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.