Starting to get together

After almost 4 months of renovation, things start to get together. The first areas that have been completed are living and dinning rooms. The existing hardwood floor and carpet was replaced by Macadamia maple hardwood floor purchased from Homedepot. The "default" baseboard was replaced by 5 and 1/2" high 3/4" thick pine baseboard with shoe mouldings. I also painted 5 layers of varnish on top of the hardwood floor... just don't ask why so many layers... 

To be Continue...

Today is another busy day. Early morning, I started to varnish the hall way. As usual, the first step was vacuuming and cleaning, then mask taping the connecting areas.  Hall way is a tricky place, many corners with a curved stair case. The way I pull and push the applicator was very awkward... Because our stair lands onto the hall way, so when the varnish was still wet, Bo and I had to jump from the last step to the living room. Although it was fund, we were glad it was NOT a long distance, otherwise, we would be stuck in either first or second floor until the paint dries. Now I will wait until tomorrow for the second coat.

In the afternoon, I cut down another tree in the backyard. I felt like one of those bads guys in "The lord of the ring" when I was cutting the tree. After all, it takes years to grow a tree but minutes to cut it down. When the tree was down, I didn't feel too excited.

The next task was to clean the yard, back and front. Bo finally came to help me. Leaves, broken branches, weeds... the whole package. When the job was done, we collected 4 bags of stuff.

And the last job was to fertilize with one of those Scott brand spreaders.

What a busy day I had...

While more and more leaves grow, I can hardly see Kanata Lakes golf course anymore.

Thanks for reading. The end.

What I have been doing for the past a couple of months...

Some people who know me through my work on Flickr, Facebook, Dpreview, Comefromchina,etc. or even some of my friends and colleagues were asking me what you have been doing for the past a couple months? No new photos, no posts on blog or forum, no nothing.... as if I was vanished from the earth.

Then what was I doing ? I would say I spend 90% of the time out of work for one task, renovation. Since I moved into a 14 year old house, quite a lot of updates needed to be done. Not the house is going to fall apart, it's its style needs to be fit my taste. And I had quite a lot of ideas. They were quite straight forward at the beginning, such as painting kitchen cabinets, changing granite, installing spot light, hardwood, ceramic, etc. However, when it started, one thing led to another, millions of small tasks needed to be done. 

It has been 4 months since my friends and I started the renovation and it's still on-going. My optimistic estimation is to have all things completed (I call them phase 1 and 2) in 1 month. Just in time to enjoy the summer and pick up my photography again.

There are some photos I took during the reno.

1. The construction team consists the father and son. They were working hard. A little break enjoying fruit plate made by Bo.

2. Vision and the planning. Always need experienced person to give you ideas.

3. Sometimes the work went on until 11:00pm. We were all tired...

4. And of course, it was a MESS !

Meanwhile, Bo wouldn't miss the opportunity to utilize another 10% of my time. I was "assigned" the job of being photographer for baptism at Bo's church on Easter Sunday.

 

One of my closest friend, James Yu, finally decided to follow Mr. Christ.

At last, I was doing some moonlighting. Taking some real estate shots for a Chinese folk lives in Barhaven.

Thanks for watching. The End.