Another weekend at the lake

We were so pleased to see that the floor had set up really nicely. It was hard enough to move all the furniture back on. The fun part was figuring out where everything would go. I was really happy to see that we could fit both tables in the room. The one in the corner can be used as a games table or a place to do puzzles without it being disturbed. Doesn't the floor look great!

Hans spent part of the day on Saturday putting the chimney pipe together. Then on Sunday we had our first fire.

It works! Really, really well. Maybe too well in +21 temperature. Let's put it this way, it was very, very toasty. When we left, hours later, we were still sweating.

Hans also worked on the little area left from moving the kitchen cabinets around.

He still has to put the top on and we need to tile the backsplash. We saved some blue tiles from the destruction. Hopefully we will get to it this weekend.

He also got the drywall up to fill in the hole left after we took out the closet in Alia's room, where the closet doors were. We bought some Oops paint from HD for the back. We'll put some trim back up and then some bookcase shelves. Next weekend too.

We have really enjoyed playing at the cottage. And it's not even June yet. Think of all the things we can do! Kidding. We do have a list though, but we are pretty much done the main stuff for this year. Hans will be working on his man room over the summer, but there is no hurry. And I am sure he will want to savour working on it. Now next year there is water and waste tanks involved and shower stalls and windows. Ohhhhhh, more destruction!

Silly Cats

On the weekend we convinced both the girls to come with us. Used to be a time when they would not be caught dead in the same room, yet alone on the same seat. We call this perch, "The Queen's Bench". Now we have two Queens and no Princesses!

They both looked over with the first picture, but then I guess are so used to the paparazzi that they were bored with me right away!

Faux Painted Plank Floor!!

We got back on Monday at about noon, but spent the whole afternoon and evening watching t.v. Catching up on everything we missed. We had t.v. withdrawl for sure. We are good now though.

When we got to the cottage, we got right to work. We unloaded the Rent A Wreck truck that we booked for the week. That truck worked pretty hard too. It was worth the money. The next morning, let the pain begin.

First thing we had to do was lay the new subfloor. We used 1/2 inch good one side plywood. It doesn't really matter what kind as we ended up painting it anyway. This was done on Saturday, I know because we had the wrong screws with us, so we laid out the plywood and tacked the edges. Jenn brought up the right screws on Sunday - Mother's Day!

All done laying it out. You can see from the outside light that it was getting dark. We were glad to leave the next step for the next day. Tired every night.

Then began the tedious and painful act of screwing down the plywood and filling the screw heads and the seams. We choose the wrong filler, but we were both so into working on the floor that neither one of us wanted to drive into town and pick up different stuff. The stuff we had was flexible, good we thought for the contracting and expansion of the floors in winter and summer, seeing as we don't heat the cottage in the winter. The good thing about the choice we made was that it was not sandable so we had to put it on sparingly, saving us that step of sanding and the dust that that step creates. Unfortunately, this type of filler required more coats that we were willing to do. After the second coat and the overnight dry time, we decided that enough was enough and if we put another coat on we were going to get off of the schedule. The floor is in a cottage, so not expected to be perfect. And it's not, but good for our purposes.

Boy were my knees bruised after this! Would have been smart to wear knee pads, but I didn't and I paid for it the next day! Hans has knees of steel I think. It didn't bother him at all.

After that was the fun part, the "planking" as I like to call it. Hans did several samples for me of different depths and widths of grooves. After I decided on one, which is harder than you think, he started grooving out the "planks". After measuring out a 7.5" plank, he tacked down a board to get a straight line, and ran his router down. Sometimes we needed to move the line to accomodate the screw heads. Planks are not uniform thank goodness. Then I went up and down the floor marking out the ends of the planks. We called it a night after that. I'm sure it was dark by then.

The next morning, I don't know what day it was, by now they were running into each other pretty good. Painful day one, painful day three. All the same. We needed to put the tile down for the new wood stove. Of course, the existing fresh air return was not in the right place, so it needed to be moved, after than we laid down the tile. We weren't interested in making any tile cuts, so we made the platform larger than it had to be. We've laid enough tile to know how time comsuming it can be if you need to be fussy. Good thing we are passed that fussy, cut the tile stage. We didn't even use the spacers this time. I seem to remember we were really hungry too. Tired, in pain and hungry. Amazing it looks so good!

We moved the wood stove onto the tile after the grout had set. The damn thing weighs about 300 empty of it's firebricks, but we really didn't have much trouble moving it. Just good old push and pull worked. We were worried about moving the fireplace and the wood stove where they needed to be. But it ended up being easier than we thought it would.

The next step was paint. Experience and disappointment has taught me to always us a primer and a good quality paint. I decided on latex primer and gloss deck paint. Interior/exterior. The colour - called English leather. LOL. Where do they come up with these names. Of course each groove had to be painted in by hand. More knee pain.

