Here we go into Week #11 of Reno's and Ray's Birthday

Tuesday morning was pretty cold out at 0C . Today Ray, Freya and I must leave the house for the night, as they are spray foaming insulation into the basement and garage. We will be staying at Kristi and Jason's in Nanaimo and returning tomorrow. After dropping Freya off at their house, we went shopping and then back to spend time with Jason. Kristi, unfortunately, had been called to the hospital at 3:30 am and we did not get a chance to see her all day. Took Jason out to Cactus Club for dinner and ordered a takeout dinner for Kristi. She had lots of ladies in labour and could not join us, so we dropped hers off at the hospital.

Here is Jason giving the dogs their treats. Freya is right in there. lol Zeus took his treat and hid in Jason's bedroom to make sure Freya did not get his treat too.

Wednesday morning we left Jason's by 7:00 am and headed back to our house in Lake Cowichan. Still no Kristi, poor girl will be exhausted today and has an 8 hour course to attend.

When we got home we inspected the spray foam work from yesterday. Apparently it took the guy all day to do the work. The basement should be much better insulated as well as the main floor with all of those voids filled. Chris beat us here by a few minutes. We also noticed that our patio door to be replaced due to rot, had been taken out so they can match up the hinges and match up the new door to be installed.  Ray's asked the site supervisor many times over the last three weeks when the new door was coming.  Every time he told Ray it was ordered, but just today said he's actually ordered it just yesterday... grrrrrr!

Spray foam in the basement between the floor joists.

Part of the garage ceiling spray foamed so the bathrooms above are warm. We lost the nice wood look but need the insulation. They will be putting gyproc over the foam to tidy it up.  Also the spray dude managed to paste the front door of our stainless steel fridge in the garage, even though it was covered in plastic.... grrr again!

Hopefully the new door is installed soon.

Boy did we have a house full of people today. The boss and his 2 workers grinding the paint off the basement floor. What a dusty slow job that is. We kind of expected large sanding machines like they use for refinishing floors but nope .... these guys are on their hands and knees. Plumes of dust were escaping upstairs. Finally we gave up and just opened up all the doors for the wind to blow through.

They did not manage to finish today so will be back tomorrow.

The Garage Door guy came back to install a better system for the boat garage door. The manual chain drive was not working very well as the cable would wrap around the drum and cease up. A little more money, but now we won't have to worry that it will get stuck again.

The garage opener is installed on the side instead of the usual place above on the ceiling. Works great.

Jim, our cabinet guy, came back to finish with the dining room buffet shelves and the hardware for the upstairs bathroom vanities. Also the hooks were installed on the hall built-in. Everything looks fabulous.

The dining room shelves all nicely fitted in.

The bathroom guest vanities all finished.

Hallway closet hooks installed ... finished.

Chris worked on making the hole in the bedroom wall for the transom window to be installed and started working on our master bedroom closet. Bernie cleaned up all the plastic drapes from the spray foam and moved all the furniture in the basement out of the way of the grinding. I think the stuff has been moved half a dozen times out of the way for various subcontractors lol.

Wall opening all blocked to support the new window.

That pile is our bed.  Dibs on the top bunk!

I had Bernie pull out our dryer as it appears to be clogged. Good thing I did ... the previous owner had routed the 6' flexible hose into the pantry, built a shelf on top of it and then out through the siding. The hose was not to code, all kinked up and a hole allowing the air and lint to escape into this hidden shelf. Talk about a fire risk! We are having the pipe reinstalled straight out from the dryer to the outside as it should have been from the beginning.  However, another mess for now. Bernie even had to take off the laundry room door to deal with this as it is such a small room.

Look at the pipe with the hole. At least it isn't like a my Dad's place where the hole was plugged by a pair of panties!

Tonight we went back to Nanaimo to meet our good friends Janice and Gary for dinner at the Mahle House to celebrate Ray's birthday, November 15th and Janice's birthday, November 20th. We had a fabulous meal.  Tonight is the Chef's surprise dinner.  For $50 you get a six course meal but you don't know what you get until it's put in front of you.  Like us, you can split the meal in four to share, or trade a salad with goat cheese and beets (which Ray will eat) for his waldorf salad.

Happy Birthday Janice. It was great to see you both.

