Holidays!!

Normally, while you're on holidays, in the back of your mind is always the thought "what's going on at the house", especially in this province where November can be either freezing cold and rupturing pipes, or a freak storm creates a random flood that can destroy a basement. We've always had wonderful friends and family coming to our house to look after our Kitty and this time, Brendon's parents will be coming by each day to give Kitty her special pills and her special food (low protein so her kidney failure doesn't progress faster). The pills have to be wrapped in a chewy treat so they don't have to wrestle her to the ground and ram it into her throat; she may be old, skinny, toothless, and clawless but she can be extra nasty to strangers. But this trip, we have added security from our neighbour. Oh yeah, one of the neighbour's house has an extensive camera system that monitors his house 24/7, with a live feed on a password protected website, and is backed up daily onto DVDs. Yup, we live next to Fort para-Knox. He has, the last time I counted on the way to the mail box, 7 cameras that covers 3/4 the radius of his house; 2 are night vision, 1 has a microphone, there's even 1 on the door bell. If anything were to happen to our house, as he told Brendon one day, he's got it on disc. He said that he can't "see into your house or anyting". This is supposed to make us feel welcome to the neighbourhood?! It's creepy creepy creepy. But being thousands of miles away and knowing that he's "covering" our house, is pretty reassuring. Just wonder if insurance can give us a discount for his paranoia?
I wonder if he's reading this...
I wonder if he's reading this as I type it next to the window near one of the night vision cameras....

Second Honeymoon!

In a few weeks, we're going on our second honeymoon! Feel free to start hating us. Hard to believe it's been a year since we were on our first honeymoon in the Dominican! We've been saving up our Air Miles for years and years until we'd have enough for a decent trip. Last year, we were *close* to having enough, so a year later, and many many trips to Rona, the Liquor Mart (yeah, that was a lot of work and arm twisting...) and Safeway for bonus miles, between the two of us we managed to collect about 8500 Air Miles. It is enough that the trip costs us 1/3 the normal price. The trip, for both of us, for a week, all-inclusive, is only costing us $900 instead of $2600. Did I mention that you can feel free to start hating us? Yeah, well, when you're only saddled with a ridiculous mortgage and a cat with kidney failure that requires pills, shots and special expensive food, you may as well blow all your Air Miles and nearly a grand on a trip. You'd be stupid not to!! We just loved the Gran Ventana and the Dominican Republic so much that we talk about going back all the time. I was looking at other all-inclusive resorts in the same area (Jamaica was top of my list, as was Costa Rica) but we just kept coming back to how much we loved the Gran Ventana. So, we're going back.

And yes, I know what you're all thinking so I'll beat you too it. No, this trip is not about making a baby. It's because we want to, can afford to, and will go to a fantastic resort, drink rum, and soak in Dominican sun for a week for $900. Nyah nyah nyah! :-P I know... I'm ridiculously mature for my age. But I get enough flack from my seriously-overly-concerned-about-my-reproductive-status co-workers with their constant opinions about why I'm not pregnant yet, that we need a week off in the 200% humidity, melanoma-inducing sun to get away from their daily advice about what worked for them, or recommendations from their friend of a friend of a niece of a neighbour. I'd like to pretend that I'm exaggerating about their daily comments, but I'm really not. I put on a little weight, they comment that I'm "starting to show" and rub my belly. Oh yes, that actually happened, (hence the new treadmill which I am using regularly). I complain that I'm not feeling well, eyebrows shoot up and a big grin spreads across their face with a "knowing" smile. Since when did sinus headache qualify as a symptom of pregnancy?! *sigh*

(follow-up... Just checked on WestJet Vacations and the trip we're taking is on sale for $750 per person, nearly $530 per person less than we're paying for the same dates. Dammit!!!)

