House Work

We've been incommunicado for a few days since taking possession of our house on Wednesday. It's because we've been too busy to write.

We had an inauspicious start Wednesday. I was going to meet Margo and Sarah at the house. An hour before leaving the office Margo told me she was taking delivery on a load of kitchen cabinetry at IKEA and might be late. When I got to the house I phoned Margo and she was still waiting. Since I had no keys yet, I spent the next hour at the pub across the way. It wasn't a great burden, but it wasn't how I expected to make a first entrance.

The delivery was delayed for its complexity. Apparently, even when IKEA's online cabinet-building application is used to specify components and measurements, it's not accurate enough, so every element was double checked, and some minor adjustments were made.

And Margo is no stranger to IKEA. She's there so often, they have a parking space for her. When she comes in, they say, "Margo! Welcome back! Quick, bring out our finest meatballs!"

Not much else happened Wednesday. I assembled some steel shelves in the garage. (We have a garage!) Thursday the kitchen was torn out. Margo spent the day building cabinets. After work I prepped the upstairs rooms for painting, removing fixtures and curtains rods, taking out some left-behind shelving, pulling out anchors and spackling the holes, taping off some edges. Friday the girls were tired (Margo had been assembling cabinetry all day) and we met at home.

Saturday we started painting. One room was nearly finished when some friends joined us in the afternoon to help out. Still, with four people working on the two remaining rooms, we weren't quite completed six hours later when we called it a night and ordered pizza. Those two rooms had dark colours we were painting over with a cream colour, and painting light over dark takes longer. After feeding ourselves and our friends with pizza and craft beers, we did a bit of tidying up and went home. (I'd of course forgotten to bring a bottle opener, but we discovered the claw of a hammer can do in a pinch.)

Also on Saturday our kitchen contractors were working with us. By now the cabinets are mostly installed.

Today I spent the day finishing the last two rooms. I am now sick of painting! Margo and Sarah started painting in our rec room. We had a surprise in the garage. Some water had leaked from the furnace room and soaked some of the cabinetry trim boxes. It was hardly a puddle but enough for the cardboard to soak it up and damage wood inside. We're not sure of the source of the water - perhaps the nearby hot water heater, perhaps a shutoff valve I noticed was open. Maybe Margo's plant watering affected it, or maybe the multiple water shutoffs the contractors did had an effect. We'll call a plumber soon to check it out and have meanwhile relocated boxes from that part of the garage. But it was more than I was prepared to deal with - I'd not even been inside the furnace room yet.

We've done quite a lot of work in the past few days but we still have a fair amount left to do, and then there's the move itself. It will all be over within two weeks. We're looking forward to being finished, and enjoying the fruits of our labours.