Healed and Happy

Yup the ankle seems to be doing not too bad, the majority of the selling has gone down and turned into bruising, but the good news is that I took a walk out to the back forty and back and managed it pretty good.  The only pain I have is if I turn abruptly or slide funny.  Also when it clicks because the ligaments have been stretched.  So good bye crutches, hello walking around like a normal person. 

A HUGE chunk of the flooring has been completed.  Let the birds sing and the bunnies fly!  The entry looks purdy even though we ended up not having enough to do the diamond pattern.  In fact after the whole thing was done we ended up with one tile, or would have it one of the tiles hadn't of been cut wonky.  I think we may kick back for a couple of days before tackling the final room with the flooring.  Today is day two of the chillaxing time and hubby is already antsy.  Sigh.  On the other hand I have already had the sheer pleasure of reading half a book.  Such joy. 

How To Tame A Feral Cat

I could tell you all the exciting news of the work on the new flooring in the entryway but then you would be too jacked up to be able to function for the rest of the day (night) so in the interest of the health of anyone reading this I will forgo that trauma.  Instead I will share with you some pictures of Karson enjoying her most favourite treat on this planet, and perhaps on all other planets combined (in all the galaxies in our universe). The purr sounds somewhat like a small chainsaw whenever someone opens a tub of kitty crack around here. 

"Haha, you snooze, you lose, stupid dog.  Only I can eat the holy yogurt from the planet Activa."

Sooo...This Is What It Looks Like So Far

My living room with hardwood floors. All I need now is a new sofa and to do a couple of paintings for the wall.  I also have my eye on a couple of bookshelves on Kijiji. 

Looking into the living room from the kitchen.  Cabinets should be arriving in a few weeks.  I can hardly wait.

The temporary island we made from old counters. 

Looking from the fireplace into the kitchen. 

My poor ankle, even my toes are swelling.  Ask me how many times I've sprained my ankle in my life?  Probably in the hundreds by now.    

A Mostly Nice Day

I wrote this yesterday, but for some reason it wouldn't publish.  Go figure. 

Today was a seriously lovely spring day. What's that you say? It's February. Ah yes well tell that to the spring gods of the east, they thought today should be spring like, and it was. Today was by and large a pretty good day, only one little whoops made it less than stellar, I managed to miss the bottom step and go over on my ankle. Some serious whining ensued until the pain subsided then some pouting happened because of my bone headedness.

The hardwood is done, and if I didn't have this bum ankle I would go and get the camera and download a completed picture, so the picture will have to wait. Today I managed to clean shit up, put shit away, and pretty much enjoy the fact that after a year and a half I actually have an area, pardon me, have a few areas which almost look like they are part of a for real house. You know, as apposed to the cabin like atmosphere, renovation central type circumstance, shackified surroundings which I have been living in. That deserves a big cheer from the peanut gallery...that would be me.

Soon I may be able to write about something besides siding, drywall, tiles, hardwood, cabinets, paint, etc, etc, etc. Believe it or not I actually have a few ideas kicking around in the brain cavity.

One fun project is going to involve seeing if I can start a new Urban Legend. For example -

Fourteen Year Old Boy Accidentally Discovers The Fountain Of Youth!

In a small town in Northwestern Ontario a young boy had finally received the ultimate birthday present from his parents. For a couple of years he had been begging his mother and father for a chemistry set when his mother finally decided that fourteen was old enough. "After his birthday we would only see Danny for a few minutes at breakfast and then at supper, the rest of the time he would lock himself in his room and work on his project." Mrs. Danforth said. She went on to say that it was their youngest son who was eleven who realized that Danny was starting to get younger. "All of a sudden instead of having an eleven year old and a fourteen year old we had two eleven year old children. Not only did he look younger, but he also had actually shrunk in size. It was quite disconcerting at first," Mrs Danforth said. But she quickly realized that Danny's science project was the discovery of the century, he had actually figured out how to reverse the aging process. "I haven't looked or felt this good since I was twenty five," the forty three year old mom said. She said that people who don't know her think that she is a teenager, and people who do know her are completely stunned at her appearance.  "Things were going great until the local newspaper ran the story on Danny and wouldn't you know it the very next day five different drug companies were knocking on our door. They wouldn't take no for an answer but I held out and now we are sitting on a pretty nest egg, we sold Danny's lab, notes and everything, for ten thousand dollars." Mrs. Danford was gleeful.

