The stone is finally beautiful!

The saga that was our kitchen and bathroom floors is finally over. The tile company sent the stone refinishing contractor out again to finish the job on our floors and they finally look as beautiful as they should. They are now also sealed so we are finally completely done with those floors. Just in time too as the finish mouldings and counters for the kitchen are due tomorrow... well all the counters minus the island - the blank for that was delivered to the kitchen guy damaged, so another had to be ordered, but we can get mostly moved into the kitchen with the counters on the main cabinetry and the doors can finally be installed once the crown mouldings and fascias are up.

Finally - Beautiful floors.

From entry looking into kitchen

This shows the colours of the floor and cabinets well.

I can't wait to see this kitchen finished, I doubt I'll be able to fill all these cabinets though LOL. When DH asked the contractor if we had a lot of cabinets (while he was installing them ;) the contractor replied "Kitchen's with half the cabinets you have have a lot of cabinets"... auh well - go big or go home right!?

The siding is coming along.

We are waiting for moldings and counters for the kitchen, which has slowed down the inside work on the house, so they have been working outside and wow does that stuff get done fast once the trim work is complete! The pictures below are from Thursday as they were working on the side, but by quitting time Friday the entire new addition was complete right down to the fascia and gutters. I was a little nervous about the colours as you only get a small swatch to choose from, but I'm so pleased with the siding - it looks even better than I hoped. I can't wait to see the whole house done.

West wall of addition (11/03/2011)

North wall of addition (11/03/2011) 

In other news the floor sealer that the tile company gave us to try on the floors did not have the desired effect unfortunately. So they are sending the contractor back out to fix the floors. They actually came today and finished the floors, sealed and all and they look great - more on that tomorrow once the sealer is dry and I can get in there to take pictures.

We are moving in bit by bit.

Small victories, first we moved into the walk in closet... well our clothes did ;-) but today we moved our bedroom into the new room. The bathroom still needs finishing, cabinets are in, but the plumbing fixtures still need to be installed and we are still waiting for a custom glass shower enclosure to be made and installed. But on to the pictures.

Taken from the door

Taken from the bathroom

I love that light fixture, we will be getting matching lamps for the bedside tables as well. Here's a closer look:

In other news the kitchen is nearing completion as well. All the cabinet boxes are now installed, the crown mouldings will be installed before the doors are put on, but the doors have been delivered and are here.  The flooring saga is hopefully nearing an end. The tile company did a trial at their warehouse using a special sealer which basically leaves the floor looking wet which should leave the floor looking as beautiful as it should. You can see in the pictures of the kitchen below that the floor looks good when wet, but looks dull and bad when it dries (I was in the process of scrubbing the floor when I took the pictures). So we will be getting the sealer from the tile company tomorrow and doing a trial run on the master bath floor, hopefully this fixes the issues.

Pantry and fridge cabinet (on left) - looking toward garage entrance.

Fridge opening  and stove opening on the left (the microwave has since been installed too)

Rest of cabinets, you can see the floor wet and dry here too.

This last picture shows the extreme difference in the floor from dry to wet, hopefully this new sealer will keep this wet look and we can move on from all this drama with the floor.

Hopefully we will have finished kitchen pictures to share soon - fingers crossed.

The saga of the floor.

I have mentioned that we bought travertine tile floors for the kitchen and bathrooms, we love the flooring, but wow what a saga.

The floor was bought in June from Home depot for $32/8 sq ft bundle, it is a cobblestone pattern floor made up of 4 different sized tiles. The floor was bought and stored in the garage all summer. The saga starts a couple of weeks ago when we saw the same tile at home depot on sale for  $23/bundle... 91 days after having bought the floor... you guessed it Home Depot has a 90 day price guarantee, anyone that knows me knows that I didn't just take that answer. It took a bit of talking but I got my money back.

A few days later the tile gets installed:

 Looks great right? Until we look a little closer...

