Laurie's World

Hey does anyone want to see pictures of Jackie’s b’day?? Rachael has not had her party yet, so that is why I do not have her pix yet….

Does this child enjoy the spotlight or what??

Today was all about getting the yard graded for the concrete. We had a bobcat delivered from sunbelt rentals yesterday and a fellow named George (cement Dave’s guy) came to operate it…they got all the dirt moved around and the grade done for the sidewalk down the side, the BBQ patio and the back patio…oh yeah, the porch also…So it looks pretty good…a lot of dust though (cough cough)

Then when they were done the rest of the kids came out to play on the bobcat…

Now these photos snapped by Jackie the photographer (other than the one of her obviously) are much more entertaining than the one of me just sitting there in the driveway!!

Here is how the house is looking from the outside…

Those are my cabinets under the blue tarp in the garage…

This is the street side of the house…check out my new corner window in the master bath…

Ooohh Aaahhh…admire these very nice new solid, not rotten, chimneys that we paid through the nose for!!

Here is the last shots you will see of the inside of the house where you can see the guts of the walls…the insulators will be kickin’ it hard tomorrow

What a disaster eh? Those are the rest of my cabinets in the family room…

So I will update again tomorrow after insulation and inspection of said insulation

Yikes! Has it really been 2 weeks since I blogged…that just shows y’all what life has been like for us the last while…

Against my better judgement, i am going to put up a photo that Troy insisted we take…

This would be MOI (Miss Piggy)…in the bobcat we have rented for the weekend to do the grading etc that needs to be done to pour the masses of concrete…it costs $125 an hour to have trac ho Dave here…or we could rent the machine for $335 for 8 hours…and we do it ourselves…so that is what we are doing. Dave (cement Dave) knows a guy who will come and operate the bobcat for us for a $100 cash–apparently he is 60 something and from Hawaii…so we will have him come for 4 hours or so to get us going and then if there is more…we will play around…

I am skipping ahead though–you must be wondering who cement Dave is?? Well…a while ago, I put the oven/microwave unit, the cook top and some of the old fixtures etc on freecycle…and a gal e-mailed me to say she would like them…in our corresponding, she said something about her husband being out on Orcas pouring concrete or something–so I asked her if her husband did flatwork. She said yes, for about 38 years–so when they came to get the kitchen stuff we met Dave and discussed having him do the patios, porch etc when the time came. Now we have had lots (and lots) of concrete guys here to discuss our cement needs…and we decided at the end of the day to hire Dave–so we call him cement Dave (so as to not be confused with Trac Hoe Dave). He is one of the most interesting characters we have hired through this whole thing, and i am sure if he does not die on this job and leave us hanging…the patios will be gorgeous. He is a big man, and quite old–he brings his step daughter’s boyfriend to help out…His name s Shaun and he is a guitar player (quite talented apparently)–but I worry about his hands–he spent Thursday jack hammering out the sidewalk on the side of the house (as we have decided to redo that also)–Good kid–hard worker–and he got a lot of blisters doing that. First manual labour job obviously–but he is a go getter–so we love ’em. So to get the back patio in we are going to have to build a retaining wall to hold the back of the patio up as it is quite a drop off at the back after we had the grade brought up. Those blocks (300) will be delivered on Tuesday and then we start the wall. The bobcat is here to get the grading finished in all areas, so that will happen tomorrow–The concrete for the back patio is scheduled to be delivered on Sat the 14th–we are doing a colored concrete with an acid wash–and a 3′ square score cut on the diagonal. All the rest (BBQ patio, spa pad, sidewalk, porch etc will be exposed aggregate to match the driveway and the original pool deck area.

So…the siding update is not nearly as optimistic–we still do not have a sided house–and the relationship with the siders has deteriorated to the point where we are not really speaking to each other (only when we HAVE to). They just continue to come when they come…works half days…talk on their cell phones…whatever! I do not pay until the job is done and they have fixed all the things that Troy and I have found wrong–Like the dryer vent they sided over, the trim board they had to replace three times, the caulking they had to fix, the light fixtures they had off center, the crawl vents they did not finish…I could go on, but you get the idea. The siding is a fixed bid, but the chimnys were time and materials–so–Needless to say we would not recommend these guys–It took them 26 hours to replace the first chimney chase that had rotted out…so this would be very much over the estimated 10 hours that they quotes us–so you cam imagine how I reacted to thatSo we had Andrew come back and do the second one–hmmm…that took 14 hours–much closer to the estimation for a much worse chimney. Basically the "siders" have not spoken to us since we told them they were not going to be doing the second chimney and that we had hired Andrew back to do it. Bryan is Andrew’s old boss–not sure if I had mentioned that before–so a little awkward but what do I care?? I am just glad I do not have to buy a new dryer–which is what I thought I was going to have to do when my dryer stopped heating–I guess the dryer is smarter than the siders! Yikes–did I just say that out loud??

