We're spending the night!

Can we unpack yet?

Tile around the main floor tub!

This sink is now plumbed! Yay!

Living around construction!

Shiny metal on the outside!

Yes, it may be a bit premature, but we're spending our first night at our new home. In the basement suite, as our bedrooms aren't quite ready. And it is doubly special, as it is the eve of our wedding anniversary! Darn good present to ourselves, if I say so myself.

We are anxious to live here. Especially since it looks almost ready. And we even have our very first house guests staying over too. Carina & Peter are visiting from Toronto- I offered a place when I optimistically thought we would be done and settled.  They get to camp in our living room tonight. So, we'll see how it goes!

Another big push.

Corrugated metal went up on the front and
north side of the house!

Main floor vanity hung! And I hope to use an LVL
[laminated veneer lumber] as the counter top, after it is
stained and epoxyed. The LVL was left over from the
framing of the roof!

The 2nd floor shower was started! The tile
installer built up the curb and slope to drain.

The Schluter drain installed. 

The HRV preheaters were forgotten about during
the electrical rough-in. So we had to put in some BX cable
at the base of the loft floor that dropped down into the
HRV closet. Doh!

Here's the red-orange cast iron sink we salvaged from
an old house. It's put on top of the plywood that will be the
base of the concrete counter-top.

Range hood in place! We should have made
sure there was sufficient blocking before
drywall. Doh!

I added closet organizers to the front & back
door closets. They are already in use!

This is the small glitch that prevented us from
full-scale moving of boxes. The right side of
the gym floor is glossy finish, while the left
is matte. Hmmm....

Not a great photo- but this was an amazing
flock of gulls over our house and Gold Bar
park. I think there were thousands of them-
they filled the sky! 

We've moved!*

* No, we haven't moved in. We've only moved lots of boxes.  And some furniture.  And our beds and some clothes.  But a number of things did not come together to move in this weekend. 

1. We need sinks. No sinks were plumbed.

2. The loft floor needed to have its final finish- there seemed to be a glitch in the polyurethane mix and so half is glossy and half is matte finish. So we couldn't move all our boxes/stuff up there.

3. The pantry isn't finished. This is essential for Serena's moving in.

*Sigh*.

Super productive weekend!

Basement kitchen. Almost done!

First coat of polyurethane on gym floor!

Thanks to my Dad, Greg, Tyler and David, & Dave, we had a super productive weekend. Now the basement kitchen is fairly close to being done, and most of the upper floor kitchen is put together. With one small hiccup. The drawer base doesn't fit next to the fridge. I can't believe it- it's 1" too big. Doh!

Almost all the lights have been hung, thanks to my Dad, who also put up the closet shelving/organizer in our bedroom.

Also, we moved our first trailer full of boxes over! Thanks to Matt, who lent me his truck while he was on vacation. I originally wanted to move in this weekend, as I was anticipating have full plumbing- but it was not to be. No sinks, no hot water. Next weekend, perhaps?

[I don't have a lot of photos because I kept busy getting things done!]

We have Plumbing! [sort of...]

Jordan pipe-fitting the water tank.

The first flush ever!

Jordan from F&D plumbing worked this Saturday to get our plumbing fixtures hooked up! We had a few hiccups, as he forgot to bring his CC key and a leaky valve connection- as he grumbled at the not-quite-level concrete floors. He was able to still make it a momentous day!  We have three toilets connected and one tub before stopping for the day. Hopefully by next weekend, we will have some of the sinks hooked up.

The toilets we used are low-flush Duravit and Villeroy & Boch toilets. I didn't install dual-flush toilets for a couple reasons. First, we were able to get an amazing deal on the designed-by-Philippe Stark 6L flush toilets. Two, we are planning for future rain-water toilet flushing. So, in our case, the cost of installing a cistern will be deferred until it makes for a more better return on investment. We already have the rough-in and separate piping for the rainwater harvesting ready. 

Friday night work effort!

Mike making sense of ikea instructions.

Rob & Felicity catching some air.

My Dad, Mike, Barry, Rob and our youngest visitor to date, Felicity came to help out Friday night! It was fairly productive with Mike being the task-master. Mike and Rob were able to hang the cupboard doors for the kitchen, and we built more Ikea stuff, and Barry was able to put in our first carbonized wood base boards installed, so the plumber can get toilets installed.  Oh yeah, we hauled all the toilets and fixtures to all the bathrooms! Yay! One step closer to "modern amenities!"

First few corrugated metal siding panels are up!

Allan put up the first few panels of corrugated metal on the north side of the building, adjacent to the basement suite door! And it looks awesome.

The only glitch was a miscalculation of the length of the wall, which was 14'-3".  The metal panels came in a 14'-0" length.  So, Allan made an wider 3" trim in one corner of the house, that most people will not notice.

