Andrew & Marnie Rolt

This weekend we had "Meyerfest" which we arrived late to because of some other happenings... Mom was singing in their annual Christmas tea and Teresa and Branko came over to help me close in the opening between the living room and 3rd bedroom.  They came a little later than planned, so I missed the tea because we weren't done the wall.  The tea started at the same time as the Meyer Christmas so we went when Marn came back from it.
Anyway, the wall is now closed in.  I now need to finish the closet -- we're closing that in as well because it's a "joined closet" with the front entrance hallway closet.  Retarded design whoever thought of that, but it's there so we're "fixing" it.  That room will not have a closet, for now anyway.  Some day we may add one in that bumps out from the wall (like the closets from the other house), but for now it's not being used other than to store crap until the rest of the house is more finished.  We need to tape and mud it and I'm thinking I'll just hire someone to do that for us.  I don't have the time to, and someone with skill could finish it in 1/4 of the time I could ever do it in.  It's a small space too, so won't be too much.

The electrician is coming on Friday (hopefully? He's away in Montreal but coming home Friday) to switch out all the light switches, convert the remaining 2-pronge outlets to 3-prong grounded and add some light fixtures to the bedrooms and pot lights in the living room.  Again, something that I could probably do, but it's just easier (and I feel safer) doing it this way.  He's newly graduated from school too, so he's cheap!

As far as flooring goes, we're still trying to find something that we both like and that won't limit our kitchen design (which we don't have, and haven't started).  We are still drawn to the darker brown floors and have really fallen for the "hand scraped" look.  We think that this will minimize seeing the scratches that Echo will put into it.  The problem with that type is it can look "country".  But done right it looks really cool too.  We're also really loving the look of a Hickory wood that's manufactured locally. It's not dark, but it's very cool and might not be the best choice for us (www.woodfloorsdirect.ca).  This look was sanded and finished with Deft oil on site.  So I don't know how durable it is or what the maintenance is like.  But it looks gorgeous! (I like the matte look).

We're hoping to make some final decisions on this in the next week.  The goal is to have the walls done (mudded and sanded, the electrical stuff done, and the floors decided on (or started??) in the next  week or 2.  We were hoping that the flooring could be finished by Christmas, but that doesn't look like it will happen knowing how things progress this time of year.
I'll have to charge up the camera's and take some pics of the progress, or lack thereof.  All of them are dead and haven't been used in weeks....