Maddy and Colin came to town this weekend with 2 of their dogs so we took it pretty easy on the reno front. Before they came though i pulled the toilet from the basement bathroom and installed it in our main bathroom because we like the basement toilet better. It is one of those dual-flush ones and does a great job. We have been having issues with our upstairs toilet for months and after trying to fix it a few times it was worse than when we started. When you poop you want it gone and even more so when you have friends coming to stay.
Sarah and I did a quick trip with Jenn to Cadeaux Bakery in the downtown eastside for the hot chocolate festival on Saturday morning. It is on Powell half a block off of Main and it looks like it is commercial french bakery with a half dozen tables. After sugaring up we walked through Gastown and i am pretty sure that was the first non-essentials shopping i have done since November. I guess it is only about 10 weeks so not really a big deal but it was nice to catch some sun and browse.
After lunch Sarah got out into the garden and i went to the dog beach with Maddy, Colin, Cinna the dachshund (miniature apparently but he is a pretty solid) and their new puppy Freya. The sun was out, the mountains were beautiful, and despite taking almost an hour to drive across the city, this was awesome. Freya is a fantastic puppy and really well behaved so it was great to see all the dogs frolicking. It was her first time seeing the ocean and pretty much her first time not in winter. Cinna is pretty mellow and is happy to dig rocks. I felt a little bad leaving Sarah to deal with plants but she loves her garden so i don’t think she missed us. We came back and ordered sushi for 6 and the dogs crashed out pretty fast.
Sunday was crepes because that is what we do for guests and Maddy has been a fan since forever. I can’t even remember when i first made crepes for the Ferguson family but it is something that has to be done whenever we see the non-celiac members of their family. When we stay with Don & Jamie i make them there too. We ate ourselves to the point of being uncomfortable (again) with a variety of sweet and savory crepes and coffee. Pretty much an ideal morning. I really miss doing crepes with Sarah and B who ate tons of lemon sugar crepes (seriously. I have yet to meet anyone who can eat as many as them and it took ages for me to scale back how many crepes i made when feeding normal people. you have no idea) before we discovered they are both celiac. We tried a handful of mixes and recipes but never found anything that was quite right.
After the kids and pups left i did a bit of bathroom demolition because i get a rash if i don’t move the project forward. I pulled a bunch of wires, took out the fan, lights, and baseboard heater. The switch box is a junction for a larger circuit so i had to sort that out and left it installed and the circuit intact with the switches out after i got the drywall off. I also cut and capped the pipes for the sink and the toilet. This is all plumbing shared with the upstairs bathroom so we had to turn the water off. I struggled with one but overall it went pretty well. I didn’t do a good job making sure the water was out of the line so it took forever to get hot enough then i ended up with a pinhole leak in my solder which was super frustrating. When plumbing goes well it seems super easy and i got overconfident with my first two going smoothly. Once i got past that unforced error, I managed to get the walls down except for part of the shower and one piece of drywall that i was just too tired to mess with. It really opened up the basement as this was the last “room” down there. The trailer is full for next weekends dump run.
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