Arbitrary and Biased: March 2007

House Update

Ok, consider yourselves lucky! I just took a few pictures and then realized that I hadn't the slightest idea where the USB connector was...lo-and-behold, it was where it was supposed to be! So you get pictures too!

Anyway, it's been a while, and for that I'm sorry. I've had a house to try to deal with, though. Since our move was programmed for last Saturday, the pressure really mounted last week to try to get everything done...Finish the tiling, do the joints, sand the wood upstairs, put down three coats of varnish, try to get all the drywall spackled and sanded...ugh. Needless to say, I didn't leave the house before 9:30pm last week, and didn't work less than 13 hours a day. We got as much as possible done before the big move. Saturday was moving day!

I want to take one minute out of my blog to thank Yohann who was with us from 9am until 9pm and did not stop. I'd like to say that I would be as involved in someone else's move, but I doubt it. It was really helpful because he's about 6'4" and quite strong.

Anyway, the move went as well as a move can go. Stressful, annoying, but nothing (as far as I know) broke and we got all of the big stuff out of the apartment on Saturday...Sunday was the cleanup day, and man does that suck. Anyway, we had help on sunday too so that went by without incident and we'll be getting our security deposit back in its entirety (which is good because its already earmarked).

Anyway, Julie took Monday off, but left for Montreal on Tuesday, so I've been trying to get stuff done this week. It's a lot more difficult to work when you've got stuff all around you. But that's the way it is. My internet came back on Weds morning, which was good. I was without internet for about 70 hours total, but it felt like 4 weeks...I think I'm going to get a Blackberry as my next phone so I never have to worry about this again...

Anyway, here's some pictures. The first one is the floor in my office just after I had finished the final coat of oil (for those keeping score at home, I used a "hard base" (I don't know the name in english, that's the literal translation from French) followed by two coats of non-color oil).

The bedroom - I like the contrast of the shopvac and spackle mix surrounding the laundry.

The closet...I just put up those bars today!

The kitchen (it looks better arranged than it really is. That Ikea (ee-KAY-uh) thing is about 4 inches from the wall because I have plumbing behind it that needs to be moved. One of the feet on the sink broken when I was trying to install the Ikea thing, and to get to the bathroom you have to go behind the Ikea thing

And the living room. Notice the nice touch of the stack of heaters in the middle of the floor.

The House: Days Dwindling

Sorry folks for not posting earlier; as some of you can imagine giving ourselves 3 weeks to basically redo the interior of the house turns out to be a very stressful thing to do to ourselves!!

Anyway, the upstairs is kinda livable. We have to do something about the wall that is not insulated at all (and by not insulated I mean it has a piece of plywood that separates the cars, people and cold from our bedroom). Other than this we finished the flooring upstairs. My father-in-law showed me how to do it and we did my office together. Then I finished during the week (actually I finished today, but it was just a few tinny bits). I think it's pretty damn well done for an rookie and I'm quite proud of it. We've got a throw up a first coat of paint and we should be able to survive for a few weeks.

Thursday, Julie's cousin got lassoed into helping me do the drywall (poor kid, he's on vacation from med school and just happened to stop by the house to see it...he must regret that move. Oh well, it helped him burn off his spring-break hangover). We got most of it done, and Jean-Christophe and I finished it up this morning before starting on the tiling! Ugh, I'm not sure what's harder, wood flooring or tiling. They both have their negatives. I think that flooring is harder to do well, but tiles are painful. You spend the whole day on your knees, trying not to displace the freshly placed tiles, while reaching waaaaaay over to the back to try to clean up the previous row. At least we bought the glue (or whatever the sticky stuff is called in english) that is already made...it costs more, but man it's so much easier that having to constantly mix up the powder.

Not sure if this post makes any sense...it's quarter-to-one in the morning here. I haven't worked for less than 10 hours this week, yesterday was a marathon 13.5 hour work session. Today was an easy 10 hour day. I've got to hit the hay, but I just wanted to get a few pics up here for y'all.

We also scraped a wall clean so that we can have a wall in stone. This is a ton of work and I was pulling stones out of everywhere for 2 or 3 days.

