Spring is in the air...somewhere...

Hello! As you can see, spring is coming. We've been having beautiful sunny days. It's still cold, but it doesn't feel so bad when the sun is shining!
I've got some updated kitchen shots for you. The other day we found some tin signs that matched the colours in our kitchen perfectly, and they really added a lot to the room.

Yesterday we went to an auction and bought a bunch of really cool stuff to go in the house - check it out:

The largest, colourful game there we are going to turn into a clock for the kitchen. And now that curling is ending, we can take up croquet with our awesome antique croquet set with solid wood balls. You should have seen all the stuff we DIDN'T get!

Today we tiled the countertop in the kitchen. It wasn't as hard as we we thought it was going to be. It wasn't exactly easy, but I had totally psyched myself out that it was going to be a huge hassle and in the end it really wasn't that bad. We rented the tile cutter from Home Hardware and had it done in about four hours. Of course, we still have to grout it, seal it, caulk it, and edge it, BUT it's looking good already.

Soon we can start on the island, and then we will need to do the doors and shelves. The moulding is up, but it still needs paint, although it is all primed and ready to go. Tomorrow is Jai's birthday, so we would like to get the grout on, but we may just end up taking a lazy day instead. We'll have to see.
We went to the pub on Friday night and saw the "Randi Grandi Band." They play carribbean-style covers. It was pretty fun. Jai was saying it was like a scene from "Northern Exposure" or something, in the best possible way. There was all sorts of different people there, but everybody knew each other, and they were all having a great time - grandmas and hippies and bank managers.

moving right along

Hello! Not too much is new here, we've just been working away on our little kitchen. THe walls, ceiling and floor have all been painted with multiple coats. The floor looks really great, the diamonds worked out really well, and weren't actually as hard or as much work as I was expecting, which was a nice change!
We got the cabinets installed, the countertop attached and the stove, sink and dishwasher put in place. Then today we hooked up the sink and dishwasher, and even ran our first load of dishes (and believe me, it was about time!)

So it's all coming along. I still can't picture how it's going to look when all the pieces are together, hopefully it will turn out just like we hope! I'll keep you posted!

Kitchen Update

Hello Again! I thought it was probably about time I updated you on the status of our kitchen project. Today it finally is starting to look like we've made some progress. We've been spending so much time doing prep stuff, I was starting to get impatient. Today we finally got primer on all the walls and trim. Yay! Jai got all the electrical stuff in and I t.s.p.'d all the walls and caulked all the seams in the room. We finished all the mudding and sanding on the chimney surround and added new baseboard all around it. We also had to take off all the wainscotting under the window because it was in really rough shape, but we replaced it all with new stuff and it looks great. Here's some shots:


We've got all the pieces for the cabinet put together, although I have a few more modifications to make on the sink cabinet just to make it a little more sturdy. The cabinets we bought are kind of crappy (but they were cheap, so I guess I should have expected that!) We found a piece of furniture we are going to modify and turn into our kitchen island:

We got all the parts now for our awesome sink, thanks to Jai's Mom.

Yay! So the pieces are definitely coming together. Tomorrow we'll actually get to put some colour on the walls, and that should be really fun.

What else is new? Jai got the job he applied for as a Driver for Trans County Transportation. He's just in the process of getting all the official forms filled out and getting his Class 4 Driver's License, and then he will be working for them part-time. So that will be really good. I signed up for a free business course run through the Women's Centre here in Bridgetown. Hopefully I'll learn all sorts of wonderful things!

Here's a shot from our bedroom window four or five nights ago:

After this, we had a couple of really warm days, and all the snow disappeared. Today was really cold again, though, and tonight as I'm writing, it is blowing and snowing like crazy. It's a good night to be at home, curled up in bed!

The First Snowman

Hello! We've been busy working away on the kitchen. We've made some progress, but we're still a long way from being finished! We framed in around the chimney and the furnace pipes, and we've put up the new ceiling. Both of those things look great so far!


The ceiling is all tongue and groove, so it was fairly easy to put together, but it is the cheap grade so it is full of knots. Today I spent a couple of hours on a ladder filling in all the knot holes. It also means we need to use an oil primer to seal the knots so they don't bleed through. I think it will look amazing when it's painted, though. We have a bit of a funny spot right beside the chimney, but we found a surrogate beam that matches the other two, and we're all set to finish that up, too.

We've got two coats of mud on the new wall, so it's almost done now, too. We've been a little bit delayed because yesterday we had to do a major outing. We went out to the dump for the first time with all our kitchen refuse. It's pretty surprising what some people throw away, we were saying as we left that you could probably come home with some pretty awesome things if you worked there. Then we went to Greenwood to buy special expensive paint and do a big grocery shopping. We've got paint picked out for the entire kitchen now. It's going to be quite colourful!
Then today it was so beautiful outside. We walked over to the Home Depot to finally pick up the dishwasher we bought before Christmas, and we trolleyed it all the way home. It was so nice out, we decided it was the perfect time to make our first snowman.

We're starting to get a couple of nicer days now. Apparently it's very unusual to still be so cold at this time of year, but we don't know any different, so we don't mind. The air today was so cool and refreshing, it was like taking giant gulps of sweet, cool water. Tomorrow it's supposed to be warm but also rainy - something more like what we're used to! Oh well, it will be a good day to get things done.

Kitchen Smashing

Hello! We've been busy smashing up the kitchen over the last couple of days. First we took the ceiling down:

Then we pulled up the floor, and actually found hardwood floors under all the layers of cracked linoleum! Along with a few holes they decided to patch with plugs of tin foil:



So that was a very pleasant surprise. We are just going to be painting it, although it has a wax coating on it, so we'll have to strip that off first.
Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day, and we went to the auction, but we didn't see anything that we really wanted, so we went to the beach. It was awesome, but really wierd at the same time. If you faced towards the water, it could have been a perfect summer day, but if you turned around there was snow everywhere!

Then last night we had a stick curling tournament. It was pretty fun, and completely different from normal curling. Everyone is in teams of two with one person at each end. You have to stay at your own end and you aren't allowed to cross centre line. You aren't allowed to sweep until it passes the hog line on your end. Each person takes turns throwing six rocks to make an end. We won the first game, and lost the next two, so we won't be famous stick curlers any time soon, BUT Jai was the only guy to score a double takeout, which meant he got two free drinks, and lots of notoriety, so he was very happy.
Today we smashed out all the old cupboards:





Whew! And that was the easy part. Gotta go for now, Sarah and Derek have invited us over for dinner at their house tonight, because they came by earlier today when we were in demolition mode. Hooray for friends!

Updates

Hello! Happy 60th Birthday, Errol! Hope it's great! Not too much is new here. We went to the Home Depot in Halifax on Tuesday and picked up some cupboards for the kitchen. We just bought the boxes, and we will make the doors and drawer fronts ourselves in an attempt to save money. I think it will look really good when it's done. Yesterday we went out to Nictaux for the first time to check out a guy with a mill. It was unbelievable! Jai says he was like the wood santa:


We got some pine for the toys we are making, and Jai got a nice piece of apple for turning and a little cherry burl. The guy kept showing us another room and another barn, it almost seemed endless. So that was great fun.
Tonight was the last yoga class of the session, but everyone signed up again. That was really great. Sarah can only come to three of the next ones, though, as she is due to have her baby in the next six weeks. That's going to be huge.
Tomorrow we are going to start demolishing our kitchen, and Saturday if the weather is good enough, there is going to be another auction! Yay, I'm excited.