Serious Updating Going On

Well, I've had a good week of work at the house - in-between cleaning at other establishments & I've had to 'book' myself as my own housekeeper just to remember to clean my own house!! Too bad I can't afford to pay myself....

So, I'm taking some time today to update the blog proper, tell some stories & plan my next session of painting.

We are still without stairs up to the loft & that will be something the building inspector will write up as a issue in our quest to gain an occupancy permit (he doesn't know we've moved in just yet & we hope he doesn't come out for a few more weeks...)

The yellow cedar stair stringers are rather large - about 14 feet long & weight a 'million' pounds. We need to cut the 2nd one down to size & then plane them both really smooth & so they are the same size. Yesterday, Phil had a few hours off in the afternoon & we tackled the initial cutting of the 2nd stringer.

Phil - the jack-of-all-trades - has claimed that he can use any tool that we have in the house. So I watched. Here he's slicing off the excess wood - requires 2 cuts per side (have to flip the stringer over to make the 2nd cut all the way through). Very loud & very DUSTY!!! I'm glad I finished painting by that time! The whole house needs to be dusted yet again......


Here, Phil's using the power planer to take off the edge created when he 2 cuts didn't exactly meet up. The idea was to make a 'super' smooth side that we could put down on the bottom of his planer & then plane the top side. Well, good intention, but the stringer is 11 or so inches wide & the planer will only take 6 inches....ha, ha, ha. But at least we have the stringer cut to size & moved out of the way of the kitchen.



The kitchen area is all painted & ready for the cabinet maker, Mark, to come & install the cabinets. He stopped by today to double check the area & the plan & will work on building the base cabinets for hopeful installation early next week. All I have to do is paint the floor under the cabinets & make sure the wood & equipment is moved out of the way. I'm hoping the stairs will be worked on & installed this week so that we don't have to keep juggling all this around!

Well, I'm not sure if I posted photos of the glass installed on the decks, so here they are. Towards the end of March, they were pieced together - the glass having to be slid in-between a groove created around it & then the whole frame work of wood & glass carefully uprighted & secured in place. Weather wasn't the greatest, but our decks are now secure & safe!




As you can see, a rather gray & dreary day - lots of moisture but what a view!




The cedar top rail will be installed soon & will cover the top angle cut on the glass frame, but we will need to get a sturdy ladder later on to stain the underside of the cut wood - not shown here. It looks great from the road, so not on the top of our priority list.




We are trimming out the windows & window casings in some local red cedar. We stopped by the 'local' mill yard & found some edge cuttings of what we are looking for. It will need to dry out quite a bit, but I hope to get some instruction on the use of Phil's planer so that I can get some of this stuff ready for the suite.


This is gorgeous wood - has 4 different colours through out so once we figure out what we want around each window, we can then put the dark stuff around the yellow windows & save the lighter wood for around the red windows.

It's a little difficult to explain without proper photos of what we will be doing - but the top piece of trim & the window ledge will retain the rough wavy look & feel of the outside edge of the tree - in the 2nd photo it's the wood on the bottom edge of the wood. The trim that's vertical will be straight & a little bit narrower in width than the top. We are going for 'simple', meaning no funky cut angle corners. The casing is going to be a bit of a brain teaser, but I'm sure once Phil figures it out, it'll go like clock-work. We are treating the wood with Tung Oil to retain all the different colours - it's contains linseed oil & some other UV protectors, etc. So, a lot of work is needed for all the trim.
Our laundry area is fully fuctioning now - even though it's filled with boxes & boxes & more boxes...Phil had time on Sunday to install the lights. For some reason we have 6 lights in this back area! It sure will not be dark & gloomy like many back laundry rooms are! We had a fun run with the washer & dryer...We thought the heating coil was not working up to snuff in the dryer, so we sent it away to be 'fixed' - $100 later, nothing wrong with it. We hooked up with washer to 'test' & it didn't agitate. Well, it was cheaper to purchase a newer one than to get the old one fixed.