The En Suite

The one room I whined and nagged Brendon the most about changing ever since we moved in, is our en suite. Actually, I whine and nag Brendon in every room, but the one I complain about the most is the en suite. It's white. It's really white. I'm talking "Blinded by the white" white. It's retina-searing, "okay, I'm awake now and seeing spots if you turn on the lights in the middle of the night to go pee" white. White linoleum (except where it's yellow from the previous owner's bath mat), white counters, white sink, white toilet, white vanity, white blinds and the inexplicable green "accent piece" behind the diagonal toilet and the window sill. Yeah, I don't get it either, but it's what was here when we moved in.
So I started my en suite transformation with baby steps and bought a new mirror. Then I bought melamine paint and did the vanity. We'd looked into getting a new vanity but because, for whatever reason, there's no shut-off valves on our plumbing, so we'd have to get someone in to do that first and melamine paint is $40, plumbers are $200. That just seemed like a lot more work than just painting it. Then I bought the new flooring, but that's currently under the bed, awaiting inspiration.

But after much nagging, Brendon finally relented (like he had a choice?) and said we can paint it this weekend so I rushed over to Home Depot before he changed his mind. I tsp'd the walls and we taped off all the baseboards and framing before painting. It's a small bathroom and he was done with the roller work in an hour while I finished the edges and trim. Here's the 75% completed en suite now. *sigh* Bliss.... :-)

AWESOME!!! The wall colour is C-I-L Tomorrow's Taupe with Cocoa Mousse on the cabinets. I prefer Behr paints but it didn't come in this colour, which is supposed to match the faux grout lines on the new flooring which hasn't been installed yet because it's going to be very difficult and we'll probably need some help with it. What you can't see in the photo is the diamond-shaped shower on the left that'll be one of the problems of putting in the new floor with the toilet being the other half of the problem. We can't do much about the shower, but the toilet? Looks like it'll be easier if we just lift it out and put the flooring around it instead of doing ten million cuts.

And in about a month from now, the view from our window will be this...

if Brendon's lucky! We're heading back to the Dominican for a second honeymoon!! We had enough Air Miles that we can go for a week for $900 for both of us. Normally, it's $1200 per person! Can't wait. If you ever get the chance to go to D.R., I highly recommend the Gran Ventana. It's a spectacular resort!!

New Clothes Dryer!!!!

Sooooooo excited!! I've heard that air drying your clothes is better for the environment and for your clothes, so we invested in a new $1400 dryer for the basement. It's even got mp3 capabilities!!

Ha ha ha. We upgraded from our stationary bike to a treadmill. I've wanted one for a while but the floor at the old house was tipsier than I was in my first year at university so we bought a bike instead. With the new house and LEVEL floors in the basement (shocking change!!) we decided to invest.

The upstairs bathroom is a work in progress. I finished the cabinets and we'd do the floors this weekend but I have a performance at the Prairie Theatre Exchange. Will post photos of the new bathroom later, but if you want to see pics of me dancing, go here.

All done

I hate saying these words, but I'll have to eat crow and utter those little words that Brendon has never heard from my lips.... "I was wrong."
*shudder* I was wrong when I said that I could find a dry waller for less than $1000. It's possible, but very difficult. I called one guy in Lac Du Bonnet three times without answer. Turns out, there's so much business in and around LDB that he can't come into the city for extra work. I called around to a number of places in the city. Those that did answer their phones said that they wouldn't come for anything less than a grand. Apparently, Naomi Campbell's attitude is infectious to the construction industry (though she will get out of bed for blood diamonds...). I did find one company that's too busy but knew someone that'll do it for cash. After a few phone calls, he said that'd come and install our 1 lousy piece of drywall for $400. Seriously. 1 piece of dry wall 8' long and 4' high! It took him four trips to the house over a weekend and a grand total of 47 minutes of work which works out to an incredible $8.51/MINUTE!! It's not bad enough that after all our collective years of post-secondary education that we never learned to shower, but to know that someone working under the table makes 25x what I make just blows my mind. However... to defend the construction industry... my university classes had dozens and dozens of MSc's and PhD's all studying med mic without any jobs to go into. I'm sure his class had maybe ten or twenty people in it, all whom had jobs lined up on the second day they showed up at school.

He wasn't out of the house 15 minutes before I was upstairs with the paint roller and a glint in my eyes!! Once the paint was dry, I tacked down the carpet and put in the baseboards. We're back to where we were 4 months ago, but here's the end result!!


