Attention

Another week of reno joy. We now have railings (which look great, they are however unstained), a fridge, functional kitchen sink and numerous lights hooked up. So there has been a ton of progress. What is left you ask? The oven needs to hooked up; the foyer, dining room and kitchen pendant lights need to be connected, the downstairs vanity sink isn’t functional, the stair railings need to be stained and finished, various walls need to be repainted, floor moulding added and the kitchen back-splash installed. It might sound like a lot… but really once the oven is connected the kitchen should be usable! ‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel…. There is a light at the end of the tunnel…‘-Therapy? We added new light sconces in the backyard on either side of the new sliding glass door. It makes a huge difference. I think you can actually be in the backyard at night now without getting lost in the shadows. It should make BBQing at night possible too. Sorry rogues.

We have been happy with the general contractor but some of his sub-contractors not so much. Some of them have a pretty careless and sloppy attitude with how they treat our home when we aren’t there. They often leave garbage and sawdust everywhere and don’t clean it up, there has been a lot of minor damage to walls, floors etc… which is understandable to some degree but it is occurring consistently. Other things like scuff marks on ‘newly painted walls’, little holes in patterns across our new hardwood floor and the aforementioned sloppiness have soured the process to some extent. Most of the work is excellent… but the apparent careless and avoidable issues due to what we perceive to be laziness is disappointing. It seems the level of respect for the job varies dramatically from trade to trade and sub-contractor to sub-contractor. Simply put, attention to detail is often missing. Ho-hum.

I came home last week to a bit of a horror show. Unfortunately we will never know exactly what happened but something upset the dog. She was in her crate as usual, as she has been for years without any problems…. However something set her off for what must have been a violent state of panic. The result was the loss of seven teeth, a bunch of bent and bloodied bars on the kennel, and one very traumatized dog. It was very upsetting to both bdot and I. Clearly the dog had inflicted a great deal of pain upon her self… If you know dogs, you know they won’t show pain. So it is hard to access how Tanga is. She hasn’t been anything like herself since the incident. Yes, she is better, but she has become very flinchy, she was before… now it seems even worse. We can only speculate as to what set the dog off. When I came home that day there was smashed glass from a light in hall about 5m from where is was. It is possible that set her off… but I doubt it. She is trained gun dog. She has heard bangs, crashes and noise all her life. If anything they should excite her. Sigh. It is sad. She is such a calm, peaceful animal. Ironically we worried about the cats well being during the reno…. The hard part is speculating on what might have happened. The sub-contractors say they heard nothing…

Away to Ottawa for a wedding on Saturday for one of Bdot’s cousins. Should be fun.

Hockey pre-season starts Sunday!