Drywall!

Yea for drywall! Sebastian and his buddy (Robert?) were here to get the board up. it looks amazing now that it's done! we still need to mud and tape and sand (which they're doing next week) but it's really starting to come together :} now we gotta start thinking about finishing touches --- floor (i think ikea tundra), trim, kitchen (we got it at ikea at the kitchen sale!), doors interior and exterior) and bathroom -- tile, fixtures and floor. oh, and appliances. that'll make a big dent in the budget. i'm ready to declare that we're officially overbudget on this one. yep. we are. at least it's a renovation project that will come with some income.

Pex plumbing rules.

i'm just sayin'. seriously -- it's easy. pex refers to the plastic tubing that some people now use instead of copper pipes. it's nice 'cause they're flexible (but still sometimes a pain to maneuvre in all honesty) and you don't need any fire to join them. so maybe safer. and then there are the fittings. there's the pex-for-dummies sharkbite fittings that we started using at the beginning. they're expensive (but waaaay cheaper than a plumber!) and simple. you just have to push them onto the pipe and they lock into place. we're since graduated to a compression system. you need a $40 tool and you squeeze a metal ring around the joint between the pipe and the fitting. we graduate 'cause a/ it's 99 cents a fitting instead of $4-$7 and b/ shark bite didn't have as large a variety of fittings as the compression system did. anyway -- we're happy with how things worked out and we'd definitely do more plumbing ourselves in the future.

ps -- it's not actually leaking .. it just got a bit wet when we emptied the pipes

Pot filler

soooo --- we're not particularly good at focusing. you may realize this as you read. we jump around a lot. in our defense ... there were a lotta things to do at the beginning -- bathroom, kitchen, everything (haha) .... so we had to jump around to get running water in the kitchen and a place to pee. and a place to shower, come to think of it! so i'll be posting bits and pieces wherever. anyway -- while the basement ceiling was still open (someone once described the basement ceiling as the main artery of the house .... once you close it up, it's hard to make any more changes) we decided to put a pot filler in the kitchen over the stove. it's mostly for show seeing as the sink is approximately 4 steps away ... but it looks cool. and it had better 'cause it was a huge pain in the ass. in the end (after it had already leaked a zillion times and then water had poured all over the kitchen floor when we once turned the water on while to pot filler was running and didn't realize it!) it turned out that we weren't tightening the last 2 bits of pipe enough. so we figured it out and are now in the process of patching up the wall. it's not totally leve at the moment either -- we gotta play with that a bit. we're not sure if it's us or if it's the filler. we'll let you know how it goes :}

Electrical Inspection, Drywall delivery and Insulation

putting insulation in the ceiling blows! it's so hard. and it gets in your eyes. even when you're wearing googles. and you gotta wear long sleeve stuff so that it doesn't get you too itchy -- but then you get all hot! we used roxul safe and sound insulation for the ceiling. it seems pretty sound proof. either that or isaac was ignoring me a whole lot more today :} it's not too too hard to cut (we used a bread knife). it was a pain when the joist spaces weren't all the same -- so we had to cut some and not others. in all, i think that insulation costs were $500 or so? we only did the exterior walls (since we're a row house) and the ceiling. Electrical inspector came by for about 0.78 seconds yesterday morning and passed our rough-in inspection. so that was good. we've been running around to get ready for the drywall to go in. it was delivered yesterday and drywallers come tomorrow! yea! it's impossible to do work down there while they're drywalling -- so we get a break! there are actually a few things that we're not totally done (don't tell the drywallers!) but i think we're ok. we gotta frame in one side of the shower still (should be easy -- maybe take half an hour). and put in the shower liner. but we're thinking that they'll do the ceilings tomorrow and then start the walls on sat. so we should have time. we're using sebastian from taping excellence -- the material cost for the drywall job is about $1000 and the labour is about 3 times that. it sounds a bit pricey to me - but they're good and i like them. and we're already over budget on this so i'm caring less. plus -- once a tenant is in, we'll be able to pay back that overage. hopefully :}