Monica Stanciu - Staged 2 Sell Solutions, Markham, ON

Residents from all Cornell Communities are encouraged to attend the Cornell Rate Payers Association Annual General Meeting.

When: Tuesday October 20 - 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Where: Cornell Village Public School Library
186 Country Glen Road

This is an important annual meeting at which the CRPA Board positions will be elected. If you are interested in joining the CRPA Board of Directors please contact us by email at: info@mycornell.ca. In order to vote at this annual meeting you must be a CRPA member in good standing. Memberships will be available before the meeting or you can see below for more inormation.

Get to know your CRPA Board
Meet your neighbours
Find out what's going on in Cornell

Note: Representatives from York Regional Police will be on hand to answer any questions or to hear of your concerns.


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Your community needs your help. Please support the CRPA

The Cornell Rate Payers Association (CRPA) is a volunteer, non-profit group of community residents, who's goal is to ensure the interests of our community are well represented when issues arise at the various levels of government. In addition to this important work, the CRPA also strives to enhance the experience of living in Cornell by organizing and helping support local community initiatives.
The CRPA membership fee is just $5 per household per year.

Among other things, this fee goes towards making sure that you, the Association members, are kept informed of happenings in and around our community. You will receive updates, and sometimes opportunities to voice your opinions on Plans from the Town of Markham, plans from Developers and Builders, updates from York Regional Police and more. It also supports the maintenance and updating of www.mycornell.ca.

By being a CRPA member, you will help ensure that these events continue: Annual Cornell Community Picnic, Cornell Golf Tournament, Community Garage Sale, Christmas Caroling, Skating Rink, Family Day Event, and more.

If you haven't joined or renewed this year, please do so today! Go to http://www.mycornell.ca/join/join.html for ways to join the CRPA.

Looks like it is still on schedule for 2011.

http://www.markham.ca/markham/ccbs/indexfile/Agendas/2009/General/gc0906 22/Fire%20Vehicles%20Apparatus.htm

In the 2007 capital budget Council approved the acquisition of one fire pumper apparatus including equipment (project #7748 -$650,000) and one fire aerial apparatus including equipment (project # 7757 - $1,100,000). Due to the 300 day build cycle, there is an immediate requirement to move forward with the purchase of a pumper apparatus for the Cathedral station. Instead of purchasing an aerial apparatus, the recommendation is to purchase the second pumper apparatus and fund it from project # 7757 at a maximum of $650,000 and the remaining funds be returned to the original funding source.

Although the Cornell station pumper apparatus will not be delivered until the projected station opening in 2011, to take advantage of the current price of the chassis, it is recommended the order coincide with the Cathedral pumper apparatus purchase.

The Hospital Site plan was approved last week. Looks like the hospital expansion plans are moving quicker then expected and will be under construction at the same time as the community centre.

http://www.markham.ca/markham/ccbs/indexfile/Agendas/2009/Development%20 Services/pl090505/Markham%20Stouffville%20Hospital%20Site%20Plan%20Endorsement.htm

The proposed expansion includes a four storey, 34,490 m² (371,247 ft²) addition to the southwest of the existing hospital building; renovations to the existing hospital building, which will provide a physical link to the proposed East Markham Community Centre & Library (EMCC&L); proposed future locations for additional medical office buildings fronting Church Street (which will be subject to a separate site plan application); and a proposed location for a district energy building near the proposed EMCC&L. The proposed site plan also includes 920 additional surface parking spaces.

The proposed expansion is expected to be phased over the next six years as follows:

Phase 1 - Enabling works including site preparation, development of a construction staging area on the existing parking lot, construction of the parking lots north of Church Street, construction of municipal services external to the Hospital site, and construction of the new access from 9th Line (Spring 2009 – Fall 2009)
Phase 2 – Construction of the new building, expansion of the parking lots and main entrance (Fall 2009 – Spring 2013)
Phase 3 – Renovations to the existing hospital building (Spring 2013 – Fall 2014)
Phase 4 and 5 – Construction of the additional parking lots in the southern portion of the site (Summer 2014 and Summer 2015)



Site Drawing

http://www.markham.ca/markham/ccbs/indexfile/Agendas/2009/Development%20 Services/pl090505/site%20hospital.PDF

“If you think you can or if you think you can’t, you are right” - I heard these words from Christine Rae, the founder and president of Certified Staging Professionals CSP, entrepreneur, mother, business woman, wife...and a lot of abbreviations that I have no idea what they mean... how much wisdom and motivation in just few ordinary words.

