Playground & fence...

Sewer back up :(

Here's some pictures from our sewer back up... I might have posted them on the main blog but they belong here too :) I believe it was May 20th or so and the boys informed me that the basement toliet had overflowed! Argh! Going down stairs, we realized that it was everywhere! The plumber came & retreieved a bunch of 'clean' tampons flushed by our youngest, Restorex came and started their 'disaster clean up' procedures and we thought we were on the road to recovery! Next day: went downstairs and discovered that the bathtub was full again, the mechanical room floor had grunge water again & obviously there was STILL a problem! Plumber came back again with a camera, to discover that the exterior pipe had FILLED with the tempoarary driveway crushed rock. Earlier in the spring, a pipe (now capped off since the driveway is complete) and been broken off and then once the ground started thawing, the ground crumbed a bit and the rocks fell in, plugging the system solid! We didn't know whether we would have to excavate the driveway base (already poured last year) or whether the vac truck would be able to come and hoover out the rocks! Thankfully the latter was possible and the bill was about $600, instead of into the double digit thousands!!! So we went back to our Days Inn hang out for a couple nights (we still drive by and the boys want to know when we can stay at the hotel again - we also lived there for three weeks while waiting for the house to be finished as well) and thus began the long chain of events regarding an insurance claim!

Affected carpet is ripped out

Industrial heaters are brought in to dry up the place

Day two... obviously we STILL have problems

still plugging away...

Well another year is coming to a close... with a sewer back up in the spring, we had to redo parts of the basement - new carpet, drywall, patching, paint, doors etc. Thankfully my dad got the insurance contract and we were able to have a great visit while they (my parents) were here puttin' my house back together :) Dad also repaired some other drywall holes, boarded the bottom half of our garage walls, built some storage shelves...

Our friends, J&D built an amazing mezzanine in our garage for extra storage - things like Christmas & seasonal stuff etc can go up there, hockey bags in the summer... so many options!

Miles & I just did a bunch of paint touch ups and then in the new year, we plan to paint the kitchen and the wall that goes across the back of the house (kitchen, dining room & living room - it's an 'open concept') a burnt orange colour. Then we'll paint the boys' rooms. They are currently just the yellow colour that is throughout most of the house. For Ethan, we will paint two walls either brown or red. For the J&L shared room, probably burnt orange but I plan on doing some fun things and for Cole's room, I have some green paint, will leave some of the walls part yellow & then maybe throw in an accent of turquoise or something (a colour in his bedding) - maybe even just use leftover orange?

Outside is a whole other story! We had a landscaper person lined up months in advance and that 'went south' the week he was supposed to start, at the END of August! After the incredibly wet spring & summer we had, when all trades were really backed up, thanks to the weather, we thought nothing was going to get done... but it did!!! Happy Dance :) We were sooo blessed to have the most amazing fall weather and were able to get some concrete patios poured: a brushed finished one outside the back garage door for the boys to play hockey or shoot hoops, also a hot tub will some day sit on the end by the deck; a stamped concrete pad with a square cut-out for a fire pit; and an exposed aggregate sidewalk, that joins the driveway & back pad together! Then... we got our fence! It's a beautiful, white, PVC, maintenance free fence - a man gate on the side of the house and a double gate (14' opening) at the back-side for trailer parking! Landscaping will be my fun project for spring 2011 - STAY TUNED :)

Oh - we also spent hours of blood, sweat and tears building our kids a play structure from Costco! And a shed has been ordered from Co-Op :) It's all starting to come together!!! Whoohoo! I will post pictures someday but just wanted to let y'all know that our home is STILL a work in progress!

garage doors

So here's my spring dilemma.... what colour do we paint the garage doors? Here's the rundown on existing colours:

Door: red

Rails: black

Shutters: black

Soffits, trim: sable

Stucco: olive green

Rock: neutral

I had wanted to get the black 'hardware' to go on the doors, since they are an estate style. My originally plan was to do it the slate stucco colour, and trimmed in the sable trim colour but when we went with our original plan of olive green stucco, the colours are too close. Options are:

Sable doors, black trim (but hardware wouldn't show up); all black doors; all sable doors; or just leave them white with the black hardware... someone also suggested to pull out a neutral colour from the rocks and do that but Miles doesn't want to introduce another colour... any suggestions???

tryin' to keep warm

This is what my hubby was doing on Remembrance Day ('09) with the help of Marty, one of our part time staff. The garage is insulated and vapor barriered and sometime in the spring when it's warmer, we'll put some chipboard up and build a storage mezzanine :) Along with all the landscaping, fence building and the list goes on....

railings

So for Cole's 2nd birthday, we got him some railings on the deck! Not planned but that's the day they came... long overdue but lookin' good, I think! Also had them take the plywood off the top part of the stairs, so I think it looks better...

With the cold spell we have encountered, it is looking doubtful if we can get the rest of our driveway poured now but... if next week proves to be as warm as they're claiming, there might be hope yet! Otherwise, a load of gravel it is, until spring!

helper of the week...

And the helper of the week award goes to Liam!!! Here he is taking the door knobs down to the basement for "Uncle John". J&D were here working on the finishing touches of our basement the last couple weeks, so we now have doors, baseboards, casings, window boxes, closet organizers etc. It's all coming together... Liam was our handy dandy helper and even added a few extras to his job description that had to be 'UNDONE' after the fact, like adding some additional screws in the wall! Hmmm...