In taking on the task of renovating a house you learn many things. For instance.....if at all possible do your renovations prior to moving in. When we started this house we were able to do a tremendous amount while living off site. Perhaps near half of all the work we have managed in about a year was done in that first month. So in effect we have spent 11 months doing not even the second half of the house. The reason for this. Logistics!!. When you live in your work site everything needs to be planned and choreographed. In order to do A you first need to move B but to move B, X needs to be completed however X is contingient on Q being ordered. So things go much slower. With the overn ight temps getting ever colder I need to empty the items from the Atic so we can go through them. (All storage items till after the reno is done) We need to be sure nothing will freeze or damage from the cold. I can think of a couple things up there that will do just that. In order for me to empty the attic we first need a place to put things and sort them. Given most of the bedroom stuff is all over the house I need to get at least one bedroom ready. Many little things needed to come together to get the room together. So realizing time is running out for the weather I have put a push on getting the master bedroom ready at least to the point that we can use it again. As of Sunday I painted, laid hardwood, installed %75 of the baseboards we have been restoring, and framed two of the 3 windows. With Jenna's dads help we moved the 3 dressers back upstairs and all that stands between us sleeping upstairs is the moving of the bed and installing some blinds. I still need to frame the one window at the front of the house but need to go pickup a half moon window first. We have found an antique stained glass window that I am pretty sure I can make fit. I also installed a window over the door on the main floor. That allowed me to frame around the door finally as well as bring the baseboard over to the framing. All in all there has been a tonne of progress in the last week and a half. As a testament to all the hard work we have done insulating. We have yet to turn on our furnace. The house has been kept warm by our electric fireplace. Currently at 1am as I write this it is 24 celcius. Meanwhile it is minus 2 outside. Got to love it when a plan comes together.

been a while.

I have been busy trying to get many things done on the house. We are trying to get the upstairs finished so we can move our bedroom out of the basement. This has been going slow despite my having some free time due to being laid off. I have been dragging my heels on getting the baseboards ready. I've done much brainstorming on ways to make the refinishing of them easier. Finally I came up with a plan that involved buying a thickness planer. This tool has proved invaluable. I really should have bought one months ago and saved many more hours of refinishing work. I was able to use it to refinish a good portion of our window frames in the living room. I am most pleased with how they have turned out. I have included a picture of them. Try not to mind the mess. Those are the boxes of our flooring for the upstairs. I cannot put that down till I finish with the baseboards however as I am refinishing them in the master bedroom. I also need to finish the laundry closet by tiling the floor to make it water tight. Given it is not in the basement I don't want there to be any unexpected surprises damaging the ceiling in our kitchen directly below. Another thing that is done or at least the majority of it is done is the bathroom. It looks quite nice in our opinion however almost anything would have been an improvement over the pre-existing one. I have include a couple of pictures of this as well. We are hoping to have a few more pictures to add soon....