Friday, March 28, 2008

First Truck Load Moved In!!

We decided to move our first truck load of 'goods' over to the house this evening....which meant that we had to first prepare the neighbour's yard for some destruction. We've been getting so much snow & rain over the last few weeks that the yard is very soggy, so Phil & our neighbour John, thought it would be a good idea to lay down some plywood for the truck to drive over to reduce the amount of damage we will incur over the next few days. Let's hope it works!

This is our temporary road....Phil had to give the truck lots of gas just to make it over the first little hump & the section of 'road' in front of the neighbour's deck is REALLY soggy - we will definately need to do some repair work there once this is all done. But we don't think the neighbour's will come out to the house until the weather is much nicer....May....??


Since it was rather late in the evening for us to even think of moving stuff over & Phil wanted to work on the plumbing in the house, he left the loading & unloading of this batch up to me. So, I made sure that my precious jams & craft stuff went into this load & went into a convenient storage space on the 2nd floor so that I have easy access to it when the time arises....

This is going to be an adventure - the ground may not cooperate with us for very long - the truck had troubles making it through the 'road' in front of the neighbour's deck & that's a bit of a tight turn for our beasty truck. I'm just hoping that there is no rain for the weekend & if we have to load up a couple of wheelbarrows a million times to get this move done...then that's the way we do things in Bamfield!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Kitchen Installation

Today is a big day for us - we are having the kitchen in the suite installed!! All that's missing is the counter top & appliances....
We got to Mark's bright & early - well, 9:00 am...We woke up to snow on the ground!!! What is up with this weather??? After we cleaned out the truck & put some wood down to protect the cabinets, we drove super-slow back to the house with Mark in the back making sure things didn't bounce around too much.




We then put it all into the suite space - here you can see that we painted the plywood floor. The colour is called Eagle Rock & it looks like a deep moss green/almost camo green.









The we had to make sure that the cabinets were spaced right for the area. Here was the test to see if the stain on the hickory cabinets would tie in with the yellow & the floor 'green'. I was so excited to see that it looks GREAT! We did notice that there is an electrical plug that is in the wrong spot...It's just to the right of the photo - it should be over the counter instead of behind the stove...So we will have to see if the electrician can cut into the drywall & move the plug. If he doesn't want to, we can deal with just covering it up & dealing with it later.

Mark took the rest of the afternoon to hang the cupboards & put in the base cabinets. We found out that our drywall has a nice 'wave' in it - not visible unless you are trying to attach something with a straight edge! But Mark is able to compensate for these minor boo-boo's.



At the end of the day, Mark has just a few things left to do tomorrow. We haven't picked our counter top - I felt it was important to see how the cabinets looked in the space before choosing either a counter too dark to too light. It takes 6 weeks for the counters to come in.....so we will install a temporary counter top make of some super-duper plywood and get it figured out sometime in April. Mark will also return to install the crown moulding.

This is what it looked like this morning - in-between snow showers & rain showers & fits of sunshine. Thankfully the snow is now melted, but it's still rather cold out! What's up with the weather????

Dude showed up today to work on putting in the glass panels for the front face of the decks. His job wasn't made any easier when his 'side-kick' went home early due to 'illness' & the frequent bursts of rain that blew right into the decks....

Glad I haven't started my gardening yet....

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Painting Pros! Part 2

I've added real colour to the suite now! After 2 rather long days, things are starting to look more & more like a home...I've now got to accessorize to tie things in....

On Wednesday (after a quick house-cleaning session for a neighbour) I broke open the Serengeti Song - yellow. It took me a long time to edge out the room & the wall with the 2 closets - and I was getting a little concerned that I had ended up picking 'School Bus Yellow' for a main room colour! At the end of the day, with the first coat on & drying, I could see that there were hints of lions in my paint....

Today, I had a large order on my plate. (I've got to work elsewhere on Friday, so I'm missing a whole day of work on the house!). I broke open the Pleasant Lake - blue - for the bathroom. Again, I was rather concerned that I had entered into a colour pallet that was going to be too dark - or just too much.