Still a work in progress because we still haven't put up the photos and stuff on the wall, and I want a new computer desk instead of a kitchen table.

My next project, the en suite... or as Brendon calls it "The bathroom that no one else sees so why should we waste time and money decorating it???? Please please please don't make me paint anything else!" Or, as I call it, "The gawd aweful room with the white floors, white walls, white counter, white cupboards, white white white." First step is to paint the melamine cupboard a walnut brown, the same colour as the vase in the corner.



The rest will be a "mushroom" colour and I really like the fake tile floors at Home Depot. My "honey do" list is growing again.... someone warn Brendon!

Plumbing update...

The stain that started it all....
So in my last post, the contractor was going to remove the wall. Here's what it looks like now.


With it open, our contractor was able to investigate all of the water damage. As you can see, there's virtually no damage to the dry wall anywhere. There's a tiny little bit around the tub and there's visible water damage to the subflooring underneath the tub but that's about it. (Yes, that's our snoopy Kitty in the room as I'm taking the photos). Brendon got the fun job of staying home the day they removed the wall and didn't find any damage. The contractor then went into the bathroom and said to Brendon that it must be our "showering practices" that caused the damage; that we use the shower head wrong and as we use the bathroom, we're hosing down the walls and floors, causing enough water to accumulate on the floors that it seeps into the adjecent room and soaks the carpets. Oh, and we don't use a shower curtain because we're complete dolts and haven't learned how to shower. He said this as he was sitting on the shower curtain. Cue the irony....
Given that Brendon's bald, it's hard to understand this guy's story... that we're too dumb to shower properly and we're in the shower for so long, splashing around like a bunch of little kids at a water park, making a huge mess, when we lather rinse and repeat?? Uh-huh, and I've got a bridge in San Fran....
Anyways, the contractor left and Brendon was still pretty gobsmacked with the baloney that they were feeding us that the Manitoba school system neglected us by not offering a "how to shower class" in school. Guess all my years in school, I opted out of the useful classes, like showering and basket weaving. The contractor recommended getting a plumber to fix the leak that was coming from the faucet. See, the thing is that the faucet that sticks out of the wall to fill the tub... when you start the water to have a bath, the water comes out the faucet and sprays against the wall. Brendon demonstrated this to the contractor, even showing how when you pull the lever to make the shower work, that the spray is even stronger ... that maybe *this* might be the problem?? No no no, couldn't be a leaking faucet causing the water in the other room!! It must be our showering practices. *argh*

We called a plumber and had him come in to remove the faucet and replace it. And since the wall was already open, we had him change the taps from a hot/cold 2-tap system to a 1-dial system that we liked better. Here's the bit of piping that the plumber removed and said "Well, here's your problem!!" (ala Mythbusters...)


I may be just a doctor that doesn't know how to shower properly, but I'm pretty sure that ain`t right. After removing the faulty section and replacing everything, we have our shower back and we're using the bathroom for nearly 3 weeks without a drop of water in the spare bedroom.

I had to email the contractor and our insurance adjustor twice a week for four weeks to get an estimate from him for how much the rest of the work that 'needs to be done' will cost. He wanted, get this, $1000 to put the drywall back up, $75 to remove the toilet, $100 to remove the flooring and $500 to put new flooring down and put the toilet back. There's some other stupid fees that he's charging but to fix everything, but suffice to say, it'd be $3000, minus our $500 deductible. We decided that we don't want insurance to pay for it and that we don't want to deal with him anymore and his accusations of incompetance on our part for not following shower directions to the letter.

Now we have to get the drywall back up to make the bedroom useable. We can maybe probably find someone in the city that's able to put up 1 sheet of 4'x8' drywall for under a thousand dollars. I know that trades and skilled labour is in high demand but I seriously doubt they're charging $1000/hr now!!

Home ownership is fun!

One step at a time...

