Painting!

"Ok, only 6 rooms, 2 closets, a hallway and 1 bathroom left!"

The Easter long weekend saw our daytime temperatures finally start to turn around. That got the snow melting, causing our muddy driveway to become a rutted bog in a few spots. The good news there is that this means that eventually the snow will all be gone and the mud will soon disappear. To celebrate the warmer weather we spent the entire weekend inside, painting. While this may seem to some to be wasting the good weather, to us it means that we can see an end to the dusty hell that has been the inside of our house for the past month. We have chosen a variety of colours for the various rooms in the place - "cinnamon bun" for the downstairs bathroom, "azure afternoon" blue for Alex's room, "moss" green for the laundry room, "caramel cake" for the rest of the downstairs, and finally, "tahoe stone" tan and a deep red (whose name escapes me) for the loft bedroom. However, before we can put this rainbow of colour up, we first have to seal and prime every square inch of drywall in the house. We could have purchased the paint that claims to include the primer in the mix and so requires just a couple of coats of the colour directly on the raw drywall. As wonderful as it is, however, we opted to buy separate primer and coloured paints <"opted", as in "couldn't afford the good stuff">.

Just like HGTV! Hey, we're even using a level!

We chose to take a room-by-room approach to the painting. We would go in and prime all the walls and the ceiling (if the room had a ceiling). Then, we cut-in the white ceiling paint and painted on two coats of the flat finish paint. Once dry (only an hour or two later), we taped off the edges where the walls meet the ceiling and then cut-in the wall paint, followed by two coats of the chosen colour. We then removed the tape, touched up any problem areas. Of course, while we were waiting for the paint to dry between coats, we went ahead and performed the same operations in the next room, and so on, and so on...
I'm very happy to report that after 3 hard days of work we have finished the laundry room! Yeah, I know that doesn't sound like much progress, but we really did get lots done. Everything on the main floor except for the dining room wall and the top part of the big glass, east wall has been primed. Alex's room (main floor bedroom) has the ceiling paint done and one coat of the blue on the walls. The hallway and kitchen have the first coat of ceiling paint complete. The upstairs bathroom has been primed and has the first coat of ceiling paint on.

Ben finding a "safe" place away from the painters!

In addition to the painting, we assembled and installed the 3 cupboards over the washer/dryer and put all the electrical cover plates back on in the laundry room. So now ALL we need is window and baseboard trim, a light fixture/switch, flooring and a door (OMG, we're never going to be finished!) and this room is done! Well it felt like we got a lot done anyway!
It's Alex's birthday today - Happy 25th, Alex. Now, go finish painting your room!

Dust Ourselves Off

As I explained before, we were staying at some friends while our drywallers finished up last week. We had decided to move back to the disaster zone on Friday, after work. Alex had gone back up on the Thursday and noted that the kitchen was usable and that the whole place wasn't too bad. When we got up to the house, we were a little disappointed to find that there were a few problems with the mudding that needed to be sorted out. Also, the tools, supplies and scaffolding used by the drywallers were all still piled in our living room!  I called Bruce and left him a message expressing our concerns. We were really pleased when he showed up early on Saturday to take care of everything. With all the tools, etc. gone and the little issues cleaned up, we had the place ready to paint. Well, not quite.

All those boxes of drywall compound were now distributed throughout the house in a not-so-thin layer of fine dust covering everything. Think... bathtub, toilets, bedding, underwear, floors, walls, cupboards, food, etc. and you start to get the idea. We had lots of cleaning to do! Clothing and bedding all got put in the washing machine. We put the "super fine" filter in the shop vac, and then put in a giant vacuum bag just to be sure, and proceeded to vacuum the house, starting upstairs. This dust is horrible! It sticks to everything. We vacuum it up. We wipe it off walls. We wash clothes, sheets and blankets. We dust off the tables. It makes no difference. Within minutes, it's back! Granted, maybe not quite as bad as before our efforts, but it's back just the same. We want the walls to be relatively clean so we can paint them all with drywall sealer/primer. This, we learned, does two things. It seals up the drywall so that it accepts paint more easily and evenly. But it also puts a protective coat on all the very soft, exposed drywall mud that has been painstakingly smoothed to remove all the imperfections. Of course, every time you touch the wall with anything before the sealer is on, it leaves a small impression. So, our mission this week is to try and clean the walls (and ceilings) well enough that we can paint them with the sealer/primer to minimize the damage we're doing, and hopefully, eliminate the source of any "new" dust.