So, with one coat on, it's not looking too bad. I'll have to wait to see what happens when we put the toilet back together, add the sink unit (still not decided upon) & get the floor painted. I think that putting in some stunning red cedar trim & then using red & black as accents (such as towels & shower curtain) would make this a stunning bathroom.




Now on to the bedroom. This colour is supposed to be Barefoot Beach & with the grey primer underneath, the colour initially looked like poo....Hope this isn't a theme throughout the rest of the house! But after I got the first coat on & it had a chance to dry a bit, it started to look more green than brown. I like the colour, but I really hope that the 2nd coat brings back the brown! The furniture for this room is light wood - maybe a pine & with the dark floor paint, I hope to find some choice bamboo or sisal area mats & bamboo shades to tie it all in.

It's just so hard to see the colours - even with a spot light on the wall - the skies are dark & grey & full of rain. We've run into a cold spell, but I hope the sun starts to shine once again when we start hauling our boxes over!



Almost at the end of the day I decided to put on a 2nd coat of yellow - just to see if it would change the colour any. Can you see the difference? Probably not, it's the lighting....But at least the 2nd coat is on & we can get the kitchen installed (WHEN, MARK??) My goal for the weekend is to mop the floor - that should take all day! Then I can get some floor paint down & can get a truck load of boxes moved over!!

I've somehow got to convince Phil to install a door in-between the suite & the laundry room - this weekend! The drywaller should be back on Monday to finish the upstairs (only 2 more working days?) and I'd REALLY like to keep as much of that drywall dust out of the suite so that neither of us has problems breathing when we move in.

Oh, yes! It seems that we neglected to use blue board around the 'wet' area in the laundry area - specifically around the laundry tub. But I thought it in our best interests to put some bathroom paint around that wall - so it's now a bright blue! Adds a little bit of sparkle to an otherwise very white area! (At the end of yesterday I saw that Phil had poured some ceiling paint & made an attempt to get it done, but had to help the boys with the deck work, so I painted the ceiling like a mad woman - it will need a 2nd coat).

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Painting Pros!

Here are some more pictures of our painting adventure.

On Monday I opened the wall primer paint. It's tinted grey so that the darker shades - basically all my colours - will not need 3 to 5 coats. I'm hoping that this works as painting the same wall a multitude of times is exhausting!
This is the kitchen area in the suite.


The bathroom is all primed & ready for bathroom paint.

We've noticed how LARGE our bathrooms are - we will need to come up with a creative way to install storage to 'fill' the space.

Have you noticed that the grey has turned a rather nice shade of blue? In other lights, it looks a bit purple! This better not mess with the yellows I am using in the main room!

Today I got the laundry area walls all primed. I used the Navajo White primer & hopefully Phil will be able to do the ceiling tomorrow.



Mark, who is making our kitchen cabinets, said that I need to get primer & 1 coat of wall paint on the walls & a coat of floor paint under where the cabinets go before he can install the kitchen. So, I got down on my hands & knees & cleaned up that plywood in preparation for the floor paint. I'm going to need a bucket brigade & a handful of mops to clean up all the floors when the time comes to paint them! The floor is FILTHY! Plus, we need to go around & fill in all the holes.....

The floor under the stairs was also readied so that the hot water tank can be installed & moved out of the way. We still haven't figured out a door for this area - it's probably one of those custom jobbies we so dearly detest.






Now comes the scarey part - will the floor colour be the right one?! I brought in the paint chip to the paint department - things get a little complicated when you fall in love with a paint from another supplier....

We also had to switch floor paint because the colour I wanted would have come out very glossy. Not a good thing for stocking feet in regards to slippage.

Welcome to Eagle Rock floor paint.

Yes, it looks like poo......






Well, it looks MUCH better on the floor, but this is still a bit wet, so we shall see what it looks like tomorrow.










This is the kitchen area with the floor paint. I really wish the sun would shine so that the colours would show up better.

I forgot to take pictures of the stairs that have been going in....they look fabulous & just need some railings & some concrete blocks under the supports.

The glass panels for the deck have been found & delivered! I'm hoping that they also get put in sometime this week to finish up the decks!


Tomorrow I start with the wall colours.....

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Finally Some Photos!