We called our insurance company about the water damage in the spare room and within days, we had a contractor (Rick) and an insurance adjustor at the house to inspect it. Rick brought out a hydrometer, which measures water content in materials and found that there's water in the subflooring underneath the vinyl floor of the bathroom. Most of the bathroom subfloor is damp. There isn't much moisture left in the subfloor of the bedroom so the mould that's growing there has been cut off from its food supply. So, the issue now isn't the mould in the bedroom, now it's the mould growing under the vinyl in the bathroom.
Our next step is to remove the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom to expose the plumbing, hire a plumber to locate and repair the leak. After that, Rick comes back to remov everything in the bedroom and bathroom, clean up the mould, and repair the damage. Best case scenerio, there isn't a lot of mould in the subfloor of the bathroom so it just needs to be dried, cleaned up and sealed before everything that was damaged gets replaced. Worst case scenerio, the entire bathroom is gutted right down to the joists and we get a new bathroom. We'll find out Monday just how bad it's going to be, and whether insurance will cover it.
*fingers crossed*

Dead ant, dead ant, d'd ant, d'd ant....

Speaking only for myself and not for Brendon, I'm not going to say that I regret buying the new house, just that there have been significantly more problems that need immediate repairs than we'd ever had in 5 years at the old house. We've just discovered we now have an ant infestation. We killed 10 last night and 3 more this morning. Two in the basement, most on the main floor and 2 in the upstairs. Big, nasty, ugly, black ants. We found four (killed three) as they were coming in under the baseboards next to the fridge so we used black pepper (non-toxic to Kitty) along the baseboards as a deterant but we're off to Rona again today to get ant traps.

Our biggest problem began about a month and a half ago when we thought Kitty was sick and had peed on the carpets. The stain never really vanished from the (sorta) white carpets despite my best efforts. A few weeks later, after we were recovering from the worst flu either of us had ever experienced (I threw up every 20 minutes for 8 hours, he had a 102.5°F fever), we noticed that the stain was 3x the size and had spread from the original spot by the door and was now about 2/3 the way along the carpet against the wall that divides the main bathroom from the computer room. We moved the furniture that was against the wall and found the carpets absolutely soaked. After cleaning it up (again), we tried to locate the source of the water: either from the roof or from the bathroom. Both times that we noticed the stain on the carpets was after long days of rain, which would lead me to suspect it's a roof issue. But the fixtures in the bathroom are loose and leak, so Brendon and his friends worked on the fixtures to try and seal the leaks. We won't know if the problem is fixed until we get another few days of downpour. Fortunately, we have an en suite so we don't have to use the main bathroom. If there is water in the carpets after it rains again, then we know it's a roof problem. And before you ask, no, we can't access the attic to inspect the roof because the only attic hatch is outside, above the 2nd floor and we don't have a ladder tall enough, or nerves strong enough, to climb up and inspect the roof from the inside.
Now that the carpets have been peeled back, we can see the water damage to the underpadding and subflooring. No matter what we have to fix, whether it's the bathroom or the roof, we also need to replace the floors before the mould gets worse and aggrevates our allergies.
List of things wrong with this house that need repairs:

• dining room window seal is broken and moist is between 2 panes of glass so it's foggy
• deck is unlevel (Brendon has pretty well fixed this using shims and a car jack to level it as best as he can)
• stairs from the deck to the backyard are rotten and falling apart
• ants
• furnace that can't heat the upstairs and
• a/c that can't cool the upstairs
• damaged carpets from previous owners dog
• damaged carpets from water leak
• questionable wiring in the garage that has blown out two light bulbs already

*sigh* I really liked this house.

1 month in!

We've nearly unpacked all the boxes. We're still missing a 4L bottle of canola oil and the little plastic circle that makes the glass plate in the microwave spin around. Admittedly, the weirdest two things to lose during the move! We can't really microwave anything that isn't perfectly balanced!! The oil can be re-bought but the plastic ring really is microwave-specific? Sucks that we may have to buy a new microwave just for a $1 piece of circular plastic!!

