Another busy weekend in the Harkness-Uszkalo household... This weekend, we insulated the attic, started the upstairs bathroom renovation and replaced the exterior doors.

On Friday night, we insulated our attic. I'd actually intended to only start the project that night, and finish it on the Saturday morning... but the insulating went so quickly that we were able to get it done within a couple of hours (of hot, itchy, low-ceilinged, insulation fun). It's actually quite amazing that we were able to get it done so quickly, considering we had to crouch the entire time and make our way through a 2' x 4' passage to get to the other side of the attic. Kirsten was a superstar with the vapour barrier while I stuffed insulation between the rafters. Hopefully this will help some of the heatloss we've been having over the last couple of months. It definitely feels warmer in the mornings.

On Saturday, we ran around to get plywood and etc for the built-in cabinets. In the morning, I took the pup for a walk, and stopped by the neighbourhood florist (don't you have a neighbourhood florist?) to get Kirsten some flowers for Valentine's Day.

I had to leave Cayce outside, of course, which she wasn't too thrilled about. In fact, she spent the entire time barking at me (since she could look through the glass and see me). When I got outside, she stood there shaking for a moment, then exploded in a fury of dog happiness that I'd come back.

The original plan was to spend Saturday night working on built-in cabinets in the upstairs bathroom. The bathroom upstairs is pretty small -- it's 69" x 104" (including the space the shower is going to inhabit) and has a sloped roof. Storage is at a premium in that space. Because our attic (located conveniently beside the bathroom) is so large, we're able to build some shelving into the wall -- two cabinets 28" wide and 16" deep.

We didn't get around to doing it on Saturday night, however; for some reason I was in a really awful mood and knew that if I started cutting things down I was going to have some sort of embolism.

Instead, we put the cabinets off until the Sunday morning, when I was in a much better mood. They were relatively easy to make, and look pretty damned good if I do say so myself. We anchored one into place, and left the other one loose so that the electricians coming tomorrow can get in to install some bathroom and range hood fans.

We finished up the cabinets around 3:30 and left the house. Oh, it was glorious! We first had coffee with Christie, then went to see The Animation Show at the Metro with Pam & Igor. We had a really great time -- if the animation show is in your local art theatre, go see it -- it's extremely enjoyable.

Monday was a holiday here in Alberta (it's heterosexual, intact, western-european family day) - but not for us intrepid home-owners!

You might remember last week, when I talked about having to build my own door jamb... well, this week I did it all over again, because I didn't do nearly as good a job as I thought I had. All week, the door taunted me by letting a steady stream of cold air into the house. So on Monday, I was determined to rehang the door properly. It took about 4 hours to rebuild the jamb by hand, position the door inside it, and chisel out space for the hinges, but I finally ended up with a door that fits, looks good, and keeps the cold out.

Once the front door was in, we took out the old back door and replaced it with the prehung door we had already purchased.... and finished that job in under an hour.

To summarize:

• Time spent replacing front door, which we had to build our own jamb for: 12 hours.


• Time spent replacing back door, which was prehung: 2 hours.

This week is pretty much focused on getting edits done on the first chapters of my book... the deadline's getting closer and closer every day.

Photos to be uploaded some time later.