Author: Melissa Gullickson

So we finally have all the windows that were delivered installed. This includes some in the great room, so you can now see the curving windows start to take shape.  We are still sorting out when and how we are going to get the last of the windows and doors. Jeld-Wen had indicated they would have them sent out by Nov 6th, but now are saying one set of sliding doors won’t even arrive in Winnipeg until Nov 16th. So we are pushing to have everything they do have shipped out asap.

We have plastic over the center window openings until we get the windows here.

So tomorrow we are having our framing inspection again. They have been busy the last couple days finishing up everything so I’m hoping we will get a conditional pass this time.  Then we can move onto insulation!

A few more small things that have been worked on recently:

The framing around the fireplace and all the piping are in place. We just need final sign off and we can start using it to warm the place up.

Master Ensuite plumbing for the shower, including body sprays

Soffits and fascia have started going up, and it looks good!

So we are inching along and hopefully we will get to that elusive drywall stage soon.

 

ARON UPDATE:  So Aron had his eye surgery today. I would have loved to have been with him, but we decided it was important for one of us to be onsite to keep things moving along with the build. Aron has most of the kids taking good care of him and keeping him company though000.

So the surgery was a success, meaning they were able to remove the aqueous humor with all the blood and other ‘stuff’ from the inner eye. Then they could evaluate the retina and optic nerve and they were in pretty good shape. The retina had a fold that they had to straighten out. As a part of this fix, they had to put an air bubble in the eye, I believe to keep pressure on the retina to keep it in the proper place. So for now Aron, has to lay on his left side and we still aren’t sure how long he has to keep this up.  Aron will see the Dr. first thing tomorrow, so he will get a more detailed explanation on the state of the eye, what the next steps might be and the overall prognosis for him getting his sight back.

One interesting thing is, that they thought his lens was floating around in the aqueous humor and it would be removed during this procedure. But when they did the surgery, there was no lens. All we can surmise is that the lens must have been lost right when the accident happened with the bungee. So there will be further updates once Aron sees the Dr.

 

So more progress has been made on getting our windows installed. Basically the back and both sides of the house have all their windows in. We do have some of our great room windows, but because our contractor took off again, those haven’t been installed yet. Jeld-Wen has confirmed that all of our windows and doors should be delivered on Nov 6th. So hopefully, shortly after that, the house will be sealed from the outdoor elements.

Here are a few window pics:

These are the dining room and kitchen windows
These windows are above the master ensuite tub This is the outside view of the windows above plus the window that will be above our bed in the master bedroom This is the office upstairs This is the guest bedroom

So we passed our roughed-in plumbing inspection, but did not pass our framing inpsection. I didn’t realize that they had so much left to do on the interior framing and with our contractor being gone and just his one worker plus a friend doing the work, it didn’t get completed. The inspector was not impressed that our builder had called for an inspection without being ready for it. At this point in time all framing should be done and windows/doors installed. He said if we cover the window/door openings with tarps or something and get all the remaining framing completed then he will give us a conditional pass. Aron and I put up plastic over the windows that we are waiting to be delivered and we will be pushing for our builder to get his part done asap!

We finally have a drywaller lined up, so that is fantastic. We have a lead on a siding installer, so hoping to hear from them soon. Next on-site after we pass inspection will be the insulation guys.

Aron and I are going to pre-drywall the powder room downstairs and put in a toilet and sink for us to use, and the tub upstairs can be used with a bit of work too. So that means we can have running water to use once things freeze up here.  Oh, I forgot to mention we had the gas lines run and our hot water on demand system installed. We just need to pour a cement pad and get the propane tank delivered and we can have all the hot water we can use! That is exciting!

We are still lucking out with beautiful fall weather. I love all the larch trees around. Even though they look like evergreens, they turn golden yellow  in the fall and loose their needles eventually. But right it now makes for fantastic fall colors.

 

Well it seems like we have been waiting for this day for weeks and I can finally say that some windows were installed yesterday!!  Wahoo, yeehaw, yippee!!!!

