a picture's worth...

a thousand words... and all of them are along the lines of "holy crap, we did it"...










now, on to the next adventure... doing jeremy and lina's house...

and now thanks to our sponsors...

we interrupt this blog to thank the many fine manufacturers, companies and products that have gone into this project.

special thanks to:

- brooks lumber, located across the street from the old tiger stadium, where marc travelled four, sometimes five times a day. special shout-out to carlisa the cashier, who started to anticipate marc's needs to the point that she was telling him what he should buy next.

- "bill" the plumber, whose off-licence plumbing job under the house saved us a whole lotta trouble and pain

- ikea, which provided us with more gear than we could ever imagine could fit in a kitchen. but surprisingly, it all did.

- target, for providing the kids with much-needed entertainment devices

- cedarland, los galanes, slows BBQ, beirut by night and panera bread for keeping us fed

- honeybee market (la colmena) for providing us with nearby milk and cream

- tecate, corona, and many other beers for keeping us, um, hydrated

- DAP expandofoam, varathane, martha stewart paint, aluminum tape, shiny bubble insulation, acme mold and mildew remover and a zillion other products of that nature

- larry (marc's dad) for loaning his circular saw (and bringing it back after we returned it to him, because we realized we still had stuff to saw)


no thanks to:

home depot, whose hot water installer charged us three times as much for a drip pan as they sell them for at lowe's

enterprise rental cars, for swapping our cool pontiac vibe for a less-room PT cruiser

fedex and ups for being sticky about shipping stuff to canada

the weather, which has been stinking hot. all the better to dry the paint, though...

and now back to our regular programming...

the home stretch...!

we're almost there. almost there! so close, we can almost taste it. or that could be the taste of windex, fantastik, silicone sealant or other such substance that lingers in your nostrils and affects your tastebuds... not that i'd know or anything.

but yes. we're in the home stretch. really truly in the home stretch.

the kitchen is done, all but for brushing the nice countertop oil on the countertops and getting the grout sealant onto the floors (and hey, you can't see those in a photo, so i'm going to post pics now).



oh, i suppose we also need to get the bathroom door put back on. um, right. details...



but overall, it's looking nice and shiny and fresh. the kids especially like the way they can play on the wide open floor without anything in their way. who needs furniture, anyway?



even the back porch, which was formerly known as "the scary room" and generally a place we didn't like to go (and yes, where we found the cat corpse), is actually nice now. with the ceiling insulation and the big insulated steel door, the heat gain inside there is way less. oh, and now that the furnace doesn't vent directly into the porch (yikes), it should be a lot nicer and, um, safer too.



after marc put on the door, i put down the floor. we still need to get door trim up. details...


so now, what's left? a few more bits. the front porch still needs handrails, and the front bedroom needs one more coat of varathane, and the crawlspace insulation still needs to be done. and a few more doors need to be installed/reinstalled. like, oh, the bathroom, for example.

but we're racing against the clock. we have one more full day to do it all. can we make it?
stay tuned...

it gets weirder

freakout of the week---
we found this in the laundry room.



of course, no renovation is complete without one, right? no clue how long this guy had been there. he could've been there since before we moved in, in 1998. he could've been one of ours who went missing. or he could've been one of the ones who lived here with marc's mom. no idea. but anyway, he was given a decent burial by sacha and billy, who happily dug a hole in the back garden...



meanwhile, magritte and molly were dancing to their own drummer (presumably the sound of marc pounding nails into the back porch roof over the laundry room)...



the result was this, though:



that'd be the insulation/vapor barrier stuff that goes beneath the roofing stuff. marc says that in the process, he's learned what it feels like to be cooked in a solar oven.

but the kids have learned more alternative foodstuffs. like this...



yup. gummy candy that glows in the dark. ain't that america. happy 4th of july, everyone!

using our noodles

so, we're getting closer to being done, and that's a good thing, because we've got potential tenants coming tomorrow and thursday to look at the flat.