Ray and I had moved ourselves up to one of the guest bedrooms upstairs until our bedroom gets put back together again. We actually slept really well. Apparently, Ray wants to move us up there as it has an incredible view of the lake and has two incredible dormers and our bedroom does not ..... not happening after the reno's, we are in the process of doing to the master bedroom and ensuite! Ray wouldn't be able to navigate the stairs as his illness progresses.

Our one man construction crew, Chris, arrived at 7:45 am again and the noise begins! The concrete grinding began by 8am.  Around 10 am I took off to Duncan to pick up some deck lights from Home Depot to escape the noise and do a little shopping. Chris finished framing up the master closet and then fought with my new dryer hose set-up ... what a process drilling a new hole to the outside and lining everything back up. They never make it easy hooking up the dryer hose to the dryer. Fortunately we found this out while we have someone here to fix it.

Jim popped in to pick up 2 kitchen doors as one of them had cracked through the paint and as our kitchen was only put in a year ago, they are fixing it N/C. It needs to be sanded and repainted. They took the other one too so the paint matches exactly.

The concrete guys did not completely finish today again.. They quit at about 2pm just as I arrived back home from Duncan. They will then finish the last bit and then roll on the finish. Apparently, the first thing rolled on will seal the concrete by bonding to it and the second thing rolled on will give it an opaque finish, with the cream colour I chose, that will never need refinishing. Fingers crossed it will look nice, however anything will look better than the red paint on the floor now.

Tonight for Ray's birthday, Jason is joining us at the Farm Table Inn, just 5km down the highway at Skutz Falls turn-off. Unfortunately, once again, Kristi cannot attend as she has meetings. Ray and I really enjoyed our meal there this summer for my birthday. The Prime Rib Dinner buffet did not disappoint. We all thoroughly enjoyed our meal. The beef was fabulous and from a local farm, cooked wrapped in bacon ... what's not to like. Jason also enjoyed the meal. It was great to have him come and celebrate Ray's birthday with us. It is going to be hard to go back to reality tomorrow as I will have to cook our own dinner after 3 days of going out. lol

The Beast

Happy Birthday Ray!

The serving staff came and sang to Ray.

What a day Friday was !!!

The concrete guys were back bright and early to finish grinding the basement floor. It literally took them all day to finish the grinding. When they were done with that, at around 6 pm, they stayed and put the sealer on the floor. Ray said they didn't leave until 7:30 pm. They will be back on Monday to paint the floor with the colour I chose. Should look fabulous and at least painting is not noisy.

Much better than red paint.

Chris showed up at 7:45 am and started work again with framing in the closet in the master bedroom, reworking the existing closet and finish the closet gyproc. Roger, the site supervisor, showed up at 2:30 to return our patio door and bring the new transom window to be installed on Monday.

Still a little more to do, Closet doors should be coming next week hopefully (that's if it's ordered)!

The service people for the living room fireplace arrived at 1 pm. These were 2 different guys. They had difficulty too. The fireplace worked when they left, through no fix on their part they said. I tried it again Saturday morning but it is not lighting again.  This is the fourth repair attempt Ahhhggggg!

Just like city workers ... one guy standing while one guy is working. Now there is a problem when both of them at one point were on their cell phones to the tech department.

Ray did some chores, cleaning up behind the spray foamers in the garage so we could put the boat back in for the winter. Chris helped me push it into it's spot. I put all my china away in the new dining room buffet. Nice to get things out of the way.

The noise in the house was horrendous all day, so Ray and I went outside and lit a campfire as the clouds lifted and it was a beautiful afternoon. Unfortunately, our house being north facing, only our dock gets sunshine at this time of year.

We came in at 4 pm and I started our dinner ... at around 5:30 Ray received a phone call from Price Alarms that our downstairs smoke detector is goning off. I guess they had so much dust down there that it went off. It was so noisy upstairs, we did not even hear our siren!!! Ray went down and noticed that the cling wrap we he put around one of the detectors had come off, so that is why the alarm went off. Got that sorted and the at 6pm our upstairs hard wired smoke detectors went off. Quite a bit of dust coming upstairs in the air and combined with me cooking, the temps on the ceiling were high enough to set the upstairs alarms off. No matter how we tried to turn off breakers to silence them we could not find one. Even turning off the main breaker! "Junior" from the concrete guys, came upstairs and climbed our 24' extension ladder and pulled down the detector ... we do have 30' ceilings. Finally after 20 minutes, blessed silence. Poor dog, took off out the front door we had open to clear the dust, and went over to the neighbours porch. We didn't even know she left until they brought her back home. lol What a night.

