Well, the renovation got stalled because of huge problems with our mortgage company. It seems that our mortgage sales rep either didn’t know what the hell he was talking about and thus didn’t know how to do his job, or he flat out lied to us. You see,  when we got our mortgage,  we had money added to it, $50,000 to do renovations. The guy at the bank told us over and over again the we could do a bit of work, submit the receipts, have an appraiser come out and verify the work had been done. So we spent all the cash we had on hand and submitted the receipts, thinking that we wouldn’t have to wait too long to get it turned around. Well, it turns out that all the work had to be completed ALL $50,000 first before thew bank would release the money we are already paying interest on. I don’t know about you but we didn’t have $50,000 laying around to spend. I mean why would we have gotten the money on our mortgage if we already had it?

SO I hate  Presidents Choice Financial. Either there guy lied to us over and over again, or he is incompetent. After tons of angry phone calls and people there telling me they were doing the best they could to help me, (a load of crap if you ask me!) we finally came to a compromise. They released the money for the receipts we had already spent (Which we are paying interest on our mortgage for anyway), and $200 in Presidents Choice points for groceries! WELL, that makes it all better now doesn’t it? Now I am going to be able to complete my renovation with about $8,000 and $200 in groceries! NOT!!!! What the hell am I going to do with that? $8,000? Great!!! Thanks a lot you bunch of thieving pigs!!! The mortgage seller flat out lied damn it! Because they are the bank I have no choice but to eat the $%!# sandwich they have served me! I have no choice.

So I am going to do the best I can to complete this renovation with no money and try to some how make it worth the $250,000 they say it has to be worth to get the money released.

I will GET ‘ER DONE! Somehow.

So the other day I started pulling down all the old drywall and plaster in the main room so we can blow in some fresh insulation and make the walls all the same level. In different rooms, past owners installed drywall over plaster but at different thicknesses so now the walls are gone everything is at a different level. with all the old stuff gone and we are down to the original boards I can hang fresh drywall that is all uniform and nice.

Pictures to come later this week of the walls all naked and stuff.

Gotta get to bed I will post later this week,

Gnite.

These are a few before pictures. I will post some “during” photos tomorow

Enough excuses though, here is the story so far…

I promised info about the floor. So we went again to see Marvin at Save on Sams Building Materials. I love Marvin. He is a character to say the least. He is one of those people that is truly unique. He seem to be running this operation by himself, he does have people working for him but its very Mom and Pop. He is also marketing a huge line of health and bueaty products which also come from the barks and waste materials produced when they mill the hard wood floors. Anyhow he has his hands spinning a lot of plates. we have ordered our floor and it should be in in about six weeks.

In the past week I have taken delivery of both our new Porter Charles Dishwasher and our Candy Apple red LG Steam washing machine. I have managed to get them both installed and they work great. The dishwasher is so bloody quiet and its not even installed into cabnetry yet. The washer is fun, it has lights inside and plays a song when you turn it on. When we put the first load in I sat and watched it twenty minutes. I have also managed to install two ceiling fans, a new light fixture in the girls room, figured out the lighting and cut a bunch of holes for the wiring, a bunch of shelves for the girls, a desk for Norah and we also pulled all of the old evergreen shrubbery out of the front garden to make room for all the plants I gave to Karen for Mothers day. The funny thing was that on Saturday, she came home with a Poeney and a Hydranga. She walks in and says “I bought my self my two favorite plants.”. “Thats great dear!” I respond. Then quietly to my self, “I have a couple more just like those in the basement.” It was pretty funny the next morning when I walk in to our room with her plant presents and she says “Well those are the ones I just bought.”. “Nope.” I say “I bought these a few days ago. ” The same plants. Anyhow we had a good laugh.

Oh yea when we were doing the wiring I managed to find a page of newspaper from 1874! It was in the same wall as the dress pattern I found from 1867! This house is too cool. Its late.

Nite

P.S Oh yea we got the tub re finished and new taps too. Not a bad week. Nite

Yesterday was a very productive day. Even though I was moving slower than the walking dead, we got lots done. First we dropped off Lola, our floozie of a cat to get spayed and headed off to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store. The stupid part was I had forgotten my book with all the door measurements. We are looking for new old doors to replace our front and side doors. The side door as it stands now is actually a hollow core interior door. So we were searching for something with a little more meat. The first store had a few things that we liked such as a nice but slightly used Frank double sink and a used set of taps for a claw foot tub. As it was the first store we didn’t want to jump into anything figuring we might see more at the next few stores. Of course that wasn’t the case. we drove all around Toronto only to end up back at the first store half an hour before they closed. We realized that the tap set we saw wouldn’t fit our tub but there was another set there that would. Unfortunatly that set was still attached to another claw foot. Not to mention the guy at the store didn’t want to break up the taps and the tub but after an excellent bit of pleading on Karen’s part, he relented and said that if we had tools we could have them for $125. “Great!”, we said and he wandered away leaving us with no tools wondering how we were going to remove these great old taps with no tools. After a few fruitless minutes with no tools, Karen begged a pair of channel locks off of our new friend and I attacked the tub. Things were looking bleak for a few minutes there but I kept at it and won the day. The taps, were ours! Treasures in hand, we collected our sad kitty from the vet and made our way home.

It is getting late and said kitty has escaped so I will tell you tomorrow of the floor we purchased as I must now go stand at my front door and yell into the night like a fool, Lola….Lola…LOLA……Stupid cat…

Nite

Monday was back to Reno World. Sounds like a good name for a store. I would shop there. Any how, I did a bunch of reading about Pex and tracked down a fairly local supplier. I figure next week I will be starting the plumbing.

