these are not my walls

Loyal readers (well, Erica and Jessica, anyway), I am so sorry I have not been keeping up with the reno pictures.

My job is kicking my ass - but in a good way; it's challenging, interesting stuff, and if they just had a damn job opening, it would be PERFECT!

Never fear, though, I have new pictures. Also? The renos still! aren't! finished!!!!, so technically this is still an interim report. :)

First, we have a kitchen floor!



This is from when they were first putting the floor in, so you can still see the plastic thingies keeping the tiles separated. (Because awww, aww you gotta keep 'em separated.)

Here's a close-up of the tiles:



I'm concerned that this picture just makes them look dirty, but I promise you they're real purty live and in person (in tile?)

Then, wait for it...wait for it...WE GOT APPLIANCES!



We are aware that we have purchased a honking big fridge. If we weren't already aware, the appliance delivery people made it very, very clear.

Or at least that's what I hear; I was at work. And as soon as they started complaining (apparently they had to take our front door off in order to get the fridge in!), Alex said "see ya!" and left for work himself. Ah, the joys of having a contractor to supervise the annoying shit.

Here's a closer look at the fridge (don't mind the reflection):



It's huge! It has water in the door! And a pull-out freezer on the bottom! We need to buy frozen things.

Here's a view that gives you some sense of how big that fridge is. Hey, every room needs a focal point!



Notice how good that half-wall is lookin'. :)

Of course, as soon as you start changing one thing, everything else starts to look crappy. So I convinced Alex to paint our living room and hallway:



That colour is called "Brown Bag". I don't know who names these things, but they have issues. It looked like chocolate milk going on, and now kinda looks like milky coffee. All good things in my world.

We've left our door the original pukey yellowish for now, because it looks less pukey surrounded by the brown bag. Which seems appropriate somehow.



*Ahem* don't mind the paint on the ceiling - we got white to touch that sucker right up.

Also, we got handles on our cabinets!



I took that picture today, after we had started taking stuff off our balcony and bringing it inside, which is why there's crap everywhere. We don't normally live like that. Shut up, we do not!

Here's a close-up of the handles:



Well, the top handles anyway. The bottom ones look a little different, because these handles only come in the one size, and we have a couple of wide drawers on the bottom that I wanted wider handles for. I may have gotten ones that are too wide, though, 'cause some of them look kinda funny. Ah well. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any good pictures of them; next time. :)

Now, as I mentioned earlier, Alex and I took stuff off our balcony and brought it in today. Why, you might ask, would we be doing that, when the kitchen is clearly not done? (Apparently there was a production line problem at the counter place, so ours have been delayed AGAIN...which means no sink, either, BOO. We're now hoping for Wednesday.)

Well, we had to get the balcony as clear as possible:



(actually, the bike and the chair were inside at the time)

so we could bring our couch over our balcony and into our condo.

That's right; we wrapped that sucker up in quilts and a dropcloth, carried it out onto our front lawn, tied ropes onto it and, with the help of the lovely and talented Morgan, yanked that sucker up 3 flights and into our condo.

Actually, we didn't technically have to tie any ropes on, because just as we were getting set to do just that (with the ropes that Alex and I carefully picked out at the hardware store yesterday), a man who was holding a garage sale across the street offered to lend us his ropes, which had carabiner-type hook things on the end. Which made our lives a lot easier. :)

I am very sorry to report that I do not have any pictures of this stunning endeavour. I tried to convince some friends to come over and take pictures, but they were all "busy" with their own "lives". Whatever. I was going to try and take pictures, but Alex seemed to think it wouldn't be a good idea for me to take my hands off the guide ropes to snap a few. And since I try to be guided by my husband in all things, like a good wife, I gave up the notion of documenting this image for all time.

Which is too bad, really. There I was, standing way back in the lawn, pulling the couch away from the building with all my strength. Alex and Morgan were up on the balcony, yanking the rope up hand over hand as fast as they could. And several of our neighbours were out on their balconies, cheering and offering advice. Ah, community.

It was actually pretty quick; about 30 minutes of preparation, and then I think the actual yanking up took less than a minute. Which is probably a good thing.

And now it sits in our living room, cradling my computer in its soft padded arms:



and my ass is happy to have somewhere other than that hard wooden chair to sit.

So, that's where we are now. Basically everything in our kitchen is done, except for those damn countertops and the sink/hooking up the water. Our living room and hallway are painted, and our new wardrobe is still sitting in the living room in boxes, waiting for us to divest our bedroom of the crap that's temporarily stored there.

Oh, yeah, and we bought paint for the bathroom and stuff to take off the sliding doors from the shower and re-do the floors.

Next weekend. :)