And Then There Was Light

It's been another busy week. We have had a few problems that needed to be dealt with so we did not start laying out the floor as planned. We continue to adapt to changing plans. It's an ongoing process.

The electricians arrived mid week after initially cancelling. There was some miscommunication (that's all I'm prepared to say) which resulted in a morning mad dash to the lighting store to pick up fixtures. Since light fixtures are not the sort of thing you want sitting around in an active work area, we had wanted to leave them at the store as long as possible. Thankfully, I mostly knew what we wanted but of course, it had to be a day that I couldn't reach Phil on his phone. I had to make a couple executive decisions but thankfully, it all worked out. The lighting store was so great and did their best to accommodate us on such short notice.

We also had some issues with the floor this week. More on that later.  

Ah, the sun! Oh, how you have been missed!!

It is such a nice feeling when the sun comes out. I know I might be singing a different tune in the summer when we are trying to keep the heat out but it sure is nice now. It just lights up the whole kitchen!

It's getting a little hard to move around in there.

This is the basement bathroom. The counter tops have all been ordered but thankfully we have more than enough work to keep us busy until they arrive.

Somebody lost some teeth.

Time for silly faces!

And suddenly, there was light.

Nice and bright at night...

Nice and bright during the day. Perfect for a reading area.

We've left the blades off of all of the ceiling fans because of how dusty the house still is. We will wrap the fans up until after we do the final clean up. 

The wall in the stairwell is the only one in the house (other than the basement) that hasn't been painted yet. We need to build a scaffold to be able to reach the top.

The guest room.

The light here changes the colour of the wall somewhat at night. Thankfully, not in a bad way.

LED pot lights in the kitchen.

They look much different during the day. We went with warm glow LED's.

Hannah learned the hard way that an empty box does not a good chair make.

 

Now I can clean after dark. How fun!

Lights in the shower. Who knew?

One bathroom vanity light installed. The others are on order.

Bringing in the all of the trim and moldings. 

The flooring continues to wait and in the meantime, work goes on all around it.And in some cases, on top of it.

Time for a smile....

...and for Matt to ponder all of the complexities of life.

Here we come to a frustrating flooring problem. A squeak in the floor. I don't know how much you know about flooring but generally, a squeak is not a good thing. Especially in a new house. It doesn't give it character, it means you've done something wrong. Ugh. If the girl's room wasn't directly over the living room, it might have been easier to overlook. For me anyway. But not for Phil. It was making him crazy so he finally decided to pull the floor up and find out what was going on. (this was, of course, after applying 88 screws to one sheet of plywood in the faint hope of fixing it from the top!)

Here is the culprit. The very thing that was supposed to prevent the floor from squeaking was actually causing it. We're still not sure why. Phil now had to carefully remove all of the blocking. I say carefully because that is actually the living room ceiling under there. No pressure or anything.

He replaced all of the blocking with this cross bracing and voila! The problem was solved. At a pretty significant cost to progress this week but really, how do you not go back and fix a job that you're not satisfied with?

I feel like we spent a lot of time in this room this week. Good thing it has such a pretty view.

You can see it on his face. House building is not always fun. In fact, it can be very frustrating at times. I am so thankful though that he persisted and found the problem and fixed it. Working on the house has given us the opportunity to teach our children many life lessons not the least of which is to persevere with a problem and deal with it when you'd really rather just pretend not to notice it. Thank you Phil for working so hard and for setting such a good example for all of us. I really appreciate it.

Kittens!! Watching...always watching!

Ready and... lights!!

Such a pretty shot. Even through the snow. 

(if I do say so myself!) ;-)

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put in under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Matthew 5:14-15