And The Walls Came Tumbling Down!

Do you remember when I mentioned a little while ago that we were planning on making the closet in the blue room/nursery bigger?  Well guess what I came home to on Tuesday?

A giant mess! I was torn between exasperation about the mess, and excitement that the closet is now bigger. There was this giant, naily, dusty mess in the hall and bedroom - I almost broke my neck climbing over it to get this picture haha - plus drywall dust foot prints all over the nice new kitchen floor. It was a little overwhelming, but the early stages of a demo project usually are.
    Jason did clean up his mess after he got home - he took the windows out, and threw everything out the gaping window less holes into the backyard haha. He had to build a header on the left hand side, and he put up some drywall and attempted to slap some tape & mud up. Now it's looking a little less overwhelming, and a little more like a closet.

I say he attempted to mud, because the mud was like soup. Because our air conditioner decided to crap out during the most humid and rainy weeks our basement was super damp and warm, apparently the bucket 'o' mud thought it was its job to act as a dehumidifier and suck up all the moisture in the air. So Jason was essentially trying to make the tape stay up with mushroom soup. Now that the weather has decided to back away a bit from Hades, and be a bit more reasonable, we're hoping the mud will thicken back up a bit, making like a bit easier.
   We still have to close off the old opening of the linen closet from the hallway, as well as a number of patches here and there, but Jason is motoring right along, and he tells me I should be able to paint by this weekend. We knew we wanted a light, warmer toned gray, something subtle so we could have fun with accents and accessories. We landed on "Gentle Rain" by Behr.

I really like the swatch, so I'm hoping it translates well to the walls. We need to get the paint up asap, so we can put the floor down and have it actually look like a bedroom for our final visit. (two weeks, yikes)

The Kitchen Files: Rise up, Rise up

Oh rise and show your power! Remember that song? By Parachute Club they're Canadian eh, and they won a Juno for that amazing song, true story...I looked it up!
  We took a cue from the good ol' club of parachute fans and made our cabinets rise up! Quite literally. We built bases for them (and by we, I totally mean Jason did all the work, and I just laughed at him when he flubbed some cuts) I did throw in my two cents a few times and save him so extra work, so YAY ME! I actually came home from work to find him just finishing up the big corner one. Let me tell you, there's nothing sexier than coming home to see your man on his knees with hard wood. (Oh man, did I just go there?!) Whoops, almost forgot my mother reads this...sorry, mom but I had too...was just set up to perfectly not to.
   ANYWHOOOO...we built simple frames for the base cabinets to be screwed into out of 2x6's because we want to make them 38" high, instead of the standard 36".

Then after we had them in place, we shimmed, shimmed, shimmed. Because the floor was SO out. More warped than Jase's sense of humour. After the third one we were asking ourselves why we didn't just put self-leveler down when we thought about it. Then we remembered it's expensive and we're cheap frugal.

The magic, floating shelf. Why yes, that is double shimmed, and no, there seemed like there wasn't any base actually touching the floor. But Jason secured that bad boy real good - we performed the jump and shimmy test, and it passed.

Then we got to screwing in the cabinets. (Not even going to go there) Again we performed the hang test, and she was good and secure. 

While Jason started on the pantry I had SO much fun cutting away the copious amount of shims we used. Good times. Then in the heat of the moment, I got all excited and did this...

Just for fun, to get a bit of an idea of what it'd look like. That's the cork tile flooring. Once they're actually glued down, and butted up all snug like, and all sealed up the lines between them should be less noticeable. But they look good, they're a bit darker in person, can't wait till they're in either.

Kai was being general contractor, and did what any good boss would do, and cut out early.

Lights out, dead dog pose. Apparently so tired she couldn't even make it to her canteen hehe.

So now the kitchen is marginally more functional. At least I can now store a few things in there, and can actually good. There have been some mighty tasty meals comin' out of there since the stove got hooked up. Maybe that's why Jason's been putting in a bit more work, now that I am actually feeding him.

And just for fun, another gratuitous picture of a sleeping Kai. Mainly just because her sleeping positions both astound us and invoke a strong urge to laugh out loud, so they are worth sharing.

Kitchen Files: Butt Candy

No, not in the candy G-string type of butt candy...that Jason threatened to wear to my ABC birthday party - which he thankfully did NOT, nobody needed to see his man bits dangling through the gaps, it was bad enough we all to bear witness to Brad's cheecks. I'm talking about "eye candy" for your tush haha.

 Since we’ve finished slapping up some walls, and the cabinets are coming together (albeit rather slowly), it’s time to start thinking about all the actual creation we have to do. There are a number of features in the kitchen we are choosing to DIY to save money; such as the concrete countertop – which we will hopefully be starting around the beginning of March. We are planning on building the table for the kitchen, along with the built in storage benches, and quite possibly stools for the peninsula. So naturally, I’ve been searching for any sort of inspiration we can use as a jumping off point for our own construction.

