Week #18 of Renos - More finishing work, trim inside and out privacy panel and etched glass.

Monday, January 7th, the big winds in the forecast for yesterday fortunately did not materialise here at the lake. I had sprinkled on and off all day yesterday so I imagine that the lake level went down overnight. We shall see once daylight comes. It is however very chilly out at -1 C first thing.

Monday at daylight, it is finally bright and sunny although frosty. The lake is down another couple of inches. Today should help with with no rain for the lake level. And yes, that is new snow up in there hills!

Chris arrived about 8:30 am and commented on the icy roads here in Lake Cowichan.  I called Ken at Jones Coatings regarding his schedule and he will call me tonight to let me know exactly what is going to happen when. He believes that he will be here tomorrow, Tuesday, to paint the bedroom floor again. The main area needs to be prepped again in areas before the first coat of epoxy goes on, then layer of flakes and then top coat. This could take up to 5 days. Will have to schedule Chris on other projects outside. This is what we expect it to look like.





Today we are having him start to trim out the bedroom. Tomorrow when the painting starts he should be able to put up outside trim between the deck and rock work. Roger is apparently purchasing it today for Bernie to paint up at the shop.

Chris managed to caulk all the patio doors upstairs again in hopes that we have stopped the leak. As it was cold and sunny, not wet hopefully it works.

He completed one window trim and other than one board finished the second window trim. It sure looks fabulous finished. All of the fir doors and windows will be trimmed in fir to keep the theme of the timber frame house.

This window will have a great view of the lake once all the junk is gone. lol

This window is almost done other than the bottom board. Looks great with the finished ceiling. The black thing on the wall is the connection to the stainless chimney for a wood stove that had already been installed in this house. When the basement was just open with no framing it would have been fine. But this is the only place to put the bedroom if we want a kitchen. The plumbing is all on the other side of the basement. We did not take it out in case down the road our kids might want a small wood stove or gas stove installed here.

As the basement is finally coming together, I spent some time online shopping and now have the queen bed frame and mattress coming from Costco and the dresser and night tables coming from Wayfair. All the furniture will have metal legs to give us a little room  before things get damaged if the basement should get wet from the lake in the future. This is not likely we are told from neighbours but it could happen The furniture should start arriving next week. I still need a table set but I am waiting for the kitchen cabinets to go in to see how much space I have to work with.


Here is what they look like.

Should be a great guest suite.

We are supposed to get some snow today, but they don't know how much until it turns to rain tomorrow.  The wind was up this morning so the storm is approaching. At 8 am the flurries began and is sticking as it is so cold outside at -1C. Chris arrived at 8:15 and said the roads were fine getting here this morning. It snowed lightly without very much accumulation until 1pm and then changed to the forecasted rain and then back to flurries. Very wintery.

Chris worked on finishing the  built-in trim in the bedroom and pony wall. The pony wall needs a piece of edging still and one board for the window is in Duncan at the shop being painted. I swept out the room in preparation for the floor being repainted.

Next Chris started on the boxing in of the windows in the main area and also the bathroom small window.

Making sure side pieces wood grains match.

Almost done.

Spoke to Ken @ Jones Coatings at 1:15 pm. He will come on Thursday morning to repaint the bedroom floor and we are tentatively booked for Friday morning to start the rest of the floor. Ken told me that there could be up to 5 coats on the floor and how many days before you can walk on it depends on how fast it dries and if they can get 2 coats on in one day. Then it has to be left alone for 24 more hours. He is going to check with Jr. and see if he will work on the weekend too. It might be that no one can be downstairs for the whole of next week, so no kitchen install yet. Our painters have tentatively booked us for Thursday, Jan 24th so hopefully the kitchen and bathroom are in. The time crunch is on to the finish line.

The lake level is slowly going down.

Wednesday, January 9th, it rained quite hard overnight so there is no sign left of the flurries we had yesterday. It will be another rainy day, although warmer at 4 C this morning. The leak seems to be fixed as we did not get any more water in the house.

