We’re floored!

And I mean that literally – the concrete was poured over the subfloor a few days ago, which puts us one step closer to getting the house done.

Before the concrete was poured, we installed pex piping for the radiant floor heating on the entire main floor and the upstairs bathroom.

The concrete truck showed up bright and early on Monday morning.

These guys have definitely done this before!

And by the end of the day, the concrete was done and dry enough to walk on.

I’m so anxious to get the drywall started, but we can’t do that until all the plumbing and electrical are installed and inspected. Unfortunately, I know nothing about this two things, but I’m hoping I can start shingling the exterior walls.

Family, friends, fun, and the flu

Wow, June has been a crazy month! It actually started at the end of May with a big surprise 80th birthday for my dad back in Montreal…

Then I spent a week visiting my dad and his girlfriend and made a quick trip to Ottawa to visit a few friends. I had to check out our old house while I was there – the new owners chopped down my beautiful birch tree!

The little shack going up next door…

And I got to visit our former foster dog Sophie :-) She covered me in sweet Sophie kisses!

It was a great week, till the airport. I missed my flight back to Nova Scotia – thank you Air Canada for changing my gate and leaving me behind. Grrrr…. anyway, when I finally got back to NS, my cousin Lynn was here to visit for a few days…

Then the day after Lynn left, I hung out with my friend Vickie who was here visiting from BC.

Then I actually had a few days at home! Alone! With nothing to do and nobody to talk to! Till Saturday, when my friend Rona came to visit. She spent a couple of days here, and then the two of us headed up to Cape Breton for a few days.

And then two days after I got back from Cape Breton, I got the flu. No pictures of that! But we did have a little bit of excitement between the not-so-fun flu activities – we bought a new car. Well, it’s used, but new to us – a 2013 Subaru Impreza. I like!

And that, my friends, is why there hasn’t been much blogging this month! Not a lot of action on the house either, other than Brian figuring out the venting and plumbing and installing some pipes and working on the electrical. But the action did pick up today – more on that next!

Talkin’ about tiles

Now that the roof is done and all the windows are in, I can finally start focusing on the inside of our house. This is definitely more my forté than climbing scaffolding and lifting million pound beams into place!

My job at the moment is to choose the tiles for the bathrooms. Yeah, I can do that! I found some nice tiles at a local flooring store a few weeks ago, but nothing that really made me go YES, that’s it. So last week when I was in Ottawa for a couple of days, I popped into EuroTile – and 2-1/2 hours later, I popped back out with a tile plan.

I gotta say, walking through the huge store and trying to take in all the tiles was pretty overwhelming. There were sooooo many gorgeous tiles, how was I going to choose?! I did have an idea of what I wanted for the shower – large white matte tiles with a wavy motif. Which I did find – but when I saw these tiles from Cifre Ceramica, a new plan started formulating in my mind.

I love the patterned tiles, and I REALLY love how the texture of the glossy plain tiles gives them the look of water. In fact,  this morning I was in a swimming pool and it struck me how the tiles look so much like waves in the water. Perfect for the shower!

And speaking of waves… this is the exact tile that I was hoping to find – not too big, not too small, matte white finish, wavy texture. Perfect! It’s part of the Lineup collection from Paul & Co Ceramiche.

I never would have chosen white floor tiles, but the designer who was helping me sort out my tiles options brought out these two tiles, which I really like. This one is Jaipur in white from Argenta Ceramica.

And this one is from the Pamesa Home Reval series by Tierra Sol.

I like the Jaipur tile a little bit more, but the Pamesa Home Reval has a subtler pattern that works a bit better with the wavy Lineup tile. Putting them together…

My friends Vickie and Wendy came to check out our house progress a few days ago, so I asked for their thoughts on which tiles should go where. The final verdict was the unpatterned turquoise tiles on one wall in the shower (and maybe across the entire wall) and the white wavy tiles on the other shower walls.

Here are a few rooms that are inspiring my design thoughts for our bathroom….

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Still lots of work to do before we get to the tiling stage, but it’ll be great to finalize the tiles for the bathroom and cross that job off my very long to-do list :-)

The Living Beach – June 1, 2017

Whoops, a few days late with my monthly beach update. I was expecting there to be more sand by now, but not so much….

On the positive side, at least there’s some sand coming back to this part of the beach below the cliff…

Comparison of the beach at the beginning of May (top) and beginning of June (bottom).

Hmmmm… there might actually be more rocks now! I hope the sand comes back soon, I miss walking the beach from end to end. But what Mother Nature does is out of my control!