And then there were 2 plus Freya. HAPPY NEW YEAR

Saturday, December 29th, was another drizzly cold day. I spent the day doing laundry for the 4 beds that were changed, including the motorhome and cleaning out the fridges of leftovers. At 10:30 am "to my wondering eyes did appear" a pompom on a toque bounding by on the sundeck. Our deck/rock crew, were here. Totally unexpected but welcome. Glad we were home. Made a pot of split pea soup from the ham bone and shared it with the boys to warm them up on such a cold day.

We've ONLY been waiting two months to take these pics!

Sunday turned out to be a spectacular sunny day. More laundry and house tidying for me. Ray worked replacing the lock sets on the doors.  It's taking forever to get anything done with only one very slow carpenter and Ray getting extremely frustrated and does not want to wait anymore. Derrick and Matt showed up at 8am this morning. More disappointment regarding the laying of the deck tiles ... the tabs on the feet that the tiles sit on are all exposed sticking out of the top of the tiles and when you break them off you can still see them. Ray is "off the wall mad" again and now David Coulson himself will be here on Wednesday, January 2 to see what is to be done. Will this job ever be done!

Matt added more mortar to the rock work that will need to dry and acid washed the fireplace downstairs.

We were going to have a piece of slate for the stove to sit on but it was going to be another three weeks (of course because it wasn't ordered three weeks ago when it should have been!) before they could get it so we decided that since we have so much rock around the yard, we would use that if they could get it level. I think that at least this is finished.

The guys did a cleanup though and most of the mess they had made on our new concrete is now picked up. They left about 1:30 to return tomorrow for the final day (they think). After they left I hosed off the concrete myself to get rid of all the grit so it does not get into our hot tub. We have not been able to use it very much due to all the junk and mess around it lately.

Being such a beautiful day I started our fire at noon and Ray and I sat out there for a couple of hours enjoying the fresh air. Hate to waste the few nice days we have by not getting outside and enjoy the calming effect of looking at the lake.

Monday, December 31st, New Years Eve

This morning cold and clear out at -2C. Burrrr. The deck guys showed up about 8:15 am, all of their tools and tile saw frozen up. They ended up using the angle grinder between the tiles to take down the black nubs on their hands and knees while they also finished the edge tiles. Once the deck was done they mortared the rocks that had fallen off the house during the deck demolition.

They finally finished about 2:30 pm after cleaning up the deck, the mess downstairs with the tile saw and moved up my fire table and lazyboy frames onto the deck. Yeah! Now to find the chair backs and cushions that are hidden somewhere in the basement storage area. The only thing left to do on the deck is the transition to the stairs, we need a piece of wood or tile so you don't see under the deck tiles and our gate.

Ray had another contractor stop by yesterday to check out the work left to be done and if he could take the job over if our meeting with Coulson went south.  If Coulson won't provide another carpenter for the remainder of the jobs and have them finished within a month (Ray Speaking ... we are SHIT CANNING him!)  So we shall see. This guy lives in our area and has good references and does not charge an extra 20% on materials!

My housekeeper came today after missing the mid-December cleaning ... so the house was not cleaned completely for a month. I did the vacuuming and bathrooms a few times in between. Nice to have the dusting, bathrooms and floors done completely, especially after all of our Christmas traffic. Jackie and her helper left at 3:15 pm and now it was time for me to get ready for company for dinner.

We invited Pat and Darryl over for appetizers and a light dinner as they had their grandchildren with them. The boys played upstairs in the loft with the TV and lego while we visited downstairs. After dinner we went over to Pat's house so the boys could go to bed there and had more appetizers and toasted to the New Year at 9 pm to 10 (It was a really long toast with multiple glasses of champagne. lol) Back home by 10:30 and to bed. I forgot to take any pictures. (My bad) so here is a picture of our guests from Christmas Dinner and one of the kids taken this fall.

Darryl with Ray

Pat

Severin and Ashton, so cute.

They are such nice people and we really enjoy their company. Great to have wonderful neighbours literally one driveway between our houses.

Happy New Year! Looking forward to 2019 and finished renos.