10 am and still waiting on Chris to show up. I am guessing he is working at the Coulson shop painting some trim to bring up to the lake. I bet Bernie was on other jobs and our work did not get done..... He finally showed up at 12:30 pm with stained trim pieces in hand. Ray received a call from David Coulson that he would be up this afternoon for the "meeting".

Chris managed to finish the bathroom window,

The last bit of trim on the bedroom window and the trim piece for the pony wall. The bedroom is now finished except for the closet. The doors have been ordered and should be here by Friday, I think.

Also this window and pony wall was finished in the living room. He has the big front window and the kitchen window left to do.

The awaited meeting with our contractor.

I had Ray put his thoughts down on paper to give David Coulson so we didn't get sidetracked and Ray could get his points across without getting upset. It worked and David mostly listened. He agreed that we were invoiced 78 hours, when Roger's time card showed 62 hours (hmmm, and they say Roger's time cards weren't changed after Ray's first complaint about being overcharged). There are many other days where Roger's time card bills us 8 hours and he wasn't on site (theoretically picking up supplies and organizing sub-contractors).  It is a good thing I blog so many details about their comings and goings around here. Pretty hard to dispute if he never showed up and I have pictures. lol  He wouldn't say anything about why his designer Donna didn't order our T-bar ceiling tile a month after given approval and never responding to our e-mail about where the order was.  He refused to answer about the length of time the carpenter takes for jobs, e.g. he took a day to install one door jam or why it took three hours to scribe a shelf, which at 7' you can't see the top of the shelf) against the wall when it sits on a support so you can't see the edge.

We took David around the house to show him our concerns, especially regarding the installation of the tiles on the deck, in which the supports are not per the manufacturer's installation manual. Dave looked at the manual then asked for one of the supports needed.  He said the supports used were wrong and that the correct ones were sitting in his shop.  Because of the incorrect supports, the tiles are not properly secured against any of the edges and can flip up. Talk about poor site supervision, especially after all the hours Roger billed us. So either the deck gets redone or David warranty's the work.  He agreed to warranty it himself so we did not have to worry.   The other areas of the deck that need a little more "fixing", he assured us will be taken care of. (We sent an email to David on Friday to confirm that the items outstanding with the deck will get done and asked him to confirm he is warranting the work).

(Friday night we received an email from the Derick, the sub contractor for the tile work ... he just received our email from Coulson's that was forwarded to him with no explanation ... why is that when at our meeting David said when I suggested I would call the plumber and schedule ... he said to me "it is my job to call the subcontractors". so why is this sub contractor contacting me?)

Downstairs there is some mortar missing on one of the replaced rock columns that will also "be taken care of".

As for more "workers" to get this finished. That is happening as of tomorrow. Roger, the supervisor and carpenter with Bernie the carpenter's helper will be here for the day to help Chris finish up all the outside parts still to be done. They will also be here next week after the floor is done, to put the kitchen and bathroom together. David now needs Chris at another job site so this has to get finished PDQ for his benefit now! We don't mind lets get it done.

Because of the discrepancy of hours on Roger's timecard and how slow Chris has been on some of the projects,  David has agreed to give us a good credit against the next invoice. The outcome of this meeting was welcomed and now Ray "will sleep". It sounds like the job will be wrapped up by the end of the month. Yeah!

Freya's rain jacket arrived today. Doesn't she look cute! She actually comes to you when she sees it for me to put it on. I think she likes staying dry when out walking with her Dad. lol

Thursday morning the sun finally came out and it's a balmy 8 C. Apparently no rain for a few days after tomorrow, so we should see the lake go down substantially. Unfortunately by 10 am it had clouded over again.

Chris arrived about 8:15 am. He continued to work on the window trim in the living room area. A bit of a pain scribing around the fireplace rocks on the one side.

He still has the one kitchen window to do yet. He took a break and went outside to fix our RV Plug that was pulled out slightly from the wall and had some water in it. He will redo it and add caulking this time. I guess Adam, the electrician did not weather seal it good enough.

