A night of scrubbing..

Throughout our renovations, we've tried to be careful and clean up after any drips and splatters around the ensuite bathroom. At the same time, we figured tile floors should be fine, we'd need to scrub them down afterwards anyways, right? Well.... yes and no. Yes, because cleaning up at the end is inevitable. But no, because if we had covered up the floors more, I wouldn't need to scrub as much and hard as I did! I had to scrub the whole night to clean the floors of grout, primer, paint, silicon... etc. You name it, I scrubbed it!  For once, I wished our bathroom wasn't so big...  On the right, you can see the results of my night of scrubbing. The tiles are shiny and silvery once more! Yay!

It's really hard to believe that this used to be a bedroom.  Looking back at the before pictures, it's really kind of crazy.  I couldn't help but take a few more pictures.  I'm thinking of compiling a picture timeline of this room in a later entry!

The room looks so much more complete after putting up the mirror.  You can see the reflection of the shower stall in the mirror.  And I have to say I really love the effect of the floating vanity cabinets!  Good choice Kel!

And please disregard the naked window frame in the reflection.  We'll get to painting that soon!

Before we left for the night, Kel helped me put up a sign to officially corner off our first no-shoes zone! :)

Ensuite bathroom 99% complete!

This weekend, we've finished touching up the paint in the ensuite bathroom, as well as install the toilet, the vanity lights, and the cabinet drawers/doors.  The only missing piece now is filling in the white gap under the sink, but that should be fast with Erica's dad's help.

Photos as promised!

Our shower with the glass up, faucets, and rainshower installed.

Our vanity; overhang sink with plumbing and faucets installed; Just missing the cabinet doors now.

Our first window frame is up! Courtesy of Erica's dad over the weekend :P

Shot of our island in the kitchen, from the other side where you can actually see the apron sink.

Ensuite shower tiles

We finished tiling our shower walls tonight.  As promised, photos are below.  We still need to grout this weekend before putting up the glass walls, but that should be quick.  :)

Summary of our past eight days

Yes, I realized I haven't posted in a week now, so here's the short and sweet of it.

Ceci came by that Tuesday and helped us finish painting the rest of the ensuite walls.  She also came by on Sunday and painted the first layer of the big wall joining the living and dining room under Erica's guidance and Kelly finished the top layer.

 Sears delivered the dryer that day as expected *phew* so that's done.  However, the crediting on the bill wasn't done and we were charged a second delivery fee, so I had to email Vicky the customer service rep to get that fixed.

 The repairman for the range came in the weekend after.  He looked at the range, and by that I seriously mean he looked at it.  He didn't pull it out from the slot between the cabinets, nor did he take anything apart.  He simply looked at it, made a call to inquire what he needed to fix it and then told us he needed the "timer" part, which he didn't have and would need to order and come back when he has it...  Really? We already told him what the problem was and what the serial model of our range was, but I guess he had to see it for himself to believe it.  We're thinking we should try baking something in the oven just to make sure it works so we don't have to deal with this madness all over again.

Besides that, we've been working on insulating the basement, and Kel's been building the frames for the basement walls.  He did another water test last weekend for the shower faucet in the bathroom and let's just say we had another water show.  LoL

Below, you can see how we (and by we, I mean Erica) adds fun to our days of work.

We've found our painter! Now we just need her onboard...

Ceci proved to be an awesome primer!  The best we have thus far!  We're trying to convince her she should use her talent on the colour layers, too.  We'll let you know how that goes...

Ceci primed our main bathroom and most of the office.  Erica's dad came over and put in most of our kitchen cabinet doors and drawers.  The kitchen is really coming together!  We should be scheduling someone to come in to give us estimates on those granite countertops this week.  Kel's dad and Erica started putting in the first layer of insulation foam boards in the basement. Kel's finished tiling the ensuite tonight. :)

Below, you can see the kitchen with all the doors, and our hallway finally has the door to our master ensuite built.

Update

It has been a while since I wrote for the blog. I have keep myself busy with the house =D Here are some updates to the various projects in the house:

Kitchen – We got the water hooked up! I just have to finalize the sink placement and hook up the drains and we will have a working kitchen sink. Just have to make a minor modification to the sink cabinet and they island should be done.

Ensuite – I started to tile last night. Took me close to 4 hours to lay down 9 pieces of tiles. It’s a real pain but the tiles look great! Hopefully I can get the entire ensuite done by this weekend. Ken helped me to pour the base for the shower kit over the weekend and have to say it looks great. Now the shower is sitting nice and flat on the floor.

Basement – Got the materials needed to start insulating and framing. This will be an interesting project as Erica and Co. will be handling this one =D

Hopefully Patsy will have some nice photos of the ensuite by the end of the week!

Day 4

Finally have the last supporting wall up today! This is the last structural wall we have to put up, getting the wall up was fairly easy but I can’t say the same about the prep work. Took my dad and I about 4 hours to prep the area to get the wall up and about 2 hours to build the wall. Hopefully we can complete the last wall (bedroom to walk-in closet) tomorrow. Just have make the current door opening bigger (about 10 inches) and higher (about 8 inches) to fit the pocket door.

The guy from Baltic Windows came in for a quotation today. Have to say, this guy was like day and night compare to the Canuck Window guy yesterday. The Baltic guy took his time and explain what and how they were going to do everything and provide advice on every window in the house (we have 14 windows in total =D) so that it will look nice and uniform. The guys from Canuck Window give me the impression that he wanted to sell me the windows that were the easiest for him to install as oppose to what will be best suited for our needs. He asked me “So how many more guys do you have coming in for a quotation?”, have to admit I was a little take back by his question...I lied and told him he’s the only one I have and he told me “I will give you a good price then”. In my mind I was thinking “WTF...so you weren’t going to quote me your most competitive price if I am seeking multiple quotation?!?” Another thing that annoyed me was his inability to provide me a quotation in writing. He said he doesn’t like email because it doesn’t allow him to “connect” with customer. I am still waiting for his quotation. The Baltic guy give me a quotation on the spot (took him about 20 mins to enter the data into his laptop) and showed it and emailed it to me on the spot. Going to call Becker Thursday and see when they can come in for a quotation.

For anyone that’s interested, there’s a great Window and Door thread here:

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?t=633922

Did some more demolition work in the basement, I have removed about 70% of the walls but I have till Friday to completely remove everything (I only have the bin till Saturday or I have to pay extra)

Bottom Pic - Here is the view from the Master bedroom into the walkin closet and ensuite

Bottom Pic – The view from the ensuite to walkin closet and Master bedroom

Day 2

Writing this in the basement today with the cutest bunny in the world, Ms Bunny Chu! It’s been a long day; we removed all the old kitchen cabinets and finished the last structure wall in the kitchen. We also started the work on the new ensuite. To allow placement of the toilet, we have to remove the door and frame to one of the existing closets. Ken the “wrecking ball” just went in and just destroyed that door and frame in less than an hour. Have to say I am very impressed since that job will probably take me over an hour and I won’t have enjoyed it as much as Ken did.

Also did some electrical work today too, I spend about an hour in the attic pulling old wires out. That’s one of the things we have to do in day 3, restoring the light to the kitchen and dining room so it`s not so dark.

(I know I promised pictures tonight...I have the camera but no USB cables. I was going to use the card reader on the laptop but there were no memory card in the camera so the photos were stored onboard the camera =|)

Here's the kitchen all opened up

That's the damage Ken did in 30 mins