Making & Keeping Promises

When we first scoped out the house a year ago, one of the first things we promised each other is that if we bought this house, the basement would be done, and notably, the scary bathroom would be replaced. We're still not sure how they considered this a '2 bathroom' house - the only one willing to use that bathroom was the cat (see litter box paraphernalia below right). Grant did add a bit of flair to the bathroom, with some lovely landscape paintings and our brother-in-law's highschool photo - just to dress things up a little.

So, after a few months of settling in, we decided not to get too comfortable before our first big project. The design to-do list:

* Lower the whole basement. Some parts are lower than others, and you can walk without hitting your head on the main beam.

* Insulate the walls. Currently, you can put your hand up and feel the outside draft coming straight in.

* Replace the existing hot-water tank rental with a tankless water heater. Will give us some more space and cut down on our energy consumption.

* Get a new furnace. Might as well, since the existing one is getting on up there and we can take advantage of the last days of the federal home energy audit program.

* Re-inforce many of the ceiling joists (several are cracked or not even installed properly. This would explain the crooked floors on the mail floor).

* Rebuild the stairs.

* Move the laundry room to the basement (currently taking up one of the bedrooms upstairs)

* Rebuild a new bathroom (with shower!)

* Build a storage room big enough for all our stuff needs to be built (we don't have a garage)

* Design a nice cozy living space for hanging out and watching TV.

So, here are some of the 'before' shots to give you a bit of flavour....

Entrance from the kitchen.

Walls need a bit of work

View diagonally across the basement to the bathroom.

The opposite diagonal view across
 from the bathroom.

View from the bottom of the stairs.

Back corner opposite the bathroom.

Bathroom Face-Lift

When we first moved in, the teeny 8' x 6' bathroom was high on the list of rooms to update. I say 'update' vs. 'reno' because we're not at the point where we're bringing in the sledgehammer and tearing down walls (sledgehammer = reno).


This is the only respectable bathroom in the house. The other bathroom is in the basement and is quite scary. It has been deemed 'Finnegan's bathroom' and has been outfitted with his litter box. Finally our cat has some privacy, a substantial upgrade from his previous bathroom which had been located under my desk in our apartment.....


So, we have 1 teeny bathroom that needed some work. The main thing we had to work with was the very blue tub, toilet and sink - these are staying until we have the time and money to reno. These pieces are actually kinda cool - the sink is especially neat albeit very tiny. The sink size offsets 'big blue' which is an exceptional throne, made way before the concept of 'water efficiency' had been considered.

Perhaps most striking was the 'stone' tile flooring. Don't be fooled by the 'realness' of the stone - it's actually a vinyl tile!  I'm a nature lover, but this is ridiculous. It's very random and doesn't go with anything except the brick wall outside the window.  It's gotta go.


I learned from our neighbours and the previous owner that the wall tiles used to be pink with a grey border.  I guess they had all the tiles painted black and white in an effort to update the bathroom. I didn't know you could paint over tile, but I'm ever so glad they did because it looks great, and the tiles are in good condition.


The other consideration is the lack of natural light in the bathroom. Grant and I were spoiled in our last bathroom (apartment) because we had a huge window that allowed tonnes of light in. I'm including a picture of that bathroom below because it was the nicest apartment bathroom I've ever known (and I kind of miss it). I'm totally a white bathroom person - nothings says clean and sanitary like white.

So maybe I won't have my dream bathroom any time soon. But that's ok. It's fun to see what one can do with a small, dark bathroom with a huge blue toilet, without 'renovating'.


First, we attacked the floor. We found a very inexpensive black and white vinyl tile to overlay on top of the stone. I would have preferred a smaller pattern, but this is all we could find. What an instant difference!

Next was the paint. The walls were painted an off-white, which when juxtaposed against the white tile made it look yellowish. I covered all the walls and ceiling in a white paint to match the tile. In small rooms I always paint the ceiling the same colour as the walls. This makes the room feel bigger.  But the room was looking a little too white, so to pack some punch, I painted the window frame and sill black. The window had to be scraped first, which revealed a rainbow of previous colours, including purple, pink, grey and tan. I love discovering the colour-history of rooms.

Finnegan 'helping' with the painting.

Add a new light, a cotton shower curtain cover, a new temporary (aka. cheap) tub facet (the old was very cool but leaked incessantly), some artwork and a stain-glassed window frame and we've got an updated bathroom!

