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.

January 2019 Wow and week #17 of renos!

Tuesday, January 1st.

After our usual morning routine of coffee and computers it was time to get moving. This is take down Christmas day. Fortunately Ray and I are on the same page with this. We thoroughly enjoy our Christmas decorations for the month of December, but come New Year's Day we are done with the clutter and can't wait to get everything back in their boxes and put away. The house looks so much bigger, it is nice to see clean tables and counters removed of their Christmas clutter. I can see the water again from my chair. lol Also with all of the builder stuff everywhere else in the house it is nice to reclaim a space for us.

We probably should have done it in two stages but we work well together. Ray puts away outside lights and the Christmas Village and I take down the tree, mantle decor and other miscellaneous trinkets. Took us about 4 hours and we were done for another year. It also gave us the opportunity to junk out things we did not use or did not work properly from being packed up so long. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow so it is better putting outside things away dry.

The rest of the day, Ray laid in bed with his TV and I read a book. A very relaxing afternoon. Meals today are leftover appetizers. lol

Ray was up very early this morning ... could not sleep regarding his meeting this morning with David Coulson. Anyways Derek, the deck guy was here quietly picking up their tools at 6:30 am and removing the supports holding up the rocks that were mortared 2 days ago. So they are done. They did a pretty good job cleaning up the concrete patio downstairs. Still a few spots where mortar is stuck on the new concrete though. It is supposed to rain very heavy for the next couple of days so I am glad the area is cleaned up and all garbage is in bags so they don't create a mess.

Bags of garbage to the right.

Wow we can get around all four sides of the hot tub now!

Ken, the other building contractor Ray had come to the house a couple of days ago, called this morning to decline. They just don't have the time in the next month to get here with all of the other things on their plates. Hopefully Ray works it out with David so work can get completed this month. As it turned out David was really sick so the meeting was off today. He seemed to think that the job has just about wrapped up ... we sent him the list of things yet to be done, especially the whole basement for "his viewing pleasure!" a page and a half typing! Also our patio door to the sundeck that was ordered at the end of August .... still is not here! Anyways Chris was here this morning for 8am and finished the ironing board closet and got most of the pantry shelving up. Now I have double the capacity in this cupboard.

Not "streaky" just shadows ... bad photography! lol

Other than the two transition pieces of wood for the floor under the closet doors where the walls used to be, upstairs that he will make up at the shop, the upstairs is done. The doors just need to be stained. He also managed to install the pantry door as well today. Still needs to be trimmed out tomorrow but progress. So happy to not see all the "stuff", especially the recycle baskets. Chris left shortly after 4 pm.

We only had one handle ... more on order.

Called today on the remaining ceiling tile that we ordered November 30th ... it is finally in Victoria and should be delivered Friday to the house. Les and crew will probably finish the T-bar ceiling off this weekend if the tile arrives as planned.

Jones Coatings confirmed today that they will be back early next week to finish the basement floor. After that we can start the finish work in the basement i.e. putting in the kitchen and bathroom cabinets etc. This is a short week with the New Year's holiday so not as much will get done.

With the meeting cancelled I headed out to Duncan to get our shopping done before the intense rain forecasted started dumping. I was lucky it was just sprinkling when I got back home but shortly after intensified greatly. lol Ray was pretty much done too. When I am not home he just keeps doing stuff to keep busy. He is determined to do as much as he can with small projects to help get this job done such as putting in the new door hardware himself.

Thursday it had rained all night and intensified by about 10 am into torrential rain with the wind picking up. Hopefully that does not spell more power outages. Chris texted that he will arrive at 12:30 today. He was working on our trim in their shop, I believe. Ray and I popped out to the Country Grocer and had a quick lunch as I needed to buy a few groceries.