Of course none of them are in the front, they are all in the back of the house, but none the less, here is my proof.

More will be going in today, so I’m super stoked about that. We are of course missing some damaged in shipping and our front door. We were not getting any answers about when those would be shipped or what was happening. So I went on LinkedIn and found some upper management people at Jeld-Wen and then found an application that will find you the email of people and got their email addresses. I then drafted a very heartfelt email to one of them explaining our situation, all the stress and time it has cost us and that we aren’t getting any help or answers and could he please help us. Well, what do you know, our Jeld-Wen Sales guy calls this morning giving us an update and promising another update this afternoon, asking us to document our costs and send them to him, promising to keep on top of this and get it resolved, etc… The saying is true, the squeaky wheel, does get the oil!!

Another plus is today we are having our framing and roughed in plumbing inspection. I’m hoping that goes well.

We are really struggling to find drywallers. We finally found one to come out and give us a quote, but that was a week ago and he still hasn’t provided any numbers to us yet. A second guy came out but then called back and said he couldn’t work us into his schedule this year. Every trade out here is soooo busy, you just can’t get people. The same problem with siding, still have yet to find someone who can even give us a quote on that. But hopefully we can keep moving this forward, just need to get over the drywall hump and then we can take a breath.

Look for more window pictures in the next few days!

As I may have mentioned before we finally sold our Airdrie house!

This weekend we had to go back and pack up all our stuff, sell anything we didn’t want to keep, put the rest in storage, and do any last minute hole filling, painting and cleaning in the house. It all sounded pretty straight forward, but it was absolutely draining! I can say we did get everything done, but it was a lot more work than we imagined. We both came back totally exhausted, but happy that this is finally off our plate.

Last week was probably one of the most stressful weeks we have had so far with our build. First off, the windows were supposed to arrive last Monday and we waited and waited and waited… Tuesday morning we contacted them and then they said, ‘oh we sent too big of a truck and had to take them to another hauler with smaller trucks to deliver them’. Well that was frustrating as we had told them numerous times that a large semi would not fit down our road.  Then they provided no information on when we could expect them. Eventually we found out they were dropped off at Canada Cartage in Calgary.  Someone from Canada Cartage called and said they were shocked that they had been left there for them to deliver as they are not registered to do business in BC. They said it would probably take close to a week to get the registration done and find BC registered drivers to bring them out.  So another delay, sigh… Finally they got it all sorted and said the windows would be here next Monday (tomorrow).  So as if this isn’t bad enough, she also told us that there were two cracked windows and they sent them back to the factory father than deliver them damaged. They will have to be replaced. Of course they are the two large great room windows, which we have been waiting for to finish the framing in the front. Another delay, sigh… And finally they couldn’t find anyone locally to hire to help unload the windows so we have to provide our own manpower. Normally I would be upset about this, but we are just so happy to actually get the windows we will just do it.

Then just 15 minutes ago we talked to our builder who had left two weeks ago to go work on another job (as he has done a few times before). He just arrived back here today and then tells us he is flying to Terrace for three days and won’t be back until the end of the week. He says he wants to be here to put in the windows, so again, no windows will be installed this week, another delay, sigh…

Things are so close, but all these delays keep dragging our time lines out, day by day, week by week. It is very frustrating and stressful. This is probably one of the lowest points for me overall. Once we get to the point where things are in our control (interior finishing), I think things will go much smoother.

Hoping to provide a more positive update next time.

Hello, I’m sitting here at our property all alone, with just the dogs for company. Aron has gone back to Calgary to have an Ultrasound done on his eye and see a specialist there about surgery (more about that in a minute) and all the trades are not on site today, nor is our builder.

The good news is, the roof is 100% completed on the house and garage and looks fantastic!

All the HVAC is completed as far as it can be for now (ducting and air handler installed)

The fireplace chimeny is all in, just need to install the kit to connect it into our HVAC heating ducts. We should be able to use it in the next week or so to provide some heat. The rough-in plumbing is all done and the rough-in electrical should be done early next week. At that point we should be having our electrical inspection.