On the good news front. We did manage to get the main floor bathroom painted, cleaned up, and then get the toilet and vanity reinstalled. While my painting skills are not yet up to my expectations ("cutting in" is an art form in it's own right!), it is nice to have at least one room that's reasonably "finished". Hooking up the heated tile mat, it was fun to feel the nice warm floor under our toes. It makes our house seem almost "civilized", after the chaos of the last few weeks. It might only be a small thing, but it feels like we're finally on our way to actually finishing the house. There's a ton of work to do, but I think we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Bathroom Floor Tiles

We have moved out of the house for a few days while Chris finishes up the drywall mudding, taping and sanding. They were supposed to be finished last Friday, but circumstances ganged up and Chris was left with no helpers and his boss out of town. That meant he was trying to do 4 jobs on his own. Something had to give, and our muddy driveway helped him choose to work someplace else for 3 out of the 5 days last week. Not a real problem for us, but certainly an inconvenience as we have everything piled in the centre of all the rooms so they can work around us. I guess it will be one more week...
On a happier note, we have been able to install the electric floor heating mat and tiles in the downstairs bathroom. We put down some orange Ditra membrane to isolate the tiles from the wood floor, a self levelling mortar bed and the electrically heated mat. Then came the layer of thin set mortar and the tiles themselves. We have yet to grout it but the hard work has been done. That leaves final coats of paint and reinstall the toilet and sink vanity and then that room is done!

We are finally getting some warmer weather up at our place. That is melting  the snow and ice (we've got lots to get rid of!) but has the side effect of turning our driveway into a rut filled river of mud that freezes solid every night. Our poor car does not go well in the deep mud so we have taken to the truck for transportation. Hopefully, the melting will progress far enough that it will start to dry up soon.

 After 4 days, all the drywall has been installed. What a mess this stuff makes. Well, the drywall itself doesn't make any mess, but the installers cutting and screwing it onto the walls leave mountains of dust and piles of little chunks of gypsum board all over the place. It's not their fault - it's just the way it goes with this stuff. Most of the time, it's no big deal, but in our case it's a VERY big deal. We live here...while all this is going on! The really good news, is that we're half way there. By the end of this week, the taping, mudding, and sanding will all be complete and the walls will be ready for painting. Well, they will be ready... after we've cleaned up all the mess!
By building code, we have to drywall the basement exterior walls, so we have contracted for Bruce's guys to do this nasty job as well. Next year, after we've framed in some bulkheads downstairs, we'll have to board up the ceilings and the mechanical room walls, but that job will have to wait for now.
We have arranged for emergency lodging with some friends if the dust and mess drive us from the house completely, but we're hoping that it doesn't come to that.
We've included a few photos of all the board on the walls to give you an idea what it's like here now. Note, the pink insulated ceilings are not being drywalled. They will be covered with tongue-and-groove pine boards at a later date. Next week, we're on to painting the walls; and then laying down the flooring; oh, and getting some loads of gravel on the driveway, and....the list goes on and on.

Drywalling Underway

The drywallers have started putting the boards on the wall and I just wanted to share a few pics of the activity around here the last few days.
When they finally got the truck up here, it was so windy that several of the 14 foot long drywall boards blew right off the back of the truck and smashed on the ground. Yikes!
It's heavy work moving all that drywall into the house, but the crane they have on the truck makes the work a lot easier. The guys still have to hump it in one board at a time, and even carry it up to the second floor. Better them than me!