What was really cool was that we went to see a flooring guy that we met at the home show. He sells a wood called Mascarey, it is so pretty. His company actually has a mill in Ecuador. He sells finished 5″ wide planks that come 2-7 feet long for $5.49/sq.ft. I can’t belive that price and the wood is Eco friendly and it is decently hard. It also a naturaly dark wood so you don’t have to stain it and if it gets dings in it you won’t notice them. Another thing is there is very little movement in the wood.

We are very excited. We should beable to do the whole main floor for about $5000. That includes the side stairs as well. I will add a link to some pictures if I can figure out how.
After the flooring place we went to IKEA and picked up some stuff for the girls room. We had decide on a bunk bed for the girls a while back and finally picked one up. We figure they will only be in them for a few years so IKEA will do for now. Its all solid wood at least. I think we found a sink there as well. A double apron sink for $409. 36″X26″

Beats the $1200 they are charging other places.

That leaves today. I went and got a oil change for the Aztec which was great. In and out of the dealership in half an hour. I then spent an hour and a half cleaning the vile winter filth out if it. I will now let other humans ride in it again. I then spent the second half of the day building bunk beds. What a delight! How doesn’t love putting together Ikea furniture? I know I sure do! They do look good and the girls LOVVVVVE them. So who am I to complain. Anyhow, its time to put the girls into the new bunk beds.

Nite.

Anyhow, work continued today. I managed to get the rest of the vinyl floor out of the kitchen and into a big pile in the driveway. I really wanted to get to the dump today but I just ran out of steam. I also managed to get the rest of the drywall off of the ceiling so that I can run wires for the new pot lights. Its now in a big pile on one side of the kitchen. I hate to cover up the old Tounge and Groove ceiling but there is so much missing its just not worth it. Perhaps the next owners might want to save it in 30 years.

I also made a miliion trips to the basement with boxes which were still piled in the kitchen from the move. Therefore I am pretty beat. Tomorrow I go to the dump after I take the cats to the vet for shots at 10:00 am. Stupid cats. Thats gonna be OH, so much fun. It a good thing I have thick gloves. I am gonna need them.

I know, I know, I need to start taking more pictures.

Nite.

I also went down to our old house today to pick some stuff we had left behind. The new owner has done tons of work in the back yard and it looks great! He did all the stuff I was meaning to get to but never did. Now the van is packed with all kinds of stuff I am not sure what to do with.

Anyhow, tomorrow I will finish getting the boxes out of the kitchen that have been there since we moved a month ago, finish taking up the first layer of floor, take down the rest of the drywall on the ceiling to reveal the t&g ceiling hidden underneth and make another dump run. My in-laws are just back from Florida and are coming over for dinner in two days. They have not seen the house yet. I wonder what they will have to say….hmmmmm……. I think I know but I will give them the benefit of the doubt. It should be …..interesting.

Sunday we are having my daughters Third birthday party so I have to have things up to a certain level of cleanliness and safety. It should be lots of fun not to mention they are having Huck Finn day in town and a fishing derby for the kids on Saturday so I won’t be getting much done on the weekend. So it must be done by Friday. NO pressure.

Now I am getting in trouble (from my lovely wife) for not calling the guy who is going to help me run the wire for the new lights. We are putting in twenty new GU10 4″ stainless pot lights. They are going to be very nice. I promise I will call tomorrow.

Did I mention that I am also going to be running new pex water line for the whole house. I was at Home Depot today looking at what they carry and I can get most of what I need there. That should be fun…ish, running new pipe through my whole house. Really though, how hard can it be?

Also I was looking at The Silent Paint Stripper® on-line. I can’t wait to get a hold of one of those puppies. WE, the royal we have plans to strip the whole house this summer and repaint the whole thing with linseed oil paint. We just have find a Canadian supplier.

It late and time for sleeeeeeeeppppp.

Nite

I took most of the material from the two walls I removed yesterday. The only stuff I didn’t take were the studs that I left up yesterday.One of the walls used to be an exterior wall and carried some load but over the years and many renovations, new joists have been added and most of the studs cut so they were not doing much anyway. I decided to secure what was left of the studs to the joist with joist hangers so at least they have something to attach to. Originaly the studs were actualy tennoned into the beam in the basement. Pretty cool. I will take some pictures tomorrow.

I also got half of the first layer of floor up today as well. I finaly got a good look at the hardwood I will have to rip up soon. Its hard to tell what it is but for some reason I think its Elm. I am hopping beyond hope to save the floor and use it somewhere else in the house. The reason I have to rip it up is that the kitchen floor is about an inch and a half to two inches higher than the rest of the now “great room”. Since we plan to run one type of floor all the way through I have to take it down to the sub floor to start fresh.

Tomorrow I will finish removing the old studs and keep taking up the old floor.

Nite.

Today I managed to get the second and third walls down on the main floor. They are in what was and will be the kitchen. Right now we have a temp kitchen set up in the laundry room. Karen, (my wife) says its kind of like being at the cottage in the temp kitchen. The cabinets don’t match and the floor is a bit slanty.Our plan is to have the whole main floor opened up into one great room, therefore the walls, they must go. At one point when the first wall came down, (a bit quicker and with a bit more material than I had anticipated) my five year old daughter who was sitting in the other room drawing says with out looking up from her work “I think you got it that time Dad.” I think she is getting quite used to living in a renovation. It is amazing what people have done to this place over the last 130 something years. Its a bit late so tomorrow I will give a better idea of what the overall plans for the reno are and a bit more background on us and the house.

Nite