The House - Day Something-or-Other

As promised earlier, I am posting a little update on the house. So, I went on Wednesday to get some stuff done. Julie took Thurs and Friday off from work. Thursday, I had rented a truck at the place where we bought the tile to transport the 600kg (~1400 lbs) of tile to our house. I figured since I was there, I would also buy some sheetrock. So I got there at 9:15, deal with the papers, get the tile loaded and we try to load some sheetrock...hmmm, not enough room. So the guy says, 'I tell ya what, I'll charge you only 1.5 hours for the entire morning and you come back (it's about 1/2 hour one-way from our new house) and get the sheetrock.' Ok. So I drive over to the house and unload with Julie 600kgs of tile. Run back to the store. Instead of getting 10 sheets of sheetrock I figure I should get 20...I'll need them and I've got the truck...why not. Then I think, we've got 400 sq. feet of wood flooring at my in law's house..which is right next to the store where I bought the drywall...ugh. Ok, I swing by there and get the 12 packs of wood. Run back. Julie and I unload the sheetrock (each sheet is 85 lbs) and the wood!

The afternoon we continued putting sheetrock on the ceiling...if you've never done this (I had never done it on the ceiling), it's incredibly tiring for your arms (and back, and neck...it's just tiring overall).

Friday we continued with the sheetrock and basically got it finished except for 3 small pieces that Julie's cousin Camille and I finished today.

There's so much work left to do and basically two weeks before we move. The next 14 days are going to be insanely busy. Oh well. There's things that have to be done...the flooring upstairs, the tile downstairs, the walls need to be drywalled...Not a lot of choice.

Oh yeah, and our new windows got installed on Thursday! What a difference double-plated brand new windows make!

I'll put a couple of pictures up here. The first one is Camille feeling the surge of power that only a large tool can give you.

The House - Days 3&4

Day 3: Sunday. Pouring concrete. I've poured concrete a few times in my life, but I think it's always been from a truck...While it's difficult, the truck comes with the concrete already made. Not this time...With only 0.75 cubic meters (about 26 cubic feet) to pour, it's not worthwhile to bring in a truck. So we load the cement mixer into Jean-Christophe's trailer, bring it to the house, then we go to buy the supplies. JC's trailer is a fairly small affair and we needed to buy about 600kg (1400lbs) of sand. We decide to do it in two loads...Get the sand, set off, strange noise...'Oh crap, the bearings in the wheels are broken!' Well we've only got a mile to go, let's do it and see. It turns out that the wheel wasn't screwed on correctly, but the bearings are fine! Second trip, doubts about the sand...let's buy a little more just in case. Great! That should do fine.

Start mixing the stuff...man, masons are not weak people...my arms, back, legs, ok basically everything are killing me and I just want to be done.

Anyway, we bang that out all morning, and...run out of sand at 2pm...with a piece that was about 1x1.5 feet left to do! Of course we can't buy any sand because it's Sunday afternoon! Ugh. Oh well, no problem we'll finish tomorrow, but still I like to get stuff done all at once.

Anyway, Monday morning we finished the cement and moved upstairs to start working on the ceiling. Of course in our rush to do things we cut a piece of sheetrock backwards so now our ceiling is bi-colored! Oh well, once it's painted it'll all look the same. There's some more pictures below.

Tuesday and Wednesday are dedicated to my company and Thursday we're back in the house working.

Day II

Today was less breaking stuff up and more getting ready to make stuff tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to be laying concrete so the two halves of our house are level (I phrased that poorly...the house is level, it's just that the floor on the left was lower than that on the right)...ugh. I'm exhausted so this post may make no sense.

Anyway, it was a lot of prep work...tomorrow we'll play in the concrete!

Our house

We have officially become mortgate holders...I'm wont to say "home owners" but this isn't really the truth now is it?

Anyway, we signed today at 6:00pm CET and we can now [officially] start destroying stuff. For the record these pictures were taken after the signature, in reality, you can see that it is still
light out and it gets dark in Bordeaux at around 6pm...

The previous owners gave us the keys and we promised to [ahem] measure and "not destroy anything" until we signed...I didn't want to, but I was outvoted 2-1 so a bunch of walls become piles of rubbish.