Oh, I must have said something confusing - the renovations took about two and a half months, although about two weeks of that was due to administrative delays because of a building inspector who couldn't be bothered to come out to the site and do his job.

We bought the house in mid-November, and between finding a good contractor, and him finding time in his schedule, it wasn't until late January the the renovations began, and work was finally completed in the first week of April.

Then we waited two weeks for the construction materials to outgas before starting to move in.

We are very fortunate in our friends, yes. In fact my best friend (I've known him since university) was trying to organise his schedule so he could come up to Toronto from Nova Scotia to help us move, but he just couldn't fit it in. ;-)