One, twins. Anyone out there who is a parent, take the total effort you put into child rearing and multiply by... probably three, one baby is awake, the other is asleep. Or even worse, both want something and are screaming about it, at the same time. (And we're lucky, the boys are actually pretty good, and usually its easy to tell what they are fussing about.)
Two, the move. With twins in the picture we had to move, we needed a much larger home. Our plan was always to move, after the second child was born, we thought there would be a couple years between the children, not a couple minutes.
Three, the renovations. It turns out, to get a large enough home that we will be able to live in for, hopefully the next thirty years, and get it near Dawn's family (Mississauga, suburban Toronto - which is considerably more bicycle friendly than Toronto by the way, and although has comparable population density to Toronto is not nearly as pleasant to walk in -lack of street life-, which is a shame) we had to buy a fixer-upper.
So far our contractor has gutted and pretty much rebuilt (just needs to hang a mirror) our main bath. Some friends and I installed hardwood flooring in the living room/dining room, office (third bedroom), upstairs hall. We had a carpeting company install broadloom in the rec room, the stairs and the bedrooms. The contractor ripped up both the ceramic tile and the linoleum under the ceramic in the kitchen then he put in beautiful new 12x24" porcelain. My HVAC guy installed a gas line to the backyard (barbecue) and a gas line to the kitchen (new range). I replaced the very dated hotwater tank with a tankless system (a rental, which is the norm, at least in the Greater Toronto Area). All new appliances, so far the washer and dryer are connected in the basement, as is the upright freezer in the basement. The other appliances are in boxes waiting for the kitchen reno to be completed. Oh yes some friends and I gutted the basement, found a lot of alarming things in the walls, and then I had basement sprayfoamed. I painted the concrete floor of the basement. (I still need -well this goes to the contractor- to put up 1/2" drywall, as code requires a 15 minute fire barrier between sprayfoam and the house.) I had the old fuse box replaced with a modern 100 amp electrical panel, finding an electrician willing to do residential work was really hard. A friend helped me to run a bunch of new circuits, actually just this evening (Saturday night) I cut about 20 more holes in the basement ceiling joists for the new circuit that will provide power to the fridge (as a fridge should always have it's own dedicated 15amp.)
Now the house originally had a disgusting electric range. (The house had been a rental property, according to my new neighbour for at least the last 16 years.) As I mentioned, we are installing a gas range. Now my HVAC guy has already run the gas to the kitchen but I still need power for a gas range. Remember, yes a gas range gets it's heat by burning natural gas, but it still needs to run the clock, the oven light, the fan (convection oven) and most critically, the igniters. So if you are redoing a kitchen and want gas, which is way better than electric and I would argue, if properly vented, much safer (you know when gas is hot, electric coils can be hot for a long time and still appear stone cold.) Anyway if you want gas, or if you want the option to use gas later, you need not just the proper gas line, but also a 15amp receptacle. Well I did a search all over the Internet and everywhere I looked people said they ran a new circuit when they upgraded from electric to gas. Not necessary, a friend in Milton told he he got something at Home Cheapo, he also suggested both Blows and Blona (for those of you who haven't suffered enough in the home improvement stores, Home Cheapo = Home Depot, Blows = Lowes, Blona = Rona) should have this dandy adapter/step down transformer.
Well I will not go into a rant about the complete and utter imbecile I dealt with first at Blows, who first tried to sell me a 240 volt, 40amp receptacle. When I finally persuaded the Blows imbecile that what he was showing me was pretty close to the exact opposite of what I wanted and when he understood what I was after he said he'd never heard of what I was asking for. So I drove to my buddy's place, in Milton, looked at his shiny almost brand new, inspire green with envy, Wolf range (it's really sexy) and saw the adapter. Next I went to Home Cheapo in Milton, described what I was looking for to the guy there and he pulled something off the shelf.
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