Monday, February 11, 2013

Van - brakes and head gasket

The brake warning light came on in the van. When we had it checked out last week it was leaks in the front cylinders and the self-adjusting calipers in the back. All told, it worked out to almost $800 in repairs. We had it done and they threw in an oil change since the oil was low and dirty (odd since I had just had the oil changed in October).

When we got the van back it didn’t have any heat. Well, it did have enough heat to eventually defrost the front window but it just felt like cold air blowing. So we took it back on Saturday to have them check it out. It turns out that the antifreeze was low about 4 litres. They called and asked if we wanted to do a pressure test to see where it was leaking. As much as we feared the worst, we went ahead with it and it came back that the head gasket was leaking. Repairs would total almost two and a half grand. With the age of the vehicle, we had to really think about it for a few days but decided to go ahead with it.

I dropped the van off on Monday and we just got it back today.  In the mean time, I've been driving a Dodge Grand Caravan.  It's not bad as a choice if we can't get a Windstar/Freestar as a newer vehicle.  We were thinking about getting a newer vehicle anyways so this allows us a bit more time to look.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Renovations - kitchen and bathroom flooring

Last week Ray’s Flooring changed the flooring in the bathroom and kitchen. We spent almost three hours on Sunday moving everything out of the two rooms. Then we got a call from the installers telling us that it would take two days instead of the one we had thought. I was already off that week so it wasn’t as much of an inconvenience as it might have been.


They came out on Monday and moved the fridge and stove into the living room – not quite where we had planned - so it was a little more cozy for that night. Originally they were going to put a skim coat over the old flooring and then the new flooring over top of that but the old flooring was worse off than they had thought – loose in spots, as well as the holes. So they pulled up the old flooring, removed the baseboards, patched the gaps, and put down two coats of thinset on the Monday.

On Tuesday they added a skim coat of thinset, put in the flooring, swapped out the toilet, put back the baseboards, and ran the flooring down the stairs. The vents Shan had picked up matched the edging on the stairs nicely. They put the stove and fridge back and were done.

We loaded back most of the rest of the stuff. We picked up a pantry unit from Canadian Tire to replace the old shelf unit we were using and the boy and I put it together. Once the roof is fixed, we’ll still need to remove the wallpaper, repaint, and replace the lights.