The other terrific news is that our windows are being loaded on a truck right now at the factory and will be heading to us asap. We should have the first load this weekend and the last few windows will show up on Monday. Then we just have our double sliding doors and front door left to ship the following week. I’m super excited to get our windows installed next week  (just hope our builder is back on Monday, he’s run off to do some work in Penticton all this week).

Thought you might be interested in how we managed cooking up a traditional thanksgiving feast with just a toaster oven. Here are some pictures to prove we did it. It wasn’t up to par with the dinner we could have made in a full kitchen, but it was pretty good for living in a RV.

The pups even dressed up for the occasion!

Oh, and the pumpkins we grew, they are definitely not ripe. A couple had some small cracks in them and they were rotten inside. I read they continue to ripen after picked, so who knows, maybe the last 3 will be ripe by Christmas, lol.

ARON UPDATE:  So I’m sure you are all wondering how things have gone for Aron. First off, the appointment was grueling, it took about 5.5 hours to get the ultrasound and whatever else they did complete and then get to talk with the Dr. about the results and the plan going forward.

So first off, Aron definitely will need surgery, probably multiple surgeries. Dr. Kherani has booked him in for the first one Oct 31st. This will be an exploratory surgery as well as a  Vitrectomy to remove all of the vitreous humor from the eye as well as blood and other debris. They replace the vitreous with some type of oil and it remains in the eye for the rest of your life. They believe that his lens is in the vitreous, so that will get removed as well. They want to see if the retina has sustained any damage and if so, how much. If the retina is undamaged or can be repaired, that will be the first step, if not, then I’m not sure the outcome will be good or if they will keep doing any surgeries after that. If the retina is good or repairable, they work on getting that fixed up first, then after that it goes, cornea, lens and then iris repairs in that order. We don’t know if each one will be a separate surgery or how it will work after that. We do know he will have to get a new lens and possibly cornea.

The bad part is that all these surgeries and follow ups will be in Calgary and with winter approaching it may make travel more challenging back and forth. I might be spending more time alone here with the pups if driving is not an option and he has to fly out.

Bottom line, we are still both optimistic that his sight will be recovered and with a new lens, probably even improved! Send all your positive thoughts his way, he will have lots of hurdles to get through before this is all done! Love him so much and all his positivity, most people don’t even know his eye is damaged, he just keeps on doing everything he did before and never complains about it.

 

Hope you are all enjoying a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend.  We have had a great, but busy weekend so far. We are even planning a small turkey dinner today. Our roofer raised a bunch of turkeys this year, so he butchered them on Saturday. Now we have a fresh, free range turkey (quartered) so we can enjoy a turkey feast today and 3 more times in the future.

Lots of trades on site most of the week. Was a busy place with up to 7 or 8 vehicles here most days. The HVAC guys will be done on Tuesday. The roofer is almost done the house and will be finishing the garage Tuesday and Wednesday.  The Plumber is done all the rough-in plumbing and the electical is well under way.

Was such a glorious day on Saturday, took this photo from upstairs in the house.

Most of the windows should arrive a week from today, so I’m really excited about that.  Also, next week we may have the fireplace installers here to get our fireplace setup. Once they complete that we can actually fire it up. Will be great to get heat in the house once the windows are in. It is usually pretty chilly in the mornings now.

Aron is also working away at getting the water line in from the river. That is going well, but it is a big job and he has a lot of other things on his plate, so it doesn’t get his full attention as much as he’d like.

We’ve also been buying up a few trees to plant in our yard. Late fall is a great time to buy as we got these for 30%-40% off. I’m looking forward to having more reds and oranges in our fall foilage.

We also have had a hard frost, so we had to go do some fall clean up on the garden. All that is left in the ground is our carrots and beets.

Here are the pumpkins I harvested (3 had gone bad and I threw them away). They are not jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but for making pies. Hopefully they are ripe enough, as they didn’t turn orange, not sure if they are even supposed to.  I’ll let you know how they turn out.  The pumpkin plant was so prolific, it could have produced a hundred or more pumpkins. I kept pulling off the blossoms, so it could concentrate it’s efforts into just a few, since we planted it so late this year.