The Universe Continues To Have A Huge Grudge Against Hardwood

Well yee-freakin-ha the hardwood is almost all done!  But I have to say that it came pretty close to, yours truly, almost having a major nervous breakdown during the process.  Yesterday we got to the point where the kitchen was half done, and in order to complete the rest of the floor we had to move the fridge from the unfinished floor to the finished floor.  Bad things happened while I was indisposed.  Bad, bad, bad things.  The hubby, someone not known for his ability to wait on anyone else, took it upon himself to move the behemoth all by his onesies, this move caused big, large, giant sized gouges in the recently laid hardwood to appear.  When I saw it I didn't go apoplectic, nope not me, I did however come close to hysterical bouts of sobbing.  It was just about the last straw.  And yes, in fact we did have to pull up great wads of the stuff and then put down new stuff. 

Luckily I remembered that I had purchased some furniture sliders several years ago which I had used to move some stuff around in our previous house, the house which the Universe actually liked hardwood in, so we pulled them out, stuck them under the fridge, and presto, whamo it moved without doing any damage whatsoever to the new flooring.  (Note to self: it is going to suck ass when I have to move the fridge to clean behind it unless I can come up with a method to preclude that situation now.) 

Here is a picture after we moved the fridge onto the hardwood, ripped up the stuff we had just laid, and then replaced we new wood.  If you look closely you can see the tear stains on the floor. 

Living room almost done. 

Here is the living room all finished.  Yipee!

Here is the start of the next part of the flooring saga.  We are going to put this tile into the entryway as well as in front of the sliding glass doors which lead out onto the front deck.  If I were a betting man I wouldn't bet that life is going to be all rosy during this project.  But it is all going to be worth it in the end...I hope. 

We are so close to the end now that I feel pretty confident about finally getting some new furniture for Kitpu Estates (damn, I really need to get a good name for this place).  Luckily when we bought this place it came fully furnished, we inherited a tiny little blue dining room suite, cute but uncomfortable beyond words.   Several twin sized beds, all the 1970's appliances, and the Kijiju ubiquitous living room set, ours are blue with purple flowers on it but I have seen them in all the glorious colours of the rainbow.  It wasn't all that comfortable either, but it meant not having to sit on lawn chairs for a year and a half so for that I am grateful. 

I placed an order for three different dining room sets.  No I am not going to buy three, but I want to make sure that whatever I get not only looks okay, but is very much comfortable to sit on and I cannot tell from pictures that will be left up to the "butt test".  Oh and now I also want to make sure that it is not going to gouge the shit out of the floors.  This is almost as much as a priority as the comfort part of things.  I have been checking out couches but so far I haven't found anything that will stand up to the "butt test", ugliness scale, and cat proof.  I guess my next few forays into the big city will mean a few stops at furniture stores.  The joy of it all. 

The Universe Hates Hardwood

Finally after having to wait the proper allotted time to let the newest bunch of hardwood acclimate to our house we once again began to lay the stuff.  Unfortunately the Universe spent the entire day conspiring against us.  Right off the bat it was deliberately screwing things up, and just making life a living nightmare for all and sundry.  But even though the Universe was trying it's damnedest to generally fuck around and drive us crazy it just didn't realize the dogged determination that can infect the two of us.  Not once, but two times we actually had to rip large portions of it out because of alignment issues.  You have absolutely no idea how frustrating it is to have to do that.  (Picture me grabbing my hair, jumping up and down, and screaming.  Not that I actually did that, that is just what I felt like doing. I'm not a complete loon, I just feel like one most days.) 

We got about a third of the living room completed, and about a quarter of the kitchen done.  I am hoping that tomorrow the Universe is scheduled to go and play waffle ball at the recreation court in town and will stay the hell out of my house.  Or I may be forced into kicking some galactic sized ass. 

