Easy?

Couple things I need to cover here tonight. We're in the home stretch downstairs, and we're one day over our...third finish date. But it's all good. It really is almost done. So first of all I've had a few complaints that I take pictures of things but never actually show anything. I disagree...but to please the masses..here is a picture of the wall we recently painted upstairs...



Also, Dad did a real skookum plumming job the other day and we all figured we needed to take a picture before we boarded over it. So here's that...




Some fine handy work there. *yawn* I'm so sleepy I need to shuffle through the rest here before I fall asleep at the keyboard. Here's Ruth and Dad having a seemingly important discussion.




"Yes Pat...one more day...yes I'm sorry.."




Flooring is down. Appliance are ready to be hooked up. Everything else is just details. It's coming together nicely and we're really proud of the work that Dad has done in the last five weeks. It's hard to believe it's been that long, but it's also hard to believe it's almost over.

It goes on...

Phew, I'm wearing down. My lovely wife has been keeping up on the blog posting while I've been trying to balance drawing, work, and construction assisting. We've been going for almost a month steady now, I don't know how Dad keeps going but he does. I get so sick of this kind of work. I joke about it but I honestly feel like I'm not built for these skills. Every tiny project I undertake ends up needing some major attention from the boss, he ends up having to drop everything and come see what I've screwed up, what it's cost us, and how we're going to get around it.



But maybe that's the nature of it. We had a neighbor that I really admired when I was growing up. His name was Barry Buchart. He had son who's nickname at school was butch. Cool guy. Anyway.. Barry Butchart once worked on cars for a living and did a little work on my parents car now and then. One day I observed him working through a problem with calm peaceful statements like "well this just doesn't make sense" and "how strange, why won't it start?".

I realized that that is how I wanted to problem solve in my life. With statements like "Wouldjya look at that error message!" and " Weird! What would make this hard drive crash again?".

These are not the things that come out of my mouth when the concrete anchors collapse while being hammered in. Or when I measure the gyp rock three or four times and still end up cutting it backwards.



Bless his batteries, Dad has been pretty patient with my incompetence. Thankyou Dad. I am learning some stuff, sorry for all the trouble this basement has been.



What do the Lepps do after a 9 o'clock dinner on a Friday night? Well..we debate about the idea of painting the walls upstairs till about 11:00pm, and then actually start painting around midnight.




It didn't take long, but then again I was just watching. Ruth and Dad are the paint masters. I tried to stay out of the way...




...tried to stay out of the way...

I'm such an idiot.






It's almost over Dad. Six days and counting.

BBQ Birthday

Last week was a week of 'homeowner firsts' for Royden. He purchased his first barbeque and weedeater and hung his first slabs of jiprock downstairs-this morning I saw even saw him wearing a tool belt! We took some time out of the busy renovation project to celebrate the fact that we have now been blessed with having him around for 26 years. So in celebration he fired up the new grill and served up some of dad's delicious homemade burgers which I made for the first time. Mmm mmm good! A bunch of our friends came over and we had our first official party at our new house!









Fellow blogger in action...check out more pics at themillerhood.blogspot.com






Thanks to all of our friends for coming out to celebrate with us. Happy Birthday Royden!!

Instant Update

Check out that handiwork. You're in the kitchen looking into the bedroom to the right. Those are new walls and a new doorway.



Inside the bedroom-new walls, closet and ceiling. Great job guys!

Blood Sweat And.....No Tears!

So the reno work continues downstairs. I've been anxiously awaiting the installation of jiprock and I'm excited because it is occuring as I write. Things are progressing!


This is the offending piece of lumber that tried to take Royden out. He's still smiling...sort of!



Lots of things have been done downstairs and there are lots of things yet to do. One of these things was to rent a jackhammer and bang out some of the foundation. Nice work dad! I unfortunately think I may have sacrificed my lens for this shot as I think that there is now a small nick in it. D'oh!



Another done...or sort of done thing is my very own laundry room complete with laundry sink. I have always wanted a sink and now I have one! Yeah!



