Our house is such a hive of activity. Our dogs Abby and Vera alerted me to two suspicious gents walking around outside one day and it turned out to be Thomas the stone mason with his apprentice Will. Although not part of the formal renovations they were here to repair some cracked mortar above two of our second floor windows. There was a warm-ish and dry-ish break in the weather so they spent part of 2 days looking after repairs.
Our morning routine is that Abby and Vera like to say good morning (and get a treat) from the visiting workers. We are often asked how the dogs respond to all of the noise and activity and the answer is they are doing better than we had expected. We never leave the dogs in the house unattended when workers are here and we keep the door between the addition and the stone house closed. Our dogs can be protective and just like people sometimes a dog may take a dislike to someone. We dont want any mishaps so other than the first greeting of the day we keep the dogs out the way. They do however like to peek through the door to see what is happening.
In the meantime, all of the woodwork for the finishing was delivered. Pocket doors, baseboards, window casing and trim and the doors for the upstairs rooms were all staged in the living room.
We then had a lovely husband and wife team of carpenters here for 4 days working on finishing woodwork for each of the rooms. The windows have had new trim and casings cut to measure and installed, and new wood baseboards have been installed in each room.
All of the doors have been replaced and the passageway between the living room and laundry room has had pocket doors and trim installed. The workmanship was beautiful! So much precise measuring and cutting.
The carpenters finished their work last week then this week our beautiful new custom mantelpiece was delivered and installed. We have made so many decisions over the course of this renovation that I had forgotten what a lovely piece of work was commissioned for the mantelpiece. It arrived and was installed on Monday of this week. The mantelpiece is made of walnut and very coincidentally almost matches the colour I had previously stained the wooden windows.
With the mantelpiece installed it was time for the stone masons to get to work. Thomas and his apprentice had already come to our house previously to do some exterior repointing of the stonework and now they are back to install the stonework for our new fireplace. Selecting the stonework was just one of many decisions we had made over the course of this project.
It seems that working with stone and completing jigsaw puzzles have a lot in common!
The stonemasons will be back for one more day to add mortar to the stonework. The stone hearth arrived as one solid slab of stone and was carried in by 3 fellows. The hearth is made of Indiana Limestone and weights approximately 350 pounds. All together the stonework for the fireplace will take 3 days of work.
In the meantime many other little details are being attended to. The new wooden staircase going to our old basement was moved to its permanent position. In the course of excavating dirt to level the staircase Liam uncovered a pair of children's boots! What a great find.
Matt the painter has been back this week as well. He has previously been here for 2 days priming the walls before the carpenters started their work. So far this week he has primed all of the woodwork upstairs and has been busy painting the trim. He won't move down to the main floor until all of the other workers have finished as he doesn't want any dust on any of his work areas. It is interesting to see how professionals tackle such a big job and he has given me a couple of pointers that I will use when I get around to repainting two of our bathrooms.
Our lovely contractor Tyler has been back every few days to check on progress, say hello and answer questions. This week he had to measure the radius of the cathedral window in the upstairs hall. The trim for this window is being custom milled at a workshop in Toronto.
The tile installer has finished his work in the upstairs shower. All of the accessories have finally been delivered and are waiting for installation. The plumber should be on site next week to install the toilet and pedestal sink. The electrician will install the light fixtures for each of the rooms including the pineapple light fixtures that were a special order for the bathroom.
The laundry room is going to be a separate big project that my husband is responsible for completing. When we first moved into the old stone farmhouse this room used to be a very small kitchen. When we had the addition built we wanted to convert this room into a main floor laundry room. Ironically it was not getting the laundry room finished that was one of the big factors in deciding to hire a contractor for help. The flooring in the laundry room is down and I have stained a big butcher block counter for the area that will have the big cast iron sink. Although this room was small for a kitchen it is a great size for a laundry room and the large window allows lots of natural light.
Up until now our dryer has been in storage and we had set up a temporary area in the barn for the washing machine. Laundry was very much weather dependent as I had to hang everything on the clothes line. What a relief to have the washer and dryer back in the house! The HVAC fellow hooked the dryer back up for us and next week the plumber will permanently hook up the washing machine.
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We will be using reclaimed brick on one of the laundry room walls and we are trying to salvage as many of the old pine cupboards that were part of the old kitchen as possible.
And that my friends is the update as of this afternoon. Thank you for following along on this journey.
