Fights, Drywall and Water... OH MY!!

It wasn't until this past Friday when my contractors said "You know Miss Vicki, we haven't seen anything new on your blog in almost a MONTH!" did I realize A) just how long it had been since I had sat down to blog and B) just how much I have been living at the church without actually LIVING there.  So let's catch up shall we?

I last left you with my frustrations with the drywall guy not finishing the job.  Well let me tell you just how much this became a HUGE ordeal.  The gentleman (and I am using this term VERY sarcastically) decided that he was indeed finished the job and began to insist on payment.  When he called my contractor, Allan said "REALLY?!!! You think you are done?!!! You are NOT getting paid until the full job is complete.  You need to call Victoria".  Well he did not do this but he DID tell Allan that he was going to take Allan's dump trailer that is parked at the church as payment.  William called the gentleman to discuss the situation.  Now at this point I need to explain just how level headed my husband is.  If there is yelling to be done it is always me.  I'm sure there is some Italian heritage in my family somewhere as we are the "passionate" type of people when frustrated.  I was shocked to witness my husband turning red and yelling... that's right YELLING at this guy.  Will got so frustrated that he hung up. When we still thought he was going to come and finish Allan had circled and wrote in pencil on the walls to show where work still needed to be done.  He asked us to go over and do the same if he missed anything.

 

Along with all the drawing on the walls, there was no tape or mud done on the kitchen or bedroom windows and huge sections that were not even begun in the bathroom.  The day after William called, I called to be the level headed one (a first in our relationship!).  When I called this gentleman called me a few choice names and told me he was going to put a lean on our house and take us to small claims court.  I kept my cool and explained exactly where in the basement I was not happy and the reasons why we were refusing to pay the remaining money (we had paid half before the job was started).  Once he heard what I said he offered to come and fix the issues.  I told him thank you for the offer but the job he had quoted as a 4 day job was now into its third week and I had seen the quality of his work.  There was roughly two days of work done and he was paid for those days, so we would no longer be needing his services.  The conversation ended with him telling me he would see me in court and me responding that I was looking forward to it. 

The issue then became who was going to finish the work?  This conversation was at the beginning of the Canada Day long weekend (July 1st) and the guys were already booked for vacations.  So guess who ended up doing the work... :)

I spent 12 hour days for the whole weekend.  Will finished work on the Friday and came out to also spend the whole weekend on this not so fun little project.

These pictures are during the fun of sanding (anyone who has had to sand drywall knows just how terrible this job is.  We did around 1500 square feet.)

Will had just washed his hands.  Look at the colour difference!

After days and days of mudding, taping and sanding we had a much better job done.

Around this time is when all that rain happened in Saskatchewan.  It was so bad that we debated if we should go out and see if the mud was dry as it was going to be hard to see on the highway.  SO glad we did as when we got to the church we had two feet of water from the sump pump corner to the bathroom and half way into the kitchen.  We spent the day sucking up water.  Will had to drive back to Regina for a new sump pump as ours had died.  No pics of this as at the time I was not thinking "this would be great for a blog post!"

We also tore down old ugly terrible drywall from the upstairs hallway that weekend.

When Allan got back from his vacation he did some of the mud/taping that we as people who do not do drywall for a living didn't know needed to be done a certain way.

I'm happy to report we are now back on track.  I was smart enough to still take a ton of pictures as work has been done.  But as this has now turned into a novel instead of a blog post, I will leave it here for now.

Renovations with my Dads Help

So this last weekend was going to be an epic painting party.  This was cancelled due to the mud/tape/sand guy not being done.  I am finding this very frustrating.  The basement is a huge job and I know this.  I am finding this frustrating because he told Allan he could get everything done in 4 days.  This would be 4 days of full work.  This gentleman was there for less than 4 hours last Saturday and by the looks of things, this is just not going to be a rush job.  Really.  Just be honest!!  "Hey I can totally do this but I have a few other jobs on the go, my son helps me but is unreliable, and I like to party."  UH.  Waiting and patients...  So for now all my painting supplies are on standby. (A HUGE shout out to my lovely friend Steph.  She has a vast knowledge of the world of painting and was very patient with me and all my questions.  Thanks girl!!)

While I am giving shout outs; this past Sunday was Father's Day. I would like to take this time to brag about how great the dads in my life are.  My dad recently bought a towing trailer to go with his new toy.  Aka the Jeep, or otherwise known as "my little mule Pepe".  He came with us to pick up the remainder of our appliances and lugged them into the church with William.

 

Thanks daddy-o!! As with most things, what would I do without you?!!!

My daddy-in-law has renovated more houses than the majority of the professionals that do it for a living and have TV shows about it.  We were really disappointed when we saw the hardwood in the upstairs hallway ended at the foyer with the bells.  William's dad was fantastic and said he would finish the hardwood with some of the extra wood from the main part of the church.  Turned out we needed to pull up the rest of the plywood as it just needed to be filled in some spots. The lighter wood was already there.  The dark is the stuff dad did.

 

It. Looks. AMAZING!!  Thank you so much dad for helping us out, and for just being great!

