Week Three of Reno. Lot's happening at once.

Lots of pictures of work being done. These are mostly for me as a record ... feel free to skip through. lol

The weekend was quite moist, shall we say, although we did have some sunny breaks to lighten things up. Saturday we went to the Duncan Farmer's Market to pick up some fresh veggies. Managed to go between rain showers. Back home, I spent the afternoon in the kitchen having fun cooking, while Ray did a few chores and then took it easy. Sunday was a quiet day at home relaxing other than Ray taking a run to the recycling centre to get rid of a bunch of cardboard and me doing a little laundry and cleaning my kitchen. We sure needed one of those days.

Monday we woke to clear skies finally. It was quite cool out but nice. A good day for work to be done.

The new grass is starting to grow. A lot of the junk, i.e rotten wood, was moved out on Friday. Still lots of work to happen in the back yard. New dock should arrive in the next couple of days and they will replace the decking on the ramp down to the dock. They picked up the aluminum gazebo to install on the dock this morning. Took 4 guys to carry it to the truck. lol Ray almost slipped on the rotten wood yesterday, going down the ramp to check on the boat after all the rain.

The concrete will be poured at a later date under the deck after the new deck is constructed. They are setting up to pour the driveway though, and hopefully the side walk, either later this week or first part of next. Two machines arrived today to level off the driveway before they pour and dig out the extra material under the sun deck in preparation for a concrete pour there.

Bernie dug down around the broken irrigation pipe in preparation for fixing it.

Yeah, new grass

Ray headed into Duncan  this morning, to see about getting our "Vista Moon Roof" fixed on our Ford Edge. Somehow in the past couple of weeks, we got a rock chip up there and the whole window cracked from side to side. Should be covered by our ICBC Comprehensive Insurance ... I hope. (It is)

The 2 excavators were dropped off this morning in preparation for Tuesday. Ray and I enjoyed some sunshine in our chairs where our garden room will be. Freya loves it when we are back outside. These past few weeks being stuck inside because of the work being done in the yard did not make for a happy dog!

They also brought a little one to fit down the side of the house to dig out extra material under sundeck.

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Out of the wind.

Tuesday morning cool but sunny. As the sun came up fog developed on the lake and it almost looked like ice on our boat cover.

By 7:15 am we had a crew of 5 running around. Three for the excavators, our site supervisor and his worker. Busy little beavers moving all of the dirt. 5 1/2 hours later they were done with all of the concrete prep!

The largest excavator with the ditch witch.

The smaller excavator that fit down the side of the house.

They took off the roll bar on this one to fit under the sundeck.

And lastly this little guy, transporting the overburden to the back yard for loading on the dump truck.  The guys in back are moving my maple tree to the other side of the driveway. It was pretty stubborn to remove. lol

 Bernie packing down all of the gravel.

 Ready for Re-bar

Ready for the concrete sidewalk to the back yard.

By 9 two more guys showed up to fix the cabinet for the new fridge that will arrive on Thursday. They had the niftiest thing that they use to move the fridge ... an inflatable fork lift.

At 9:30 the two dock guys showed up to replace the wood on the gangway via boat. 

Shortly before 10 am, Roger, our site supervisor and another supervisor stopped by for suggestions on how to handle lifting the gazebo on the deck to build under it. Hopefully they got it figured out. For coffee break I served up cookies to the crew. :) The cookies were gone in seconds. lol

Two Heads are better than one? I hope.

At 8:15 am Ray headed to Nanaimo for our scheduled appointment with our Investment Adviser and I opted out to stay home and keep track of what was going on today. Unfortunately he had a mishap backing out of our driveway. One of the work trucks backed out of the driveway so he could get out and then backed back in on his blind side. Ray was watching his mirrors instead of the backup camera to avoid the large boulders in the driveway and did not see the truck . He drove straight into the guys steel tailgate that was down and mashed up the back of car. Of course not a scratch on the other vehicle. Yikes. Not a good start to his day.

Oops!

A beautiful day. Took Freya to the park next door several times just to get out of the house and away from the noise, noise, noise. My neighbour, Deb, said she had to wear earplugs to work at home today... their office is on the side of the house that the machines were running up and down on. Fortunately they are understanding, especially as their build only finished last October so I am sure there was several months of noise for Louise who lived here at that time.

Throw my stick mom!

Everyone was gone by 2 pm. Tomorrow will start with laying all of the re-bar in the driveway. The ramp should be finished tomorrow and possibly Thursday the new dock will arrive I am told. (Not)

After a busy day we were in bed early to watch some TV and lights out at 9 pm.

