The guy came out the other day to measure up my granite worktops. He can fit them the first week in December, but that is when hubby’s daughter and friend come over, so we have put off the fitting until they leave, so it is being fitted the week before Christmas.
A couple of nights ago we had another power outage for 1.5 hours from about 8.15pm. No idea why as there was no adverse weather or anything – the mind boggles!
Although we have been here for over four months and have had a phone line for about 3.5 months we had not had a bill from Bell Canada. Yesterday I called them as I suspected that we should have had the quarterly bill by now.
It turns out that we should actually have had a bill every month and had actually missed three. They looked into the account and saw that the address had been taken down wrong and that was why we had not received any bills.
They are now sending out the bills again so we can see them and I paid the balance, over $200 whilst on the phone. We have also been put on another tariff, which will hopefully reduce our future costs. We knew the initial bills would be high, as we had to use the phone a lot when we first got here, it should even out now.
Talking of phones, I called my aunt and uncle in Spain yesterday (using Skype – much cheaper!) They were sitting out on the patio in mid 20C temps! I don’t think they can understand why we want to live in Canada, but we could not stand to have really hot weather all the time, it would send us mad and I would end up resembling a lobster.
Also, Spain is really backward with certain things, they have lived there for almost two years and still do not have a home address and have to use a post office box, neither do they have a phone line, they have to use cells all the time.
Busy week this week, we had a big bin delivered to take away all the crap we had accumulated since we arrived. We had so many cardboard boxes from stuff we had bought we could have started our own factory. Although you can recycle them, you have to tie them into specific size bundles and quite frankly we couldn’t be bothered, so it all went in the bin. We also got rid of all the old decking that had been around the pool and lots of other rubbish. We think we will need another once the basement is complete.
We had our oil tank refilled (it was about half full) and it cost us $188, which we didn’t think was too bad. We will keep an eye on it to see how long it lasts and how much we pay over the winter.
I also decided that I would like to replace our laminate kitchen worktops for granite. We have such a lovely kitchen now – well I think so! So we thought it would do it justice to put granite in place.
This morning I drove to Kingston to see a guy I had been speaking to on the phone who gave me the best vibes after phoning several and getting really annoyed with Home Depot.
Home Depot advertises prices starting at $52 sq ft fully installed. The one I chose turned out to be nearly a $100 sq ft, not a problem – my choice. However it turns out that if I order it, they come out to measure up (at a cost of $100 which is refunded if you go ahead) and all existing countertops have to be removed first. Then you have to go to Toronto to choose your slab, then it takes them 8 weeks to fit. You once again have to remove the counter tops yourself. But that is not all. The edging you choose is also at an additional cost as is the sink cutout. They will not fit the sink, even if you buy it from them and will not plum. Total cost for my choice was nearly $7k. Goodbye home Depot.
The guy I went to see this morning quoted for fully installed, so I went over there to choose my granite – oh boy, what a choice. They had over 300 samples of colour alone. Eventually they let me take a few samples home so I could try them in situ. So I drove home with half a dozen granite samples.
When I got home, hubby and I laid them out in the kitchen and decided which to buy. Unfortunately, the one I really liked was the dearest – obviously, but it made it worse because that was the one hubby like best too.
When I looked at my email, the guy had sent me a message, saying that he could offer me a better rate on the one we liked as his stockist was closing down and needed to get rid of stock. So, in the end we are getting a much nicer granite than we thought we could afford for just over $5,300k, fully installed, with edging included and they fit the sink. Marvelous.
He is coming out in the next few days to measure up and will install in the next couple of weeks. Extra marvelous!