My plan is to help out as best I can this week and if (fingers crossed) everything is ready, perhaps even get some painting done on the weekend.  Until then, I keep myself busy with my thesis and shopping.  Oh the shopping...  This week it's obsessing about the perfect chandelier.

I wonder what next week's shopping obsession will be?

Taping and Mudding the Front Foyer

I have a difficult time expressing just how high all our ceilings are.  When you say "our ceilings in the front foyer are 15 feet" it sounds high but I don't think many actually comprehend just how tall that is.  The majority of these photos I've tried to give an idea of not only what we have been up to, but also just how high a space we are working with.

We had drop ceiling in both the foyer and the landing where the church bells are.

Foyer before

After

Landing before

After

When I was out last week doing my best to help out, Al (my contractor) and I did the taping and the first coat of mud. Or should I say, Al was VERY patient with me while he taught me how to mud and tape correctly.  If I do say so myself by the end I was doing not bad!

Looking up

View from atop the scaffolding

 

The guys we hired to do the taping and mudding for the basement began yesterday.  Hopefully they will be done to begin painting this week.

I am happy to say that the windows are done and they look GREAT!  I am so glad we decided to open them up and show them as they were originally.

Al told us tonight that random strangers in town have been coming up to him expressing how much they like how the windows look.  It's nice to know people have approved the change.  We keep reminding ourselves that yes, we are in the process of creating our dream home but this building once (and to many still) meant a whole lot to the town.

Convoy of Cupboards and a Window

I have never been a looking at flyers/searching for the best deal type of person.  I never really had a reason to until now.  I scan EVERY flyer that comes to the house.  In doing this we found a fabulous deal.  The experience of buying the cupboards was not the greatest but now that we have them, that doesn't seem a big deal.

My contractor has a huge truck so I asked him to come with me to pick up the cupboards.  We discussed using the trailer as well, but thought everything would fit in one truck.  We were wrong.

At this point we still had two more very large pieces that were still being brought out from the warehouse.  Luckily, William had brought our truck to work that day, so I called him to bring it.

The pile in the main part of the church is becoming extremely full of stuff.  But we have the space and some of these deals just cannot be passed up!

Now it's a matter of picking out the hardware and countertops.  Oh I don't know... that one? (Getting really tired of all these decisions!!)

The basement is going to be taped and mudded this weekend.  While we are waiting for this, my amazing guys are working up in the main hallway.  I worked with them the past two days. I already knew they were amazing and did great work, but I have much more appreciation for what they do as they made sure I was doing my part.

This is what the outside windows look like.  They all have the triangle peaks at the top of each window.

The thing we don't understand is that whoever did this covered up more windows.  We eventually want to uncover all the windows.  For now, two in the hallway.

Did I mention how amazing my guys are?  Lots of the wood was rotten, so they built their own window sills.

And the final product.

These obviously still need some TLC.  We still need to scrape off the old paint, prime and paint but I don't know about you.  I think this looks way better and brings in more natural light.

All Done the Drywall, One Door Down, and some Stairs

It is official, the drywall is all up! The kitchen was the last room to be completed.  Here it is as you are about to walk into it.  The door at the back left corner is the furnace room.

And here is the opposite view.  Huge built in pantry!

The next step is the taping, mudding, and sanding.  I helped with this stage when we had the bedroom built in our current house.  It is a TERRIBLE JOB!!!  Our contractor is getting someone else to complete this.  Which is great because he is helping us with a project upstairs (but I will leave that for another post).

For those that have been keeping up with our adventure, you will remember the doors we decided to strip the paint off and sand down.  We FINALLY finished one of them.  This has been a job when we have finished other projects or between them. 

The door with no paint, but you can see all the scuff marks.

As we were stripping off the paint I kept making comments like "why would anyone want to cover up such a beautiful door?!!"  Perhaps they didn't want the very dirty/dusty job of sanding them down.  Here I am with my new favorite toy, the mouse sander.  Unfortunately this picture does not show just how dirty and dusty I was at this point.

And here is the finished product aka my labour of love.

The smell of the wood was fantastic!  It almost smelt spicy.  We are thinking they are made from cedar.  I love real wood.  These will receive a coating of lacquer, but I am going to try to keep them as true to this colour as possible.

We have been busy trying to tackle as much as we can when we are getting work done.  One of the little jobs that we have started is the front stairs.  They are made of concrete and will eventually be jackhammered and replaced with a deck of some sort.  For now we ripped off the nasty indoor/outdoor carpet that eats away at concrete if it is on for years and years.

The carpet ate away at sections of each stair.  We would like to try to patch this and perhaps cover it with a coating we found that is meant for garage floors.  It is slightly textured and comes in different colours.

Finally, today we picked out and ordered our kitchen cabinets.  This was WAY more of a hassle than I care to discuss.  This was my view for almost THREE HOURS...

This was such a headache.  I won't go into it as it will just irritate me again.  They are paid for and we pick them up on Tuesday.  Thank goodness!!  Almost done with the choices and purchases!!!