The Life of a Karson

Recently I bought a bench for the front entry so when I decide to take my sorry carcass outside, or bring it back in again, I have a place to plant my butt and put my shoes on, or take them off, depending on the coming or going part.  Unfortunately it came with no storage, which I wanted for things like hats, gloves, scarfs, surveyors tape, gum, string, batteries, GPS's, and dust bunnies.  To rectify this I purchased a couple of baskets so I could have a place to neatly store my stuff, and a place I could bitch about where the hubby would store his stuff. 

In case you missed it, here is a close up. 

It turns out that it is also a pretty good place to store your cat.  Well at least the cat thinks so anyway. 

As I have been bitching...I mean blogging about, we are doing renovations here at Kitpu Estates, and as such we have been ripping things out, putting things up, and pretty much indiscriminately ignoring the needs of the cat.  It turns out that occasionally we do manage to make life a lot more interesting for her. 

As you see in the picture above, Karson, has developed a singular love for the hole in the floor that was found under the kitchen island.  She is fascinated with this hole.  It keeps her occupied for long tracts of time.  In fact, she can never resist the urge to at least go and stick her paw in it whenever she finds herself in the kitchen.  I'm pretty sure she may need counselling when we finally get to the stage where we cover it up with hardwood. 

Speaking of hardwood!

Yes believe it or not, this picture is showing hardwood attached to the living room floor.  There is joy in Mudsville.  Soon vast tracks of Kitpu Estates will be covered in a veritable cornucopia of arboreal forest...products.  There will be galas, dancing in the street, well road, toasts, and possibly even toast, fireworks, conga lines, jousting, speeches, large quadrupeds being roasted in fiery pits, soup, chocolate bunnies, tiny little wieners for tiny little people, shampoo, and all the other things which comes with people doing celebratory things. Ah, the future, the world of dishwashers and counter space, its like Nirvana, but with a lot less of that pesky reincarnation stuff that you have to go through. 

New Spirits and Such

Every once in awhile my computer refuses to read the card from my camera so I have to go and get the USB plug to download the pictures, tonight is one of those times, and seeing as I am far too lazy to go down into the dungeon and dig through piles of crap to find it, you are not getting any new pictures of the work done to date.  I know, how will you be able to bear it?  *Snark*

Anyway the good news is that I did manage to get the required layers of paint onto the walls to consider the room done enough for us to be able to start on the floors.  So we started pulling up the old linoleum, yowza.  Two layers.  Two gross, glued, stinky layers.  We used a flat shovel, which worked quite well until we hit the spots where they nailed it.  And when I said nailed it, I mean it.  Hundreds of nails.  Nice.  Real nice.  But at least the crap is up and off the floor, there is still some residual bits stuck here and there, but those bits are going to stay and be covered by the new hardwood. 

Warning Pat Robinson I'm on a new tangent now.  I don't know if I ever told you about the house I used to live in on the other side of the country?  We did lots of renos in it too.  In fact we did so much that it really didn't look much like the house we had moved into.  It was an older home, and as with most older places it came with its own character, the not quite plumb walls, the furnace that needed replacing, and the ghost of the lady who used to live there before we move in.  Vera was pretty happy with most of the changes we did, typically she would let us know when she was around by opening the basement door, or giving off a very faint whiff of cigarette smoke in the bathroom closet.  She supervised the construction, inside and out, sometimes even lending a helping hand.  I was kind of sad to leave Vera behind when we left, but was happy when I realized that she found us here and every once in awhile comes to visit.  It makes me feel special. 

Well this week the people who originally owned our properties had a tragic event happen, their youngest son died suddenly, and they asked us if they could spread his ashes on the back forty by a small shack which he built when he was a teenager.  Naturally we said yes, I can absolutely understand why he would want to come back here.  It is a tranquil, peaceful, beautiful piece of land.  So perhaps, if we are lucky, we will once again have a full time spirit hanging out with the family.  Welcome to Kitpu Estates, or is that Renovation Palace? 

Short and Sweet

Today.  Wake up early, go to the hospital to have blood sucked from veins.  Buy thermometers.  Come home and eat breakfast.  Open paint cans.  Paint walls.  Make supper and eat it.  Pay bills.  Spend a half hour playing at catch up on this thing.  Go to bed.  The end. 

