Brian's 42nd Birthday

It was a birthday weekend, and a Mothers Day weekend! And a lets keep working on the house weekend.

Using our "school bins" to see what we'd like to have under the tv - the painted door to the new room is back from the shop! All ready to be hung!

We moved in one of the couches from the other livingroom - still hadn't bought or decided on furniture yet, other than what we already owned for it (2 grey leather rocker recliners). The tan futon is from Kenna's room (for the tv up there).

We found a large carpet at Home Emporium on sale for $120 - which is a great deal as far as area rugs go - wow they can be so pricey! We bought it probably in December-ish, and were just storing it until it was needed. It's perfect for the space. Yay. It's hard to buy thing on a whim (when you don't have paint samples or furniture colours with you), especially when they are final sale. But my "true colour" didn't fail me this time, lol. I was pretty sure it would be spot on, and it was. Whew.

For Brian's birthday I decided to get him a wood fire pizza oven. I had heard about them around Christmas, and with the new deck and the outdoor living area that would be available to us I thought it would be a good time. I started to research them - Going between the Ooni and the Gozney brands. I wanted it to be a complete surprise for him, because I knew he'd love it, and didn't know about them.

Well, thank to Google searches and the way everything is integrated these days, probs in April sometime (after I had already purchased one for him), he says, "It's so random, I keep getting these pizza oven advertisements all over my facebook" Insert guilty face from Darla. Hmmm. I wonder why?! Lol. Oops.

I had decided to purchase the Gozney Roccbox over the Ooni because of size/portability. And then also, the propane gas attachment for the Ooni was on backorder, and that sealed the deal for me. So I bought him the Roccbox, with the gas attachment and the woodfire attachment. 

The oven gets up to 950 degrees in about 20 mins on the gas attachment - and cooks a pizza in about 90 seconds. And its AMAZING. Truly. We are all over the moon impressed with this thing. Using the woodfire attachment takes longer to get to temp and it over all a little more "work" - it's cool but more of an "experience" and I knew that if we wanted to use it often and quickly (which we do), we needed the faster (perhaps less authentic) gas option. If you have time to slowly rise the temp and nurse it along a little (like a smoker, sort of), then the wood attachment is the one!

We ate pizza on the deck for Brian's birthday!

I found this on Facebook Marketplace for $90. It's the PERFECT size, and we are loving it for this space.

Note - remodels are MESSY. The main house was falling apart holding tools, lumber etc, during this remodel. We spent months stepping over boxes of flooring, piles of ceiling wood, and walking around barrel trusses. It's not glamourous, but - worth it in the end. Take note of the obvious messes in this little video. I love how she says super-prise instead of surprise.
 
Happy Birthday to Brian! We sure do love life with you, and are grateful to spend another year with YOU! 💕

Mostly Almost Totally Done...Mostly

These pics were taken on May 8th & 9th - things really did feel like they were starting to finish up quickly! The weather was nice now, and the motivation was to get done so we'd have a weekend day free to go boating!

I milk painted the brick - I'll have to look back and see if I posted the how to's - and post if not. Just for future reference. I did it once before, on the other side of the brick in the livingroom, and both times it was quick, easy, and turned out SO exactly how I wanted it to! We bought a massive TV (77" 😱) on a January Sale - President's Day I think? Why to they discount stuff for Presidents? Lol. It was right before the Superbowl too, and tv's tend to go on sale then - so we bought it in Jan, but requested a mid March delivery, because we thought we'd be ready for it mid-March. Well. That didn't happen. We were ready for it mid-May. The tv is really thin, but the box it came in literally took up half of our hallway. We were very glad to get it out of the hall and up on the wall for sure after two months of walking around it.

Milk painted and ready to go in March. Milk painting is messy so it was quick and easy to get it done before the floor was done.

It's an impressive TV, for sure. Brian wanted as big of a tv as could fit in the space, and he got his wish;-) It makes our previously thought to be large 54" tv look small 😂

It's a big room with very high ceilings, and he didn't want it to look dwarfed. No worries there, haha! It fits the space really well, and it's definitely our fave tv now. It's amazing how tv's seem to breed?...We had only 1 tv in the whole house for 15 years! And then when we got the 54" inch one a few years back, it came with a free smaller one. Maybe it's about 40". Then Grandma and Grandpa gave us another one of about a similar size. So we put one in the play room and one in our room. And with the addition of the big tv, we now have FOUR! The play room is now Kennedy's bedroom, but we left it up on the condition that when we have guests over etc, the kids are allowed to play video games or watch shows on it. She's ok with that, so she's got a tv:-)

Vale was here!