I spent a couple of hours talking with Sameday Freight to locate our ceiling tiles ... after several calls all over the island and then calling Sameday Freight again, I finally discovered that they had been transferred to Standard Freight via Richmond to Victoria to Nanaimo. Finally have confirmation that Nanaimo has unloaded the semi and they have my skid and will deliver it tomorrow between 12 and 4pm Wow!!! What a pain. Les the drywall guy from Gordon and Gordon is going to try and get it finished this weekend. Good thing because we just received another invoice from David Coulson and he has charged us for the T-Bar ceiling and tile install before the job is even finished!

Ray spent a couple of hours this morning replacing door hardware and then a quiet afternoon reading laying down in the bedroom. He also did a short stint of sanding some of the beams in our ensuite from the overpaint that was done a year ago by the previous owner.

Chris did arrive at 12:30 pm and continued working on the pantry trim. Of course with a new door, the trim is not fitting the same and has to be rejiggered.  It took 3 1/2 hours to finish and he still has to put in a new transition between the wood floor and tile floor as the old one now is too short with the larger door. We also had him put the little stoppers so the door would not open so wide and hit the counter.

Chris said that on his way here today, there were areas of Highway 18 where the water was coming over the highway and cones were being put out to warn drivers. Between first thing this morning and about 1:30 pm the lake has come up 10 inches. A very wet, windy, miserable day.

Tomorrow I will take everything out of the pantry and organize it so I can get a bunch of stuff off my kitchen island. lol

Ta Da (all done Friday morning)

Friday. It had been a very rainy and windy night. it not bother us, but if there was a particularly strong gust, Freya would lay beside our bed instead of her bed. Chris arrived at 7:50 am and started working on the stair posts. The edges need to be rounded off as are so sharp Ray really scrapes himself on them. I did also for the first couple of months but I learned. lol By the end of the day all of them had been done and will have to be stained at a later time. Glad to see .... hear that job over. Both the dog and me were getting very tired of the loud noise all day long. Between the shop vac, router and sander.

Quite the contraption to minimize the dust for me. It worked great.

Bernie, Roger and two other guys showed up about 9:30. The 2 guys were digging out all the old cement in the grass and extra gravel and rock to take to the dump. The extra guys left after filling the trailer with all the garbage. Bernie stayed and cleaned up the concrete and attempted to clean the bathtub that was left a mess by the drywalling. I will have to pressure wash the concrete from all of the mess at a later date. Bernie will have to try something else to get the tub clean at another time as paint thinner did not work. New rubber was applied to the stairs to prevent Ray slipping as all of the black paint with the walnut shells all peeled off so they came up with something better. (we hope). Bernie left at 11:30 as there was no trim here to finish under the sundeck and rockwork.

Roger took out our patio door to get it remeasured against the new one. Apparently the one that they had ordered came in with veneer instead of solid fir so the whole thing had to get redone again. They took out the door and left me with a piece of foam for the day so they could match up the hinges and holes for door hardware. Apparently they are bringing the door back later today and installing it back in place and will put the new one in the garage for the painters to stain with the other doors later this month.

Ray took some pictures from the park after the major windstorm we had. Wow. Swim dock was now in the picnic area. Going back today with the rise of the lake it is now floating in the picnic area! Just to give you some idea of how much water the lake has filled up in 2 days.

Jan 2, 2019

Jan 4, 2019

There were some very large trees that had fallen over as well.

Fortunately Ray wasn't walking this trail with Freya!

At 10:15 am Ray noticed that water was dripping downstairs by the patio door !!!! Had Chris suss it out and it turns out that the tile guys cut our trim for the deck tiles and then cut around the trim and exposing the house to the rain. Now Chris is outside caulking all those areas. Unbelievable! At least it should be an easy fix, just Chris's time at $60/hr!!!

Basement door

We waited an hour and the water is still coming inside our upstairs patio door by the floor vent and dripping down through the floor to the basement floor. Ahggggg. Chris back out at 1:15 pm to try and stop the water egress again off our sundeck into the house. He is going to bring more supplies on Monday to attack this area again. Roger mentioned that he stopped at 4 other jobs today due to leaks.

