Weekend of destruction (part 2)

As the mayhem continued in the basement, we were trying to get the bedrooms upstairs ready for painting.

Freda putting a coat of primer on the ceiling.

...while the mayhem continues in the basement. We piled up the old ceiling tiles and carried them out in stacks. Things like the paneling that we could take out and pile, we did. Loose bits of debris we took out in garbage cans and dumped on top of the panel piles when we ran out of garbage cans. The dumpster people came and loaded it all up on Monday.

One of the hardest workers I have ever seen!

This is the 'green room' after it was primed.

Mayhem aftermath...

This is the result of the first day of mayhem.


In the "bedroom" in the basement, the walls of the closet are taken down, and the ceiling tiles are down. There were also glass tiles glued to the wall, and they are gone too. We took those down carefully so we wouldn't have shards of glass mixed in with the other debris.

The glass tiles are leaning against the wall in back corner (on the right). But this photo shows the mould that was growing on the drywall. First we cut off the bottom two feet of drywall and carefully bagged it. Everyone was wearing respirators during this step. Once the mouldy drywall was taken down, then the rest of the crew could go in and start their demolition.

Removing the wallpaper in the office exposed the various colours that this room has been painted. There were a lot of patches to be done because of all the naill holes from the paneling, but also just because.

The room that was a dark pea soup green also had lots of patches to be done.

Weekend of destruction (part 1)

We took possession of our new house on Thursday. Before we even got the keys, I had cut down the huge shrubs/trees by the post light. On Friday, some friends came over and helped us with start with removing panelling (yesterday's post), drywall repair and painting. On Friday evening, some other friends came over to help us with the demolition in the basement, removing the old panelling, ugly stained and mismatching ceiling tiles, and taking out a non-load-bearing wall that separates the kitchen and dining room.

Here Freda is making the first hole in the wall from the kitchen to the dining room.

Removing the ceiling tiles in the basement. The paneling has already been removed from the wall on the right. It was very dusty so everyone was wearing dust masks.

Here you can see some of the aftermath.

This is an in-progress photo of the "bedroom" that was in the basement.

More later...

The Office transformation... (part 1)

This is the photo of the bedroom that we will use as the office. There was paneling on one wall and part of the adjacent wall.

Freda removed the panelling, which was quite easy since they had just nailed small finishing nails into the drywall. Under that, we discovered wallpaper of some classic sports cars: Mustang convertible, Corvette fastback, Jaguar E-type, and a Valiant. A Valiant??? Go figure.

Of course, we stripped the wallpaper. This picture shows our friend Colette helping us out. The wallpaper came off very easily with just warm water applied with a sponge.

There was a very very bad drywall repair, so I cut out the section to repair it properly.

The Dream continues... a NEW dream house...

My devoted readers have certainly noticed a lack of updates on this blog. I apologize for that and can only say that is a direct result of us selling our previous dream house and purchasing a new dream house. This new dream house is significantly smaller than our old dream house (about the size that the old garage was!), but also needs significant renovations as it was built in 1959 and has never been updated.


The before photo: you can't really see the front door and a good part of the house. This photo is courtesy of Google Maps Streetview.

And after, now you can! This is 6 hours after taking possession. The post light also now can light up the area instead of being totally enveloped in the bushes...

I can't promise that I will make regular updates as to the renovation progress, but I will endeavour to do so. :)

A memory of summer

Hard to believe, but this rose is still blooming today - November 23rd!!

Is winter here already?

So... is winter here??? The light dusting of snow might make you think so, but it is only -1C but the windchill is ferocious, something like -800C. :)

On the CBC web site...

Check out the CBC web site to see fall photos.

PHOTOS: Ottawa's fall colours
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 2, 2010 | 3:01 PM ET

Snow started falling in Ottawa last weekend, but for a few more days the fall season's reds and golds will linger around and line the sidewalks.

This slideshow, narrated by CBC Ottawa's weather specialist Ian Black, features some of the best photos sent in from our audience across the Ottawa area this fall.

There are a few days left of fall weather, Black said, so enjoy it while you can.