Always lining things up!

The flooring is going down!! That went FAST - I went to get an update pic and he was entirely done, I think he started around 7am, and was done by noon. 

This ceiling. I think we all have a bit of trauma associated with it, LOL. But man, it is truly GORGEOUS.

Board by board. It felt like we might die trying on this one;-)

The fan! I love it so much!

And BooM! Just like that, and seemingly all in one day - well, it was 2 days...we had a tv, floors, and lights!

But we still weren't done that ceiling. Whew! We kept plugging away at it, a few boards per night.

 

Videos of Deck & Room

Here's a little video post of a mash up of deck videos I took, during various stages of the process. Not necessarily posted in order. 


Grey used to line up all the scribby bits like this too. She was occupied for hours just collecting trash and lining it up to build things:-)

Just Decking In...

This feels like a photo dump. But I guess it's really more of a post creation dump, lol. I know they aren't really that interesting to most. But I feel like we're gonna look back on it and really want to remember. The kids helped build our shed in June 2020, that was their very first intro to helping Brian and what the various tools did, and how to work them etc. They got to flex those muscles and learn more during the new room/siding/decking process for sure. I wanted to make sure their "first project efforts" were recorded:-)

We didn't put up the last top line of siding, so we could paint our vinyl wrap from beige/tan to white, and also so we could nail up plastic to protect the siding from the staining over spray. 

Thankfully with the paint sprayer, it made quick work of the staining process, as we did multiple coats.

Here you can really see it taking shape, and spot our shed off behind the house:-)

Staining - this was just one coat - I think the underside only got 1 coat or so. We did the top side with I think 3 coats, I can't quite remember now. The colour darkened with each coat.

 

Brooks' 14th Birthday

Well, the boy knows what he likes...This is about the 5th year in a row that he has requested Tiramisu;-)

We had a fun work hard/play hard kind of weekend...his birthday was on a Sunday, so we did a few special things to make it fun on the Saturday/Sunday...including everyone getting their own little ice creams!

We took the boat out, although it was chilly water, so we didn't swim, just tubing. We took a splash of water, and this fish washed up onto the boat! LOL, and EW!

Brian just chilling out in the gorgeous weather!

Relaxin'

Birthday cereal choice, yet again:-)

He started studying for his boat license prior to his 14th bday, so that he could get it right away after meeting the minimum age requirement. He finished a few days after his birthday, so now Brian, Kenna & Brooks are all official. I still have yet to get mine. I need to fit it into my schedule, but alas...😜

 

New Room - Slow and Steady

Why do we do this to ourselves?!? With deck progress happening, not wanting to lose momentum, Brian was motivated to keep working on the new room on his break times - the evenings. With all the new trusses up (that he made by hand), and the HVAC mini split system finally working -we had a few difficulties there with the wrong hoses supplied to us from the supplier etc - it took about 3 weeks of back and forth until everything was correct and it was functioning. We couldn't "finish" the space without it being conditioned...it was now time for the dry wall and paint - which had to happen before the ceiling could go up.

We did knockdown on the walls, as that's what we have in our other main living area - it's the easiest way to cover uneven finishes - which was definitely what was the case with the main living area remodel. Not necessarily the case for this room - except that Brian could do it himself, whereas we'd want to hire out a "smooth finish" wall, as that is not Brian's forte and he always sees all the imperfections.

Holding the guard meant I got "knocked down" too, LOL

The following pics are slightly out of order, but I think you can figure out the progression;-) This ceiling is oak tongue and groove flooring, and we are using the back side of it, due to the bend we needed to achieve with the barrel shape. This was left over from a job, where this was put on the ceiling of a restaurant down town - but it wasn't arched, it was just flat. So we added quite the layer of complication there. And also - most of us are scared of heights. And this is a very tall ceiling (18ft I think!)

It was very VERY .V.E.R.Y.  hard to get this ceiling up. Partially it was sub-par help (were short, and the aforementioned heights & ladders thing), and partially it was just really really difficult. It was all the leftover stuff. Slightly less straight and all that. At the end of it all, I think we had 2 boards left! We had exactly enough! (Good counting and measuring, Brian!)

Walls are looking good!

The flagship center piece is up! Little did we know how hard it would be to complete this gorgeous ceiling!