Yeah, the drywaller's are here. Week #13 of Renos

Monday the wind ramped up about 3 am this morning and woke the three of us. Managed to sleep  until 5:45 before waking. What an ugly day. It like a making soup day. lol It poured all day and night with quite a few gusty wind events.  Everything stayed put here ... including the new dock and gazebo.At least our fireplace seems to be working consistently now. Yeah.

Today the drywall crew from Gordon and Gordon Interiors arrived at 8:45am. Scott and Will will be doing all of the boarding and Dan arrived about 10am to do the mudding and sanding. He started upstairs first with boarding the closets. Roger came at 9:30 and gave this crew instructions as well he met with the glass guy who is making something to enclose our front arch from the bats. So far today things are a thumbs up.

Scott and Will managed to board up half the basement today. Dan did the first coat on all of the cutouts and new gyproc installed for the closets upstairs.

Upstairs closet sheeted in.

Bedroom closet.

Kitchen

Tuesday, we woke up to rain but it started clearing by 7 am. Bernie caught us in the hot tub kissing and smooching at 7:30.... Oh Ray he did not!  hehehe  He's here to move the stuff in the garages to make room for mudding the gyproc seams.  We needed to seal the garage to prevent fumes coming into the house. We moved the boat out and covered it and what we didn't take inside, Bernie moved into the middle.  Now I have bags of tins cans in the dining room waiting for new shelves in the pantry. More mess.

Roger arrived by 7:45 to use some fasteners to secure the dentix (concrete board) to the concrete The gyproc will be glued to this along the bottom pony wall.  The drywallers were concerned there would be movement in their seams otherwise. I asked Roger the status of the rubber feet for the deck tile, and apparently the adjustable ones we received apparently won't work and there are new ones on order.  (or so he says).  Roger waited until about 9am and then left as the drywallers hadn't shown up.

Went down to the dock to check the water level. It's risen 4 feet from all the rain in the last 2 days!!

Water is up to our landing from the beach.

Water is up to the rock ballast, holding up the yard, under our ramp. (We have wrapped that tree with wire to prevent the beaver from taking it down this winter.).  The other one isn't ours.

When the rain quit this morning, Ray took Freya for a trip to Skutz Falls to see the volume of water coming down the Cowichan River.

This picture from today, November 27/18

Here is a picture of Skutz Falls this summer

Unbelievable

He also managed to get a couple pics of a Great Blue Heron.

The drywallers were here until around 4pm. All of the boarding is done including the bathroom ceiling and the arches in the garage. Apparently some Jr. comes to get the enormous pile of cuttings in the middle of the room. The first layer of tape and mud was done upstairs. Things are moving along. Now the next few days will be mudding, taping and sanding. Oh Joy. I have scheduled painters for a week tomorrow, so hopefully they will be all done.

Kitchen and hallway

Bathroom

Bathroom 

Bathroom ceiling

Boat Garage 

Car garage, they had to climb up the kitchen cabinets to reach.

This morning I worked on putting the lights into our Christmas Village. It's starting to look a little like Christmas around here.

Kurtis Electric showed up to put in our surge protector into the panel and asked us if we wanted our panel to be properly labeled. Well ya.... especially that damn smoke detector. They ran out of labels so will be back tomorrow to finish. There are a few other "jobs" for them to do as well such as installing my lights into the ensuite vanity and a GFI plug on the outside of the car garage for Christmas Lights.

This afternoon I decided to tackle the setting up our new Costco artificial  tree. This will be our first
"fake" tree, we have always purchased or cut a fresh tree. The box is heavy, so one of the drywallers help me excavate it from the garage.  I then pulled it on a mat to the living room. Once the box was opened it took me less than 10 minutes to set it up. It looks and feels like a real tree just pre-lit. Bonus!!! Garrett suggests I buy those pine tree scent things from the gas station and stick it in the tree. lol Ray helped me decorate it. With the lights already on it only took about half an hour and we were done. I am still missing a box of Christmas decorations, my tree topper and mantle stuff. I know where it is but that will take another excavation in the downstairs storage room after everything we practically own was stuffed in there for the work. I gave away a bunch of stuff seven years ago but it seems we have enough for our new tree, just don't look at the back of it, other than the lights it is a little naked! lol Also missing my tree topper.