We put the first finish coat on before we left for the day on Friday. We needed to come into the city, return the truck and meet Jenn for dinner. My 47th birthday was on the next day, so we went to our favourite place, Red Lobster! Yeah for fish! We headed back out to the lake after dinner and grocery shopping. Saturday and Sunday were spent messing around with Hans' man room for Hans and sleeping and reading for me. We brought back in to the room our chairs and one of the tables so we would have somewhere to eat and sit and read. It was too cold to go out to the porch or the deck. The cats wandered around back and forth from porch to inside for the whole week. One very cold morning Hans caught them curled up together in one cat bed snuggling. They both jumped up when he opened the door. God forbid anyone saw them being nice to each other. Typical siblings.

This is how we left it. We painted our selves out of the room on Monday morning. Second finish coat. We left the ceiling fan on and the one heater on medium in case it got really cold. Hopefully it will be nice and hard on Friday night and we can put our furniture back on Saturday morning. Isn't it lovely? And now that we have all the parts, we can put the wood stove pipe up and we'll be able to make a fire. Life is good. Of course, we aren't done yet! Not much. Really. No really. Depends on which list you use. teehee

Look Carefully

We got back from the lake earlier this afternoon. I wanted to share these three pictures with you right away. I'll do a bigger posting right away on our renovations, but I couldn't wait for these. As usual, Ninja managed to keep us entertained. We found her asleep in the folds of our bed.....

Then she woke up. Or maybe because we were laughing so hard, she was awaken.

Then, we found her asleep in the folds of a blanket that was on the floor with the wood stove on top of it. This is all we could see of her. She was so fast asleep in there, she didn't wake up for hours.

We got a lot done. Took lots of photos too. Hopefully I will get to them tomorrow.

Just before we go....

We are on our way to the cottage for a week of well, renovation pain. But excitement and pride in our accomplishments, but mostly pain. Anyway, I couldn't leave without leaving a little reminder of why I started this blog. This is how she sits on the couch. I am not kidding you. What a goof.

The demo continues

This is our second Saturday of demolition at the cottage. We are old now and can only do one day at a time. Believe me, 20 years ago, we would have put in a 7 hour day and then got up the next day and put in another, but both of us are happy to go back to our little city nest at the end of the day. However, after saying that, we start holidays on Friday and after picking up all the construction material and the new wood stove, we will have 10 days to drive ourselves. Maybe end up driving ourselves to the hospital. We'll cross that bridge.....

We started with the floors, of course. First things first, we had to remove the kitchen floor and the carpeting in the living room area. In order to do that, we had to move the now defunct fireplace sitting in the middle of it all. Believe it or not, it's easy to move a 500 lb fireplace if you are motivated.

As you can see, we moved it as far as the front deck. Our hope is that someone will come and steal it. However, we did that once with an old fridge and there were no takers. Cross your fingers.

I took these two pictures as soon as the fireplace was out of the way. You can see how taking out that wall really opened up the room. The dimentions of the room are 17.5 feet by 24 feet. Making it 420 square feet. It's amazing what a person can do with 420 square feet if there are no walls in the way!

We got right to work. We had to remove the kitchen floor, stick on tiles and subfloor. I think this was the most labour intensive time of the whole day. Good thing it happened first. lol

Of course, once again we brought a cat with us. And once again Phoebe refused to accompany us. Ninja was very busy all day helping out in any way she could. Finally, she had enough. Look at her little eyes. I didn't have to wait long for the second picture.

While Ninja was napping we were busy with the second half of the list. Take the closets out of the guest room now man room. Also take out the adjouning closet which is/was in Alia's room. She now has a room with no closet, just a gapping hole where the closet was. Sorry Alia. But Hans has a much bigger man room. Woohoo Hans. Don't worry Alia, we will put a wall in the hole and a nice mirror on it to cover the missing wallpaper. Jenn suggested I paint the exact same pattern as the wallpaper. Ahhh - no. Mirrors are nice.

Ninja woke from her cat nap and discovered that you can climb all the pushed up furniture in the kitchen to reach the counter! At this vantage point, you can see a whole different view!!

Now, I know what you are all thinking. Hans seems to be the only one doing any work. Well, while he was busy inside the cottage, I was busy building a mountian outside.

Shortly after this picture was taken we gathered up Ninja and headed home. We have lists of things to bring up next week. We've rented a truck and on Friday we'll get all the new good one side 1/2 inch plywood that we'll use as new flooring in the kitchen/living/hallway. By that time I will have picked out the non-combustable flooring (tile, slate, marble, whatever) for under the new wood stove that we will also pick up on Friday. We are doing a really neat treatment on the floors. Something I have been wanting to do for years, but never had the opportunity. You'll learn more about it as time goes on. Probably like we will.

See you next week. Send energy our way. Please.......