What a Crock: One Year, One Crockpot and One Reno Wreck

Food Mood: Sausage Corn Chowder Equals Carb Comfort Reno Ridiculouso: Well Let’s Just Throw Everything Out the Window Then! So, a recap:   Pit dug, cistern removed Block Laid.   Not squarely as it turns out.   “It’s really hard to get things square!” Says Bull Talker Contractor.   Stage Carpenter Hubby looks at him blankly and elects not to speak.   It’s mostly square.   Sort of.       Gravel put in and tamped, floor joists laid on dining room and back entry From the beginning we have had our Architect on this project, because, well, it’s kinda’ big.   Generally speaking the way it works with architects is that they give you drawings, you give them to your contractor and then he/she follows them, for the most part, with the occasional adjustment for onsite conditions. Unless, of course, you’re Bull Talker and then you use them more as a jumping off point, an inspiration, a muse as it were. Because the new addition attaches to our kitchen, we gutted our kitchen a

Food Mood: Sweet Salads, no crockpot needed today Reno Ridiculouso: Early Door Issues, Solving the Problems Oh the doors. Consider yourself forewarned that this innocuous beginning masks a much deeper, darker, door journey.   The doors that threatened to send us to counselling.    In the beginning there was a plan.   The plan had French doors coming off the dining room, facing north.   The dining room connected interiorly to the back entry via a step down and in the back entry area there was another single back exterior door facing west .   A bit busy to say the least, but this is the footprint that we had to work with without wrecking ours and our neighbours' much defended parking spots. WAAAAAAY back in May when these plans were drawn both of those doors were at grade, out a wee four inch step to the ground.   And then city of Toronto inspectors got their hands on our dining room plans and we had to add a whole other course of stone.   Leaving our four inch

Food Mood: optimistic and adventurous Reno Ridiculouso: Early Warning Bells, Hubby to the rescue! One early June day I come home to the Hubby, Bull Talker Contractor and two young guys who remain unnamed for the duration of their stay (short, let me tell ya) down in a pit in our backyard laying the cement block necessary for our dining room foundation.   The rather large hole had been satisfactorily dug the week before, as previously mentioned. I’ve had a pretty good day, things were going well at work, the sun was shining and I’d had a lovely walk at lunch.   So I wander in my happy haze back the driveway between the two houses to see how things are going.   And find The Hubby, who clearly indicated that he was going to let Bull Talker Contractor do the job and stay out of the way, in the pit, in his good jeans, covered in mortar, earnestly and intensely explaining something to THE UNNAMED YOUNG MEN.   They are literally covered in mortar, my garden hose and wheelbarr