Basements and "The Walking Dead"...Oh, And Roses.

Happy Monday all! Back with more basement overhauling. This weekend, the liveable side of our basement, went from this:

 to this:

Cleaned up and cleared out? Check! And done for now.

After that, we took the dog for a nice wintry walk, added some cheery roses to our Costco cart, cooked up a delicious dinner, lit a fire, and sunk into (pardon the pun) Season 1 of The Walking Dead.

What did you get up to this weekend? Did you overhaul any rooms in your house or get lost in any zombie lore like we did?

The Moose Is Loose And Other Friday Stuff

This greeted us in the kitchen after a hurried walk with the dog (it's too cold to go out for long, so we spend more of our time taking shorter, more frequent walks). Our stuff was all wet with snow, so we hung up mitts, hats, scarves, etc. on any surface we could find. This was apparently a good spot for two gloves and a dog towel. Bonus, it looked like a moose. Startled me at first, but then I thought it was kinda' hilarious.

We also reorganized our furnace room / 'man room' last week during our last few days off for Christmas. It went from this:

to this:

It looks and smells better...? Fresher. The last of our moving boxes have been collapsed and moved out. One resin shelf unit later and a few hours spent pitching, sorting, vacuuming, and re-stacking, we were pleased as punch.

This weekend we'll be giving the liveable side of the basement the same treatment and maybe taking down our Christmas trees - they're the last vestiges of Christmas still up. Oh and more walks, so more moose, loose.

What are you up to this weekend? Any cold weather organizing going on where you are? Stay warm!

Furnace - Installed!

What a glamourous way to spend a few thousand dollars!

Regardless, we're safe and sound with a brand new high efficiency furnace. Installation went off without a hitch yesterday - even in the -28C weather!  The technicians were inside and outside, upstairs and downstairs, and at one point dropping pipes down from the roof. These guys were serious troopers.

We kept warm inside with hot soup, hot chocolate, and rooms full of candles. It got mighty chilly in here after 6 hours of installation time. And Juno was exhausted from all the coming and going of 4 workmen in the house.

One thing we didn't realize until late last night was that the hot water tank never got turned back on after the furnace installation. So we read ourselves through those instructions this morning, and are back in business.

The new furnace is so much quieter and heated the house back up pretty darn quickly after the technicians left and everything was installed and turned back on. We're happy everything worked out so smoothly. That never seemed to happen at the old house - we were always dealing with the 'unique' challenges of making modern equipment fit with the infrastructure of a 1930s build.

So, picture us doing a happy dance in our furnace room last night!

Now to pay it off...ouch.