As the boxes are starting to disappear, our house is starting to feel like our *home*. We've started decorating and putting up pictures in all the rooms so it's nice to see our stuff again. Brendon doesn't really like "messy" everywhere, but I like having rooms full of photos. I'm trying to find a balance between tidy and cluttered. We splurged on new furniture for the living room with navy leather reclining sofa and love seat, a "server" (topless hutch) in the dining room and a new bed, all from Paliser, plus a new bbq for the deck. Woo hoo bring on summer!!

We've been in contact with the previous owners of our new house and had them over just recently to pick up some of their mail and some of their gardening stuff that only recently thawed out. Surprisingly, we haven't heard from the people that bought our house. I sure hope the people that bought our old house aren't disappointed in their purchase. We went back a few weeks ago to clean it out, and I left in tears. So many good memories at the old place!!

New home sweet home

Moving day is never easy. Moving day with a 14 year old cat that's not good with change (not that I'm any better) is even worse. We spent since mid-December packing so by the week of the move, nearly every room was floor-to-ceiling with boxes. Kitty thought we were making forts for her to explore so she was jumping like a kitten from box to box. We'd been training her to get into her travel crate with less stress than 3 years ago when she nearly killed Brendon trying to escape from his clutches for the move to the old house. I took her, her stuff, and our frozen food and headed to our new Transcona house while Brendon waited for his best friend and his older brother and the moving company we'd hired to show up. I locked Kitty in the en suite while I unpacked and cleaned other stuff then let her go into the master bedroom while I read a magazine and sat on the floor listening to the radio. Brendon kept me in the loop through text messages and let me know when they were on the way so I could return Kitty to the en suite.
The movers really motored and unpacked with both engines on full. We stayed inside with clean(-ish) feet and hauled boxes from the front door to the right rooms while the movers ran back and forth to the truck and the front door. They packed the old house, drove across the city, and unloaded in under 5 hours. We're paying them $110/hour so the faster they worked, the better for us. And because we were running the boxes around the house, the mud and grit from their shoes wasn't being tracked too much on to the carpets that I'd spent 3 hours shampooing last week!
I started getting the kitchen set up while Brendon set up the basement. Took me about 5 hours (until ~9pm) to get the kitchen unpacked and useable. We actually have fewer cupboards and less counter space than our old house, but the square footage is larger. It's just really big and open, without much room to prep anything. Neither of us like the counters (or the cupboards for that matter) so we're pricing out new counters. Depending on the price, maybe new cupboards too???

But, all in all, the move went spectacularly amazingly well. The house is beautiful and we've got most of the rooms (except for the guest room) setup and almost 100% the way we want them. There's still lots more to do, but it's starting to feel like home pretty quickly!!.nce everything's done, I'll post photos.

Battle on 2 fronts

We took possession of our new house on Friday morning after a flurry of phone calls and visits to the bank and to the lawyer's office to sign everything, including the bridge financing between our West End house and our Transcona house. Because I was performing on Friday night, we didn't head straight there after work. We'd gone over on Monday to meet with the sellers and pick up the keys and garage door opener. They weren't ready to move yet and the house was in total disarray so it seemed a lot smaller than we remembered from our last (and only other) visit in November when we bought it. However, on Saturday morning, when we'd showed up with paint brushes in hand, the house was empty and we spent about an hour running up and down all the stairs in disbelief that the house is now ours, at long last!! We'd gone to Home Depot and picked up paint to cover over the faux plaster look in the master bedroom and the orangey-yellow of the "office", a colour I particularly didn't like (But Brendon liked it). We thought we'd picked some really different colours, a deep plum for the accent wall of the master bedroom, and a mossy grey-green for the office (Behr's "Semi Sweet" and "Sage Grey"). But when we got them to our West End home, we realized we'd picked the *exact* same colours as we already have in this house. Our chocolate brown and teal master bedroom in the old house is now brown and lemon yellow in the new house. Our white and grey bathroom in the old house will now be white and grey office! Oooops!
No matter, the painting went quickly and I had another performance Saturday night at the Roller Derby bout at the Convention Centre. We did final touch up, some unpacking (mostly kitchen stuff and anything breakable) and cleaning today before rushing home to catch Canada's gold medal victory over US in hockey. Woo hoo!
Moving day is next Saturday!!!

