The countdown is on

Holy Crap – we have one month left to make our house liveable because we have to be out of our rental house by December 1st. Not to mention that we have a basement full of stuff here that we have to move there. Remember this?

Yeah, so all that stuff that came off the moving truck has to go back into a moving truck. UGH! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m super-excited to move into our house. But I’m also stressed out and feeling kind of apprehensive that we’ll get everything done that we need to get done.

On the positive side, the second storey has been dryalled and taped & mudded and primed and the painting will be finished in the next day or two. YAY! A BIG THANK YOU to our drywaller Vinny for all his hard work.

And I’ve ben plugging away a shingling the east end of the house. This is about as high as this chubby almost-50-year-old with bad knees and a fear of height can handle.

And the tiles for the upstairs bathroom have arrived.

On the not-so-positive side, there’s still most of the main floor to drywall and there’s white dust on everything.

Still so much to do and so little time to do it!

I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want

When I lived in Ottawa, I went to HomeSense pretty much every week. Now that the closest HomeSense is over an hour away, I don’t get there very often. So when I had to go to Halifax on Tuesday, HomeSense was most definitely on my list of stops.

I was hoping to find a pendant light for the bathroom and a new duvet cover. I came close with the light and struck out big-time with the duvet cover. But all was not lost – from the lighting section, I saw something teal off in the distance. Four somethings, actually. As I got closer, I got more excited – they were pretty close to the chairs that I really really wanted for the dining area in our kitchen. Blue – check. Low backs – check. Nail head trim – check. The only not-quite-what-I’m-looking-for were the dark legs.

If I didn’t have a box of hardwood flooring and 4 bags of dog food + $300 worth of groceries in the car, I would have snapped those babies up in a second. I could only put them on hold till the end of the day, although the store would hold them for up to 10 days so I could go back and get them. But did I really want to go back to Halifax next week just for some chairs?

In the end, I headed back home chairless. And then proceeded to obsess over those chairs for the rest of the day. CRAP, I should have bought them! What to do, what to do…

BING!

Lightbulb moment!

I texted my cousin who lives near Halifax and asked her for a BIG favour – and being the awesome cousin that she is, she went to HomeSense the next day and bought the chairs for me, which I luckily was able to put on hold for another day. WOOT! Of course, this means another trip into Halifax next week, but I think I can live with that. I just hope the four chairs fit into the back of my car!

So now this is my updated kitchen mood board….

Now if we could just get to the point where we’re actually putting the kitchen together!

Beam me up Scotty

A few days ago, I was walking Sassy on the beach and came across a big wood beam sitting in the sand. I’m always picking up pieces of wood from the beach for as-yet-undefined craft projects, but this baby was way too big for me to handle by myself. Plus it was in the center of the beach, so a long walk back to either end with it. Luckily, the beam washed up right in front of a rental cottage. So after asking for and getting permission to use the cottage driveway and beach access, I convinced Brian to help me round up the beam. Which, as it turns out, weighs about 1,639 pounds. But we managed to get it off the beach and into the car and up to the lot.

So now I have an 11 foot long wood beam to use somewhere in our house. Where, I have no idea. But I’ll figure something out :-) Maybe we’ll use it for something like this around the front entry…

Source

What would you do with a big old beam from the beach?

Damn you Sarah Richardson!

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was perfectly happy with the wood stove that we selected – the Kodiak 1700 from Enviro. It’s a nice enough wood stove, and it should do the job of keeping our house toasty warm.

But then Sarah Richardson had to go and mess things up. I happened to catch a reveal from her latest series online, and now I’m obsessed with this blue & nickel wood stove.

I mean, really, is this not a sexy wood stove?

I did some sleuthing and discovered that this blue beauty is either the Super Classic or Summit Classic from Pacific Energy. I went to a local hardware store that carries Pacific Energy wood stoves to get more info and pricing. And my dream of having a blue wood stove has been shattered – Pacific Energy discontinued blue a couple of years ago. Yet  they still carry maroon wood stoves. Seriously? Why?! Who wants maroon?!

ARGH! Damn you Sarah Richardson for getting me all excited about a wood stove that I can’t have!

It’s a gusher!

So we’ve been working on the garage and the house for two years now without knowing for sure that there’s a good source of water on our lot.The chances were pretty good we’d find water, but we didn’t know for sure.

Last Monday the diviner came out and found water about halfway up the driveway. He let me use the stick to see if I could find water. On the second try, the stick pointed to the same spot the diviner found. It was pretty crazy, but I really had no control over the stick, it did what it wanted to do. When I asked the stick what the water flow was, it started to point down when I reached 11 gallons per minute. Yep, crazy again! I mean, this is just a plain old stick, how does it have these super powers?!

Today the well digger came out to the lot and started digging in the spot the diviner found.

And two hours later, the digger hit water 100 feet down. Right at the spot the diviner found.

And now we have a well! The water flow is about 8-10 gallons per minute.

Now we need to get the water from the well to the house. It’s only about 250 feet away ;-)

It’s definitely a huge relief to know that we have water. It would kinda suck to have a house with no sinks or toilets ;-)

It’s crunch time!

I’m excited and stressed and happy and freaked out all rolled into one… we have two months to get our house ready to move into, because our rental house is being rented by someone else starting on December 1st. EEEK!

I’ve been bad about posting house build updates over the summer. But most of the work happening over the last few months was plumbing and electrical, which really isn’t all that exciting. And who wants to see pictures of wires and PVC pipes anyway, right?

So here’s a wrap-up of what’s been going on since the electrical and plumbing were done around late August. After e passed the electrical inspection, we could start insulating. Brian got to do the whole ceiling while I was downstairs insulating the main floor. Then we covered it all with vapour barrier.

I swear this stuff smells like cotton candy!

Meanwhile, the big guns came back to work on the septic field.

Our foredogs inspecting the work ;-)

Last week we had a diviner come out to look for water for our well. The diviner has found water for lots of wells in the area, and even the well digger told us to have the diviner come out to find the best spot to dig. I was a bit skeptical till I held the stick myself. It’s hard to believe, but you can’t hold back this stick when it starts to point towards water. It’s really quite incredible, and I’m totally a believer now!

Brave (or crazy) Brian is now working away at installing drywall on the ceiling.

And I’ve been working much lower to the ground shingling the exterior walls. The ocean side is almost done and now I’m working on the west end.

And that’s the house build wrap-up!