Before it turned dark I went out to take another look at the lake, up another foot for this morning.

Rained on and off the rest of the day. Forecast for tomorrow is for a little sunshine. Fingers crossed.

Tuesday evening the rains continued all night. I did hear some wind as well. For this storm we seemed to be somewhat protected as the highway in to town was quite windy according to Roger yesterday. There are Wind Warnings up for the coast.

Wednesday morning we were both up at 6am. Temps outside 2C. There are flurries in the forecast on Monday. Thank goodness our snow guards were installed in the nick of time. The rain seems to have ceased for now but is forecasted to shower this morning with rain again this afternoon. The only break from this is not until Saturday when the sun will shine on us again. As soon as it was light, I went out to check the lake levels. Yup the water is higher.

Matrix Marble arrived this morning at 8am to install our quartz countertop and cut the holes for the taps on our ensuite vanity. Looks fabulous. Just need the plumber to hook up the sinks and Southshore Cabinetry to box out the top drawers around the installed plumbing and install mirrors.

All taken apart to be put back together. lol

Glad it is not us trying to put that sink in. lol

Adam put in the vanity lights now we just need the plumber.

Dan showed up at 7:30 to tape and mud the main floor and upstair bedrooms. They sent two new guys, Les and his brother Paul to do the taping and  first coat of mudding downstairs. Also they had a cleanup guy in to take away all of the gyproc scraps as promised.

Boat garage all sealed up now.

Car garage all sealed up, a little tricky with all of the cabinets etc stored there for downstairs.

Downstair kitchen area

Living room area

Bedroom area showing where the built in bookcase will be.

These guys are also measuring up for the T-Bar ceiling ... apparently it could be 4 to 6 weeks for tile! Damn Coulson's again. Anyways the guys are trying to source something that will be acceptable that is in stock somewhere close. They finished up about 1 pm and will be back every day at 8 am for a few hours to mud some more and sand. They should be finished on Monday.

Adam and Nick showed up at 9:30 am just in time for letting Les and Paul know where all of the pot lights are downstairs ... currently all covered up with insulation. They need to know to plan out their grid pattern for the T-bar ceiling. The electricians had a full day installing gazebo lights, an outside plug for Christmas lights, lower outside plug from above basement door, put lights in ensuite vanity and a new fan timer in powder room. They were missing some lights so will be back around noon tomorrow to finish up.

Outside plug and motion light installed

Outside plug for Christmas lights.

Moved plug under patio from top of door to a better location.

Gazebo track lights, still need to add one more.

Another busy day here at Kyle's Kottage. Managed to find the missing box of Christmas Decorations ... it had been split into two rubbermaids instead of one big box it had resided in for years after the move and I did not realize it as storage is "Ray thing". lol The mantle ornaments have been put up. Unfortunately my angel tree topper does not fit our new tree, also difficult to light up with a prelit tree. I will have to buy another one. lol 

She looks pretty sitting on the speaker beside the tree.

It is definitely feeling like Christmas around here now.

Thursday morning, the lake only came up a little overnight with the rain event mostly over. The forecast after tomorrow is sun for the next 6 days so that should enable the lake to drain quite a bit.

The drywallers, Les and Paul with Paul's wife Kristy arrived at 8:15 to continue mudding downstairs. They also gave me options for the T-Bar Ceiling ... we shall see how soon that gets installed. Dan the other drywaller arrived shortly after to do the mudding upstairs.

At 9:30 I went to Duncan to pick up some groceries and ended up taking my neighbour Pat with me. We spend a couple of hours having fun shopping. I did get a new "star" for the top of my tree.

The plumber showed up around 10 am to hook up our ensuite sinks and install the taps. Yeah one step closer. All done except for the mirrors that were measured today.