Hiring movers

Because we're taking nearly all the appliances and March is a finicky time of year, we decided to splurge and hire movers instead of risking life and limb (and lower back) to move the stove during an ice or slush or rain storm or whatever Mother Nature will throw at us. I went online and found three moving companies that most people in Winnipeg have heard of. I contacted all three and the first one emailed back immediately with a quote of $550 for our house. Sight unseen but based on the square footage and moving date. Further investigation into this moving company revealed that they have millions of dollars in unsettled lawsuits from across Canada from disgruntled clients, and have their Better Business Bureau title revoked because of the sheer number of complaints. And people from work have had terrible experiences with them trying to rip them off, demanding cash payments before unloading their stuff, destroying their personal items etc. Okay, so they're out.
Next two companies came to the house wearing company uniforms, gave us their business cards, discussed insurance options, packing options, and had a checklist to mark off what all we have to move. Their quotes came in within $50 of each other, nearly $800-ish. Moving company #2 has moved many of our friends and co-workers so they have a better word-of-mouth from people we trust.
Company number four is where things got uncomfortably weird. They put a mailer in our mail box and I figured for the sake of interest, maybe a smaller company would be cheaper and just as good. Well, not so much. I emailed back and forth with the boss (Let's call him W) to arrange a time for him to come to the house. That time comes and someone shows up at the back of the house. His name starts with a G, not W. And he doesn't have a company jacket, or anything at all to indicate which company he's with. He does, however, have Gov't of Canada business cards (which all look the same so we both instantly recognized that he's a fed, not a mover. He explained that this is a side job, which we didn't buy. No one, especially not a fed, chooses to move people's furniture on a weekend for kicks??). He brought a notepad, just a standard Staples 8x10 notepad and wrote down a list of everything we owned. He started asking really weird questions like "how old is that laptop? Wht's the value of that guitar? Do you have any other electronics aside from what's out? Those bikes look pretty expensive..." AWKWARD!! We couldn't wait for him to leave, and once he did, we both realized that he never asked when we were going to move. Seems like an obvious question to ask, you know, to make scheduling easier?? We're still convinced that G's going to rob us when we're at work. Either way, they came in a over $900 so aside from it being completely unprofessional and creepy, they were too expensive.

House is sold!

We spent the entire Christmas break getting the house ready for showing, which meant taking down personal items, cleaning cleaning cleaning and repainting all the nicks and dents in the walls. We listed the house on Comfree on January 9th and the first request to see the house came the next morning while we were cleaning it. Of course, we turned down his request (he was in his truck parked in front of the house... creepy), but we got another call that night from someone who lived around the corner. He and his wife and parents came by the house and offered us over listing price. We were really excited and told him to go to a lawyer and write the offer on paper. They came back again the next day, again offering us over asking, but didn't seem to understand (despite 4 phone calls back and forth) that we wanted an offer written by a lawyer and not a personal cheque for the entire amount. He got really hostile towards us and accused us of trying to rip him off, rather than realizing that we wanted a legally binding document and not a verbal agreement. Silly us!

Every day after that, we were showing the house 3-4x per night to different people. The first and second people through on Monday came back twice to look again and bring family by for their opinions. The third couple brought an offer to purchase with a price we liked so we called back to the other people who were going to write up an offer and told them that we're going to take this offer. It was rather hard to make those calls and disappoint the other people, but we really liked this couple, liked the offer and it was more than we'd expected to make. (In hindsight, we should have listed the house for $160k or more because it would have been pretty easy to get that... oh well, hindsight's 20/20 eh?). We accepted their offer and had to wait 10 days for them to get their financing arranged with the bank. In the 10 days that we waited, we had 14 other people sign our "Call Back" list so if the financing fell through, we had other people waiting in the wings to swoop in and take our house. Sweeeeeeeet.

So their financing was approved and the house is sold after 6 days on the market. We're now packing up and getting ready for the move. Kitty's really enjoying playing in all the empty boxes and spends most of her time jumping in and out of them and investigating the growing piles of boxes in the basement.