Really cool remote-controlled crane. Notice the blowing snow in the background.

These guys earn every penny they get paid! They work very hard.

Upstairs bathroom with odd looking window

 
Drywalling is a messy job as you can see by our upstairs bathroom. The installers are good enough to cover most of our stuff in plastic. Alex, who was home while they were putting up the boards on the first day, said that they went hard at it all day. We saw them driving up when we left for work at 7:20am and they were still there when we got home just before 6pm. They are really good about making sure they don't damage anything in the house while working quickly and efficiently. Even though they are one person short this afternoon (Wednesday), they still got a ton done and we expect all the board to be on the walls by Friday afternoon. Now, the mudding and sanding is a different story!

The upstairs bedroom looks almost odd with actual walls instead of the pink insulation.

The drywall is here!

I am typing this on my Blackberry while 2 strong young guys unload and carry all the drywall into the house. Great news for us. Not so much for the 2 guys! Bruce called us this morning to tell us they were going to try again. It is below freezing so the driveway is in pretty good shape. They got the truck up here with no problems at all. Yay!   :)

Houston, we have a problem...

      They say that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Well, we got a little bit stronger today. We had been waiting for Bruce, the drywall guy.. to come up and do a "board count" so he could order the drywall to be delivered up to the house. This is the last step prior to the crew coming and putting it all on the walls. We passed Bruce on his way out when we were on our way home last night. He had been up and done what he needed to and told us the drywall would be delivered in the morning on Friday. Yay! We had to quickly rearrange stuff in the house to accommodate the 12 and 14 foot long boards that the professional drywallers use. Friday was also the day that the laminate flooring we liked at Rona was going on a "buy 2, get 1 free" sale - a substantial saving. I took the truck in to work, opened up the office and then left Loni in charge for the day while I went to pick up the flooring and underpad. Tobi at Rona looked after me quickly, and I loaded more than a ton of "spalted maple" flooring into the back of the truck and headed up the hill to our place. It was a beautiful day, with lots of sunshine and warm temps (13*C in town). The road was quite sloppy as most of the snow and ice was melting, forming rivers of muddy runoff in the ditches. As I drove into the first part of our 2km driveway, it quickly became apparent that something big had been on our road. It must be the drywall delivery truck! Hoping not to meet it going in the opposite direction, I carried on up through the snowy and sometimes icy mess that is our driveway. The big tires of the crane truck they use to unload the heavy drywall boards had made significant tracks along the way with several areas where they obviously were slightly off the main part of the road. About 300 metres below the house, on a part where you still can't see that there is a house ahead, there was an obvious "oops". The tracks fell off into the ditch and there had been much futzing around to get them back onto the road....and then the tracks ended! OMG, they got all this way up, within a couple of hundred metres of the house, and then stopped and went back! Yikes!
After arriving home, Carol didn't even realize that they had been just out of sight, around the little curve in the driveway. Shortly after, Bruce called with the obvious news. The delivery truck had been stuck for several hours and had broken a set of tire chains trying to get in. They were, not surprisingly, pissed and told Bruce that they wouldn't make another attempt until we had something plow the driveway completely clean and flat. That was not going to happen with our little tractor so we would have to come up with another plan.
As you know, we had tried to get the gravel guys up a couple of weeks ago only to be thwarted by the load restrictions on the soft roads. It seems that you have such a short window of opportunity with all this stuff and you have to walk a fine line to get it all done when you want/need it done. We'll think about it for a day or two and then decide what to do.
For now, all we could do was unload all the flooring stuff into the basement. I will work on the downstairs bathroom and some of the electrical finishing. I have lots of lights, plugs and switches to install. The extra tile for the bathroom floor had arrived last week so that can be another weekend project. And, of course, we need wood....lots of wood....lots and lots of wood.