Our Kitchen Tiles

Kel finished laying the last couple of tiles on Friday, while Erica and I continued to work on the walls. On Saturday, Erica and her dad came over to help. Erica's dad worked on patching the walls and ceiling in the ensuite, while Erica and I worked on the kitchen walls and ceiling. Sanding the ceiling has got to be the hardest thing ever. It's not only repetitive, but we also had to stand on chairs, and stretching ourselves to the fullest. What sucks is that the procedure of plastering and sanding takes quite a bit of time and cannot be expedited since we have to wait for the plaster to dry, so every layer takes at least a day. Kel sealed up the last of our supporting beam with dry wall and hooked up the outlet on it, and I plastered the first layer on afterwards. The last task for Saturday was to grout the kitchen tiles. That look a lot longer than we thought since we weren't quick enough to clean up the floor, which meant we ended up scrubbing til midnight. :( That's okay though, at least it turned out pretty well! Erica and her dad came over to help again on Sunday. Cecilia also came over by mid-afternoon, brought us tea, and took a lesson on plastering 101!

Below: Our kitchen tiles!


Our hallway after demo, and now:


Our Kitchen last week, and now:

(You can see Erica standing back admiring her days work!)
Seeing the before/after pics of the kitchen makes this weekend's work all worthwhile!

Progress

Last Saturday, Erica came over and this time she brought her dad over to help. Her sisters came after a while to pick him up for lunch and they ended up helping a bit, too. By now, we've managed to plaster most of the kitchen walls, ceiling, and parts of the ensuite. (Erica brought Flora over to help for a few hours on Sunday after lunch :) Andrew and Kalee dropped by for a tour, too! It's been a busy weekend!



Ken came over yesterday to help tile the kitchen floor. We would've finished if we were not a box short on tiles.. :( Kel's picked up another box this morning, so we'll finish that tonight. Stay tuned for pics on the completed floor!

Kitchen

We been prepping the kitchen for the tiles this past week. While patching up all the holes we put in the wall and ceiling and getting new drywall up on the new frame, there seems to be one common theme; nothing is straight. Certain sections of the wall/ceiling would be thicker than other sections and this has make my job very unpleasant. It is taking me twice as long to shim everything so they are nice and straight.

It took us almost a week but we have completed 90% of hte drywalling, taped and mudded of the kitchen walls and ceiling. Hopefully we will have some cabinets up but the end of this week!

Photo update!

Below Left: The shower in the main bathroom has been installed!
Below Right: Erica helping plaster the bathroom walls.


Below: The kitchen walls are sealed; the floor prepped for tiles.


Below Left: Kel peeking from the attic to the kitchen (through the hole he fell through last month).
Below Right: The kitchen ceiling aka the hole Kel fell through, all patched up.

Day x

Been a while since I wrote for the blog but it’s been a tough month. The constant working and running around has drained me physically. And the tons of “what ifs” and “not sure” with the plumbing has taken its toll on me mentally. I been working on the for weeks and the chance of failure/screw up has really impeded my progress. The final push to complete everything came from the window installation. Now that the plumbing it`s finally completed, it feel like a load was taken off my shoulder.

With the windows and doors finally done, it is time to complete the house. The goal this weekend is to patch up all the holes in the various rooms this weekend so we can start working on either the kitchen or ensuite. Hopefully Patsy will have some new photos for everyone next week!

Our new doors!

Our new front door looks awesome :) So do our new patio doors from the kitchen to the deck. However, what we realized afterwards was that our house no longer had the house number on it. As well, our old door had a mail slot in it, so we lost that, too. Next thing on the to-do list: Buy new house numbers and mailbox!

Below: The front of our house before the new windows and door.


Below: The front of our house now, in daylight, and at night.


Below: The old door and window from the kitchen to the deck and now the patio doors.

Windows

The window guys came in today to start their work. After just one day, they've managed to change all the windows in the house as well as lay the cement for the patio door to the deck. Below are some pictures of what it looks like after the first day.

Left: New living room window looking out the front of the house. Isn't it huge?!
Right: New dining room window looking out into the backyard. Doesn't it look like a big painting?


Left: Big window in the office that looks out the front of the house.
Right: Ensuite bathroom frosted pane, so we wouldn't need curtains and it'll have light shining in all day.


Left: Current door and window to backyard. They've cut the hole in the wall to pour in the cement base. Waiting for that to dry before converting it to a sliding patio door.
Right: One of our basement windows that look out the front of the house. You can see the house across from us, as well as the little old lady that sat outside watching the window guys work.


Below: The amount of garbage we generated after a day's work.


The window guys are going to come back tomorrow to seal the window edges with foam, install our new front door, patio door, and fix the trim. I wonder if they'll finish tomorrow.