Summer is flying by this year. We just said good-bye to our most recent guests, our daughter Alexa and her boyfriend Mitch and our son Jesse and his girlfriend Pei-Chi and their dog Mia. It was great to have them here and have some fun and relaxation for a change.
Here are a few photos from their visit:
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As far as the house goes, we finally finished installing the railing. Aron also finished the rest of the lighting in the closets and wiring for the hood fan. We are now ready for our ‘Occupancy’ inspection. You may be wondering, shouldn’t we have that already, we are living in the house. The answer is technically ‘yes’ we should, but it isn’t uncommon around here for people to start living in their homes prior. We hope there is no big problem when they come to do the inspection, but have been led to believe it should be fine.
We’ve also been trying to balance working in the house with keeping up the garden. It has been a bit of a challenge this year and we are having some issues with our watering system, but we are getting some produce now and lots of flowers, which I love having around the house.
Veg from the garden!
Next we are planning to do a bunch of clean up outside, we still have a big rubbish heap we need to take to the dump. Also we have a firewood pile and some leftover lumber pieces we will use as firewood that we want to move to their permanent location. After that, back to finishing things inside.
Enjoy your summer, it will be over before we know it!
First off, I apologize for taking so long to get another post up, but time has been flying by and since we are mostly working on finishing, sometimes it doesn’t feel like I have anything ‘big’ to share.
Quick update on what is going on with Aron and I. I’m still working 3 days a week in Nelson. I enjoy the job and have made some good friends and get to meet a lot of people in the community. And to be honest, 3 days of work is just the perfect amount. Aron took a contract in Calgary for 5 months, starting in July. It was a bit of an adjustment for both of us, having him away, but he flies home every weekend, so that makes it bearable. The flight is around an hour long, so we usually gets two full days at home on the weekend.
We have had a few guests since my last post. Our daughter Alexa came out in the spring, she was our first official guest. Then early in July our son Aaron and his wife Sonya and our granddaughter JJ came for a week. It was fun to see JJ enjoying the river and the beach and just loving the outdoors. Can’t wait for her to come again next year. August long weekend Alex and her boyfriend Mitch are coming as well as Jesse and his girlfriend Pei-Chi. that should be a fun visit and keep us busy!
JJ enjoying playing with her doll
Probably the best way to get you caught up with all the changes is to do a walk through of the house.
I won’t include an exterior photo as we it doesn’t look to different. We did get the gutters installed, which doesn’t really change the look much, but sure does help when it rains!
Well start with the front porch
We got our concrete (aggregate) power washed and sealed. It looks so much better now and is much nicer to keep clean. We’ve added a bench for some seating. I finally sealed the tongue and groove ceiling but we still need to finish all the rock and stain the front door, but it’s looking pretty good.
Come on in!
Not much has changed here. Still need to tile the floor. You can see one tile sitting there, it is basically stones sliced flat. We also have our fireplace mantle stored against the wall. We were testing stain samples on it, we are going with the dark stain in the middle.
Laundry room is next, no photo this time. Nothing much changed, but once we get the backsplace and the counter over the washer and dryer installed, I’ll post a new picture.
Powder Room
Pretty close to complete in this room. Just need to hang the mirror and finish the backsplash. We are pretty happy with how this room turned out.
Onto the kitchen
Not much changed here. Still have quite a bit to do: finish range hood installation, put up backsplach, get last cabinet installed, finish crown molding and under cabinet lighting. Can’t wait until Aron has time some day to make us a nice big wooden dining table.
I’m not bothering with a picture of the pantry yet. It has been painted, but the hardwood still needs to be installed. Once we get the floor down, we can put in our metal shelving and then unpack all our kitchen boxes. Can’t wait for that day!
Next, the Great Room! This has a big surprise in it now (we have been saving and waiting to purchase this item for many years, so excited to finally have it)
We finally got our new Suzuki electronic mini-grand piano. It is so fun to have and I know both Aron and I will enjoy it very much over the years. As for the rest of the great room, no major changes. Still need to finish the fireplace. Probably won’t happen for quite a while. It will look great to have it finished, but it isn’t high priority.
