Category: House stuff

Went to the first organizational meeting for the homeowner’s association for the development we live in. There seemed to be a pretty good turnout for this first meeting. Learned a few things about the neighbourhood too.

• There are 34 houses in the development
• The two builders that built most of the homes still own most of them and rent them out
• The big black dog with the white patch on his chest that roams the area barking and growling at everyone is apparently a stray.
• A pediatrician lives here
• Most people are upset about all the cars blocking driveways and sidewalks, just like we are
• One of the people living here is the son of one of the builders
• One couple are New Jersey transplants

Overall it seemed to be a reasonably productive meeting. Picked a few ‘volunteers’ to serve as the HOA officers and architectural review board, set up a few rules for the neighbourhood and set the HOA dues. They dealt mostly with where cars could and couldn’t park and noise regulations. I think there will end up being another meeting in a month or so to work on more organizational things.

The new chandelier is finally up in the dining area. Taking the old light down and putting this one up was actually the easy part. The hard part was hanging the several hundred crystal chains and dangly crystal bits on the darned thing.
Looks really cool when it’s all lit up though.
Next job is to put the old light up in the breakfast area so we can finally get some decent lighting there.

The parade of house upgrades continues with this new light in the front entry. An acquisition from the wife’s recent trip to NYC last month resulted in this and a matching chandelier that I’m about to put up in the dining area. It ended up being little bit on the small side, which has the wife planning another trip back to NYC to get a bigger one. When that happens, this one will probably end up in the hallway.

I have an extra light fixture. 13″ diameter, frosted globe, 2 bulbs. Anybody interested? Looks kind of like this one only flush mounted to the ceiling.

Finally the floor in the bedroom is done. Naturally of course, the wife’s visiting relatives decided to change their minds and come Monday evening instead.

Worked most of yesterday evening on it on my own (wife was busy with other things…no need to rush anymore anyway) and finished it off this morning. Put in the trim and some of the other transition strips in the rest of the house too. Just a couple more transition strips to put in (between the floor and carpet and for the bathrooms), a little bit of clean-up and we can start moving back into the bedroom!

There’s nothing like hearing that you’re going to have company in two days to make you hurry up and finish something.

Some of Yaenette’s family decided to make the trip down from NYC, so out goes the octagon we were trying to work out how to do. We’ll just have to settle for plain floors. So off to the equipment rental place I went to pick up the nailers and in the space of 4 hours we went from a bare room with a few boards racked up

to half-way finished.

I figure I should be able to get the rest of it finished tomorrow night or Saturday morning. That leaves us a few hours to take the nailers back, move everything back into the bedroom and clean the place up to make it presentable before the horde descends.