Hi and welcome back. To follow are just some more photos of just before we moved in. You will see more pictures of the kitchen including the cabinets and doors, the new shower for the downstairs bathroom and the progress for the upstairs bathroom with a new bathtub.

We also have to say a big thank you to my uncle Danny and his girlfriend Nathalie Drapeau for spending their Saturday with us painting. Nathalie has a fantastic eye for paint and colours and she was able to match up some stain to match the new finishings with the old, including the baseboards. Finally, we started the prep work in the living room for the addition of a ductless mini-split heat pump furnished and installed by Levesque and McIntyre Electric.



Rebonjour....enfin d'autres photos !  Les prochaines photos ont été prises juste avant qu'on déménage. Vous pourrez voir notre cuisine, la douche de la salle de bains en bas, notre bain dans la salle de bain en haut et tout plein de cartons sur nos planchers...

Sur une photo, on voit le plancher du salon et du couloir.  Un gros, gros merci à Nathalie Drapeau et Danny, l'oncle à Eric, d'être venus nous aider un samedi matin (de l'aide et des cafés...rien de meilleur !!!).

Well it has been a little over a week but we have some more photos to share. To bring everyone up to speed though we will have to be forthcoming and tell you all that we finally moved in going on three weeks ago!! This does not mean that we have been just sitting around looking at the walls....well we have but that is because there are still some rooms to be painted.

After moving in we were more like camping as the bathrooms were still not 100%, nor was the kitchen, or all the electrical, the afore mentioned painting and the cleaning...oh yes the cleaning. We had cardboard all over the floors for the first week as the work was still going on. The move in went very well as the weather cooperated nicely. Another big shout out to brother in law Tony and again Margot's parents for the help.

In these photos we take you through more of the staining of the floors, the finishing around the new window in the kitchen, the addition of some crown moldings in the dining room, an addition of a chandelier in the staircase and the starting of the new cabinets and island in the kitchen.



C'est vrai qu'on est un peu en retard dans les photos !  Oui, nous avons finalement déménagé...et nous commençons à s'installer petit à petit.  Les premières semaines ont été un peu difficiles : il fallait chercher pour tout...de la pâte à dent, aux ustensiles...et le travail continu toujours.  Merci encore à Tony, mon beau frère et mes parents pour l'aide...on vous apprécie beaucoup ! 

Finally...more pictures!! To be quite honest, there has been alot going on in the past few weeks to a month. Again...we are quite a bit behind with our pictures and yes again we apologize. What with work, winter, Sarah's after school activities and Eric going down to the house every night after work, the whole family going down to the house on the weekends to prime and paint...there is not much time left to keep up to the blog.
First off, a big thank you to Margot's aunt Leonie and uncle Andre for coming down to help us with the priming upstairs and a huge, huge thank you to Margot's parents for the immense amount of time and help they have given to us in seeing this project through. We decided to tackle the painting by ourselves but with the expert advice and color choices of Casa Bella Decor and Design in Campbellton.
Some things that you will see in the photos are our three carpenters; they were downsized to two shortly after the new year, the addition of a window in the kitchen, the rebuilding of the fireplace and the sanding and staining of the floors, upstairs and down. As a note, it took over a week to do the sanding and about fifteen large garbage bags of sawdust were removed from the floors....our poor power bill!!

And the work goes on...

Now that the floor is ''finished'' in the kitchen, it is time to continue the work upstairs. This means adding new drywall to make the bathroom upstairs in addition to re-figuring the bedrooms to add some closets. Meanwhile the work still advances downstairs with saving the old plaster walls and ceilings and securing the floor under the fireplace. We took apart the marble fireplace like a jigsaw puzzle in order to do the repairs with the hope of making a new frame and rebuilding it at a later date.

Take two ''great'' Danes, add Dale from Archibald & some ''birds eye'' maple...

Finally...after I stayed until midnight the night before pulling out stray nails, ripping out the old birch bark off the floor and sweeping up the century old dust and dirt, the Petersen boys returned the next morning and we were ready to lay the new flooring. First thing though, we had some repairs to do to the sub floor. There were two trap doors and several other access ''holes'' to fill in. Then we had to lay 5/16 inch presswood over the entire floor. This would even it out and to raise the new flooring to the height of the old flooring which it will join in the hallway and the dining room. The old original flooring was one inch in thickness but new flooring is only 3/4 inch.
If you remember, we intend to refinish all the floors the same. As stated in the last issue the only place that we could find unfinished flooring is at DJ Smearer Hardwood in Archibald, near Jacquet River. Dale Smearer; owner, has the most unique business for anyone that has interest in anything wood...it is kind of hard to explain. From Mercedes Benz to Fender and Gibson Guitars, from million dollar homes to ski lodges, golf resorts, etc., Dale is the man to supply you with your exotic wood needs. For our flooring...we are going with rustic ''birds eye'' maple. Once the starting point was ''mathematically'' determined by head guru Larry, we were off like a herd of turtles! I was slowing the pace by being too choosy in laying one piece to the next. The afternoon came quickly and the boys had some holiday parties (yes...we are a month behind) to attend. We were finally able to finish on Sunday; not too late. We were missing a bit of wood to actually complete the entire room but it came out looking totally awesome!! Who knew that Danish people would know so much about hardwood flooring; if anyone is in need, I hear they come pretty cheap!
I had Larry and Joe sign and date the back of one of the pieces....I wonder who will be the next person to see it.... and when....




