More squirrels and more rain

We continue to plug along at the reno. They came to the conclusion on Tuesday that ceiling in the old kitchen had to come down, so started to pull the drywall and insulation, and found lots of evidence that the squirrels had been using the kitchen attic as a home and store room for quite some time.

Squirrel bits above the insulation 

Insulation, and a whole forest of leaves, down 

More leaves than insulation

There was clear evidence that the squirrels had built a winter home in the attic some time in the past, and had burrowed little tunnels through the insulation to make sleeping quarters. Hard to tell when they did this. It's unlikely all of those leaves were new. But it turns out that someone else found they were in there.

Pine martin poop. A squirrel's worst nightmare

The electrical, plumbing and heating dudes were all here Tuesday roughing stuff in.

Wires dangling. Pipes dangling. Vents dangling.

They wrapped the exterior in home wrap, and started the siding.

Not Tyvek, but close

I always used to joke that in Calgary, it was a building code that your construction project had to look like this for at least 6 months.

It's a good job they wrapped it, for on Tuesday afternoon, it socked in and started raining after lunch. At first, there was no leak to the inside. But around 5 PM, my interior water feature that first appeared on Saturday at midnight returned.

Not inconsequential drips

This time, my contractor was standing right there to see it. And we came to the conclusion that there was nothing we could do to fix it, other than get the roof put on. Maybe starting tomorrow. Maybe.

Today, the rough ins continued, and the siding (that we painted) got installed.

A lovely paint job... 

...that matches the rest of the house

We also discovered (almost by accident) that the ceiling in the kitchen was going to be two different heights, with a step change in the middle of a cabinet. Not in our personal plans, and not in the plans of our kitchen designer, but clearly visible on the architect's plans. Oops.

The location of the step change. Blue is the ceiling line

It's hard to make trusses thinner. So we now have to drop the ceiling on the left side by 3".

We also found out that the floor tile we wanted (and ordered last week) was discontinued. So we had to dash around to find new stuff. And we spent some time painting more boards, this time the facia.

More chocolate boards

We're tired of working for a living. Tomorrow, we're going to enjoy the fall weather here and go for a bike ride.