Winter in the East

Yesterday it was raining pretty much all the day long.  Sometime last night the temperatures dropped which means that today it was cold and icy.  So instead of going outside I painted the ceiling and the walls in the almost finished drywall of the kitchen.  There is one section remaining which needs touching up, but other than that she is good to go.  So now I can say, "holy smokey baby is it white and bright in here."  Tomorrow I am hoping that I won't need to do any touching up of glaring errors and can add some colour here and there.  The good thing is that the majority of the walls will be hidden behind cabinets so I will not have to worry about being all OCD about it.  Not that I am anti OCD it is mainly because I really, really, really hate to cut in with the paint.  Sometimes when I am doing that for hours, and hours, and hours I can see the merits to painting everything white.  But then the thought of living in a house where all the walls are white gives me the heebie jeebies so I mutter to myself and add colour to the walls. 

Random Thoughts

I was listening to CBC the other day (big surprise) mostly just to listen to Elvira Kurt to hear her inductee into the Culture Hall of Shame on Q.  I love Q on Friday's because of Elvira, she rocks.  She was in pretty good form and sounded incensed about her choice, Karl Lagerfeld, and his comments about Adele being fat.  As usual she cracked me up.  I most especially chuckled about her description of him and that from now on she was going to call him a Designosaur.  Very apt and to the point.  Where does a bizarre looking old guy get off disparaging how someone else looks when he looks like a freak of nature himself?  Elvira nailed it.  Have I mentioned that she is my favourite comedian? 

The day before I was listening to, Canada Reads, where the two final books were, The Game, and, Something Fierce, the first about hockey and the second about a woman who became part of the resistance in Chili during the Pinochet regime.  In my head during the debates I was already composing an email in protest against The Game.  I was positive that it was going to win and felt like it was going to be the biggest cliche ever.  A book of hockey winning the Canada Reads contest, how droll.   Thankfully I did not have to write my email, not that I have read either of the books so I was basing my opinion on topic alone.  Perhaps I should shut up now because I am showing my dark underbelly of my prejudice against hockey. 

The good news is that today the hubby put the final coat of mud on the drywall after a good sanding.  Which means that tomorrow after a final light sanding I might be able to put the first, and possibly second, coat of paint onto the walls.  Which of course means that soon we will be laying flooring.  Which means that we are that much closer to getting finished the biggest chunk of the renos.  Have I mentioned any of this before? 

Today, after several days of feeling like crap and not doing much, I decided to take the hell hound and go for a walk.  It was overcast but warm and only raining a tiny bit.  I decided to go and see if I could find any evidence of a meteorite which I saw fall the other day.  Actually the hubby saw the meteorite, I saw a ????.  At least I don't think it was a meteorite because it acted more like a flare.  I wandered around searching the ground on the hill behind our house and found zip.  So whatever it was will have to remain hidden, most especially because they are calling for snow tonight, although it is +2 and still raining right now. 

When I got home I once again found the cat locked in a closet.  That is another reason why it will be great to have the house done, at least Karson, will only get locked in closets instead of all the cupboards and other cubby holes she has been climbing into and getting stuck for hours because we didn't see her scoot in while we had the door open.  I don't know about other cats, but this one cannot resist a closet, in fact she has super hearing when it comes to closet doors being opened.  She can be fast asleep in the basement but if someone opens a closet anywhere upstairs she is up and scrambling to get inside.  I've started calling her  Karson The Reluctant Lesbian, you just can't keep that cat out of the closet. 

Another Kitchen Renovation Update

I'm just recovering from a pretty good knockdown where I spent a couple of days sleeping and when I wasn't sleeping I was whining about being in pain, I was down for the count, thankfully the hubby wasn't.  I won't bore you with the in-between pictures so we shall go right to the finished, mudded walls.  Real progress. 

This of course means that in two, perhaps three days, I will be able to put the first layer of primer on the walls, and then some colour.  Wow!  Then it will be floor time.

