Home Ownership

Well, we have moved into the house. For the most part, things are great - I still need to bring a whole bunch of my stuff from the apartment to the house (mostly books) and we need to really start unpacking. The entire living room is just full of stuff. It is amazing how many things one person (or in this case, three) can acquire. The house project status stands thusly:

• Upstairs Bathroom: Completely gutted and redone. Gorgeous new bathtub, toilet, vanity and sink installed over gorgeous Ana Slate tiles. Curved shower curtain installed with gorgeous curtain. New window. Fantastic One Sone fan (extraordinarily quiet) with a timer, and a dimmer for the lights. To do: finish priming one wall, paint the walls (a very light blue-grey) and the ceiling (white). Refinish door and trim.

• Master Bedroom: Painted, most furniture in. Now wired for light fixture. To do: Install fixture, touch up paint. Actually decide where all furniture is going and unpack remaining clothes.

• Baby's Room: Painted, furniture in, clothes unpacked. Her stuff always needs to be done first.

• Kitchen: Fridge and stove installed. Laundry area nearing completion. Moved kitchen drawers around. New door out to deck installed. Cupboards modified to fit in fridge. To do: Install dishwasher, cut down small cupboard and install a shelf for the microwave, install range hood, grout laundry tiles, hook up laundry. Unpack all kitchenware and find a location for it. The kitchen is still a scary place.

• Living Room: We have made almost no changes to the living room, but the bar is set up in one corner. I have my priorities. To do: Pick and install living room light fixture. Unpack all items that are currently living in there and move the furniture around. Get all the books in, get the TV on the TV stand and the Wii and DVD player set up. Think about painting. Get curtains.

• Den / Office / Guest Bedroom: Changed the (unacceptable) bi-fold entry door to match the other . To do: Paint, finish door intallation. Set up furniture.

• Basement Apartment: This one was all finished, but we needed to do some wiring and such, so some stuff had to get ripped out. We punched a lot of holes in the ceiling all over. But we also bought a new furnace, a new water heater, had central air put in, and wired up all the fire alarms. To do: Fix holes in ceiling. Paint over fixed holes. Install suspended ceiling near electric panel. Install fire escape window.

• General House stuff: Like I said, new furnace, central air, water heater. Also changed all the locks and put new doorknobs in around the house. Planed many of the doors because the general accumulation of paint meant that they were difficult to close. Built a new 8x10 Cedar deck off of the kitchen (our second exit). Changed many appliances to gas. Had gas line installed for barbecue. New mailbox and light out front. New plumbing all the way down to the drain. To do: New light for backyard (purchased, but not installed), stairs for deck, some exterior brickwork. Needs insulation in attic. Minor skunk issue in neighbourhood. Shed roof needs painting.

All told, we've done a remarkable amount of work on the new place and we're getting really close to the point that we can have a housewarming party. It's been a great experience thus far (and is only going to get better)!