Week #14 - Ready for Drywall

(April 19 - 25, 2010)

With the exception of some green grass sprouting, the outside of Casa Roa remains largely unchanged this week. The inside is a different story however. The interior was spray foamed to fill the cracks followed by insulation and vapour barrier. It took a crew but one day to install the insulation. It is noticeably quieter in the house now.

Kieran (and her sidekick Jerome the Giraffe) makes her Casa Roa blog debut this week. She is pointing out the obvious lack of cabinetry, sink and other missing elements in the kitchen (see below). So far, she seems to approve of the new digs.

Here's a shot of the newly insulated Great Room with the drywall in the foreground. The drywall crew is scheduled to start hanging drywall on Tuesday next week.

The drywall was delivered on Friday. The upstairs bedroom window had to be removed to get the drywall up to the second floor.

I spent an excessive amount of time on the phone this week to get our gas reconnected. Who knew that there is a lack of communication between ATCO and the gas retailers?! There is some room for streamlining the process. Understatement. I was thinking that these inefficiencies were limited to an entity that shall remain nameless that we've had the pleasure of tangling with. Does it really take 5 business days to transmit customer information to a supplier via the Internet?!?! I'm sure that Canada Post could get it there more quickly. Wow.

A quick update on the selection front - with Sue's assistance, I have started the paint selection process. If I thought that posting pics of the potential paint colours would translate over the web effectively, I'd solicit opinions. One more decision nearly complete!!

Finally, I received an updated schedule from the builder. We have a tentative move-in date for July 9!

Weeks #11-13 - Selections and Inspections

(March 29 - April 19, 2010)

Its been almost a full month since I last sat down to chronicle the tales of Casa Roa. I'm combining weeks 11, 12 and 13 in one post to get caught up. The bulk of my time has been spent on tile, tile and more tile...as well as other selection refinements like cabinet stain and tweaking previously made decisions about headers and casing. Sigh. It is so consuming at times but the effort to revisit a tile store or rethink the way a header looks will hopefully pull everything together and look more polished. I've enlisted the help of Sue Heinz (an interior design gal) to help with my second guessing ways. She has been fantastic!! I will post pictures of the final selections once these are determined. So close - I'm hopeful that week #14 will be the week that many of these decisions are finalized.

Week #11 (March 29-April 4, 2010)

This was the start of the tile selection process. I visited several tile retailers in search of tile for Casa Roa including bathroom floors, backsplashes, tub/shower surrounds, floor tile for the front and back entryways as well as the mudroom and something for the kitchen backsplash. Oh yeah, and some sort of stone for the fireplace surrounds. Let me tell you, the tile choices are abundant. The secret is to find someone in the store that has the time to pull samples for you rather than aimlessly wandering. Question - why do the tile retailers hang floor samples on the wall? Some have these nifty pull out trays that more closely resemble placement on the floor which is helpful. BTW - all retailers should remove their fluorescent lights! Anyways, I babble. I succeeded in finding some stuff that I liked but am far from finished.

My business colleague and good friend John Somers came by the house this week to do a walk-through for our security system install. We are putting a DiCam Property Control System in the house - it is a self-monitored system that monitors intrusion, water leaks, hi-lo temperature and other things that we may wish to keep an eye on. Part of the intrusion system includes video surveillance. If you'd like to learn more about the DiCam system, let me know...

The HVAC work was completed. Furnaces and ductwork are installed.

The central vaccuum system was marked out by the Vacuflo lady.

The most noticeable change this week was the digging of a trench through the backyard and halfway down the side of our house. This trench is needed to bury our electric and gas services. Until now, our electricity line hung precariously from a pole out in the alley onto the roof of the old house. It isn't a cheap process but one that we will be glad to have completed. The electricians will put the line in the ground and Enmax will come over to hook it up and inspect. After this is done, the temporary electricity set-up will be removed. Good stuff!

Week #12 (April 5- 11, 2010)

The electricians and plumbers finished up their work this week.

The building inspector arrived on Friday to inspect the various mechanical components of the house including electrical, HVAC and plumbing. All were approved! Excellent! With these approvals complete, the builder will finish up some framing that had to remain opened up for inspection purposes. The building inspector should return next week to complete the framing inspection.

I had a productive meeting with Paul and Sue to review all of the selections including the cabinet stains. The cabinet colour wasn't there quite yet so we made a suggestions for tweaking the colour and will reconvene next week. Until this is done, we won't look at paint samples. With Sue's help, we made a quick stop and finished up the tile selections. Phew!!

Week #13 (April 12 - 19, 2010)

The trench in the backyard was backfilled on Tuesday. In Perry's words, you no longer have to have the grace of a mountain goat to move around back there. :)

The building inspector was scheduled to arrive on Friday. He had not arrived when I was there at 1:30pm. At press time, I still did not have the final verdict. Will have an update early next week. With a framing inspection completed and approved, the drywalling crew should arrive Monday to start insulating followed by hanging drywall and mudding. This will really give the interior some shape. This should make for some good photo opportunities!