Cette fois-ci, ça va être vraiment difficile d'écrire ma version des choses...je n'ai vraiment pas participé dans le «replaçage» des planchers...une chance !  Mais, je suis allée avec  Eric voir l'entreprise de bois DJ Smearer Hardwood à Archibald.  Incroyable !!!  Même moi, qui ne connais pas grand chose du bois (autre que ça sens bon quand on le coupe) j'étais impressionnée.  Pas nécessairement par la quantité, mais par la qualité et les différentes sortes de bois qu'on y retrouve !!  Finalement, on a opté pour de l'érable piqué dans notre cuisine.  Les gurus (les frères Petersen) et le «aimerait vraiment être guru» Eric ont travaillé très fort pour placer notre plancher de cuisine. Le résultat final est très, très beau !

Those old floors...they practically lift themselves!! Ahhhh l'histoire des planchers !!

As you may remember from some earlier posts, we had ''discovered'' the original hard wood floors hidden under various layers of plywood and flooring. Unfortunately the floor in the kitchen was just too rough to save so I decided that I would lift it and replace with some new hard wood. As our intent is to resurface all the floors and stain them, I needed to find some unfinished hard wood flooring. Thank you to Dale Smearer from DJ Smearer Inc. Hardwood from Archibald; near Jacquet River, for coming through in a huge way! Dale has the most unique business tucked away in such a remote little place...will talk more about it in the next issue.

As I have never worked in hardwood before, I called upon the expertise of two hardwood flooring gurus...Larry Petersen and his brother Joey. Joe also has a lot of experience in renovating old homes as he has tackled a similar project on a similar house just down the hill. Looking for encouragement and bravado, I placed the call. ''Would we...'' they said, ''...no problem...those old floors practically lift themselves off...'' they chimed. A Friday night was chosen, right after work, a couple of coffees from Tim's and then a few beer for later. ''The coffee won't even have time to get cold it will go that fast...'' I was told. ''We will lift the old stuff, repair what needs to be repaired (several old trap doors that led to the cellar) and give a good start to laying down the new...'' they said with conviction. ''Won't it be hard pulling up the flooring with all the old nails?'' I so innocently asked. ''Nails...nails were too expensive back then!'' I was told. ''...they might have used one nail every four or five feet...'', ''...just wait...you will see!''. 

 We finally got going around 6:00 pm. By 10:30 I told them both to go home and rest up and we will give it another go in the morning! The hard wood turned out to be one inch thick by about three inches wide and most were as long as fourteen feet long!! What about the nails you ask? There were five inch nails doubled up every half foot or so!! It was deafening from the sound of the nails being forced to leave go their century long hold. One really cool thing though, was under the flooring the floor was lined with birch bark...the original vapour barrier! I decided to hold onto the the old flooring for a little project that I will describe at a later date. I must admit though that it was a great night...we drank a few beers and had even more laughs at the situation...''...lift themselves...''alright.

Ahhh...le fameux plancher de cuisine ! On croyait (et aurait bien aimé) pouvoir sauver le plancher de bois franc dans la cuisine. Malheureusement, celui-ci était vraiment en trop mauvais état.  Eric avait donc demandé à Larry Petersen et son frère Joey (qui ont fait cela très souvent) pour l'aider à l'enlever, ça devait prendre quelques heures pas plus... Mais, plus tard dans la soirée, Sarah et moi on a été appelé en renfort : « On a besoin du café, ça va prendre plus longtemps que prévu» !  Quand on est arrivée à la maison, on pouvait entendre de dehors les clous se lamenter !!!  Et des clous....j'en avais jamais vu autant sur un même morceau de planche !!

Nous sommes encore de retour / We are back ! Again !!

We are back! Again!!

We had to take a small break for the Christmas / New Year / beginning of flu season but we have some new (old....as the work has been continuing) pictures to share with you. The following are more pictures of demolition of plaster and yes....more steaming of wall paper!! Even though the work was progressing downstairs there was still some more prep work upstairs. We want to take the large bay window bedroom and downsize it to make an upstairs bathroom and this would enable us to increase the size of the adjoining bedroom to make it a bit larger for a master bedroom. In one of the photos you will see the ''mistake'' someone made a long time ago in measuring the stud and then scribbled it out...pretty cool.



Oui, comme Eric le dit si bien : nous sommes de retour après un court repos de Noël, Nouvel An, grippe...  Le travail dans notre maison avance très, très rapidement.  Voici quelques photos qui le prouve bien !! On vous promet (avec beaucoup, beaucoup de joie dans mon coeur ) que se sont les dernières photos «d'enlèvage» de tapisserie que vous allez voir...YÉÉÉ fini la tapisserie !!!!!!!