I think the worst part of the work so far has been attempting to remove the linolium off of the
bathroom floor. Amy valiently attempted the frustrating task before we invested in goo gone and a super sharp razor...she has more patience than I. I liken the task to trying to scrape bubble gum off the floor that's been glued there first. Awful. I wouldn't even attempt to remove the stuff until we had some new devices to aid in the removal. It's all off now...and my hands are still aching!

.


Jiprock has arrived! Those strong boys are nailing it to the ceiling right now. Sounds like fun eh? Tomorrow however we will have fun and celebrate Royden's 26th birthday.

My Hot Date with a Contractor

Friday, the most anticipated day of the week is rife with possibilities. It is the end of the work week and signals the kick off for well...kicking off...or kicking it up...or just plain kicking around. We Lepp's generally just kick around Friday night and Mrs. Lepp, she often is found sound asleep by 9:30pm. If not sleeping Friday evening then the Lepps are found at the local movie theater partaking in some popcorn as Fridays often are opening night for new movies. Well this past Friday there was to be no kicking around. I had a hot date with my favorite general contractor, and yes it did involve popcorn.


Safety googles never looked so sexy. Yep, Friday night was spent spaying and scraping that darn popcorn off of our ceiling. It looks much better now...I'm just not so sure how our lungs look since some boys I know laughed off my idea to suit up and wear respirators. I guess that's what faith is for??



Saturday was spent continuing the deconstruction of the basement. After seeing the extent of our progress on Thursday Stuart arrived to lend a hand...and some muscle to our labour. He's moving in June 1st and I think he wants carpet and drywall by then:). Thanks for your help...we really appreciate it!



I really felt that no real progress was being made until we began pulling out the existing carpet. I was so delighted to find that in the old garage it pulled up almost effortlessly as it was hardly glued to the floor. In the office however was a different story. Note the above mosaic rubberbacked carpet stuck to the floor in the above photograph. What were they thinking?!



My dear old dad (I mean young...actually quite young as far as dads my generation's age go) has been working tirlessly for us. Not only is he loaning us the money for the project he is working for free. I can't begin to thank him and I don't know what I'd do without him. I'm so glad to have him here...and we're not even driving each other nuts yet! (well at least he's not driving me nuts....I might be driving him nuts........)



Look at that man work! Has anyone ever seen Eric move so fast?!

+

On Thursday dad and I went to the dump to drop the first load. A city dump is an interesting experience. In fact it's not even called a dump but a 'transfer station'. There you shovel all of your junk into a semi truck container and they haul it away. You're not allowed to use your cell phone either in the area for some strange reason. I was concerned that I'd get in trouble for taking pictures and I did in fact get mildly interrogated when I began brazenly snapping photos. What a laugh. The guy unloading his garbage next to me told me that in Seattle they load garbage into freight trains and ship it to guess where? Good old Canada. Of course. Well, I felt quite saddened by this fact until I asked where in Canada they ship it to. "Saskatchwan" he answered.





So there you have it, 1800+ pounds of drywall has come out of our basement and there it is, cleanly swept waiting for framing to begin.

Breaking Things

Things break easily. Nothing lasts forever. Things break when you drop them. Things break if you don't maintain them. Things break because they where down.

Things also break when you swing hammers at them. Sometimes they break when you kick them too. Or when you pull at them with a wonder bar. Breaking things is easy.

That's what I learned this week as construction got under way in our basement. Ruth's Dad is here for an undetermined amount of time, remodeling the downstairs into a sweet little suite. I'm going to have to post some new pictures almost immediately since the work is going so fast, a lot of things have changed since these pictures were taken.




But it's a serious business; construction. You can't mess around with reciprocating saws lying around, and nails all over the floor. Safety comes first, and that means no horsing around...





My Dad and Mom also came down for the weekend with Joanne too. Unfortunately, and fortunately, construction continued downstairs while we visited upstairs, so it was a little hectic but still fun. My parents got to see the house for the first time and I think they liked it. I promise it won't be so noisy next time, Mom.

We decided to hit some of the Seattle sites that they haven't seen yet, like the Library and Columbia Tower. We took my Mom to a baseball game at Safeco but I totally forgot my camera. d'oh!






Oh ya, Mom got a new camera. It's got a nice big LCD.



Sorry it was kind of a hectic week for everyone. We still enjoyed all of your company and hard work.

Come back soon!