Was such a sunny, lovely day Saturday, took a few pictures along the river.

In other news, we finally got an offer for our Airdrie house. There are conditions on financing and an inspection, but by Thursday, hopefully the sale will be final. Can’t wait!!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to say how grateful we are for; being able to move to such a beautiful location, having wonderful family and friends who love and support us, enjoying good health, and getting to build the home of our dreams. We are truly blessed. We love living in Canada and are so lucky for all that we have here.  Enjoy and celebrate!!

The ‘sky’light that is!  Well it has been a few days and I finally have some photos I can share with you.  We’ve had multiple trades here over the last while so a lot is getting accomplished in the house. Our builder is finally back on site after a two week abscense, so we are hoping he gets a bunch of things wrapped up as well.

Here we go:

So as you can see we have shingles and two skylights installed over the dining room.

The other front half of the house is left to shingle and install skylights, but I’m pretty pleased with how it’s coming along. Also we got our chimney framed so we will be working on getting the fireplace hooked up right away and as soon as it is, we can start using it! Wahoo!

I had to add a picture of Aron driving on his little tractor. He’s heading off to smooth out our road.  It’s a steep road and we get a few people driving up who try to gun it and then spin out or make a mess of the road. Slow and steady always works the best. Anyhow, it will be a constant job for us to keep the road in good condition while it is under so much use.

This is the interior of the dining room with the new skylights installed. Both have built in blinds that run off solar and one opens to vent out hot air in the summer (also runs on solar).

They have cut the holes for our bedroom skylights, tomorrow, they will get installed.

The electricians, plumber and HVAC crew have been busy. I’m impressed with the size of our electrical panel

and we have vents, pipes and wires running all over the place now. They should all be wrapped up by the end of this week. One major issue that we run into was that we planned to have an electrical hot water on demand unit (there is no natural gas running out this far).  Unfortunately we hadn’t really paid attention to the electrical demands for the unit and our electrician almost fainted when he saw the specs. Needless to say, we’ve had to change our plans or get another 200 amp service run to our property ($$$$). So we are now going with a propane powered hot water on demand system, but this requires more work for ventilation, piping in the propane, etc.  Plus we can’t have it in the utility room as with everything going on in there we couldn’t find any way to vent it. So we are putting it in our pantry (knew there was a reason we had such a big pantry).  Anyhow, at least we found out before we bought the unit we originally selected.

And last but not least, I got the front entry beams stained. Now I just need to get 3 coats of sealant on them and I’m done!

Aron has been working on our water system, digging in pipes out into the river and then working back to the pump shed. This will be an on-going project for the next week or so.  I’ve been working at my new job the last 3 days, so I’m not around much during the day. I’m going to enjoy my next four days at home doing some work on the house and garden.

Sorry to hear about all the snow in Southern Alberta, we sure hope you are all safe and warm. The weather here is in the mid to low teens now with the odd bit of rain, but overall it is pretty decent fall weather. We hope you get some sunshine and warmer weather soon!

Sorry, but no pictures this time. Just wanted to let you know we have some progress over the last week. About 1/2 of the house roof is shingled, the HVAC is well underway and the rough-in plumbing is almost completed. The electricians will be on site tomorrow to start planning the electrical layout. Of course none of these activities lends to really nice photos, but I promise by later this week I’ll have some good shots when our skylights are installed and the roofing is completed.

Aron Update:  Aron had another check-up with Dr. Yap last week. He was able to fully assess the iris this visit. The iris is damaged from about the 10 o’clock  to 2 o’clock position. It is either folder over or pressed down over the lens. The blood has diminished in the eye, but the Dr. is still unable to see the lens and retina enough to determine any damage there. The pressure in the eye is still elevated (and now elevated in his other eye for some reason?), but since the iris helps control the eye pressure, it isn’t suprising to have pressure issues. Dr. Yap now wants Aron to have an ultrasound or some special eye scan done to the eye and then to see an Anterior Resconstructive Eye Surgeon about a surgery to attempt to repair the iris. He said working with the iris is extremely difficult, like sewing a wet piece of tissue.  He will be seeing a specialist in Calgary for the ultrasound and surgery.  We are hopeful this will be the first step towards Aron getting vision back in his eye again. Will keep you all posted!