We had our electrical inspection last Monday (after a long, long weekend with Neils). And we did not pass–yes I said did NOT pass. Apparently our recessed cans that Neils spent like 1 day and a half installing are not IC rated (that means Insulation Contact) So all the cans that we have in the "new" area have to be changed so they are in these 10" square metal boxes (called convesion kits), so that the insulation is kept away from touching them…I guess they get VERY hot! Well, this sounds easy enough in theory, but since several of them are within an inch of a floor joist, putting them in a metal box would move them out of alignment with the nice preplanned lighting scheme by several inches. So we pulled those ones out entirely on Thursday (when Neils came back) and replaced them with track lighting–the ones affected were the ones in the sunroom, and over the corner sink…the rest we were able to jiggle etc to make work with the conversion kits. Also, we had o make up all the grounds for the lights and the plugs…So Troy did that part…we had the electrical inspector come back on Friday and he signed us off. YEAH!

We also tried to have our gas inspection on Tuesday–hmm–this guy did not sign this off either–he wanted us to have Jeff come back and disconnect us from the gas and run a pressure test on the system. The only down side to this is he would have to run the whole system to 15 pounds–and code only required gas lines to hold to 5 lbs of pressure back in 1992–so if any leaks were detected we would have to have them repaired. SIGH–such are the risks of a renovation. SO Jeff came Friday am and hooked up the guage etc…He set it up to 20 lb actually and it held completely tight–YAHOO!!

The other hoop we had to jump through before we can insulate and put up the drywall is another framing inspection–So we had this on Tuesday–only a couple of things we need to do, some strapping on the old walls to bring the house up to earthquake code and some fire blocking in the wall we put in to fill in the old pass through between the dinign room and the living room. No biggie as he said go ahead and insulate–he would check for those two things when he comes back to check the insulation…

So we got full clearance to insulate and I have hired that crew to start on Monday–the lead guy’s name for that crew is John–they are a local (meaning Woodinville) company that does renovation and restoration work. John lives in here in the Cottage Lake area and his business parnter Jeff lives over by Wellington. They seem nice and will have the insualtion and drywall done in a week. So then I can paint and we can start the floor installation. Which we are planning to do ourselves. Doug (framer Doug) is going to come and teach us how to get the floors started as that is the tricky part–then we are away to the races.

I also finished tiling the second/guest bathroom upstairs. It has sat for several weeks now with everything done but the floors–so it is nice to have that done–Here are some pictures so you can see…Of particular note is the tricky cut for the heat register–It is a long narrow register, and I was able to do it in one piece

I will take some pictures of the outside of the house tomorrow and post them up so you can see what it looks like. I am starting to think I may reconsider the colour I had chosen for the house. I was going to go with the colours we had before–safe choice–as I really liked them–but oddly enough I like the colour of the preprimed cedar–and so do other people. There have been a few people that have stopped by to say they love the colour we painted our house. Funnyas we have not painted it…but I may just go with somehting close to this colour. It is a sage gray colour–the sage only comes out in certain lighting conditions…so it is kinda cool. A little different–but the shed won’t match anymore–not that I should paint my house to match the shed–but I really do not want to paint the shed–so we will see!

For those who are wondering why I look like I have been in a mud wrestling competition in that photo at the top of this post. I spent the day diggin’ Dig, Dig, Diggin…just like one of those juvenile delinquents in the movie "Holes" for those of you who get out to the moviesWe have noticed in past years that there is a little sink hole situation at the tightline access by the pool equipment. Shock surprise–Anyway, since we seem to be in the PVC pipe repair business these days as well as going to be pouring concrete over there in the next few days–we thought this would be the time to address this issue—GLAD we did! I dug out the whole area down about 3 feet to expose the fact that we have a mystery pipe (and whoever put it there just cut a square hole in the side of the corrugated tightline pipe and poked the round 2" PVC pipe into it. OK–now I am just a lowly homeowner–but even I know that is not right–and it explained our sink hole–since anytime large quantities of water were put down the pipe, it would have sucked dirt right along with it). That and we all know the saying about round pegs in square holes etc–The other weird thing is we have no idea where this pipe comes from. It is only 8" or so below grade and it comes from the direction of our neighbor’s house. Well since we do not know what it is for we are not going to just cut it off–so Troy went to Home Depot (kickin’ and screamin’–we hate Home Depot) and got the parts to make it right–so we did that and then filled her back up…

OH YEAH! I am almost forgot! Our cabinets were delivered on Thursday–they filled the first stall of the garage and what was left (about half) for room in the family room. They are so PURTY–and they have that new cabinet smell

Also, Dick finally got the second window installed in the master bathroom Now this is my new favourite thing that we have done in this renovation…There is such a nice breeze that blows through the washroom and it is SO bright! Troy is thinking maybe he could have skipped the rest of everything we are doing–All he needed to make me happy was to put a second window in our bathroom