Heading for the Master Bedroom
No big changes here. Really enjoying the space, just need to get our barn door into the ensuite hung up.
Master Ensuite
Quite a few changes here. Floor installed (heated), toilet with bidet seat, vanity, counters, sinks and faucets installed. Still waiting for our big illuminated mirror, will probably arrive next month some time. I didn’t include the shower and tub area in the photo. They are still incomplete.
Next, Master closets
This is just a glimpse into my side of the closets. Alexa was a huge help in putting together all the closet storage, including these shoe shelves as well as drawer and shelving units. Still need to get the clothing rod and shelves installed. Then we can finally unpack all our clothing, that will be great!
Heading for the second main floor bedroom (or exercise room, as we call it)
We finally cleared out all the tools and clutter in the room, so we could use it for JJ’s visit. As you can see we still have our Master ensuite tub and some flooring stored here. Once the room is cleared out we can bring in our treadmill, Bowflex and sauna. We should still have room to keep this futon so we can use this room for guests.
Let’s head upstairs!
Aron worked really hard to get the newels and railing installed. I stained and sealed them. They turned out really good. Last weekend we started putting in the wrought iron balusters. We hope to finish them up this weekend.
On the second floor we finally have our glass panels installed. We love how it kept the upstairs space feeling open and didn’t impact the view out the great room windows.
Welcome to the second floor
The second-floor open space is a multi-purpose area. We have some seating (to relax and enjoy the view), a table for gaming or hanging out and our office area at the back. We finally got our desks and computers all set up. If we need extra space, we can also rearrange some of the furniture and easily put a blowup mattress in this space for guests.
Onto the second floor bathroom
We finally have all the tiling done around the tub and got the showerhead installed. This has been great, as we have been only able to use the tub before this. We still need to finish the backsplash, but this bathroom is just about completed. Aron did a great job on the tiling, it was a lot of work!
And finally the upstairs bedroom
Overall, not too much changed. We did get the TV installed and some black-out blinds. Ready for our next guests!
We are still very much enjoying our view. It has been quite a rainy summer so far, so everything is green and beautiful.
Can’t wait until next year when we get the grass down and finish our landscaping
We did plant our garden again and it is doing well. All the plants I started from seeds survived and are thriving. Even all my flowers have done well and I’m already enjoying having fresh flowers in the house.
It has been fun living here as we get to see the hummingbirds coming around almost daily.
Well that’s about it for now. You’ve basically had a full tour of the house! We are getting closer all the time, but still have a lot left to finish up. With Aron being away during the week, our pace has definitely slowed down. I’ll try to post an update at least every few weeks, but don’t expect too many changes!
Sorry I haven’t posted more often, but Aron and I are usually both so busy that I just can’t find the time.
We are continuing to work on the finishing in the house. I feel like we are getting a lot done, but there always is more to do. One big accomplishment was getting the great room finished enough to move in our furniture. Feel so much more like a home now and we have somewhere to sit besides the kitchen table.
And since I could never find our king size duvet, I broke down and bought another one and we finally have a proper sized duvet on our bed. Also have our chaise lounge in the bedroom now.
Aron was working hard doing tiling again and we got our ensuite floor tiled and our vanities installed. My boss came on Saturday and laser templated all our vanities for quartz counters!
Ensuite
Our focus today was on cleaning out the pantry, it has been being used to store all kinds of stuff since day one. Aron and I will paint the walls tomorrow and then he will put down the sub-floor and then the hardwood. Next step will be setting up our shelves and we can begin to unpack all our kitchen stuff finally.
Now that the weather has been so fantastic (in the high 20’s and even up to 30) we have been focusing on outside jobs too. We burned a bunch of tree stumps and deadfall, planted some trees and flowers and we are working on getting the garden planted, hopefully finishing it tonight.
Some of the tomatoes, cantelope and watermelon we are growing.
We are heading to Alberta at the end of the week to fly to Kauai for a couple weeks. Will be good to do some relaxing for a bit and get recharged to come back and finish off everything.