More Progress

I bet you can't guess what we did today.  Did you guess renovation?  Because if you did you are absolutely correct.  Yes we did more renovations, but the good news is that the old kitchen cupboards are officially a thing of the past.  Its almost enough to make a person have a real good cry.  So of course this means that if we are really good little boys and girls (well, boy and girl) and we work very hard, we may actually have the old insulation out and the new insulation up, the new vapour barriers up, and new drywall up sometime in the next two days.  Folks you have NO idea how excited, happy, elated, and breathless with anticipation I am about that moment.  Then all that is left is mudding, painting, two weeks of laying hardwood, installing new cabinets, installing the new lights, putting up the trim, installing the new flooring in the entryway, touching up all the walls and ceilings which got smudged during the process, and then Bob's your uncle.  Then I may take about two weeks off and do nothing but laze about and perhaps take the dog and hubby for a walk every once in awhile.  Perhaps.  The new bathroom and closet will just have to wait. 

This picture is of the wall that used to house the built in oven, that was the last thing to go. 

Notice anything missing?  Yup, it is the island with the stove top....gone.

One wall with some actual colour on it.  Yippee.  (And no the fridge is not going to stay there.)

The Day After Ground Hogs Day

Good thing that the old ground hog wasn't coming out today, it was sunny and cold, winter at its finest.  I decided to go for a walk this morning before heading into town and my next dreaded appointment.  The lake was groaning and chatting up a storm.  I had to laugh because at one point it was making so much noise that the dog freaked out.  The hackles went up all the way from her nose to her tail and she went into German Shepherd mode.  Of course I found it very amusing and asked her if she was planning on attacking the lake.  She pretended that she did not hear me and became extremely interested in smelling a lump of snow. 

The wind was pretty chilly this morning so I was pretty happy that I dressed for the weather, even then once I got out of the sun the temperature was quite noticeably chillier.  I had my gators on today, have I mentioned how much I love my gators?  I bought them a couple of years ago when I bought my snow shoes.  The company I used to work for had a pretty awesome fitness incentive program, they would reimburse you up to a $1000.00 a year for anything you spent on healthy lifestyle purchases.  Snowshoes, gators, runners, hiking boots, kayaks, etc, so that's when I got them.  I used to talk about buying them for years, most especially when my running partner and I used to run a million miles a year in the winter.  Man they would have come in handy then.  I can remember slogging through waist deep snow some winters then digging snow out of my runners, socks, and pants before they permanently froze to my legs.  

This was me this morning, all warm and toasty, no nasty wind blowing up my pant legs. 

Happy Ground Rodent Day

Apparently the ground hog in Nova Scotia, (I won't even try to spell the name) did not see his/her shadow today which of course means an early spring.  Normally I would be all, yippe, yahoo, about it, but this winter I really can't find too much to bitch about.  It is already February and so far I believe we have only had one or two days where the temperature actually dipped below -20, and that was at night, by the middle of the day it was back up to acceptable levels.  And the snow has been almost nonexistent.  So it actually kind of feels like we have just had a rather extended version of fall for most of the winter.  In other words, I can't really complain.  That is a tough predictament to be in, I really feel that my duty as a Canadian is to do serious bitching about the weather, but as a person enjoying a pretty damn good winter, I shouldn't. 

So we actually had a little more progress on the kitchen front today.  1) I have a brand spanking new range which actually works.  2) I have added a bit of colour to one wall.  (Although the jury, a jury of one, is still out on the colour.)  Which means that after tomorrow's trip to yet another appointment in town we will be able to rip the remainder cabinetry out of the kitchen.  I love progress.  Progress is good. 

A Foggy Wet Day At Kitpu Estates

Today was a warm, wet, foggy, rainy kinda day.  I had every intention of taking the, dope on the rope, out for a walk but I got sidetracked by insidey kind of things.  So instead of getting some fresh air, I got paint in my hair.  (My inner poet sometimes surfaces.  My inner bad poet.)  Have I mentioned how much I hate painting ceilings?  And seeing as pictures of white blank ceilings are mind numbingly dull I thought I would put a few on here from yesterday, you know, when I actually did get outside. 

Morning has broken...