I have been having so much pain in my neck lately, that I went to bed at 7 pm with a muscle relaxer and that was our Friday.

Remembrance Day Weekend at Lake Cowichan 2018

Saturday, Ray and I went to the Duncan Farmer's Market to pick up a few things and for me to get my regular neck/back massage. Sure was a beautiful day. Once back home my job was to get the new hot tub filled, chemicals poured in and heating up. I also emptied out my china boxes that have been in storage for 7 years. Once the shelves get put in my new built-in buffet I will display them.

Sunday morning we woke up to very thick fog. I checked the hot tub and it was at 104F, just where we like it. After checking the balance of the water we were good to go. I decided we had better wait for daylight as we don't know where all "the gizmos" are and it would be hard seeing it in the dark. At 8 am, Ray and I enjoyed our first soak. Absolutely fabulous. We still need to figure out what switch turns on what water ... but overall it worked pretty good. No instructions regarding placement of switches/jets etc.

I will take a picture of the tub once the new cover is here and all the stuff that has exploded out of the basement temporarily for spray foam on Tuesday, is put back away from the hot tub. Hard to even get into it will all the stuff around it. lol  The cover they sent is a 2-piece, but with the height of the hot tub and the bottom of the deck, it won't fold up out of the way so they will send us a 3 piece that folds back on hydraulics. For now a bit awkward to take the cover on and off and will require both of us.

At 10:30 am, Ray and I left to attend the community Remembrance Day Celebration at the cenotaph downtown, a 7 minute drive away.  There must have been close to 1000 people there by 11 am. Considering the town only has just over 3000 people, that was a lot! We took our strongback chairs as Ray cannot stand for an hour for the service. What a beautiful day. Most services we have attended over the years has always been wet and cold. Today beautiful sunshine although only 3C. They had an honour parade including a bagpipe band, 3 tenors singing, and a few speeches in between the prayers and service. Not too long, not too short. It was nice to part of the community.

The Three Tenors, apparently their fourth tenor was on holiday somewhere far away from here. lol

Once we were back home we saw 7 small single engine planes fly overhead in formation and a few minutes later back over the house. Of course Ray did not have his camera ready. lol

Today we spent catching up on laundry and moving our clothes into our new hall closet ... they will be putting in the transom window in the bedroom and framing out the new closet this week so we have evacuated the room. As Ray says,"the circus has reached our bedroom".  Now will we sleep up in Garrett's room as there is a working bathroom complete with a working sink until they finish the work in our room.

Monday, another sunny day. We decided to enjoy some scenery and fresh air. A drive around our little town was in order as there are many areas and subdivisions we have never seen. You tend to just drive the main road to where you need to go and back home.

We managed to find two small lakes that are bird and wildlife sanctuaries so you can't actually access the lake but we got close enough walking a trail for a few pictures.

You guys coming?

Kwassin Lake

Kwassin Lake

 There was also another small lake a little further on the trail called Grant Lake

Back in the car we went to the next little subdivision and found a foot bridge over the Cowichan River that we never knew was there. A bonus was seeing some spawning salmon in the river.

The white "sticks" in the water are the backs of the spawning salmon.

Here is Ray's picture of the salmon ... can you see it? It's in the bottom left corner.

This is obviously an old rail bridge decommissioned and now a walkway to town.

What a beautiful day.

The river is flowing much more quickly now with all the past week's rain.

On the way back home we stopped at the other foot bridge across the river that is close to our favourite pub. Not as nice a view but still interesting with some beautiful fall foliage. Freya certainly enjoyed all the new smells on our adventure.

Lovely fall colours still.

Swim up docks for tubers in the summer, looking up the river towards downtown.

Looking up towards the river mouth.

We decided to go to our favourite "watering hole" Jakes for lunch. On Monday's it's 25% off for seniors on everything except booze. Great deal.

After lunch we walked in the park across the parking lot with Freya, watching people fish for salmon in the river just before the weir. You could see a few jump.

Jake's at the Lake, our favourite "watering hole".

This guy came in for soup and a beer before resuming fishing.

Hmmm, three men in a tub! Fly fishing.

A lovely day enjoying the last day of sunshine for awhile. The rains are coming tomorrow.