A Rain of Frogs

You just don’t.

Delta Centre-ville, Montreal.

Yes, that’s a functioning sink among the gloom and the mess over there.

And the cooktop. Next, we install the oven, and all the appliances are in. Then some trim-work, and we’re done. The gap to the left of the oven is some custom cabinetry I have to engage in, as the space above the fridge.

There’s light at the end of this tunnel!

Forget Shadowfax, last night, the king of all steeds was my trusty Bixi bike!

I’ve been in Montreal most of this week for work, along with one of my developers, Matt, and we decided to rent bikes yesterday and see a bit more of the city.

The first step was to walk about 100 feet North of our hotel to the Bixi bike rack. These are scattered all across the city, and are really easy to use. Insert credit card, print ticket with bike code on it (or, for the environmentally anal, simply memorize it on screen instead), then choose a bike, enter code, and go. Yes, it really was that easy.

So, we got our bikes, and rode through the city. In many places, Montreal is much more bike friendly than Toronto, and what’s more, the drivers actually seem to understand that they share the road with cyclists. At no time did I feel threatened or aggressed by drivers. What a refreshing change.

The bikes are… okay. They’re relatively heavy, though not unbearably so, and they’ve got three-speed hub shifters which are pretty well geared, though not enough for the ride up the mountain we took. The brakes were my biggest concern. The drum brakes sometimes felt like they were connected to something else, a different bike, maybe. Cos sometimes I’d squeeze those levers, and get nothing back. Aside from that, they were great, if a little nerdy looking.

As I mentioned, we rode around town for a while, then up to the top of the mountain, where one is treated to an amazing view of the city.

Then we had a relatively hairy ride back down the mountain (brakes, remember?) and parked the bikes back where we got them. We could have returned them to any Bixi rack in the city, but we figured we were going for dinner near the hotel anyway, so why not just put them back where we got them.

All in all, my Bixi experience was incredibly positive. Next time Sarah comes to Montreal with me, we’re definitely going to take advantage of the system. I hope something similar makes it to Toronto!

We have lower cabinets installed.

There’s still a couple more to be installed on the oven side, but these two, plus the space for the fridge, are in. We’ll move the fridge into that space very soon, and slowly start reclaiming our sunroom, which we’ve been using as a temporary kitchen.

The countertop is not yet installed, but we put it on top the cabinets both to gain a work surface and to see what it would look like.

It’s really starting to look like a kitchen!

Allow me to present this series of photographs.

Yes, that is our slate kitchen floor. Last night, my father (that’s him in the pictures. I wasn’t in ‘em cos I was taking ‘em!) and I installed slate tiles of two different sizes into the kitchen. Sarah did all the tile cutting – a messy and loud job. I am sure the neighbours loved us.

The pictures have made the walls look far more peach than they are.

Nonetheless, the floor is now down. Once the thinset has set, we will seal the slate tiles, then grout, then seal again. After that, the lower cabinets go in and the appliances can be installed!

Doesn’t the floor look amazing?