(May 23 - June 13, 2010)
Well, I did it again...another 3 week stretch between posts. The good news is that progress on the house continues even when my blog updates are temporarily suspended. :)
The previous sequence of pictures are exterior shots - the first one being the house at the end of week #19, the back of the house remains unchanged through the 3 weeks and finally the front of the house at the end of week #21. Read more to see what happened inside and out.
Let me introduce you to your tour guide for this particular post. Kieran quickly added the word 'house' to her vocabularly. She enjoys going to the house so much that when I do a drive-by only, she starts to fuss and cry about not stopping to see the house (or is it pick rocks outside?). She is easily occupied picking up the small bits of trim waste off the floor, stacking it just so. She also finds the occasional used ear plug. I think I'd rather she collected rocks or played in the mud (see below)!
The largest chunk of work undertaken during the past 3 weeks has been installing trim - window casings, door casings and jams, baseboards, crown moulding and the like. Your guide would like to turn your attention to the leftover materials in the Great Room. Its amazing how much the look of the rooms is improved with some unpainted mdf and some painstaking attention to cuts, corners and straightlines. Your guide presents some other shots of the trim below.
Most recently, the stairway railings were installed. They look fantastic. The painter will take care of staining the railings to match the floors. I think Kieran is mildly thrilled about the railings - she just can't seem to reach yet - but thinks the craftsmanship is up to snuff!
Some important milestones came to pass during this time period. We finally have some of our services turned back on. There is a story behind that 'finally' but I spare the details and mention only that its important that the call centre for your utility provider of choice reinstates service to the proper site. We clearly didn't get our money's worth on the hook-up fee. Enough said (pathetic). The house now has natural gas (as evidenced by the new meter) and electricity. Someone climbed the utility pole outside the house to steal the coil of electrical wire required to hook-up the electricity. Fortunately for us, it's on Enmax's tab to put in new wire. Unfortunately for the thief, there was no money to be made from the aluminum wire he/she/they lifted.
Whilst on the topic of services...
We are required by the City to replace our water and sewer lines to the house. Did I mention in a previous post that its on our tab?! This is the case for both the lines on our property (we have no issue with this) as well as the city's lines from the property line out to the mainline. Eeek! We've known about this from the outset but time has not lessened the sting of this exercise. We're still not sure why we are responsible for upgrading the city's lines but we cannot have our water hooked up until this is done. It is a significant expense that was not budgeted for. This might be an easier pill to swallow had we not known that the City plans to upgrade all the water/sewer lines in the inner city communities in the future. It remains unclear who will pay for this (City vs. homeowners). So, we pay like everyone else in the community that is (re)building. But will continue to monitor the City's plans...perhaps there will be some restitution at some point in the future (wait, that was my deranged voice speaking out of turn). In the end, we should have some better water pressure and some pipes that won't leach lead into our water.
So, we've completed the first phase of the water/sewer line replacement. An excavator (see below - amusing picture) dug a 12 foot deep pit in our front yard then the pipes were replaced and then the pit was filled back in. These pipes will be connected back to main line once the street side pipes are replaced.
No comments:
Post a Comment