Burn Out

Three months. That’s how long I take to burn out on a project (the house, in this case). I might’ve lasted longer if not for the blasted vapour barrier. The 6 mm sheets of plastic, that wrap the entire house in an unbroken bubble of un-weatherness, broke me. It was supposed to take one week, maybe two weekends…but that was four weeks ago. So so so long ago. It went deceptively fast at first, when my mom was here helping. The great sheets of plastic covered entire square walls quickly. But the closets, corners, ceilings and (especially) the finicky first floor ceiling where the open web joists provided foot upon foot of detailed taping and caulking were too much. When we build another house, I won’t be doing the vapour barrier. No siree.

So now we are at the end of month three of construction. We both work full time jobs, come home at night, eat supper and then head back out to the house for three hours of work (a couple nights a week). When we don’t go directly to the house, we run around paying people/ordering supplies/checking out sales. Weekends we wake up at 7 am and stay until supper time. By Easter weekend, we were desperate for a break so we said Screw It and left for New Brunswick to spend the weekend with our extended families. It was great.

Nothing has really changed at the house, so there are not cool pictures to add.Well, the basement floor was finally poured so we have been framing /insulating that. Pictures to come later.

Last Thursday a shipment of stuff for the house arrived from the States. Included were bath accessories for upstairs and down (towel rack, TP holder, etc.), faucets for kitchen/both baths/shower, all interior door handles & one hefty exterior door handle. I was adamant about getting oil rubbed bronze finishes for door handles/faucets/lighting fixtures but our budget was tight. I did find a spot online that would ship for a reasonable fee their collection of oil-rubbed bronze items. Their gimmick is that by buying all from the same place, the oil-rubbed bronze finishes will be uniform (they can vary quite a bit, even in stores). So they arrived on Thursday and I’m unhappy with some items (the lav faucets, shower faucets and exterior door handle don’t match the rest & are ugly matte black). Must now either decide to 1) keep the ugly finishes or 2) spend more money to return the items and get new ones (also from the store since they sell another similar shade called “antique copper” which may be closer to what I’m looking for and still 1/3 the price of anything we could find around here). Don’t know, need to call Mississippi tonight. The carbon footprint of this stuff off the net will effectively negate any green purchases we’ve made so far. Boo for that.

Drywall is being delivered tomorrow morning. Since it took so fracking long to do the vapour barrier, we’ve abandoned our plans to put up the drywall ourselves. It is the outermost layer visible to us/guests, so we felt okay justifying the expense. Also, I don’t think I had the mental reserve to attack the drywall ourselves. That much detail + too little experience = near breakdown. Worth 3000$ I’d say. Not to mention that fact that the people we have hired will take 2x five day weeks to complete the house so I can’t even begin to guess how long it would have taken us. Way worth it.


The end is near. Drywall, paint, floor, cabinets, plumbing – We’re in!