Rules and Reality

I forgot to mention that after the accident with the screwdriver, I made up a list of rules for renovations or repairs of any kind!

1. ALWAYS wear goggles or glasses no matter what the task entails


2. Always wear a mask (we are all asthmatics here)


3. Always completely clear the area you are working in. Don't just pile things above or beside, remove them completely.


4. Keep track of your tools


5. Pray intently!

This morning I got a note from a incredibly lady I have come to call friend through an internet community. She said she read this blog and thanked me for my insight. I have to admit that I have never been more humbled in my life.

This woman and her husband are going through many renovations in their home, and in their lives as he is suffering from stomach cancer. She has shared much of their story and I have gotten so much from her and it on strength, bravery, perseverance in times of trial.

We are renovating because of a gift of money that got us started on something we should have done when we bought our place 3 years ago. This couple are renovating out of necessity, so that things will be easier for her when he isn't around to help. And their progress is so much better than ours. I will say again that everything in life is a teaching opportunity and we just have to notice it as such and learn from the lesson. I want to thank this dear woman for being an incredible example to work towards.

Even if my husband's accident had been worse, all he would have lost was an eye. He still would be able to live a long and healthy life. Besides the couple I mentioned above, I have a long-time friend of mine lost her two year battle with cancer just before Christmas. Through it all she never gave up her faith or the hope that she would be healed. Lesson - we only need to look a short distance outside our own little worlds to see how others are handling even worse circumstances.

So, I intend to make a new set of rules for real life. I haven't gotten them yet, but I know what two of them are....look to others for good examples, and, pray intently!

Dishwasher 1, Hubby 0

On Tuesday the fifth, the day started out pretty well. My father's cleaning ladies came in at 10 and performed their usual magic on the rest of the house, leaving the kitchen alone as requested. They left an hour later, just as Hubby arrived with the dishwasher. Now this is a regular sized dishwasher in a cardboard box; however, it was being picked up in an Aveo hatchback. No small feat, but when my husband puts his mind to something, you don't even try to doubt him. So far so good.

With a clean house and a tiny kitchen filled with a huge box, the three of us piled into the Aveo and Dad treated us to A&W.

When we returned, Hubby got to work and quickly removed the old dishwasher and emptied the cupboard under the sink, putting everything onto the countertop above. Now, we live in a 28 year old townhouse and none of the fittings seemed to work. So, Hubby decides that we may have to do the dishwasher, sink and cupboard all at once

So, trying to be of SOME help, I grabbed a basket and started removing all the cleaning supplies and other items from the counter, while Hubby waited below, his head in the cupboard. All of a sudden, a screwdriver that I hadn’t seen rolled off the counter and hit Hubby in the face, just below the eye. We both screamed at once and dogs and Dad all came scrambling to find out what was wrong. I screamed “I just hit Tony in the eye with a screwdriver”. It actually hit the cheekbone below the eye, but his eye was a little blurry.

We put ice on it right away and tried to get to a clinic but it was closing and the eye was feeling better so we continued on to a hardware store to buy parts to hopefully make the dishwasher work and to Costco to pick up some more dinner as cooking was again out of the question.

After dinner it was on to another hardware store to buy parts we couldn’t find at the first one; however, nothing seemed to fit our antiquated pipes. While trying to figure it out, Hubby mentioned he had something in his eye and asked if I would look. Yes, there was something…..blood! So, I ended up driving to the Emergency at 9 pm and fortunately we got through very quickly. It turns out that he was rubbing his eye, which opened up a small tear. The doctor said “don’t look at it, leave it alone and rest for a couple of days”.

I am a woman of deep faith and I will let you know that while I was sitting beside my husband in the Emergency waiting area, with him holding an ice bag to his eye, and me feeling guilty about being clumsy, I started to pray that everything would be okay – with the eye, the dishwasher, etc. I even asked God if maybe he was trying to tell us we shouldn’t have spent the money on the machine in the first place. I truly believe that He allows things to happen for reasons, and those reasons are usually lessons. The lesson I learned that night was not about dishwashers – it was how much I loved my husband and how I couldn’t live without him. The funny thing is 8 years before, in a different ER he proposed to me because I was in an accident and he spent 3 hours in the waiting room realizing the same thing.

Anyway, back to the dishwasher. We went home, and went to bed. As I figured, Hubby figured out a plan by morning and doctor’s orders about resting went out the window. He went back to hardware store number one, got some new parts and had the job done in no time. A few solders here, a cut or two there, some new hoses and we had a wonderful working dishwasher!

Since the install I have been doing my best to find something that it WON’T clean and so far the machine has won. I will happily keep trying though.

Starting at the Top

Okay, we have done the tour, so now here's an overview of what is to come. And watch out, because a few balls of snow might be headed this way.

We realized that we were not going to get away with just replacing the taps and sink - a countertop was a definite need seeing as the area where we would put the taps through the sink was totally rotted out on the old one.