Reclaimed gym floor for the loft [homeschooling] room!

I'm pretty thrilled at how well the reclaimed gym floor turned out. Kudos to Dave, Rob and Dave for a great job so far. We still need to fill in some of gouges and gaps before varnish.

More kitchen progress!

Yay! Barry hung the upper cupboards in our kitchen today!

I have to say the brilliant thing about Ikea kitchens are how easily the drawers click together. And how everything needs only a screwdriver and hammer to  put together. And I had to return some items- as they were the wrong size. It was mostly painless, unlike getting the stuff all delivered to site.

Speaking of delivery challenges, Sears finally got the address right on the 3rd attempt to deliver the washer/dryer and new induction range. But this time, the delivery people refused to use the exterior stairs as they thought they were too dangerous.

And the bottom of the dryer was crushed. So I sent it all back. Hopefully, 4th time is the charm?

The guts of an HRV

Kris Otto of Otto Heating and Cooling installed our HRV's and did a bang-up job. Here are the guts of the 3-195 HRV that does the bulk of the work! The diamond shaped things are the heat exchangers. Simple, really.

Kitchen progess [at least one of them]

Barry just completing the first wall hung cupboard!

Brandy showing off her handiwork.

Today, Barry, Brandy and I made some good progress on the basement kitchen!

Only a couple setbacks:

1. Ikea gave us the wrong range hood cupboard- it should be a 30" wide by 24" high type- not 24" wide x 18" high. Doh!

2. Ikea didn't give us enough legs for the cabinet bases. Perhaps they though we were anchoring the base cabinets directly to the wall an only needed the front set of legs?

and if the rule is 3 trips to the building supply store to get enough parts/pieces, I think the rule for Ikea is about double that.

ENERGIZED! [or we have electricity!]

Levi: "Let there be light!"

The energized after party!

Our bedroom lighting!

Ou 

I am a very happy person. Levi helped get the house energized and tied-in with all the breakers on the upper floor and basement panels.  Only a few more two pole breakers left. It is a glorious sight.

Sliding doors look Awesome.

Thanks to Barry Westerlund, who worked on his birthday, and a beautiful Saturday afternoon, for installing the Pax sliding doors. They were bought at a bargain price of $99 each. Definitely, an offer I could not refuse, so we bought 5 sets. Happy Birthday Barry!

Kitchen building party! A great success!

Kathleen & Randy putting together their
specialty: a 36" base cabinet. 

Greg & Tiffanywhipping up cabinets!

Thank you to Randy Troppmann, his wife Kathleen, Greg and Tiffany for coming over to build kitchen cabinet boxes.  They were cabinet building machines by the end of the day. We managed to build all of the wall and base cabinets for BOTH kitchens. Phew! Now to mount them on the wall and install and the doors, drawers, etc.

The kitchen boxes are on site!

Where are the instructions?

Finally!  After much telephone coordination, searching and moving, the IKEA kitchen is on site. All three skids of them. Thanks to Julie at Dynamex Courier in Edmonton, for going above and beyond, and finding our boxes in the IKEA home delivery area. No thanks to the unresponsive and unreachable IKEA home delivery staff that did not return phone calls, nor make any effort to sort this out.

Now I pray there are no missing or damaged pieces. And if anyone is not going to Folk Fest this weekend, and wants to help me build 2 kitchens, let me know! We'll have a big bbq party after!

HRVs in place!

The basement HRV. It took a good portion

of the closet I alloted for it. 

The main house HRV- it will hover above in a tall closet.

I still wonder how useful it will be, since I'd rather just open

a window to have fresh air.

Building the vanities, cabinets & sliding closet doors!

I am very fortunate to have some great friends to call upon to help build a bunch of flat-packed furniture/cabinets and sliding doors.

It started last week, with Brandy and Robert helping build the vanities for the main floor washroom.

Then Tiffany helped build the tall high cabinet for the washroom on Saturday.

Leendert & Eleanor helped build our sliding closet doors. And Duncan and I finished 2 more sliding door sets yesterday.

Now just another couple sliding door sets to do- and two entire kitchens to put together!

Stacks of hardwood. Hard to imagine it will become a floor!

Here are some stacks of hardwood that my friend Matt reclaimed from an old school gym! We have Dave and his crew pulling it all apart and then re-installing the hardwood as the finish to our loft floor. I am hoping it will be good just to leave with all the random gym lines intact! Serena loves the idea that this floor is in our home schooling workshop area.

Lights, Camera, Action!

My Dad helped install fixtures and bulbs!

Leendert looking fashionable with our
bedroom fixture.

We had a flurry of activity on the weekend!  Electricians were buzzing around installing electrical outlets, switches and some lights!  But we didn't get fully energized, much to my disappointment.  After two trips to the hardware store, we still needed some connections and bits and pieces. So, I hope we'll get it powered up by this weekend...