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...

STUCCO :)

September 15 & 16 so far has been a 'colourful' couple days for us! Whoohoo! I thought that the tinted scratch coat that they started putting on yesterday might take a week to dry/cure before they could come back but apparently not...

We went with acrylic stucco in the end, for quality reasons and the bonus of that was being able to go back to our original colour scheme of OLIVE GREEN! We had picked out a 'slate' colour but since changing our plans, four houses in a row, across the street from us, have slate stucco... so we're happy not to conform! The shutters are black, the railings will be black and the garage doors have yet to be painted (probably the same 'sable' colour as the soffits - we are accepting opinions though)

PS: we got front stairs too but we're probably going to switch them up a bit - not 100% happy with the workmanship!

pavin' the road...

It's September 2nd (not the 'beginning of July' as originally quoted) and we're finally getting the roads paved! Now that they've done the three side/smaller roads, they will start on the main road, which will probably be at least another three weeks... if they're lucky, they'll get it in before it starts snowing!

driveway delight...

Whoohoo! It is sooo exciting to report the amazing news that we now have phase one of our driveway! Phase two will be completed as soon as the roads are in! Our little 'bay' is being worked on at this very moment - the second grade has been done, as well as the layer of gravel! From what we understand, the next step is pavement! Bring it on!! Our driveway was started August 20th and was poured yesterday, the 21st... I'm sure the guys thought I was the 'paparazzi' with the photo shoot & they probably don't have loonie housewives & kids watching them every day :)

The cement truck arrives :)

Team work...

Getting it all level

Note: this picture is of the LONG pole used to smooth out the surface, not the buff tan young worker in front (just wanted to clarify)

pretty impressive really... all that is involved...

OF COURSE!!! If you were 4 yrs old, wouldn't you head outside to find the water hose & mud, in your mother's brand new flip flops too?

Smooth like buttah...

The guys are back to hose it down (the rest of the crew is just up the road framing another driveway)

TA-DA... here's what we've got so far

The front (our steps will go all the way across to the first pillar)

Side profile & a peek at the crews working on the road!

The flowers' perspective :)

Exposed Aggregate - obviously the most beautiful I have ever seen!

buildin' a road...

Late yesterday afternoon-evening (like 4-7pm) our little bay looked like an episode from 'Mighty Machines'. They finally started the process of paving the roads, although from what we understand, this is just the rough grade, which will be followed by another grade, gravel and then pavement! All this will take us into next week sometime! The rough grade on it's own was quite the process... a dump of dirt, grading it, picking up the excess, measurments written on the markers (something surveyor-ish), shovels, bobcat, more grading, rolling, repeat... The main road will be used as the acess to all the smaller 'crescents, bays, places' etc and won't be done for at least another three weeks! Anyhoo - I'm off to see why my driveway guy hasn't returned...

hoovering up the excess

the parade of equipment

the grader...

cabinet craziness

Friday, August 14th was the big cabinet 'raising' day, so Thursday night Miles & I emptied all the uppers. The original plan was to raise everything but when I found out that the microwave didn't have to be raised, I decided to leave it be so that the corner cabinet could stay put, being that they need to be the same height...

BEFORE:

EMPTY:

AFTER:

The electricians will have to come back to fix the wiring, which is now too long but you can see when you look at the microwave that the undermount moldings are now higher up & SHOULD hopefully meet the gas inspection requirements... we also have wall touch ups to do as well since the walls were painted after the cabinets were installed - lotsa fun!

and the saga continues....

The gas inspector was by the other day and discovered that our undermount kitchen cabinet moldings are too close to the gas range and need to be cut back 6-8"... this will look absolutely retarded and I am sooo unimpressed that the cabinet shop didn't pick up on this. I guess the inspector got to them before I did and 'Amanda' left a message on my answering machine stating that she was aware of this change and that she had gone through my entire file and nowhere was it noted that we had a gas range, otherwise 'this could have been prevented' - REALLY... guess that answers that question! I am still ticked with the original person I met with though (he left & then we ended up with Amanda 1/2 way through) because I went in there on 'day one' with all the info needed and even as time went on, I took in measurements and specs of EVERYTHING, not to mention magazine photos etc. I knew what I wanted from the get-go and have been so disappointed with this corporation. Anyways, Amanda informed me that option number two was to raise all the uppers two inches and that should be the clearance we need to make the inspector happy. We also needed a bigger gas metre to accomodate everything that is in our house....

I've lined up a bunch of appt's for August 4th and 5th, so that should be a busy day in our household, with a constant revolving door...

Met a lady when we were camping, who is a contractor in Alberta and talk about knowledgeable! She knows her stuff and has convinced us to go with the acrylic stucco (not concrete), so hopefully we can contact our builder and make that change ASAP because we should be up on the 'stucco assembly line' pretty quick... might be able to get our dark olive green colour after all :)

railings yet to come...

'Phase Two' of our deck project is now completed!!! Just in time for a couple weekend BBQ's :) Many heads have turned as they drive by, being that it is a decent size and someone even stopped yesterday & asked John if he'd build a deck for him!

Ethan on the second level - there are three boards past the pillar and then it steps down to the next level (don't think you can see the difference from the photo)

The deck to date... there will be a phase three which will consist of a smaller level and stairs going down into the yard (we need to wait for the yard to be graded though and at least seven loads of 'dirt')

Abuela Darlene helping the boys make swords :) Uncle John helped them make airplanes the other day out of scrap lumber...

John finishing the edges

buildin' a deck

Our handy man/woman team has been here this week working on our deck. The wrap around porch was only completed on the front and side by the builder, so John & Darlene have framed in the back portion now and have started laying boards. It's starting to look like something and will be so nice to be able to place a BBQ back there, along with patio furniture etc. We are also doing a second level off of the covered porch, so it will be a nice functional deck when it's finished :) Stay tuned for the completed project!