David and Susi’s Blog

This past week was once again a busy week with the house. Robert spent most of the week on the new plumbing for the kitchen and the 2 new bath rooms upstairs. On Friday, one of Robert’s friends (a Heating and Cooling Contractor) was here and completed the installation of the duct work for the first and second floors. We also had a large dumpster delivered so that we could get rid of all of the construction debris which had been accumulating since December and also the last remaining sheet rock from the upstairs.

So, we decided to have a demolition party, to get a little help with the last big part of the demolition. Our friends Josh, Melanie, Brad H. and our contractor Robert graciously donated most of their Saturday to help us with our little project. Once we got started on tearing out the old sheet rock, it went pretty quickly. So quickly in fact that we completely filled the huge dumpster. We really appreciate the help that our friends have given us with this project, we sure couldn’t have gotten it all done without you guys!

While the demolition was on going, Susi was hard at work in the kitchen making sure that the work crew was well taken care of, and I was smoking a brisket which took a little longer to cook than we expected. By the time the brisket was almost done Brad and Josh were both about to starve to death, so I rushed it inside and carved off some of the meat which was cooked fully just to keep them quiet

Today, Susi and I removed all of the sheet rock screws from the walls in the second floor, and took out all of the old heating and cooling duct work which was in the attic. We both wanted to do more, but we were both completely covered in fiberglass insulation and itching like crazy, so we decided to stop for the day and ran to take showers. Thats pretty much all that’s going on here for the weekend.

Additional comment from Susi (April 12th): the dumpster is still sitting in front of our house, full filled with debris. Shortly after the demolition party we noticed some peeping somewhere outside of our house and tried to find the reason. Well, we came to the conclusion that it must be one of the smoke detectors still amounted to the drywall that had been ripped out at the demolition party and is still peeping now somewhere in the dumpster. I tried to find it, but couldn’t get to it due to lots of junk wood with outsticking nails. Till to this day the smoke detector hasn’t stopped peeping – I wish I knew which kind of battery we had put into it, it even withstood all the terrible storms with lots of rain! The dumpster was supposed to be picked up yesterday, but this didn’t happen (did they forget about it???) So we still have that peeping noise outside – I hope the neighbours haven’t been disturbed in their sleep…… so far nobody complained. hahaha

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Robert has been here this week, and continues to make incredible progress with re-building our house. This photo shows the completed framing of the new pantry in the kitchen with the half wall which will be the location of a breakfast bar and a peninsula which will contain a nice gas cook top.

This picture shows the new framing in the kitchen, the new soffet area above the bar which will look into the living room. The soffet area above the bar will have a couple of pendant lights which will hang down, and a custom made wine glass rack like to see at a nice bar.

This is a view of the kitchen area which was taken from the top of the stairs. Here you can see the new floor joists which will support the second floor of the house.

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Well, we have taken a much needed break from the construction project this week. Robert has another job somewhere else to do, a good opportunity for us to recuperate and get back the strength for the next challenges.

I spent quite a bit of time paying more attention to our babies. Of course they are not very happy about all the different loud noise during daytime while construction is proceeded. Most of them hide downstairs in our bedroom. This week they can stay upstairs, sit in the windows and watch the birdies that are coming back these days after the cold winter months. How exciting for our little shits!

I caught our three little red babies on a video while they were relaxing on the dishwasher (temporary stored in the dining room) – a cozy and convenient place for them. While I was trying to catch them on video, Cutie made an unexpected appearance, wanted to get noticed as well – jealous little guy!

Constructionwise: the former doorway from the kitchen into the hallway is closed up and framed in, the wall between kitchen and former laundry room closet is removed and became the new entrance into the laundry room and the hallway – way more efficient! Robert finished up the electrical stuff in the kitchen and will start with plumbing pretty soon (something that he hates like hell! LooooL)

A dumpster is ordered, the 2 tub units for the upstairs bathrooms are ordered and Robert also found us a company that will do the duct work for heating and cooling for an incredible price!

David and I talked about the lawsuit some more and we decided not to proceed with it for RIGHT NOW, but better take the money that we would have to spend for this and put it directly into the house. As much as we hate to “roll over” and “play dead”, making the previous home owners think that they successfully ripped us off, we think it makes way more sense right now to invest the money directly into the construction and make significant progress than to spend that amount on lawyer and court expenses, hoping to get something back in several years…..

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On Tuesday of this past week, we had a somewhat freak Winter Storm that was threatening to dump a lot of snow and freezing rain on us, so I decided to take a vacation day and not go to work.

Here are two video’s of David and Robert tearing out more of the old construction mess which was above the kitchen ceiling. The beams were in terrible shape and additionally, were spaced very far apart. It really is a miracle that the whole house didn’t collapse, and that no one was hurt.

We had a very experienced local contractor visit on several different occasions, and when a man with over 50 years of building houses and commercial buildings tells you “this is the worst construction I have ever seen”, we really count our blessings that no one got hurt!

We also posted pictures of that day into our Photo Album – for a closer look at what we had to deal with……

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It has been several days since we last posted anything to the blog, and a lot has happened since the last writing–yes, we continue to be very busy with our little renovation project

The kitchen in the basement is as good as ready to go, although there are still some little things that need to be done – like finishing up the new counter top on the ends, fixing two smaller cabinets to the wall and amounting counter tops to them and adding a back splash behind the sink. Yeah, this is really necessary as I got a new aerator for the sink faucet and it sprays the water pretty nicely all over the area – sometimes I get soaked when I am doing the dishes LooooL

But this little kitchen works just fine, I cooked already the first meals in it. We just have to figure out a solution for storing the coffee makers and my little convection oven somewhere as these three appliances take away the majority of my working space on the counter top and it’s no fun to move them around all the time.

This is my little kitchen-kingdom right now:

As you might have seen, Robert built me two built-in spice racks, that I just love and also want in my new main floor kitchen as well. They just work awesome and are for sure a very nice and unique feature!

We are very happy with the result and can stop eating fast food LoooooL

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