This is the underside of the counter where the old taps were. Even though we had decided we needed to change it, we had no idea it was this bad until we changed it.....but I am getting ahead of myself as this picture was taken a week later than what I am documenting! But I wanted to give you an idea of what lay ahead.

So, at this point we had the sink - a nice one and a half combo that would give more sink without losing too much counterspace - the taps, and had picked out an inexpensive countertop from IKEA. Along with the dishwasher, this brought us right up to our gift money and we were very pleased with our selections. We decided we had enough in our renovation fund, which we just started, to purchase the matching countertop for the other side. Who knows if they would discontinue it or the colour (white) would be different....well, that was our excuse and we are sticking to it!

Duck, here comes one from left field!

We decided if we were doing all this we should paint the kitchen as well. I mean who wants to have beautiful counter tops and cruddy looking walls?

Lookout, here comes an idea to take down that awful stipple ceiling instead of painting it!

Uh oh, did someone mention new cupboards? Okay, we have been able to dodge this one a couple of times and leave it for the future, though it did throw a few curves in there. We can save up and do it right in the future, and enjoy what we have now. I will let you in on how big this dream got in another post though - it is good for a laugh or two!

So, with a game plan ready to go and a few days before the dishwasher arrived (January 5th), we began.

The first task at hand was to remove the cieling. But to do that we needed to prep first. We removed as much stuff as possible, but instead of emptying out all the cupboards we decided to use plastic and sheets. This was about 75% effective at keeping the dust and stipple out of the cupboards.

Hubby climbed our two-step ladder and began the arduous task of hand scraping the stipple off the ceiling off the raw drywall underneath. He had this wonderful idea of having me vacumm up the mess as he went. I am a full-blown asthmatic who is severely allergic to anything in the dust category (along with mold and smoke). We had no masks and at the moment, neither of us were wearing eye protection either (this is a point to remember for later, folks).

The picture on the right shows hubby with goggles on. This is after he felt some of the grit almost go into one eye, but he was fine. There was a point, when I was bending over vacumming, where I felt a pile of stuff come down over my head and back. My wonderful husband tells me "it's snowing". Little did we realize what an ironic statement that would be.

The left picture shows a small sample of the mess left on the floor, even after trying to vacuum it up. I decided to leave it until the end and swept it up, vacuuming the dust left behind that the broom couldn't get. There must have been a kitchen garbage bag full of debris, but at least the ceiling was bare, and after a bit of a sanding, ready to be filled, sanded again, and then painted. However, these last three steps will have to wait, I am afraid, until after the installations.

So here we are, ready for the big fun to begin.

The Nickel Tour

I haven't written for days, not because I have been lazy or forgotten about the blog, but because the job was happening so fast (with a lot of challenges along the way) I couldn't keep up. Thankfully it is all etched in my mind and I will be able to catch you all up quickly.

I am going to start with a bunch of before pictures to set the scene. I call it the nickel tour because it sure isn't worth 25 cents and even still I should probably give you change!

This is a look at our tiny galley kitchen from the front entrance through to the dining room. The gate is to keep our dogs out. This shot shows the top of the dishwasher on the right hand side. This, along with the taps shown below, are the main events of the reno.

This is the view towards our front door and mirrored front closet. The space is tiny, cluttered and old.Our "wonderful" old, low, dirty stippled ceiling. I don't like these ceilings as a rule, but especially not in a kitchen where you can't wash the grease and grime off.

This is where we removed a cupboard because our wonderful 22 cu ft fridge was too high. This shot also shows how dirty the walls are - we believe they hadn't been painted since it was built in 1982.

Now we are getting into the nitty (and mostly) gritty of why we needed to do this reno. The picture above shows rot, covered up by caulking, around the sink. When we bought the place, the renter who was leaving told us she lost her key and would crawl in through the window about the sink. It looks like she pulled herself in with the taps, making them loose and allowing it to rot away. Only when we removed the cabinets (pictures to follow) did we see the horrible extent of the damage. We thought we could get by with a new tap and sink (only because I wanted a double one), but this showed us the counter needed to go too. Woosh!!!! I just felt a snowball go by!

Okay, that ends the tour. Next we get on with the actual renos. Buckle your seatbelts, it is going to be a bumpy ride!

I was listening to the radio the other morning and our station always has a question of the day. That day's was, "What was the biggest change in your life during the past decade?"

I realized I had no idea what to pick. I fell in love, got married, graduated from culinary school at 47 years old, changed from being a web designer to a caterer and cake decorator, had 3 major surgeries (including a knee replacement and a redo a month later), bought a townhouse with no mortgage, and now have my elderly father living with us. And that is just the outward stuff! I also went through a metamorphisis of attitude, emotion and faith.

So, I decided to start the new decade by blogging my life and how things can snowball so easily. The first item is our kitchen. We got a fair sum of money for Christmas and decided that we would use some of it for a new dishwasher and some new taps to replace the ones we have that are old and almost falling through the rotted counter top around them. The next several posts are going to document the fun and hard work, and snowball of other things that are ending up getting done in the process.

I will next post some pictures and document the snowballs that have been coming our way since December 25th!