And more bricks

The brickwork is moving quickly, and looks great. Every day, more bricks. It's a wonderful thing. Our house's first residents are doing excellent quality control from above (right photo).

The guys have been hard at work on the inside, too, building the landing for our stairs. Bricks have pushed me to the edge of excitement; next week, stairs might put me in a coma.

More bricks

More progress was made today on our brickwork, which was very exciting to see. The little flecks of grey on the bricks and on the doorframe are just mortar and will come off. Looking good!

Have a seat

While we don't plan to replace all of our furniture when we move, we decided that we wanted to buy a new couch. Seven stores later, we decided on this one. It was on sale, which meant we had to move more quickly than we normally would like to on such a big purchase. Tonight, we took the big leap and bought it. I have dreamed of a sectional as long as I knew such things existed, and this one is perfect. We love the colour, it's leather (read: durable and easy to clean) and it even has a queen-sized sofa bed in it. Perfect! It will be ready for delivery to our new place when we are.

Brickwork begins

The bricklayer began laying our bricks today, and we love how they look so far. Actual bricks! On our house! I can hardly stand it.

One brick at a time

People say, "What is the sense of our small effort?" They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. - Dorothy Day

Two bricks made their way onto our front wall today. They're not attached yet, but will be soon. The concrete mixer is now on-site to mix the mortar, and the bricks are ready to go.

The house is becoming a hive of activity these days. Our meter has been installed, and the electrician is starting tomorrow. If everything goes as planned, we should have hydro running to the house by the end of this week. This is great news for our builder, who can then stop renting the generator for the crew's tools, and it's better for the environment, which isn't crazy about emissions from generators. Our mechanical system will be installed this week too, in preparation for our concrete floors next week. Once the electrical is in, the floor is insulated and the piping for the radiant heating is laid, the yogurt-like DaroTopp light-weight concrete floor will be poured.

Sista on tha ladda

This is my lovely sister, Lynn, braving the ladder to the third floor. My mom and sister came over on Saturday to check the place out. My mom even made it up the ladder to the second floor -- brave ladies!

First stairs

We were really happy to see the first stairs to our house put in today. These stairs descend from the second-floor deck to the ground (they don't quite make it to the ground yet, but they will).

We spent a lot of time shopping over the weekend. We looked for bendable, rectangular trim, a product we've decided is purely mythical. We also looked for a replacement sink and tub/shower unit for our first-floor bathroom, since the ones our gracious friends in Kingston gave us won't fit with the curved wall and piping, respectively. (We will still find a home for them in the basement apartment, but we were really hoping to use them ourselves.) We also checked out some couches at a couple of stores and think we might have found the one we've been looking for. It's a very nice sectional with a sofa bed. We were worried it would be too big for the living room, but we measured the space and it looks like it might work out. We're planning on visiting at least one more store before we decide.

Finally, we bought our interior doors yesterday. They are all clear pine doors with five rectangular "lights" (glass panes) of translucent glass. They will be stained to coordinate with the other woods in the house. We expect to receive them in about four to six weeks.