So here is quick update on what’s been going on the last few days.

The biggest update is that the septic system (tank and field) is completely installed and functioning.  This means that if we wanted to (and had any toilets or sinks installed in the house) we could actually use it.  They did a great job and got it done in a few days.

Next is the roughed in plumbing. This has been moving along quickly and there is only about a day or two left of work to do.

The HVAC got started and will probably wrap up next week.

The bad news is that our builder has gone to Penticton for a week to do some other work there. We aren’t happy that he is gone, as there is still so much left for him to do, but it is what it is. The roofer will show up next week to get the shingles on, and our builder needs to have our 4 skylights installed as well as the chimney framed on the roof. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this all gets done in time.  At least the forecast for next week is looking good.

Aron and I are focused on painting the trim that will go around the windows and doors and staining all the exterior wood beams. Both are very time consuming, but we’ve been able to make some good progress.

Since I don’t have any really exciting new house pictures to share, I’ll resort to some food related and other photos for your enjoyment.

As you can see I’m still getting beautiful flowers from our garden. I just love these dahlias, I’m getting more next year for sure!  That small bowl at the bottom of the photo is full of hazelnuts. There are tons of hazel nut trees/bushes around this area and Aron picked a few this year. They don’t grow to be huge, but if you had enough energy you could probably pick enough to do something with them. We are currently letting them dry out before we try and shell them, as recommended.

We’ve been picking cherry tomatoes like crazy. Here are a bowl of ones that are in various stages of ripeness. I just loved the mix of colors, so I’m sharing the shot.

Speaking of colors, we have a few funky veggies in the garden. We have striped beets, both red and yellow ones (red ones shown below). I also planted yellow zuchinni, but it grew, yellow, solid green and striped zuchinnis, which is kind of cool.

Our strawberries are producing like crazy still. We’ve resorted to making dessert out of them, they are such a treat!!!

Aron Update:  Aron will be heading to Kelowna on Wednesday next week for another check up with his Ophthamologist. He still has no sight in they eye, just able to see light. We are hoping his eye pressure is normalizing and maybe the Dr. will be able to do a more thorough exam if there is less blood in the eye. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Today has been the busiest day we’ve experienced to date. We had our builder and  his crew on site, the plumber, the HVAC guy, a delivery of gravel for our septic and a visit by our appraiser (for mortgage purposes).  Needless to say it was hectic and noisy, but felt so good to see progress happening on multiple fronts.

Over the next week we should see the completion of the roughed in plumbing and the HVAC. Then we can get the electrician on site and he can get started.  Also next week the roofer will be here doing the shingling on the garage and house. One exciting thing is that our skylights are here, so they will be installed next week as well. I’m excited to see them, we have two that can open and they all have blinds in them that we can lower and raise as needed.

Here are some photos, not all that thrilling, but will show some of the work under way.

These are the supplies for our septic field and below that is our septic tank.

Our pump house got it’s door

We unpackaged our beams (for placement outside in our roof gables). The first picture is the curved beam (it’s upside down) that will go over top of our curved windows in the great room. The second picture is of the other beams that we are currently working on staining.  These are hollow beams, so Aron and I can easily lift even the biggest ones. The look great and you can’t tell them from solid beams, but cost less and are way lighter to lift and install.

The rooms are getting the holes for the furnace vents and and air returns as well we are seeing pumbing starting to appear.

Here is the current state of the house from an exterior perspective. I don’t remember if I’ve included a picture of the porch being completed before. It definitely finishes off this side of the house. We will be working on getting all the big beams in the porch stained very soon.

And finally, in honor of our granddaughter’s BDay on the weekend, this is her playing chef in her new kitchen (she loved it!). Happy Birthday JJ!!!!