July 2016
Sunday July 17
Our new bannister
Our home renovation continues apace. The cabinets are now in the kitchen but are still without handles, and the stairs have a new bannister (see the picture). Our new appliances are being delivered and installed this week, so the kitchen should be pretty much complete by the end of this week. The following week the hardwood floors in the other half of the house will be done. We are currently busy trying to move all the furniture that we moved to one side of the house over to the other side. This time that means moving a lot of floot-to-ceiling bookcases which is a real pain in the neck.
Sunday July 10
What the kitchen looks like now
Our lives continue to be dominated by the kitchen renovation. The week before last the walls and ceiling were finished. I spent most evenings moving furniture from the living room into the office and guest bedroom, and from the TV room and sewing room into our bedroom: this so that the hardwood floors could be refinished this week.
The original plan was that the kitchen walls would be finished by Thursday giving us the three days of the weekend to paint them before the installation of the hardwood floors began on Monday. Unfortunately, one of the tapers had a family crisis and they didn't finish in time. They came back to finish on Sunday morning which left us very little time for painting. We did our best, working late into the night to get the walls primed followed by a first coat of paint. We were quite put out when the floor installers never arrived on Monday due to a mix-up in timing between them and our principal contractor.
The floors were done on Tuesday to Thursday. Since most of the house was inaccessible and smelled to high heaven from the varnish, we decamped to Jim and Valerie's for a couple of days. We moved back in yesterday; it still smells a bit but is now tolerable. Ann and I are still using the bedroom downstairs as the upstairs bathroom is not yet back in service and our bedroom is filled to the rafters with furniture. James and I put a second coat of paint on the kitchen walls today to be ready for the installation of the cabinets to begin tomorrow.
We have still managed to find some time for more pleasant activities. Since we weren't painting on July 1, we had Jim and Valerie, and Carl and Roxanne, and our new neighbours Adria, David and Aurelia over to relax in the sun and play boules, our Canada Day tradition. Later on, Ann, James and I went to the Dartmouth waterfront to watch the fireworks.
On Saturday, Carl and Roxanne had the three of us over for dinner, a welcome respite from our microwaved dinners.
Canada Day fireworks
On Friday of this week, Katy and Ben flew down from Ottawa to attend a wedding. Ann picked them up at the airport in the late morning and took to them to Halifax where they had lunch with some friends. We met them mid-afternoon (I took the afternoon off) at the Good Robot brew pub before going out to dinner at the Rock Bottom Brewery. James drove them to Ben's parents' place after dinner; we won't be seeing them again before they fly back home. That evening Ann, James and I stayed at the Four Points Sheraton in downtown Halifax courtesy of a coupon that we won as a sort of door prize at the Christmas party for Ann's work with the diabetes program.
Yesterday we had a picnic at the communal oven in the Dartmouth Commons so that the church community could meet our refugee family. There was plenty of food so, despite a cool and cloudy day, everyone had a good time.
I have also been watching the UEFA Cup games though I missed the semi-finals while we were out of the house. Most of this page was written while watching Portugal slip by France in the final, despite losing their star player, Ronaldo, early on due to injury.