house.

The capped line is waiting for the dishwasher hookup.

The line on the right from the kitchen.

The lines on the left from the upstairs bathroom and the sump pump.

 

To give us easier access and more cupboard room under the kitchen sink,

the P trap is now below our floor in the basement.

 

Below is the new bathtub P trap - at the correct height.
The old one was the culprit of a large leak turned mould that finally lead us to say "OK let's do the kitchen". For some reason (maybe with an old repair) the old P trap was actually in the way of the ceiling, so the ceiling bowed down to accommodate the P trap!!

 

Really no surprises so far (we knew about that P trap above).

Although we found a lot of old telephone cabling. Maybe it was on sale?

Now back to the saga of my main floor bathroom vanity. Recall (or scroll down again) that we couldn't get all the flooring out from under the cabinet? Well the contractors tried for a number of hours to get the sink and counter off without damaging it. He gave up and indicated that it may indeed break if he tried much harder. We gave him the go ahead even if it breaks - since we wanted all the flooring to be the same. So... it broke... and now we need a new bathroom vanity.

It even took out some wall board when he took out the sink.

 

And we found yet ANOTHER layer of flooring under the vanity.

Apparently this isn't the first time that cabinet and floor have been a problem. 

Eric's fabulous and creative cooking have kept the sanity in the house after one week of renovation. But since we have no subfloor, every bit of sawdust, wire bits, plastic chunks etc falls through the floor boards above and lands on our temporary kitchen in nice diagonal lines. So every night we vacuum our kitchen, then wash the surfaces we didn't cover so we can begin cooking dinner.

This picture also shows how they were working in our temporary kitchen (plumbing) and had to move stuff to get to the area they need. So sometimes we also have to move stuff we've already moved! The big white sheet in the back of the picture is how we keep most of our appliances clean. The other room (not below our kitchen) has a ceiling so we keep the food and dishes in there.

This WAS Adam's clean clothes, but he left ("forgot") them downstairs, so they got covered in dust and debris and we (the royal "we", read mom) had to wash them all over again.

Maddy might be having the toughest time with the renovations. She lives upstairs during the day. She was carried up and down the stairs while they were being refinished. She wasn't allowed on the main floor until all those nasty nails were gone. And now, this week, her MOST favourite ball (green, squeakywith white nubbins) rolled down an open heat vent.... GONE!

Eric put his cell phone down the pipe, pointed it down the long arm of the venting and took this photo. We tried vacuuming it. The contractors tried vacuuming it. It was just far enough that it was out of reach...

 

This is Maddy after our great contractors took apart the venting to save the day!

Thank you Josh and Dave!!