Here’s a reminder of what the layout of the kitchen will look like, and where the benches and table will go. The benches will be about 6ft long along the long wall, and about 4ft long on the other to take them to about the window. And we’re hoping to be able to get as much storage as possible from them. We don’t really need the storage right now, but we’re positive we will down the road, and there’s really no such thing as too much storage right? We’ve been debating whether we want a flip top, or drawers, or if we want back and seat cushions, or just pillows, or nothing at all. Do we want a rectangle table, or an oval? Yeesh, I guess I somehow just imagined it miraculously looking perfectly put together after we built the frames for them haha. So I pulled from a few of my favourites from Pinterest to hopefully come up with something that will best suit us, as well as our space.

I'm drawn to the fun colour combinations of this...and it definitely helps with my "pillows are better" argument. I also like the drawer idea, although I'm not a fan of the look of those knobs, I think they'd bug your legs too.

Here's another take on the drawer idea. I really like this idea...much more than the drawer from the front idea - this way you don't have to slide the table out of the way - or crawl under it. Plus we have the room for this type of style. I feel as though the more I look at the benches, the more I want cusions haha...it just seems sort of cold without any butt cushion. But the drawers with their clever dividers really strike a chord with me.

I absolutely love the look of this bench. I love the simplicity of the cushions, the back one that goes all the way to the floor, elongating the line of the bench. I'm also fond of the open end...a great place to store cookbooks perhaps??? It would work best with the flip top type of storage access.

Another fun drawer option, with pillows...I'd like to order a view like that please!

A little too formal for our tastes and style, although the table is right up my ally.

I love the look of this table. The clean lines, and low profile of it are ideal for letting a fun bench show through, and isn't bulky or heave if or when you'd have to pull it away to gain access to the storage compartments.

So there's our inspiration for the corner of our room. We're still trying to work out everything that goes with it...but we both agree that the table in the last picture will be waht we go with, a) becuase it's a sort of timeless look too it, and b) it really won't be hard to build. In terms of the benches we're rather torn on the style. I'm pro drawer from the side (like the second picture) but Jason doesn't really like that idea, not that he'd give another suggestion or anything haha. A flip top style might be easier to build, but in the long run, and in terms of functionality, I think a drawer would be best. And I am leaning more towards the third picture for cushion configuration. Hopefully we can start building very soon! 

Cha Cha Cha Changes

We didn't even technically own the house for 8 hours before we had the kitchen completely demoed. Seven men, wielding sledge hammers, and bats, and sawzalls who are itching to break things, make short work of something a insignificant of a wall. Or a solid plywood bulk head.

I brought out most of our clothes in suitcases intending to hang them when I got there, but it still smelled too much of stale old person, so I didn't want the smell to seep into our clothes. Not to mention they would've been totally covered in dust. We had every intention to cordon off the kitchen to make it a dust zone...to close the doors to the rest of the house...we planned on taking precautions to try and contain most of the dust in one space...then testosterone took over and all the plans for mess containment was steamrolled.

Once Brent kicked a hole in the wrong wall, there was nothing I could do but get out of their way. After of course, I gave the inaugural sledge swing!

There were punching contests...Jase didn't wind up at all, Brent wound up, and Brad kind of did a running sort of punch.

Movie impressions....

And just a barrel full of shenanegans...

The boys had so much fun that they decided we should buy a house every week, so they can demo stuff. Don't worry guys, there's plenty of demo that will have to happen in the house. MY plan is to space them out enough that all the work still seems fun!

I couldn't believe how quickly they managed to get everything out, and bare looking! when Steph and I left to go on a Timmy's run they were still working on getting out the bulk head and the built in hutch thing. We were gone maybe 10 minutes, and when we got back, they had everything out! No cupboards, no bulk head, not even any floor! I was a bit ridiculous. I was even more impressed with how well they were cleaning up after themselves.

It was fun to be the "forman" and tell them when they could and couldn't do haha. They were still rarin' to go, so I "let" (you know, not wanting to ruin their momentum or anything) them take out the dining room carpet...

and also cut a few bigger holes in the kitchen drywall, and take the carpet from the hallway out...and take the stupid ramp/step thing out. I did have to stop them from taking ALL the drywall off the kitchen walls though, had to draw the line somewhere haha. Favourite part of the whole night had to be when the cute little old next door neighbours came home with all their shopping, seeing all the trucks, and hearing all the noise to exclaim, "oh my goodness, what is going on over there!?" Teehee...if only you knew cute little old man.