At around 1 pm Adam and Nick arrived to finish off the last light in the gazebo and replace the broken motion light. Nick also climbed up our extension ladder to take the battery out of the hardwired smoke detector mounted 25 feet up in our ceiling so we can just shut it off with a breaker. Since the ladder was there Ray went up to put up a Christmas Wreath that a friend of ours, Sue Krog, made for us as a housewarming gift for our Nanaimo home about 12 years ago. I even had to climb up to straighten up the ribbons .... reminded me of Ray and I being volunteer firefighters in the Queen Charlottes. lol It has been a loooonnnngg time since I climbed that high on a ladder.

The last hour they spent marking out the breakers on our electrical panel so there is no more confusion. It was never labeled. Won't see these guys back until the ceiling is up in the basement for them to finish the pot lights. While they were testing this and that, of course the beeping of the smoke detectors upset Freya. She decided she was a lap dog as she shook from head to toe.

As they say ... once your baby, always your baby. lol

At 1:30 pm Jim from Southshore Cabinetry, showed up to take out the back piece of granite so we can slide my kitchen range closer to the back wall. Next up was boxing in the two upper drawers of the ensuite as the plumbing was done. Finally, he measured up for our mirrors.

Another busy day. When everyone left, Ray and I managed to get in a hot tub before dinner. By the way, the lake is only up another inch or so and hopefully start receding as there is an extended period of sunny dry days in the forecast.

Thankfully we have air conditioning in the upstairs bedrooms ... we had to turn up the heat in the house so the mud would dry downstairs. We put a portable radiant heat dish and an oil heater downstairs, (borrowed from my neighbour Pat) but they did not seem to heat up the space very well. Hence we turned on the furnace for the house  up to 22C/72 F and of course heat rises with our vaulted ceilings. Normally we have the house set at 20C/68F.

Friday only the drywallers coming to apply another coat of mud, upstairs and downstairs. Hopefully with the heat turned up it all dried from yesterday. (Checked it most of it did dry, only a few damp spots so I cranked the heat some more this morning.) Only one of the drywallers came today to sand the walls for the closets upstairs and the drywall repairs on the main floor. Dan also brought a heater for the downstairs. Only one spot in our bedroom that needs attention on Monday and the bedroom closet and walls are ready to be painted.  The room definitely needs cleaning though from all of the dust. So in about a week we can put our bed back up even if the closet is not finished.

Les, one of the drywallers on the downstairs team (they are on contract while the upstairs guy Dan, is hourly, I am told.) Anyways, Les has figured out the T-Bar ceiling and I am to personally order the ceiling tiles from Home Depot ... done. They should be here in the next two weeks or less. Les said it will only take 2 days to install the T-Bar and the ceiling tiles, we might make it yet before Christmas.

At Rogers request we also had a guy stop by at noon to look at the rock work that needs doing. This is to put the rock back on the house that had fallen off during deck construction and fill in the spots where timber posts were concreted to the house. We have a lot of leftover rock laying around from the previous owner, so we should have enough. Derrick will also rock our fireplace in the basement and put slate on the hearth for the new propane stove.  We are mimicking the rock fireplace upstairs. While Derrick was here, Roger also texted him to check out putting the ceramic tiles on our sundeck, mentioning the wrong feet received as well. I guess Coulson's are farming out the work instead of Chris and Bernie doing the work.  Turns out the feet hadn't been ordered. Fortunately Derrick knows of a supplier with three types in stock.

So things look to be moving forward. The downstairs team for drywall will come tomorrow to do some more work. I guess I will be "Molly the cleaner" tomorrow to vacuum upstairs and get rid of as much drywall dust as I can.

I spent the morning baking for Christmas and Ray put out some Christmas Lights. The lake is now receding and is down at least a few inches.

Saturday morning was cool and cloudy with a sprinkle of rain when we got up. Noticed the tops of the mountains across from us have a dusting of snow. Winter is here.

The downstairs drywall team arrived at 8:15 am and were done by 10:15 am. I left around then to head to Duncan for some last minute shopping. Boy was it busy in town ... not really compared to the lower mainland, but enough you had to be patient at traffic lights and parking spots. It was sprinkling rain in Duncan but much lighter skies by the time I arrived home at 2:30 pm.  A quiet afternoon with a dip in the hot tub. Well deserved after another busy week of renovations.