Calling in the Troops

I took a week (almost) off work to make some headway on some of the house projects that had been nipping at my heels. These are the projects that every time I walk by, I can hear a little voice is saying, "paint me", "trim me", "cut me down". Ok, I made up the last one - like any tree/shrub would actually volunteer to be cut down.


Is this the way life will be from now on? Taking 'vacation' to work on the house?  Little voices coming from all nooks and crannies? Oh dear....


My parents came up for a few days to help me get some 'labour intensive' projects done.  The list included:

• removing the big dead vine/bush in the backyard corner
• trimming low-hanging/dead tree branches
• taking out the cherry tree (diseased and unsightly)
• power-washing the front porch
• painting as many rooms as possible

It was a productive few days, that's for sure. Instead of describing it via text, I'll use photos to do the talking.


Outside work.....

Cutting down the cherry tree in the front yard. You can tell who the 'site supervisor' is.

Finnegan saying good bye to the Cherry Tree. 

                  

And now for inside the house....

Above and below: Prep and painting the living room.

Getting the bedroom ready.... Good bye beige!

When everything is done, I'll do some before and afters.... after all, that's the most exciting part, and as HGTV has mastered, the only reason people stick around to watch 30 minutes of renovation.

Green Dreams - Part I

My favourite thing about living in a house (as I believe I have mentioned earlier) is having a frontyard AND a backyard.  This is a significant improvement from the apartment I spent the last 6 years in.


For years, I've been cutting out pictures of yards and gardens that I love.  Now it's time to make that dream a reality.  First things first though, need some garden tools. It was such an exciting day when Grant and I went to the garden store to buy garden tools - 31 years old and never owned a rake!  It was a dreamy day!!  


We had made a list, but that list flew out the window once I was allowed to go into Lee Valley. (Prior, I did not allow myself to go in there - I heard I would love it too much, which would cause serious storage problems for an apartment girl).   The rumours were correct - Lee Valley was made for me. My new favourite place.  Bought some hand clippers,  hand saw and a manual push lawnmower - had to seriously restrain myself. Everything else we got at RONA, thanks to a lovely giftcard from E & B.


Up to that point, our yard looked like a total jungle - grass was long, trees were overgrown and things were of a general un-tidiness. So, Grant was eager to get our new lawnmower into action. Here he is posing for me (isn't there some kind of right-of-passage for a man with a lawnmower? I had to document this).


From the picture on the left, it doesn't really look like we need a lawnmower (at least  on that half of the front yard - note the lack of grass).  But the other half of the yard needed a haircut.


Here are a few shots of the virgin backyard - untouched by anyone up to this point (except for that pile of twigs and leaves that I made with my NEW RAKE). A good reference point for things to come....

Making Messes

So, we purchased an old house - just over 100 years old. We wanted something with character, something we could fix up and put our own stamp on. We also wanted to live in the city, which means 'completely renovated' + 'character' + 'nice neighbourhood' wasn't in the financial cards.


The first renovation came early.  Our house was largely (despite the home inspection report) knob and tube wiring. We needed to bring the electrical to code so we could be insured.  Some of the wiring on the main floor was borderline fine (ie. grounded but not wired correctly), but almost all of the second floor was not.  It's easy to see why - you actually need to open up the walls to re-wire the second floor. Minor reno, right?

Some of the 'apparently fine' wiring

in the kitchen. You can see the knob

and tube (black wiring) that was capped

and cut out.

If anyone has ever dealt with plaster walls, they'll know what a total mess cutting through plaster is.  Not one room in our house was unscathed (no worries - Montauk was safely hiding under its plastic sheet).  In addition, we had little bits of plaster rubbing on the previously buffed wooden floors - made some nice scratches for which I gave Grant a lot of heck for.


It took Grant about 3-4 weeks of 'after work' work to get things all straightened out and properly installed. In the meantime, all my plans for indoor beautification was basically put on hold. I was relegated to outdoor work, which is not really a bad thing. (More on that to come...)

Above: Tools everywhere!!


Left: Cutting holes in the curve of the ceiling
(yikes! How will we patch that up!!). Note the
few 'tester' holes to find the wires.  It's was bit
of a guessing game to find where the wires
were running.  No rhyme or reason.

Holes where Grant was cutting above - filled 
and sanded!