now, it's mostly stuff that's on the outside of the house. like, oh, the back porch roof:



yup, last thunderstorm we found out this thing leaked something awful...so marc's been up on the roof, taking it apart before fixing it again, hopefully before the next thunderstorm.

additional challenge of the day--

when we were on our way to pick up an enormously heavy steel door for the back porch, we stopped in at the car rental place to switch the contract from a weekly one to a monthly one. to our surprise, we had to actually return the car! as it turns out, they'd sold it! (the trouble with car rental places that also sell their cars, apparently...). anyway, we were chagrined because the cute little pontiac vibe we'd been driving was extremely useful in that it had a roof rack and hatchback for hauling loads of stuff.
they were apologetic, and gave us a free upgrade to a PT cruiser, which is fine, except it has ... no roof rack. and we were on our way to get very heavy doors.
so... we used our noodles.
pool noodles.
you can barely see them, but they're under all that stuff on the roof. they worked perfectly to protect the car and allow us to bring home the doors, metal flashing and porch railings that we needed to transport.
this probably voids our car rental agreement, but, well... what happens in detroit, stays in detroit, right?



and when the hatchback isn't as big, well, the stuff has to fit somewhere, right? those shiny things next to magritte are giant rolls of aluminum-coated bubble wrap insulation, which we're going to use in the crawl space. if you look carefully in the previous picture, you'll see lots more in the somewhat smaller hatchback. hmpf.



stuff we've done but haven't taken pictures of:

- bedrooms all but finished, including refinished floors, paint, trim and air sealing in windows
- installed toilet, sink and cabinets in the bathroom
- installed dishwasher, sink and cabinets in the kitchen (stove arrives today!)
- air sealed all the windows in the downstairs flat
- cleaned out the nasty front closet, fixed the walls and painted
- cleaned out the nasty back porch, fixed the walls (painting happens today)
- installed overhead light fixtures in the kitchen and dining room
- replaced all the heat registers and switch plates

and probably other stuff i can't remember... every day is blurring into the next. i'm going to be really glad when we're done this...
only three more days to go!

yikes.

we interrupt this renovation...

we interrupt this renovation for a vacation!

yes indeed. it was definitely time. we drove to dexter, michigan, to spend the weekend with our lovely friends adam and audrey. here they are:



dexter is a pretty little town (er, village) outside of ann arbor. it has lots of stuff like this:



we spent the weekend hanging out, eating great food and playing. the kids were especially enamoured of the STOMP ROCKET, which allowed small foam rockets to be launched to heights that would be the envy of NASA.



of course, some kids--like magritte--also discovered the joys of individual retro sports. like hula hooping.



and roller skating...



all in all, a good time was had by all. except for the part where we had to leave and get back to our world of renos.
and the part where we had to stop at ikea on a sunday afternoon. on the weekend before the 4th of july. when there was a sale on. oh. my. it was not just busy. it was beyond busy. it was as though everyone in the metro area decided to hop into their air-conditioned SUV and head on down to stock up on plastic stuff for the upcoming holiday. yikes.

here's how we felt.



now, back to the reno zone...

incendiary events

ahh, detroit. detroit on fireworks night, when kids get to stay up waaaaay past their bedtimes, lighting incendiary devices on the city sidewalks. in our case, we watched the very large annual fireworks display from the sidewalk of michigan avenue, in front of our friend cathy's place. here's the view:



and here's sacha, looking mighty pleased at the idea of his parents letting him play with fire...



of course, the kids found a better vantage point:



but the big fireworks display only inspired them to do more of their own pyromaniac activities (assisted by marc).



oh, and we did some house renos today too. including having a new hot water heater installed and finishing with the floor sander. and a whole lotta little things, like oh, cleaning out the crap from the back porch, and putting knobs on the kitchen cabinets, and that kind of thing. it's coming along. will it get done? we're starting to race against the clock... marc returns to victoria in 10 days. can we do it?

it's starting to feel more and more like a reality show around here...
stay tuned!