As the last week full of events fast approached, I was oscillating between excitement, fear and doubt that I will be able to survive until this Sunday. But as every day in the life of a stager is full of challenges of every kind, looking back I can say that it wasn’t even that hard.

Hit the nail in the head!

Everything started on Wednesday, April 22 when a group of CSP stagers participated in a Charity Build for the Habitat for Humanity. As my company, Staged 2 Sell Solutions donates a portion of each staging project to the Habitat, I considered that participating in the build will do more to the cause than just handing my cheques.

I never wore a hard hat or safety boots before. I am not that kind of girl. And actually never built a home...errr....a wall even, so when I arrived at the site and got the safety talk, I was still doubting my inner building skills. It was then when I realized that some protective gloves and a warmer jacket would’ve come handy. Don’t get me started with the weather forecast network:) So here I am frozen to death and we haven’t even started the build. We got the safety talk, quality talk and fun talk, but when you are freezing, you can't actually think that fun, safety and quality work can go hand in hand. Never mind. A cute and obscenely young guy named Rob was “allocated” to us as the crew leader and things kind of got a little warmer:) The gloves from Michelle Finnamore helped too. Thanks Michelle!

When I decided to do the build, I was convinced that nobody in their right mind will ask the inexperienced volunteers to actually build, but use them for painting, cleaning or hm...even decorating these new houses, right? WRONG! Our house had only partial walls on the first floor and our group built the entrance wall. Yes, I know, you will think is not much, this is what I thought too, but actually was a LOT. We barely finished by the end of the day, as a matter of fact. Do you know how much math, measuring, cutting and nails are required to just make the proper “hole” for the door or window? Maybe not so many nails if you hammered them right:) Guilty as charged...but they were stubborn long nails, not the monkey tails I use in my staging projects:)

Anyway, the day started right, we were asked to find a stud and Michelle pointed at Rob, our cute civil engineer. His face was red, but hey, he will have to learn the construction talk, right? I met Michelle few times and I read her blogs, but being the hermit type, it takes some time to open up. This is when I knew she’s game.

And the built went on. And the rain came on. And I was still on the site hammering those nasty nails. I could barely feel my fingers and my right arm, and it wasn’t even 10 am. Then a nature call brought me in a little piece of heaven: a clean, fancy port-a-potty that had not only a running water sink, but it was HEATED. Now that I found my oasis, I have to admit my guilt of taking few unnecessary trips there just to warm up:) The rain stopped, and then it came again. The temperature hiked from 8 to 10 degrees. Still on the site hammering the nails. By mid day I found my “niche” and was crowned the “Queen of Nails”. It was Rob who showed me the right technique when using the hammer, he took me out of my comfort zone and thaught me how to use various electrical cutting tools. I was always terrified of these machines. I get the "bag of ice with bloody fingers" image every time I see someone using them. Plus I have a husband, why bother? But I risked my cute manicured fingers that day and I did it just to prove myself that I can do it. It wasn’t that bad after all. Was scary, very scary, though. Then went back to may hammer and nails. By the end of the day I was so experienced working with my hammer that I barely had a miss. I could sense the envy in my group, oh well... they had to suck it up. It is so good to be a Queen!

By the end of the day, a new, extremely good looking wall, actually the best wall ever being built, was sitting straight up in front of us. Was I proud? You bet I was! Will I do it again? You bet I will!

There are news that the Habitat for Humanity will open one of their stores in my Cornell Village. I am already involved with their cause, can’t wait to be able to do more. I wake up every morning being thankful for having such a wonderful life: a great family, a roof over my head, food on my table and the most fantastic job of selling dreams. Habitat for Humanity make dreams possible. They had me at “Hello”...

I don’t have the pictures with our group and our wall, I will post them as soon as I get them. Some from my group are Active Rainers.

We were hired for a staging consultation by one of our Realtor™ partner. The house had been previously listed in the fall of 2008 with a different agent, but it had no showings. Now the homeowner was ready to list the house with our Realtor™ who understood the need of a professional staging consultation.

The original homeowner lived in this house for more than 40 years, he passed away and now his widow was ready to move on with her life, joining her family in another province . At the first glance we noticed the amount of personal items that were collected through years and a red carpet that was covering hardwood floors in the principal rooms. The kitchen was painted in blue. The house had 4 bedrooms, but one was used as an office and another one as a hobby room.

The agent told us that the homeowner is not willing to spend any money to get the house ready for sale, as she already replaced some light fixtures. Also that there will be no way to convince her to refinish the floor as the red carpet was in very good condition and was installed recently.

We did a thorough consultation and then presented the homeowner the staging report, the list of top priorities and an action plan to get at least these priorities done.

After

For more photos, please click here: