Moving On

It's time to move on to kitchen plumbing. We found out tonight that there IS a solution to what we thought was a large problem or two, so that's good news. Bad news is that it involves tearing out more drywall. Good news is that's tomorrow's job, not tonight's.

Now that the floor has been grouted and sealed, I wanted to post photos stage by stage. Since some of the pictures have already been posted elsewhere and the floor has already had visitors (it's more popular than I am), I'll keep the commentary to a minimum. To decrease the risk of being repetitive but to allow a viewing for those who haven't seen the photos yet here's a quick overview. If you've seen enough of the in-between already, scroll to the bottom for the finished product which hasn't been posted anywhere yet!

Whew! Not gonna lie, I'm happy that's done. Here's to hoping that nothing the City is doing outside with all the crashing and banging is going to disturb the cement or the grout curing.

Shave and a Haircut

A little more road construction before-and-after. Now that the City thinks our hedge has been suitably massacred it's time to oust the trees that separate our lonely little sidewalk from a rather busy street. All in the name of progress. And making sure we have a nice expanse of exposed fence ripe for  budding graffiti artists.

It really opens things up, huh? Yah, yah, it actually does. I'm sure we'll get used to it, and we still have lots of trees and foliage IN the yard. Embrace change, I say. Next step is for what the City folks call a "healthy pruning" of our trees that overhang the fence, so they can get their equipment closer in.

As an aside, the tear-out happened on Monday. It's all still sitting there. I'm sure there's a method to their madness. Somewhere.

Bath Day

I had a bath. My ears are clean, my feet don't stink, and my toenails are trimmed. That's all I'm sayin' about that.

I did feel much springier afterward though.










Besides, after that, we went to the river! The river makes me happy. See?














I met some strangers. That's okay. They liked me. Except when I tried to kiss them (well, seriously, if you sit on the dog beach, you're gonna get kissed). They let me play with their dog. Weird thing had one grey eye and one normal eye. Freaked me out a little, actually.









Ahhhh....warming up in the sun. Funny enough, the river is the best place to dry off after a bath. If you're a Ridgeback. Nothing really gets any wetter, except maybe your feet.

This is the side of the hedge that delineates our front yard - photo taken earlier this summer. I took a bunch of photos because we knew city road and sidewalk construction was imminent, and of course I'd want to track just how much of a muck they made of things.

This is the same hedge when I returned from errands today. Not the tree guy's fault - he has to trim (read: hack) the hedge back a certain distance into the property line so there is room for the forms for the new 2 metre wide sidewalk the city insists is required. Silly, really. Nobody uses the sidewalk on that side of the house. Probably because it ends at the end of our backyard. But I guess they'll remedy that too.

 

Tree guy was nice enough to give me a few pointers on hedge maintenance when I went and introduced myself. I don't expect he's going to be making friends anywhere along that stretch of road over the next couple of months. Wait till he goes to tell our neighbours in back of us that their maple tree has got to go. At least our trees you see at the side of our house (the ones inside the fence) get to stay, with a healthy pruning to make room for the equipment that's coming in.

This is the same sidewalk, taken from almost where the sidewalk ends, looking toward the front. See the nice, secluded little pathway to nowhere? The trees on the right are on city property and have to go to make room for the new bus stop. Most excellent, I say. Expose our long white fence to all the graffiti artists of the world, yeah!

Seriously, although I was pretty bitter a couple of months ago I think I'm over it. Somebody has to stay rational while Norm fumes away about the unjust senselessness of it all.

This Is My Dog

This is my dog.

This is my dog on dru..., uh no, this is my dog on power tools

Really. He's a reno pro. Or a really good foreman. The sounds of tile saws, grinders, drills (and the occasional curse)? He laughs in the face of all of that. Or at least he sleeps. His people, on the other hand, had work to do.