Here are the most recent photos for you. We are now into the painting stage of things, so you might want to re-fresh yourself as to what colours we are using by check back to the post where I put in photos of my fabric & colour chips. (Date: January 30)

We cleaned out the suite so that we have room to paint & not worry about splattering paint on tools or the workers having to come in to get things. I'm going to make the suite an 'off limits' place as soon as the walls are primed & I'm ready for colour. This will allow us to start hauling our stuff over sooner & will hopefully keep it cleaner....


First thing, I had to clean up the drywall dust. Nasty job, but we've got a large shop vac & it does the trick real nice. The one thing about dry wall dust is that it cloggs up the shop vac filter very quickly. I was having to empty it out every 10 minutes! So I found someone in this town who actually had some nylon stockings in her drawer & we've put it over the filter. Neat little trick & will save us having to buy new filters!


Now the fun part! I'm working in a top-down fashion: ceilings first then walls & then floor. The ceilings are just getting a good heavy coat of primer tinted Navajo (Nava-hoe or Nava-joe?) White & it's a nice warm white colour. I found myself doing a little two-step dance with the roller on a long pole & it's tricky work. I'm glad that there isn't too much ceiling upstairs - I get a kink in my neck after staring up for a couple of hours. But it looks so good to have the ceilings painted!


Today I painted the storage area under the stairs & just did the whole thing in navajo white. The hot water tank will go in here as soon as I get the floor painted - tomorrow? It's hard to see how nice the colour is because it got really dark & grey early this afternoon. Once the sunshine returns & the rest of the walls have colour, you'll get to see what I'm talking about.


This is the ceiling in the main room. It was the first one I did & it's a large area to try to start off from. I have to go & put another coat on because by 4:30 yesterday, my eyes weren't working so well, the lighting was poor & I mis-applied the paint in the center of the room! It's the main living area so the ceiling has to look better than it does. Shouldn't take me too long to finish that up - tomorrow?

I haven't shown you photos of what has FINALLY been going on with the decks. There are a few things that HAVE to be done before we are 'legally' allowed to move in & one of them is stairs & railings on the deck. Well, the stairs might be done in time (yes, they have 2 more weeks, but don't hold your breath folks) & the glass for the front part of each deck is hiding somewhere in Port Alberni. Once the weather dries out & we can clear off the decks & clean them up, I'll show you how HUGE they are. I can't get over the size of the upper deck - now it is more enclosed....it feels even bigger!

You may also notice on the upper deck there are 2 posts on the front edge & 2 posts on the side that stick up about 8 feet. I'm putting in 2 more along the front, in about 4 feet towards the windows so that we can have a trellis built there - a bit of a sun block during the summer. The 2 on the side will have some sort of trellis on them too & I've got grand ideas for hanging baskets & huge climbing vines & other green, leafy things surrounding the house. Don't ask me to start explaining the gardens because I won't stop & I'll forget that I'm supposed to be painting the house! Just wait a little while longer.....

Anything Being Done?

I know it's been a while since the last posting - well 2 weeks isn't that long, but I'm sure most of you want to see new photos! That's a bit hard to do when NO WORK IS BEING DONE!

That's sort of where we were at for the last bit. The boys showed up off & on to work on the decks. The railings are almost done & the stairs are built only in my dreams. I really do have to take some photos because now that the upper deck has a railing - it really does feel HUGE! It's larger than most of the rooms in the house!

We drove into Port Alberni on Friday to buy all of the paint for the inside of the house. It was shipped to us via the Lady Rose on Saturday - no way we could have brought 400 lbs of paint home in the crappy car. Now it's all here! I've got my work cut out for me for the next 10 days or so.

The lower floor is 100% ready to paint. We moved all the junk out of the suite & I dusted & vaccuumed all the drywall dust (nasty job) & have started to prime the ceilings. I got the bathroom & the kitchen/living room done yesterday. Today I will go over to see what it looks like. I'm cheating on the ceilings. I got the primer tinted to my navajo white so that I need to only put on a primer coat for the ceilings (except the bathrooms - they will have another coat of proper bathroom paint). The colour is fabulous & I'm hoping that one coat is enough. I was so sore after only a few hours of doing my ceiling dance.

Yes, Yes - photos tell many more stories than I or you have time to write or read. Will be done & notices sent out!