Four Square Nightmare?

 So I am not sure if you can see my chicken scratch but these are the dimensions of my kitchen. This is just going to be photos of the kitchen. I have the appliances as you know and am thinking of doing a black iron kitchen. We were jacked again today and I will take photos of that tomorrow. Door 1 Our basement door since the jacking.... The pine floor with its many layers of paint. I am not sure it can be saved. My husband wants to pull it. After the first jacking it seemed to be much better but now it has rolls.  More floor shots....Notice how easy it is to take a chunk out of this floor... And yet more floor photos- this was an area of a lot of mouse dirt so I think this was their attempt to plug in the holes.  The soil stack and water pipes to the upstairs bathroom. The soil stack is going to be replaced. Too much jury rigging.  I have 4 plugs in this kitchen. One on each wall. And a stove plug. I am considering not closing up this wall as I get nice light in the...

 When I woke up this morning, I just washed my hair. No full shower, just a hang your head over the tub, wash and rinse. Got dressed and put on a load of laundry and sat down to have my breakfast. Husband came in and said, "I am having a shower." Oh I said, "Let me turn off the washing machine." The machine hadn't started properly and since I have a new washing machine, I wasn't panic stricken. I turned it off and kept doing laundry.  So I trundle upstairs with the laundry and my husband comes in less than two minutes later. "Wow! That was a fast shower!" Chris stomps out of the room and says, "I haven't had one. We have no water." But, but, I just washed my hair?! This is why the washing machine wasn't working. No water.  Now this is a newly done well. In October. We paid almost  $10000 to have it refurbished and have a new pump, new UV system- the works!  The electrical panel says everything is fine- nothing has tripped. All of ...

 On Wednesday November 22nd, we had our second jacking. Very quick this time. The problem is: My newel post is loose now The cracks in the walls are bigger and there are more of them Somethings that seemed to rise up have sunk down The kitchen floor was solid but is now spongy again My bedroom door won't close and nor does most of the doors in my house now.  Sigh. Maybe my husband was right and we should have just stopped after the first day.  Next jacking is Friday morning. I will be doing so much wall repair..... I think I will end up repairing every wall in the house.

 Yes, I broke down and bought my appliances. Why? Well my husband pointed out it would be easier to design the kitchen around existing appliances. Hmm well, that's smart I thought. And he is the one designing and building the kitchen. Yes, you read that right! And two, he said, I've read blogs where people had to cut back at the end of their renovations on buying appliances because they had run out of money.  That's why I bought my appliances today. Given the steady flow of cash out the door on renovating this house, best to buy good, low water use, energy star appliances now, while I still have cash! My salesperson was excellent. We both like cooking so he was a whizz at showing me all the latest stuff on stoves and fridges. No, I did not want an induction stove top ( I like my pots.) No, I did not want to be able to look into my refrigerator. (Looks expensive to fix.) Yes he could get me the same fridge without the see through door. And so it went.  Besides, between now...

Sad to say it has been that type of weekend. Attempted Critter Control. Again.  We did get some solid outside work done, taking down some trees that we know have grown into the leach field ( I am not ready to talk about the septic situation yet, it is just too painful) and pruning trees that were not pruned this year (and perhaps the year before) but as usual it is the critter control that consumes most of our weekends.  My son Peter, who knows I panic anytime he is near something sharp (There are reasons for this). The caption to go with it? "Look! Mom's worst nightmare!" He is his father's son.  Trying to get an exterminator in is not as easy as it seems. I call, leave a message and nothing. Not being a family that's good at waiting around for things to happen we've been DIYing it. Traps mostly. But this weekend Chris and Peter went out and started closing up the holes in the extension and I went shopping. Yup! Went for the poison.  W...

While a lot of our renovations. some already done, have been on the outside of the house, most of the interior stuff is on hold until the floors are level. This includes replacing the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom, removing old wallpaper, etc. All my cooking is microwave cooking right now. We are eating a lot of take out and our BBQ is getting a workout. Dishes are a challenge as well as I have no kitchen sink so it is paper plates, bowls and bamboo cutlery.  The centre of this house has sunk about three inches. Doorways are crooked, doors don't close, walls and ceilings are cracked and the floors are spongy. You can't walk anywhere without the floors groaning. The living room, pre lift. We had a structural engineer the day after we closed to give us an assessment on October 4. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad. There is one section of the house that has a 27 foot span that is unsupported. Stairs were cut into the basement about 80 years ago or so. Before the only entra...

Our oil tank has been condemned. We have a third of a tank of oil left and now we have to buy a furnace, pronto, because we live in Canada and it is cold here.  There is no natural gas in our neighbourhood, Hydro One takes weeks to disconnect your power so we can't upgrade our 100Amp panel to a 200Amp to support a new electric furnace before winter comes, geothermal is an option but can't get it installed quickly enough (and it is expensive!) and while we could replace our oil tank (we have discussed this quite a lot because it is the cheapest option) why would we? Our furnace, while in still good working order, is 20 years old.  We've decided to put in propane with an arctic heat pump. $24000. We do get a rebate for the heat pump from the government! Plus because our home is so energy inefficient we qualify for the 0% loan for retrofitting our house. Propane is actually considered greener than natural gas which I found out today. It is a by product ...