Once the wiring was complete and to code, Grant had to patch up all the holes. Not an easy job considering no wall in this house is straight, and he'd never done this before. The holes in the curve of the ceiling were the most difficult (right). However, the sanding of the plaster patches was the worst!! Dust everywhere!! (As an aside, we had a 3 month old baby coming to stay for the weekend with his parents two days after the photos below were taken. I was freaking out a little bit - too dusty for newborn babies!!!!).

We tried to minimize the spread of dust in rooms with small holes by taping Grant into a confined space while sanding (kind of looks like an alien in a pod). Although you can't tell from the photo, he IS wearing a safety mask and googles (Grant is very into safety). It worked fairly well, as you can tell from the cleanliness of the floors.


It took a good 2 days afterwords to clean all the plaster dust that had spread to every crevice.  Some good relationship building moments there. Made it clean in time for Henry (baby).


Overall, rewiring a house is not the most fun project a new homeowner can undertake.  I was so glad this 'minor project' was over.  It now means that our house is more electrically safe than before, and more importantly, that I can start painting, and start making this place look fabulous.

Montauk.

Some of you who know me well are aware of the fact that I've been drooling over Montauk sofas for a while (about 3 years).  I  had it planned out for years - I was going to get the 'Julian' sofa in the 1015 Natural Linen fabric.  The people at the Montauk store knew me well, that "girl who's gonna buy a sofa, just once she gets a house".  Grant and I would go and visit our future sofa every time we were in that part of town.


We saved for this expense for a long time. I'm not a new furniture kind of person - 99% of the things we have are either a hand-me down (beautiful hand-me-downs, though) or a reclaimed/salvaged pieces from the Salvation Army. We also have a few road-side picks (props to Idalia). But this was one thing I was not willing to compromise on. I was going to have a Montauk.


So, even before the ink had dried on the real-estate papers, we headed to Montauk to order our sofa.  It was one of those surreal days - days I only dreamt about. We marched in, went to the counter and very matter-of-factly said, "I'll take 1 of those and a little friend to go along" (the little friend was a single 'Wingback' chair).


(Actually, it didn't happen exactly like that.... we played the whole "we're unsure if we're going to get anything..." customer,  hummed and hawed. Can't show your hand...even though they kinda knew me by name by then.)


Grant, being the salesman he is, got us a sweet deal on the 2, which is just a reminder that everything is negotiable.  A lot negotiable. Even if they say it isn't.

A few weeks later, the truck rolled up. Again, a surreal moment. However, they forgot to deliver the single wingback chair, so that was going to come later.  But my dream sofa was here.


It was well covered in plastic. Since Grant was making an ultimate mess in the house with the re-wiring (more on that in another blog), I thought it best to leave it covered until the mess was done.


But I couldn't wait that long. On moving day, we removed the plastic.  I needed to lay upon the lap of luxury that is Montauk..... (sigh)  ;)


Dream come true.

March, April and May showers bring me flowers (and dessert)

My favourite thing about being a homeowner is having a yard.... ok, having laundry, a dishwasher and a 6 burner stove is great too.... but none compare to the yard.  


When we first saw the place in March, the yard was brown and dead - not so impressive. By the time the house became 'ours' there were ferns popping out everywhere and oodles of plants to identify. This is heaven for a girl that spend an entire summer wandering around the city of Hamilton with a waterbottle and her GPS unit, identifying and recording the health and status city trees while getting chased off front lawns by unruly dogs and/or Italian grandmothers. 


However, I wholeheartedly admit that the state of my front yard is a little embarrassing. A huge black umbrella of a Crimson King Norway Maple (hence the lack of grass anywhere in the front), a half dead cherry tree, 2 random rhubarb shrubs right smack in the middle of our entranceway (more on that later), and one very unknown tree/shrub.  The only redeeming quality of the front yard is the lovely White Pine right against the porch. The Smoke Bush is ok too. 


I have big plans for you, front yard. And it will involve a chain saw. But I thought it would probably not be the best thing to move in and serenade my neighbours with the ring of a chainsaw the very first day.... gives the wrong impression... That day is coming though.


In the meantime, I made a pie out of the rhubarb (might as well eat it away). A first on 2 fronts: 
1) the first pie I ever made; 
2) the first time I harvested something 'from the land' (from 'my' land). 


I feel a bit like a farmer. It feels good.