The weather here has been fantastic. All the trees are leaved out, many are in full bloom and it is just lovely. Here is the forecast for the coming week.
As for the work in the house, it continues. We were away for 5 days on a trip out to AB to pick up some more things we needed (window blinds, closet and pantry shelving and storage from Ikea, paint, and other misc hardware). It’s hard to leave for so many days knowing how much we could accomplish if we were home, but it is also great to see everyone. Besides all the running around and family time, Aron and I both had medical appointments, so we were very busy most of the trip.
Grandpa and JJ hanging out. Like grandfather, like granddaughter!
Our crew worked while we were away and installed all the doors and finished all the trim around the doors and windows. They also finished the last little bit of siding on the garage (we had to order more, so they couldn’t finish earlier).
The upstairs bathroom is fully functional, the powder room has a working toilet and Aron is just getting the tiling prep done in the ensuite so he can tile tomorrow. So soon we will have some functionality in there as well.
Powder Room
Ensuite
Upstairs Bathroom
Our hope is to get the counters measured for early next week and then shortly after we should have them installed.
Our crew is also working on finishing up the attic doors on the garage upper floor and the double doors at the backend of the garage. They got the top doors installed yesterday and they look great!
Just need to paint the overhead doors and get the stonework done!
We’ve made some great friends out here already and one couple who grew up out here are showing us some of the wild growing plants that are edible. This is what they call Suzy Q or False Solomon Seal. It only grows for a short time around spring. You blanch it and then fry it up with garlic. It is quite good and can be frozen too, sort of reminds me of spinach.
I’ve started some plants for our garden and they are doing pretty well. Actually hoping to transplant some of the into the garden this weekend. We’ll probably plant some potatoes and other things too, hope we don’t get any late frost.
We have our guest room almost all set up. Just have to put a duvet in the duvet cover and get the window trim and door installed. Then we are all ready for our first guests!
Even comes with a cute little puppy in the rocking chair!
Speaking of cute puppies, our little dog Maggie had to have some teeth removed last week. It was a three hour surgery, so it was pretty tough on her. They wanted to remove a fourth tooth, but the vet was worried pulling it could break her jaw (OMG!). So we opted to save that for another time and see a specialist.
This was her after we brought her home, still pretty groggy. She’s doing a lot better now, running around and back to her normal self.
Should have some more updates for you soon on our upstairs bathroom and office area, stay tuned!
(Tried posting a bunch of times yesterday and kept getting an error, so had to revert back to an older version/style to do my posts. Think it is working now!)
I feel like I have done so much painting the last couple of weeks that I could go professional any time now!
Aron and I have just had our heads down getting things done lately, that’s why I haven’t taken time to post sooner. Sometimes it feels like we are so close to being finished and other times (when I look at our ‘To Do’ list), it feels like we have so much left to finish.
My focus has been painting recently so we can get the contractors back in to finish the trim around the windows and start installing all our doors. We’ve decided we will do all the baseboards ourselves.
Aron has been working on tiling the upstairs bathroom and will be moving onto the other bathrooms next. Tiling is such hard work, I feel bad for him that we have so much of it.
So we had some 240 volt heaters we were using when the drywalling started in the house. We ended up returning one after a couple weeks, but kept the other one running 24 x7 for the past few months. Our January electricity bill was only a couple hundred dollars so we assumed it was pretty cheap to run the heater. Little did we know that the Jan bill was an estimate and this time things caught up with us. The more I think about it now, I guess a good analogy would be having the dryer or the stove running 24 x 7 for months. That would add up quickly. So lesson learned, don’t overuse a 240 volt heater, or you will pay a LOT!! Now that we aren’t using that heater anymore, we did a quick check on our power usage for the last 2 weeks and we have only used about $120 of power, which makes us feel a lot better. Whew!
I still can’t tell you how much we are enjoying living in the house, even if there is still so much left to complete. We keep working at our list of ‘To Dos’ as best we can and we are making progress.