You can see the list of contributors below the slide show. See if you can recognize any names. :) My photo is at 0:43 to 0:40 remaining.

Whoa!! Snow????

What???? It is snowing!! Fortunately it won't really stick around. :)

Pretty sights!

 
When I was getting the house ready for a showing, the Little Dickens and the Big Dickens jumped on the bed. You can tell that Tawny knows she wasn't supposed to be there because of the sheepish look on her face. (Oct 18th)
 
The gorgeous sunset was lighting up the bottom of the clouds. (Oct 18th)
 
We haven't had a hard frost yet! (Oct 20th)

Beautiful sunny day

 
The sunlight lit up a chilly landscape - a light frost but a fog from the lake, since the water was warmer than the air.
 
The frost hasn't killed the pretty flowers yet (dahlias??).
 
It seems that the goldfinches have gone, but the Chickadees are still here.
 
The Chickadees like the finch feeder, so I am leaving one of them up - I put the smaller one away.

On TV, take 12

This is Freda's photo of the young Chickadee on tv - her second photo. This is the 12th photo that I've submitted that's been on tv. I see that I have missed posting about #10 and #11 due to the ISP outage that we had. I will try to catch up...

A pretty thistle...

Usually I am picking the weed seeds off the dogs coats after the walk, but this morning I took this photo of this thistle seed. The white ball of seeds is so pretty and fluffy and not prickly at all - how deceptive Mother Nature is sometimes!

Bundle of fluff

I was walking the dogs on Monday afternoon, and Freda spotted this little bundle of fluff on the back deck - a very young chickadee. Freda thought it might have been injured, but it flew away a little while later so were glad that it was alright.

Lovely fall day, but a bit windy!

The morning dawns with a beautiful clear day, brilliantly lighting up all the colours in the trees.

The fall mums looks wonderful. We have several colours of mums in the front garden, and they all LOVE the location, judging by their size! :) In this photo, there is a bright pink in the foreground right, then some dark red ones in the middle, and then two pale pink mums in the pots on the steps (far right) -- these colours of these ones are a bit washed out because the sun is so bright.

A shovel and some culverts were delivered. It looks like the city is going to start the work to put in the ditches and culverts to properly channel the runoff water. This is good news!

The wind had really picked up by the afternoon, and the lake actually had breaking waves on it!

Birds seen on October 5th

This is a Great Blue Heron that visits the lake fairly regularly. The photo is not that good because (a) it hard to hold the camera steady while also holding two dog leashes, (b) the camera was at full zoom and it is very difficult to avoid camera shake. At least you can see the size of the bird even if you can't see the details.

The Heron flies with his neck folded back against itself and the legs stretched out behind out it (it's flying from left to right in this photo). Juvenile Great Blue Herons are brownish, instead of the bluish-gray/white colour.

It's migration season! That's why the Canada Geese love visiting here...

Even though the Blue Jays are noisy and are messy eaters, it is still wonderful to see the brilliant flash of blue as they fly along.

First frost

Our first frost - 7am October 4th.

Yummy carrots!

Horses love carrots. Here Cooper is trotting over to see me because he knows I bring carrots!

Yummy!!!

Congratulating each other on their good fortune of enjoying the carrots...

Fall colours!

A brilliant sugar maple in a neighbour's yard.

Been out of the loop

Gentle Reader,

Sincerest of all apologies for the lack of updates recently. Our ISP appears to have disappeared and we were on dial-up for a couple of weeks. We are hooked up again with another ISP but are still having teething problems... Hopefully I can get the worked out so things can get back to normal...

Cheers,

Pano bookends

Pano, Sep 13, 2010 - morning

Panorama taken on the morning walk with the dogs.

The American Goldfinches are really enjoying the feeders. I have captured a photo of about 16 of them on the two feeders - unfortunately it was blurry so not worth posting. This photo shows 6 females and one male. We think they are getting fattened up before their migration flight.

Taz still carrying his trophy rock catch!

Pano - Sep 13, 2010 sunset

This is a cool photo - it shows the sunset, a huge cloud, and rain on the horizon at the right.