Category — home

Jeff has been far too busy actually doing the landscaping to write about it, so I thought I’d step up. Jeff has made leaps and bounds. Since the last post he has put underground sprinklers in the front yard, laid sod, finished the rock wall in the backyard and built steps to the backyard. Not sure what I’ve been up to….

I did help with the sod though. Actually, the whole neighbourhood pitched in for the sod laying. Since it’s a new community and everybody has laid sod lately, everyone’s an expert. I was happy just puttering away with my snippers to cut it. I had 3 different people come up to me and say “did you know that a steak knife works way better for that?” After the third comment I did switch. They apparently are an expert and if you ever lay sod, don’t be a moron – use a steak knife. It really does work.

Here are the pictures to tell the landscaping story:

Rock delivery

Digging trenches for sprinklers

Laying the pipe and digging trenches

875 square feet of sod

Lindsay laying sod - slow and steady wins the race

Jeff hard at work laying sod

All done - we have a front lawn!

I think I’ll save the pictures of the back for the next post. Plus, the intermission is over and the Canucks need my support!

This has been a crazy week. We put our house up on MLS  and before we could even write a blog about it going on the market, it’s been sold!

It got listed on Wednesday at 11am and by noon we had 5 showings booked. I was off to Edmonton for work so Jeff stayed at work until 9pm since showings were going on and he couldn’t go home. We had 5 or 6 showings on Thursday, including 2 repeat visits. I arrived back from Edm at 7pm and all I wanted to do was go home, but couldn’t. Friday morning we got our first offer and countered. Five more showings on Friday. On Friday night we waited patiently while two competing offers were being submitted. That definitely worked to our advantage and we accepted one of the offers (slightly above the asking price) on Friday evening. Our house was officially conditionally sold today at 11:22am. Their possession date is February 15th so looks like things will be moving a bit faster than we originally thought. We even pushed back from their original possession date of Feb. 1st.

We made a bet after meeting our realtor for the first time that whoever could pick the date closest to the conditionally sold date. The winner gets dinner cooked for them in the new house. I picked January 21st and Jeff picked January 19th….Jeff, how do you like your steak?

Clearly we were both surprised when it sold this fast.

We are now off to Kamloops for a ski vacation at Sun Peaks and will be stopping in Kelowna to look at houses. At first we thought we would be just looking but I guess now we can actually buy something!

After working day in and day out over the holidays, we have now completely finished paint and we have finished the drywall in the basement. We had water in our basement a couple of times over the years whenever it rained a ton. Turns out it was due to the grade of our yard running towards the house. When we put our sprinklers in this spring we were able to change the grade and it stopped the leakage. Unfortunately this meant replacing some of the drywall downstairs. We got a quote for $700 and decided that we should try and do it ourselves and learn about drywall and save a few bucks. How hard could it be really?….turns out it was pretty fun but super dusty and tricky to get it perfect. Kudos to professional drywallers – it’s super tough to get it all smooth and not bubbly.

When we tore down the wall (I wanted to use a sledgehammer but Jeff suggested doing it the proper (boring) way using a utility knife), we luckily discovered that only the bottom of each drywall sheet was damaged by water and that the frame and insulation were dry and clean. Phewf. Framing and insulating would have been a bit more challenging. I’ll note that all of our know-how was coming from a very helpful chap named Jim from Home Depot and a Home Depot do it yourself book. We bought all the supplies they suggested and $6 worth of scrap drywall. I may have mis-measured a section and messed up some sheets and ran out of drywall. Jill and Mark happened to have the perfect sized replacement piece and saved us – thanks guys!

Jeff was a pro-star. He was super fast and was the foreman on the project and answered all my questions even though it was the blind leading the blind. I was VERY slow and meticulous. If I got paid by the job I might be in the poor house.

I was so proud of us. It looks awesome. Funny that we finished and had a look around at the rest of the basement and was able to notice major flaws in somebody else’s work that we never noticed before. All in all I think we made the right choice. It took us a few days to do and cost $150 in tools.

Jeff put the icing on the cake by laying anti-fatigue flooring to warm up the basement and make it look more cozy. I just wish we did this years ago.

Here are some pics:

Screwed up the dry wall and taped;)

Supervision was in full force as usual

Finished product

Check out the smooth wall