Yup marks on our beautiful... installed... tile floor, over 50% of the tiles have these marks. Great! Call Home Depot, they give us some options for cleaning it, nothing touched it at all. Finally the tile company, Anatolia Tile, stepped up to have the tile professionally 'cleaned' which actually meant they had the stains (apparently from coloured straps on the tile bundles)  ground off the tiles. So now most of the marks are mostly gone, but the surface of many of  the tiles is no longer the same. We are hoping that once the tiles are sealed that the difference in the tiles will be less obvious. I'm working on sealing the tiles in the master bath tonight so I will hold off on my call to the tile company until that project is complete... wish me luck!

On the bright side - we now have cabinets! All the boxes are here and the doors will be here tomorrow, the custom colour and finish looks great. They got all the upper cabinets installed today and will be working on the lowers tomorrow - woohoo! I'll try and get pictures tomorrow.

First night time pictures.

Yup, that's right these update pictures were taken in the night... because we now have power and lighting installed in the addition. Today the hardwood floor was finished in the bedroom and closet, all the electrical was installed and the ditra tile underlay was installed on the first floor. Was a busy and productive day.

Over the weekend we choose and bought most of the lights, we chose to go with xenon lights in most locations, they are an alternative to halogen, they don't get quite as hot and they last longer than halogen bulbs. The kitchen and dining room chandeliers and the closet light are the only non xenon lights we installed.

On to the pictures:

Entry from garage, wood door is to the powder room.

Kitchen - Ditra installed

There are matching chandeliers in the kitchen (above) and dining room (below). I had actually seen these at Home Depot well over a year ago and loved them, but when we were getting close to needing them I couldn't find them any more. When my mom and dad were here last we stopped into the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Oshawa and what did we see but these lights - and they were on sale! SO for $75 we got both the larger and smaller one - score!

Dining room chandelier

Ignore the mess please, the dining room is our catchall during this reno and houses our very basic kitchen set up.


The second floor:

Master bedroom, hardwood finished - temporary fan/light

Master bath - Tiled shower

Above is the tiled section of the shower, the fibreglass base is under the plywood - this will have a custom glass enclosure. Custom was required due to the slanted knee wall.

That's all for today - I'll try and keep the blog up with the fast pace of the next few days, this week has them getting ready for the kitchen cabinets (being delivered next week) and getting our heating installed - the boiler has been installed since June but we still need to install new rads to get rid of the horribly ugly old baseboard rads. That should be done just in time for the temps to climb back into the 20's  - Murphy's Law.

I can see the end from here I think! Whoohoo!

Drywall!

Well after two drywall contractors not bothering to show up the drywall is finally done.... and primed and painted (pics of that tomorrow). The trim was completed by our main contractor and is turning out to be an amazing match to the original trim work in the house.

Drywall and priming complete in Kitchen

Solid door installed on the powder room

Close up of trim around window before door trim was installed.

Lots of projects have actually been completed this week (since these pictures were taken). I will get pictures and post the progress tomorrow.

Waiting... and updates

I didn't get around to posting these pics from August 26th... so here they are. The windows and doors are in and the house wrap is complete. The insulation and vapour barrier was complete - regular stuff in the walls and spray foam on the slant (knee) walls as well as a 1inch layer of spray foam in the ceiling in the old part of the house to act as a vapour barrier under the new blown in insulation. All the old blown in and bat crap was all removed of the old attic section.

Kitchen looking east

Master bedroom looking west

The rest of the pictures can be found here.

The waiting came in with our first setback. Fortunately nothing too serious, just waiting for drywallers. The first crew just stopped answering or returning calls from our contractor. We lost a week of work (contractor was working on window casing and doors at the shop). The next guy was supposed to come on Sunday to have a look and do the work Monday and Tuesday... yup another no show. So the main contractor started drywalling the bedroom, it is now done and they have another crew coming in Friday to drywall the kitchen and do the taping. He's already been here once, so lets hope he shows up on Friday.