Wednesday, our last sunny day for awhile according to the forecast. A cool 6C. The 4 man crew this time arrived shortly after 7 am and starting preparing the driveway for re-bar ... i.e. drilling into the house (concrete) to be able to glue in the re-bar before the concrete is poured. Bernie repaired the irrigation leak. Roger has come up with a way to hold the gazebo up with scaffolding while redoing the deck. Yeah!!! At 10 am the re-bar arrived so the boys started laying it out. Ray moved the boat over to the our neighbours dock, as Mike graciously offered, so it will be out of the way for the new dock installation. After the car fiasco yesterday it makes sense to get the "other expensive thing" we currently have at the house, well out of the way. (The motorhome has been put in storage in Duncan for the next couple of months.)

Ray after putting in the claim with ICBC this morning, headed out to Duncan to get the car looked at. At the very least we wanted to seal up the hatch from the weather as it is going to pour with rain tomorrow. Fortunately this is the same place that will fix our sunroof anyways. As it turned out with the punched hole in the liftgate, it is unsafe to drive the car as exhaust could come in so they kept the car and gave us a courtesy car for the next week or so. Here is our "new ride". Good thing we never considered a Honda. Both Ray and I have trouble getting in and out of it as it feels like you are sitting on the ground. lol

The dock guys arrived back here at 1 pm and only had a couple hours of work left on the gangway so it is mostly complete except for the transition piece at the top and the cables between the railing and gangway. We are scheduled for Monday now, for the new dock to arrive.

No more slipping down the ramp.

The driveway crew managed to get 1/3 of the driveway hooked up with re-bar. What a tedious job haywiring the rods together. It should be interesting to see how my new fridge is getting delivered tomorrow. lol They something about putting down a bit of plywood.

The stairs down the side of the house were partially done today. At least there is a plan to follow now. Ray's original idea to leave it just with the gravel from the driveway did not work out so well ... it was way too slippery to walk on so he decided to put in concrete stairs to the heatpumps for safety.

Roger, the site supervisor picked up a bunch of scaffolding and the guys had to unload all of that too and carry it to the back of the house. Just as one mess goes away another is created! They should be starting rebuilding the sundeck either Friday or Monday I think.

Another busy day at Kyles Kottage. 

To cheer Ray up from his trials and tribulations .... I made him a wonderful lamb shank dinner in my InstantPot. Love that thing! Best lamb shank dinner I have made over about 10 tries over the years.

Thursday morning I made a bunch of "Scuffins", kind of like individual brownies. This is bribery for crew for helping with the fridge move today. With the driveway filling up with re-bar it should be interesting how they are getting it down. TBA

Well, they managed to get it into the house and now I have to wait 24 hrs before plugging it in. Fortunately I have room beside the new fridge for the old fridge so once I can start up the fridge tomorrow morning ... tomorrow afternoon I can move the food over and clean out the old one. The crew will move it into the basement next week for me. The "scuffin's" paid off! lol The delivery guys told me that the fridge weights 403 lbs... a monster. My crew kept moving the plywood ahead so they could move the dolly to the house. Even the front door of the house had to be removed.

The old versus the new! The new one is quite a bit wider with lots of great features not to mention heavier!

I headed into Duncan this afternoon and when I got back this is how much had been completed. The driveway almost done and the stairs were almost done as well. 

It is like playing hopscotch trying to get to our front door right now. lol

The rain started around 1:30 pm this afternoon and by the time I got back home it was teaming down. so far no wind though. Another day and tomorrow is Friday already!

Friday, dark and gloomy and OMG did it rain overnight. Fortunately just a drizzle at 7am when the lads began again with the re-bar. The crew must have prayed to the "Sun Gods" as the sun actually came out around 10 am. What a bonus for them instead of slogging around in rain gear. lol Most of the day was just cloudy with a few showers. The main rain did not start until they were finished for the day. The driveway is not ready for concrete and the stairs are finished on the left side of the house. The concrete is an unknown at the moment ... apparently the concrete company is way behind so hopefully they get a cancellation or something so it can be poured this week. The guys laid out some plywood so we can get to the neighbours driveway to get out of our house. Next week the deck starts.

This shows the "California drain" to catch the water from the driveway at the top of the stairs. There is also the same drains in front of both garage bays for drainage. All of the downspouts have been tied in with the perimeter drains too.

Where water used to pool by the heat pump, we have also added another drain there to catch the water.

And that's a wrap for this week.