With the exception of the copper inserts, every single tile in this photo required cutting. Every. Single. Tile. And not just one cut. Oh no. The tiles in the border were cut on all four corners. If I didn't find that renovations provide me with a much needed creative outlet, we would have just layed the darn things side by side and been done with it. This is the progress after almost two days of work. The rest should be easier. Should be.

I'm going to BBQ some steak, get the watermelon out of the fridge and call it an afternoon. That's what my dog would do.

Where Were We?

Oh yes, I remember now, when last you saw me, the folks were tearing out the old subfloor leaving bare planks where I was perilously at risk of getting my toenails stuck.

At the unfortunate expense of long, leisurely hikes at the dog park (I don't mind about the mosquitoes, really I don't), the people of the house opted to get down to business and finish the kitchen floor.

They've put in new 3/4" plywood over the 3/4" shiplap. A lot of screwing went on in there.




















Then a layer of thinset and a layer of Ditra. This is me.
Sometimes I wonder if my momma doesn't realize what I good help I am.



















I find leaning on your people really helps to them feel loved. ("How about now? Can we go for a walk now? I'm bored. Is it supper time?")



















Last night, momma put tape on the floor. It's a little CSI-ish, huh? I didn't get it. She said the blue tape was where the cabinets would go (that's a lot of cabinets...they'll hold a lot of dog food, I say).




















Then the green tape helps make her virtual rectangle, so she can figure out where to put the tile border - somewhere on the inside of that rectangle - you wouldn't want the pretty parts to end up UNDER the cabinets! She made some chalk lines and made sure the rectangle was square (I guess I really don't understand geometry. A square rectangle??). And then she marked the centre point. That'll come in handy later.




















Then a dry layout of a couple of courses of tile to make sure things line up the way she thought they would.



















Scratch everything out to scale on some paper. She decided that having the border echo the virtual rectangle would make the kitchen look like a long hallway. The second option is to make the border a shorter rectangle. Yup, that's the ticket!



















Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I'm excited to spend the long weekend watching them lay tile, rather than being out camping in the woods. For sure.

Everything Must Go

I love long weekends, don't you? Two Fridays per month off work is excellent. Especially when you spend that Friday with your significant other. In a swampy mud pit. Getting bitten by mosquitoes, intermittently burned by the sun, and falling into four-foot deep holes. All for a good cause of course. We were helping build a playground at our community centre this Friday. If there wasn't enough backbreaking labour involved there, we spent Saturday tearing out what was left of the kitchen (the sink and surrounding counter top), and the old tile and plywood off the floor. Tonight, you get pics of how serious the people were that built this house. Nothing comes off, or out, easily. Nothing.

Here's what we started with on Saturday.

Here's our foreman, uh, Rory. Pretty much his eyes are saying "Please hurry up. I want to go for a walk. And I'm tired of getting my toenails caught in these boards. It's ridiculous how long you've been taking to do this. And I want to go for a walk. What did you get yourself into? Can I have supper? Did I tell you that I want a walk?"

Much banging, crashing, twisting and tugging results in....this. Now I want to go for a walk. I don't care that it's raining.

After we pried up the base of the cabinet this is what we saw. Peanuts. Of an unknown vintage. Petrified. Don't ask me. There was no way in or out of that space...not even for a peanut.

All done arguing with the cabinet, drain, sink and garburator. Now we tackle the floor. And a million nails. I do have to say that I'm glad the dumpster guy is coming on Tuesday to take the bin out of the driveway. Otherwise, I would have given up right here. Nothing like a bit of incentive to get you in deconstruct mode.

Finally! Here's what we ended with on Saturday. I was originally going to call this entry "Everything. Including The Kitchen Sink". But I'm not going to make it that far in bloggerdom tonight. We didn't finish screwing down the new plywood today, but we did get a good bit of it in. I'm hoping we finish it tomorrow so that I can lay the tile while Norm is away.




Here's to peanut butter sandwiches for supper. For the foreseeable future.