Anyways the lake has come up substantially, 3 feet in the last two days. Hopefully the forecast for the next few days sticks with the rain slowing so the lake has time to empty before the next storm. Our neighbour Darryl had to go onto his neighbours dock and tie up the stump from their yard that had floated off and was in danger of hitting Darryl's dock. He has it roped between the two so it should stay in place until it can be dealt with.

Water again, up to Mike's ramp platform.

Our water level as of 12:30 pm Jan 4, 2019

We are glad we are here to monitor lake levels this winter ... just so when we are not here in the winter we know what to expect. It was high a year ago November the once and that was the most people had seen in quite a few years. This year has not yet reached that level even though it seems to us to be really high. So we shall see what happens with the "climate change" that is talked about.

Ceiling tile arrived at 12:30 as promised thankfully. Now hopefully Les and Paul will be here later today or tomorrow to finish.

Roger was back at 1:30 pm with the new door and trim. This door will get stained by our painters when they do the other doors, but at least it is finally here! The old door was put back in as well. On the same day ... who knew. lol Roger also took the leftover "feet" for the deck to Slegg for a credit.

The new patio door is finally here after talking about ordering it since August!

The heavy rain finally quit at 2:30 pm.  You can actually see the lake flowing like a slow river. The showers started up soon after again. Chris was all packed up and gone by 4 pm. It is definitely "Miller Time"! Now Ray is making all of the noise. He is ripping the left over baseboards we have so they can be used with the new smaller profile ones that we are putting in the basement.

Saturday we were both up early ... too much on our minds I guess. Took a quick peak at the lake level while I had Freya out first thing (5 am). I think it is down a bit ... we shall see when daylight comes. The rain had stopped though.

Later in the morning Ray determined the lake was up a couple of inches and then went down a couple of inches later in the afternoon.

Les texted that they will be here tomorrow to finish the T-Bar ceiling so Ray and I had a free day to go to Duncan for a little shopping. Ray took me out to lunch at Original Joe's. Fabulous fish and chips.

Back at home I got our rattan lazyboy recliners all set up in the gazebo, lit the fire table and turned on the infrared heaters. Nice and cozy on the very cloudy day. lol

The rain began again around 3:30 pm so that was our afternoon outside. Hopefully it does not rain too much again tonight. There is apparently a wind warning though for early Sunday morning.

Sunday, cloudy but the rain has appeared to stop. Ray says the lake did not come up any higher but it was quite windy at 7 am.  We are waiting for the expected wind storm this morning. Already 10,000 BC Hydro customers out of power on Vancouver Island as of 8 am. We shall see what today brings for us. lol The next few days are quite a bit cooler so we could see snow flurries, although tomorrow is supposed to be sunny before the next deluge of rain.

Les, Paul and Kristy, showed up at 9 am as planned to finish the T-Bar ceiling. It turned out the flat tiles we received are a different colour "white" than the contoured ones. However, because they are the exact same colour as the T-bar track and walls it really looks fabulous and sets off the patterned tile more like a coffered ceiling. Bonus! Whew! They were all done by 11 am. After they were finished and took out most of the garbage, I finished up and swept all the leftover bits.

Living room ceiling

Bedroom ceiling

Checked the lake at 9:30 and it is down 8 inches or so. Great. Still waiting for the predicted wind at 10am. (It never came.) It rained off and on for the rest of the day.

Kat and Garrett gave us an ornamental garden anchor for Christmas. We found the perfect place for it. It will look better once the junk is gone. lol

Floors should be dealt with downstairs tomorrow, Monday or Wednesday and will take two days to finish. Then we can move onto finishing downstairs. Ray decided to make the transitions for the upstairs closets himself. It is a finicky job and takes quite a bit of time, but it is far cheaper for Ray to do it than pay Chris $60/hour. lol Ray is enjoying the challenge of using his brain with fractions and using his tools. He is taking his time and doing a little bit at a time to not hurt his back.

And that was week #17 of Renos.