We’ve looked everywhere for the king size duvet I bought before we moved to BC and we still haven’t found the box it is packed in. So this means we are using our queen size duvet and cover that we had in the trailer on our new bed. So the decor looks a little bizarre now, but here is our bedroom.
We just put up our curtains and finished all the final hole filling, sanding and painting of the window trim and some of the baseboard trim.
We also got our TV installed. It is called ‘The Frame’ as it displays as art when you aren’t watching TV. You can select from a bunch of preloaded art, or load your own, or buy some online. The art goes to sleep, but when you walk in the room it wakes up, it’s actually pretty cool.
I’ve been painting all the remaining trim for all the windows. Next I’ll be starting to paint all the door jambs and doors.
Today we started hanging our hood fan, but we need to buy some parts, so we didn’t get it finished. Last week, we got our stove hooked up to the propane, so we can use the stove top and electric ovens now. Planning to do some baking really soon!
We also got two islands installed in the island. Aron did a meticulous job of cutting the cabinets to install them both and a light switch that controls the island pendant lights. Already using them!
Also finished, filling the holes, sanding and doing the final painting on all the window and door trim in the kitchen and dining room. Very tedious work, but everything is looking good.
Aron is heading back to Alberta for a real quick trip. He’s going to empty out our storage locker and bring the last of our furniture back here. Looking forward to that!
The big projects for next week or to do the tiling in all the bathrooms and install all the vanities so we can get our vanity counters measured and ordered. Also hoping to get the office/upstairs area painted so we can setup at least one of our desks.
Here is quick update of our progress the last couple of days.
Our quartz counter got installed in our laudry room along with our undermount sink. Looks great. Phase two will be installing another matching counter over the washer and dryer.
The big job so far was setting up our fridge and freezer units. They have a trim kit that makes them look like one big unit. Upon doing further reading to install the trim kit, it gave very percise measurements we needed for the height and width opening which we had provided to our builder. He got pretty close, but not exact, so we knew we were going to have to get creative to make it work. It took us a day and half, but we finally got it all set up and it looks perfect, no one will every know all the ‘fixes’ we had to do.
Can’t tell you how wonderful it is to finally have a full size freezer and fridge, after nine months of just having a mini one.
Today we are going to get some handles on our kitchen cabinets and finish up some of the trim in the master bedroom. If we are lucky, we might even get our master bedroom TV installed.
We slept here 3 nights so far and it is wonderful. Loving having a regular size bed, an indoor bathroom only feet away and a kitchen that isn’t 3 feet long.
We amazingly were able to move over all the appliances by ourselves. We had them stored in the garage. I was doubtful we could do it as I’m not all that strong. But we did it and we didn’t damage anything. We don’t have them all working yet, but is great just seeing them.
We’ve been slowing bringing other things over to the house, but still have lots we will wait to unpack until the house is completely finished. There are a number of things we have purchased and stored over the past few years, keeping them for when we built our new house. The little bear clock below is one of them. Everytime I look at it, I smile!
Aron bought this as a gift for me in Canmore a few years ago. Also got me a black bear cookie jar!Aron cooking us a special supper in our new kitchen.
We had the laser templating done for our kitchen and laundry countertops. So normally it takes about 3-4 weeks to get the counters in. Unfortunately for us, to get exactly what we want in the kitchen, we will have to wait until around the end of April. It will be worth the wait! The laundry room counter arrives tomorrow, so that will be exciting to see. My boss and I have decided to do another counter over the washer and dryer, so that will be phase two for the laundry room.
We are also wrapping up the electrical. Most lights and plug-ins work, there are only a few left that need to be finished. By the end of the week, all the electrical (except the furnace) will be working. That is huge!
Our big focus now will be to finish up painting, staining, setting up the appliances, tiling, working on trim, installing our mantle and stair railings… Lots still left to do. But at least we are doing them with a smile!
