Take time to Rest and Ponder

Update on Renovation:

Last night we managed to clear another 10 feet of the subfloor and made it to our bathroom doorway in the hallway. Tonight my brother-in-law, Andre, is coming over to help us in our efforts. Hopefully we will be able to get the rest of the old subfloor up and start, if not finish, laying the laminate in the hallway. Wish us luck! :)

On the less "mundane" side of things I have come to a momentous decision for the new calendar year. Starting January 5th until next Yule season I am eliminating television and movies from my life. I have decided that I need more time to meditate, read, listen to music and ponder things. Eliminating this time consumer from my options will free up a lot of time in my calendar! When next yuletide rolls around I will decide how much of my free time I will allot to this activity again.

Mike and I have also decided to implement a Sabbath again for our lives. From sundown Saturday until sundown Sunday we will not do any "work". No commercial work, unless we are traveling for business, or renovation work will be done during this time. We will spend this time in rest and leisure to recharge our batteries for the week to come.

I will keep you all posted on how I am handling these two "resolutions" throughout the coming year.

Life is good

Well today has been a good day so far... laundry continues. :) Making ribs for supper, yum!

We had a good time at my Mom-in-law's last night and I won the game of cards. Yay! Tonight we will soldier on with the flooring, hopefully getting up the last of the subfloor and possibly some of the laminate. Andre, my husband's brother, is coming over tomorrow night for supper and to help him with the flooring.

LIFE IS GOOD! :)

If at first you don't succeed, try and try again...

Well we discovered that the hallway floor was much worse than we anticipated! We had to remove all of the old tiles and then try to find the multitude of screws that was used to fix down the thin underlay plywood that was used on top of the old floor. The issue is that the screws were then covered with thin set that was not applied thinly! We discovered that they screwed and nailed down this plywood at least every four inches! The best method is to put a commercial ice scraper underneath the plywood and pop the floor up in pieces, vacuum all of the thin set "sludge" and then find the screws and take them out of the floor. It is a slow and torturous process for sure! Well tonight we are at the mom-in-law's for supper so will be taking a break from the floor. YAY! We will get back to it tomorrow night and hopefully clear the last bit and be ready to put the floor down on Wednesday evening.

Today is laundry and household chores before heading out for supper.

Continuing on...

Well I haven't posted for a few days but life has been busy! We had our first major snowfall which left us with a foot of snow within 12 hours. Winter is now here. LOL!

The floor is down in the living room and we now have just the baseboards to finish and then move onto the hallway floor. The floor in the hallway is much more involved as we have to take out the old cracked tile, plywood with a layer of thinset in order to be able to lay down the underlay to put the floor on. This we will work on this weekend.

We did manage to get the xmas tree up :)

Another day of Chaos!

Yesterday saw the majority of the "stuff" being put down in the family room that was left around the house. I have a chili in the slow cooker for supper and have one more load of laundry to do. I then will work on getting the furniture that is left in the living room over to the far side of the room so that we can start installing the floor on that half tonight, after supper.

Life is always busy with us and thankfully never boring!

Cleaning while in Chaos

So we have decided not to use the nice shiny flooring in the basement but replace the much needed flooring on the main floor level of our 1960's bungalow. We will need to replace the baseboards, etc. as well but this can be done at a minimal cost while we are installing it. We have moved our tv down into the basement family room so that the living room will be for reading, listening to music and visiting. Once more a hospitable sanctuary with not a goggle box in site. :)

Now I have to figure out how to survive my house being in total disarray while we are installing the floor. The living room must be finished by Sunday evening as we are putting up the tree! Wish us luck and I will keep you posted on the progress.

Getting ready for Yuletide

Wow hard to believe that it has been over a month since I last posted!

I am in the process of getting ready for the holiday season. We have two Yule celebrations, overnight vigils, to participate in and also have our own homestyle Yule celebration to get ready for. My mum is visiting for two weeks over Xmas so most of the prep must be done before December 22nd. Time to get busy!

This weekend we have a Christmas Concert to attend on the Friday night. Lindley, my 20 year old daughter, is competing in the Canadian Music Competitions this year. This Friday is their Xmas fund raiser concert and she is singing an aria for it. December 5th is our Daw Family Xmas get together before my mom-in-law leaves for a warmer climate. December 6th we are putting up our Xmas tree in the family room with hot chocolate and White Christmas playing in the background. Wow, it is beginning to get busy! Okay so time to knuckle down and get some stuff done.

I would like to do some Christmas baking tins for gifts and need to finish my Christmas Cards and Christmas gifts! I love this time of year! :) So gonna put some xmas music on the stereo and get my laundry in and pick out some recipes and get planning!

We had our first dusting of snow last night and it is getting me in a festive mood.