I spent the weekend in a mad frenzy of painting in a very confined space. Well, it's actually a huge bathroom, but the pole I use for the painter roller is about 6 inches too long! I finished off the bathroom - same colours as the suite bathroom, in the hopes that by this weekend I can seal this room off to use as my staining room. We have some interior wood doors that need to be stained to 'match' the kitchen cupboards & I need the space to do it where there is NO DUST! Well, I should be painting the floor in here by Wednesday afternoon & will have my work station all set up by Friday. I've now got a piece of hemlock/fir to test out first - soft woods (conifers) react to stain differently than hardwoods (leafy trees). My doors are soft wood & my kitchen is hard wood. Let's hope I'm able to figure this out without too much cussing & fretting....!!
Thankfully, the amount of ceiling in the 2nd & loft area is very small & in chunks that allow for quick & easy application of ceiling paint. That didn't take me very long at all & it looks much better than my first attempt downstairs!

The walls also got a quick coat of primer - I'm really starting to like this primer gray they gave me....


Welcome to my yellow house! It's very bright & warm - but difficult to see around all the scaffolding & equipment still living up there. It was a royal pain dancing around all this stuff while trying to get 2 coats of colour on the walls in the shortest time possible.

I have a whole bucket of yellow paint left over - how on earth I miscalculated the wall areas, I have no idea!! It's non-returnable because it's in the bucket size (5 gallons) - so I will be re-painting the house in 5 years whether it needs it or not!

Introductions are needed here. This is my Autumn Bronze for the front window wall. It's difficult to get a proper feeling for this particular red - it's got lots of brown & earth tones in it & this is just the first coat. I know it will darken up once the 2nd & possibly 3rd coat go on & once the lighter cedar trim is around the windows it will tone it down a bit. I had a moment of complete panic late one afternoon just after a put this on. The light was weird & the walls beside the red were still primer gray - which actually turns blue or purple depending on the light. Well, the red wall looked purple - like a merlot purple! NOT the colour I wanted! I had to shut my eyes & run away. The light around here can do funny things - & not to mention being exposed to paint fumes all day!! So, with the yellow beside it & the sun shining, the red looks much better. But it sure is bright!
The kitchen area is all painted & ready for the cabinets to be installed. Now, this kitchen is different than the one in the suite - same wood, same doors, but the upper cabinet will have only 1 shelf & be about 18 vertical - starting from the ceiling. I wanted it flush to the ceiling so that underneath this row of cabinets, I can have to open, floating shelves. There will be a floor to ceiling 'pantry' cabinet right on the left side of the back wall, then the fridge & then the open kitchen. No upper cabinets on the right of the window - just like the suite. We will have to build & install some shelves to attach the hood vents to, when ever those arrive in the mail.... We also have an island running parallel to the side wall - but it's hard to visualize with all the 'junk' in the way....
We've also made some 'last minute' colour changes with the house. I was going to paint the 2 half walls of the loft & the half walls of the stair well & the 2 posts in yellow. But the yellow is just a little too much for ALL this area. So, yesterday I painted it all navajo white. I was concerned that the primer gray it was originally painted would not work well with the white, but after 2 coats of white, it looks great. We still need to cut away some of the half wall close to the glass block window - but after the stairs are installed. Should open up that area once again & not make it feel so boxed in.
Last bit of yellow is in the closet - that's going to be the 'happy' place - the ceiling is being done in yellow to save me some back ache & once the light is installed, it will be BRIGHT!

Well, I'm going to have to give Phil lessons in taking photos for the blog. This is me on the scaffolding trying to get primer up into the tight top corner of the peak. I taped the paint brush to the roller pole (Thank you, Mike Holmes - I wish I could get Craig, your painter, out here to help me with this wall!!) The scaffolding is a very scarey place to be - apparently the welding on the 'ladder' part isn't very strong.....So, the less amount of time I have to spend up here, the better. This is what I'm tackling this afternoon - will try to get my 2 or 3 coats on in a very short time frame.....Now, how do I get the shop vac up here to clean out the windows??? Might as well bring up the Windex & do that too!!!

So, that's pretty much it since I've started my full time job here at the house. I'll go work elsewhere til noon & then paint like crazy til about 8 or 9 pm - just in time for Phil to come home from work & check out what I've done. There's been some yard clean-up (wonderful feeling to burn it all!!) but really, the weather is still too cold to be concerned about gardens. I'm sure I've got tulips & daffodils blooming in the greenhouse, so I should check on those later today too. I've also managed to sun-burn & then freeze half my house plants. The poor things are looking quite raggity & I'm hoping that I can save some of them. I really did have a jungle going on & sometimes it's necessary to chop it up a bit.