Aron Update: Aron did see another retina specialist when we were last in Calgary, for a second opinion. The new doctor concurred with his original specialist that they should just leave the eye alone for a while and let it heal from the cornea transplant. With the current condition of the cornea they don’t feel another attempt at a retina reattachment would have much chance of success. He also told Aron that in rare cases, when you do too many procedures (like cornea transplants, etc.) to one eye, the body will sometimes start to reject the other good eye. That would be a terrible thing to happen, so I guess the point is to avoid too many eye procedures, especially if the outcomes are likely not going to produce good results. Anyhow, he’s doing well and we are both happy to be here together and moving forward with our dream house.
Dog update: Maggie was soooo furry. I hadn’t given her a haircut since last Septemeber. Here is a picture of her in her furry glory, sitting on her new dog sofa.
The longest she has ever gone before is about 3 months, so this was extreme. All her fur helped keep her warm while we were in the trailer. But now I shaved her all down. Got a big bag of fur out of it, feels like we should do something with it, like spin it into yarn and knit a little dog sweater!
We are in the final stretch before we take the plunge and move into the house. Let me be clear when I say ‘move in’, that doesn’t mean unpacking all our belongings and getting settled. It means setting up a bed, bringing over some clothes and dishes and living in the house while we do the final finishings. Ultimately we want to get most of the appliances set up too.
Here is the kitchen with the cabinets and island installed. We had the laser templating done yesterday for our quartz counters. Could get them installed any where from 2 – 4 weeks from now. Hoping it is sooner than later.
We already moved in our beverage fridge, next will be the dishwasher, fridge and freezer
The laundry room cabinets are installed, tile floor is complete and we put back the washer and dryer this morning. The cabinets are missing a panel by the side of the washer, so we are getting that remedied.
The stairs are almost finished, just need touching up on the painted portions.
They turned out fantastic!
One of the big lessons I’ve learned about building your own home is that
There will always be messes and dust. During each phase as we progressed, I would think, great this phase (e.g. drywalling) is over, now I’ve cleaned up the house, it shouldn’t get this dusty/dirty again. Wrong!!! Everything makes a huge mess. I’m constantly cleaning and then it is dusty and dirty again right away, sigh…
There is soooo much garbage to deal with. I guess I always new there would garbage, but I sure didn’t realize the volume we would have to deal with. We had a small dumpster rented, but we filled that up quickly with the garbage from the shingling and framing. The cost for one of those dumpsters out here is way too expensive. Once all the snow melts I suspect we will have to spend many days cleaning up and hauling away debris
I hope we are getting our last winter storm of winter. We had a big dump of snow last night.
Aron plowing our road this morning
The snow does make things look pretty, but we are ready for green!
This morning
Good news is on the way though, here is our forecast for this week!
Aron Update: Aron is heading to Calgary to see a new specialist to see if he thinks he can do anything for Aron’s detached retina. I’ll let you know how things go.
I painted a couple walls of the 2nd bedroom on the main floor. We call it our ‘exercise room’, it will have our exercise equipment and sauna in it, but we can also put up a queen bed if we have extra guests to accomodate. We are painting the room a cheerful yellow called ‘Pineapple Cream’
These are the walls I’ve painted in our Master Ensuite. I didn’t paint the entire room yet as we are storing all our vanities in here right now. At least with these walls painted we can get the trim around the windows installed.
This is our upstairs office area. I painted this entire room a while ago. We are just starting bring up some furniture into this space.
This is the socializing area of the upstairs office space. Aron went to Alberta last week and brought back the last pieces of furniture we had stored there. Now we are bringing them all into the house. Yay!
This is Aron’s tiling work in the upstairs bathroom. We plan to install the vanity and toilet right away and this will be our fully functional bathroom while we work on the other two. This bathroom and our ensuite will both have heated floors.
This is the upstairs guest bedroom. It was painted quite a while ago, but now Aron has installed the ceiling fan and some baseboards. We are moving in all the furniture today, so we will be ready for guests soon! 
On the weekend I painted the entrance and the hall. My boss said ‘send me pictures’, so this is what I sent her. That big piece of wood on the floor is our future fireplace mantle. I’ve been testing out stain colors on the back of it. 
Yes, you are reading this correctly! I almost fainted when I opened it. 