Ken from Jones Coatings is on his way so the bedroom floor will definitely be done today. Roger and Bernie are due a bit later with supplies to finish off the outside trim under the sundeck.

Ray headed off to Nanaimo for a few hours as he needed to pick up a prescription and needed to do some clothes shopping at the mall.

Ken arrived about 9:15 to start on the bedroom floor. Chris helped him install a blower fan outside the bedroom window to help prevent the smell of the paint coming upstairs. So far it is working. I have the fireplace on to heat the house and the furnace is off.

Unfortunately for Ken, he used up the leftover paint first and then started with the new can he ordered and brought with him. They were supposed to be the same colour and it stated the additives on both lids and they were the same, but once on the floor there is a bit of a difference. Now he will have to repaint the small section from the wall to where the closet ends tomorrow. Still don't know when they will start on the main area to fix the floor. We are hoping this weekend but who knows.

Bernie and Roger were here about 10:15 am. Bernie was able to get the bathtub clean from all of the gyproc mud. It had been left quite a mess. The first thing they started on was putting up the etched glass windows in the front of the house. Hopefully this helps keep the bats out next spring. It looks awesome!

At lunch I fed all four crew chili which they greatly appreciated. Need everyone "happy" for the final push to get this reno done.

Sitting in my chair ... yeah here comes our privacy panel that Roger crafted from the good fir wood from our rotten sundeck timbers. He is quite the craftsman. This fence has been sitting here waiting for install for a couple of months, delayed until the sundeck was finished.

The finished product. No more neighbours gawking at us from their office window. lol

My new barbecue utensil cart.

See how close the neighbour office window is, that's why we had the privacy screen built.

After the screen was installed, Bernie and Roger worked on the black trim under the sundeck. Chris helped Roger put on the door trim on the outside of the downstairs patio door to match. Bernie tacked back up the security camera but it does not seem to be working. We had a picture a couple of times then nothing ... will have to get Price Alarms back out here I guess.

Lovely black trim to hide the join between the rock and the soffit.

Door trim finally on.

Bernie also installed the conduit over our ground wire that was just left exposed on the side of the house.

That is it for today. The guys all left at 4 pm. Our gate was supposed to be installed today, but nobody came for that job. We shall see what tomorrow brings. Until the floors are done we are kind of in a holding pattern with the rest of the basement.

Friday morning, Ray was up early and I did not get up until 6:30 am. Looks like we are going to have a cloudy day but tomorrow it is forecasted for sunshine for about 4 days. That will be awesome.

Chris did not get here until 9:30 am. He had to drive his kids to school. In Shawnigan Lake 3 school buses were set on fire so no pickup today. Geez.

Ken arrived around 10 am and finished painting the floor in the bedroom and did some prep on the main area floor. He left around noon. Apparently Ken and Junior will be here on Sunday to start on the main area floor. Which means that work cannot continue down there until Thursday at the earliest, possibly Friday.

Saw the pile driver go by on the lake. They are putting a new pole in at the "yellow houses' dock". It snapped off completely in the windstorm on December 20th and his dock is practically hitting up against the dock next to him.

Chris put in the bathroom vanity today. It is a floating one so if water comes in it won't get wet. lol Just waiting for the plumber when everything else is installed. They followed the installation instructions for blocking up the wall before drywall but of course it did not work so he had some fiddling to do.

Chris also finished up the kitchen window other than the bottom as it will have to be done after the counter top is in. He moved everything he needs to work with upstairs for Monday as he won't be able to access the basement for several days. Still no gate.

Last window trimmed out just waiting for kitchen counter to go underneath it to finish.

I picked up the rest of the door handles today and the mattress for the bed downstairs arrived. Costco is fabulous. The bedframe will arrive on Monday and the night tables and dresser should be here early next week as well.

Ray and I were able to sit out on the sundeck under our heaters with the firetable on for an hour or so this afternoon. Sweet.

So that ends Week #18 of renos ... things are moving ahead and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.