Week 23: 28 November - 4 December

Dec. 4, 2022

This week has really been great and progress has been made! We spent Thursday morning at the property meeting with the electrician who will be doing all of the electrical work in the basement. As previously mentioned, everything in the main part of the house is being handled by one company, but we have been responsible for getting the basement structures taken care of.

We had to work with a garage door company and get that configured a few weeks ago and we’ll have to do the same for electrical, plumbing and wall and floor finishing for the basement.

So, we met with the electrician on Thursday morning and decided the placement of all the outlets. There’s no international building code that needs to be reviewed, so it was fun to be able to decide the location of switched and outlets and we’re still finalising some of the lights. The electrician even recommended the height of the switches based on our height. It really pointed out the fact that here, most people move maybe once or twice in a lifetime. You build a house and it’s where you stay forever. As someone who has moved more than 20 times, this is so hard for me to process.

So the same morning, we were happy to see that insulation was going into all of the walls and ceilings. We returned on Sunday morning to make some more decisions about the basement but were thrilled to see that in 72 hours that we were gone, all of the walls and ceilings were done being drywalled.

Unfortunately, on Sunday we were unable to get completely up to the top floor but we did manage to get some photos that provided us a glimpse into the other rooms on the second floor which look great!

Entryway

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was how tidy everything was. There was no construction equipment laying around and no more piles of drywall. All of the places that had had gaps from putting the walls together were insulated and drywalled.

This photo is actually a good one to show how much the floor will be built up. The floor will be to the top edge of that green tape under the front door and to shortly below the metal frame of the pocket door in the foreground.

Downstairs Bathroom

All of the toilet mechanisms are hidden behind the drywall and all that is visible are the flush buttons (the rectangular box that says SIGMA and GEBERIT on it and the input and outputs for the toilet. The toilet itself will be mounted to the wall.

From the bathroom, you can see Stano’s office, the pantry, the entrance to the basement and the future location of the stairs going up.

The bathroom ceiling is drywalled and ready to go.

Kitchen

All of the foam insulation for the floors is stacked in the kitchen.

Living Room

The walls and ceilings look great the chimney is drywalled. The far light hanging from the ceiling will be over the living room area and the cable in the very foreground at the top will be over our dining room table.

A better view of the nicely hidden chimney.

It’s starting to look like a proper home! From this view, you can again see the layout I spoke of earlier - the living room area on the right under the cable for the light and the dining room table will be under the light in the middle of the photo.

Stano’s Office

A peek into Stano’s office…

Upstairs Landing

So, this is the state of the upstairs landing on Thursday…

…and this is Sunday!

The attic pull-down has also been installed. You can see through the door into our bedroom (on the wall in front of you) that the ceiling in our bedroom is drywalled. You can see the same in the guest bedroom (the far door on the right).

Landing Skylights

This is Thursday again…

…and this is Sunday. The skylights are completely enclosed and drywalled in.

Lauren’s Office/Sewing Room

Also on Thursday, but no updated photo for Sunday because I couldn’t quite climb up there!

Guest Bedroom

Same for the guest bedroom.

Upstairs Bathroom

This is Thursday, and you can see all of the waterproof foil used as protection against water. You can see the wires for the different lights in the bathroom.

Our Bedroom

On Thursday, our bedroom had some added insulation but drywall wasn’t complete yet.

Our Closet

Our closet also had all of its ceiling insulation in on Thursday.

A Puppy Update!

We haven’t provided any puppy updates recently, so I thought I would include these. She’s two weeks shy of six months and she’s a huge troublemaker but nothing compared to the first few months we had her. She’s great at car rides now and can take naps in her carseat when we are out and about.

This is in the elevator in our apartment building. You can tell that her tail is wagging because it never stops. She loves playing in the snow but she’s not a fan of wearing winter coats. Or anything for that matter. But she’s learning a lot and happily becoming much easier to live with!