Now that we're left with just the bare bones it's much easier to get a better view on the space. I want to template out the cabinets, because I'm still not 100% sure on the exact sizes and pieces that I want. So we'll draw them out on the floor and walls to figure out the best. Jason laughed at me wanting to template them out with paper...but it's easier for me to see when there's an actual paper (or something) on the wall to show the heights, and the spaces and what not...how am I supposed to know how much space will be between the counter and the bottom of the uppers, to best decide which sized uppers to go with. I say, shut-y Jason...I'll do as I please!

So thats' where we're at as of right now. We talked about electrical stuff, and got it all sorted, so now we basically just have to get home from our trip to start banging stuff out!

The house...the way WE want

OK, so I hope you all enjoyed the “tour” the other day, and are ready for more today. Lets just jump right in.

So, the first change we’ll highlight, is the Dining Room. Call us crazy, but we decided we didn’t need TWO front doors & entry points – odd I know – but we did need a dining room. And, presto, chango, we have a dining room.  We plan on closing off the front door there (and probably replacing the window at the same time), we’re going to rip up the carpet & the tiley things they had in the old entry, to make one, cohesive floor. We also plan on knocking about 1.5ft from the corner of the room to make the opening into the kitchen bigger (and to avoid having to walk all the way around the corner – those extra 5 steps made me too out of breath, so we had to eliminate them). We are also knocking out the closet that was there to add more space in the kitchen. A “breakfast nook” will take the place of the closet & pesky built-in space, the benches for seating will also double as more storage. The kitchen…tada! Doesn’t it just look so much more open and welcoming now? And since neither of us are hobbits, we have the appropriate amount of room to move, and counter height that better suits us. Because the large window that is there is so low, we aren’t able to add anything in front of it, so by putting our new (and significantly larger) fridge in the previously unoccupied space beside the window we can increase the amount of counter space in that corner. The stove will be moved to the other side, flanked by more counter space & a peninsula. By rearranging the kitchen like this we’ve tripled the amount of counter space, and also added significantly more upper cabinets, that in a miraculous twist of fate allow us to fit not only our plates, but so.much.more! For both of us, the biggest upgrade will be adding a dishwasher! Thank you, Baby Jesus! While neither of us overly dislike doing dishes, it is definitely safe to say, that neither of us actually enjoy doing them either haha…we do them about twice a week (if we were being good), but a lot of times they would pile up, until they were out of control, which was/is a huge embarrassment. SOOOOO, we cannot WAIT until we have a swanky dishwasher of our own. While any dishwasher would be an upgrade, we have our eyes on something, a bit…special.

  Ok, moving on, because I have a whole bunch of posts in the not so distant future, that are all about the kitchen, so I don’t want to give too much away now. We are going to put up a half wall in the living room to create a designated, separate area for entry. A place to hang coats, and store shoes (since there isn’t anywhere currently to do that.)

   Next we have the bedrooms. Before anyone sees “nursery” and runs away with the idea, NO, we do not have anything to announce at this time…and do you honestly think, that I would announce it like this!? We do however plan on having children at some point in time, and this will be the room that the cuties reside in. If you remember the layout from before, the bathroom, was a lot smaller and there was a laundry room. Here’s a side-by-side just in case you forget.

  

We are going to move the laundry room to the basement to make more room for the bathroom & the guest room. We are also going to get rid of the tiny linen closet to make the Nursery closet bigger. In order to make the bathroom bigger, we have to take out a window. I think my favourite part about looking at the side-by-side is the floors haha. Just look at how much better the “laminate” looks next to the “carpet”…so much better than the sea of blue!

Lets go downstairs now, because that has a lot more changes than the upstairs haha. This is how we think we would like to layout the basement…keep in mind we wouldn’t even touch the basement to start these changes for 5 years, unless of course we win money, or someone would like to impart a large chuck of change upon us. (We really would welcome that at any time) So this area is the one that has the potential to differ the most from these plans we've come up with.

 

The basement…dun, dun, dun. We have the biggest ideas for this space – mainly because it is a blank slate and we can do whatever we want. Three cheers for being able to do what you want! We decided you’d come down the stairs and be in the family/living room (we wanted a large enough room that we could fit a sectional…one with a lovely chaise lounger type dealeo. Off the new living room we’ll add a fourth bedroom. (There are two windows in that room we'll have to dig out...not sure why no windows showed up on this plan) Through the livingroom you come into the laundry room, as well as where we'll keep the large freezer, and our seasonal stuff that needs to be stored. To the right will be another (albeit small) full bathroom. Then the room where, “all the magic happens” (so says Jason), the Man Cave. I have always wanted to create a “man cave” in my house, and my hubs deserves one for sure! (Especially after he does all the hard work with the kitchen, and the bedrooms, and the windows, and the bathroom, and the everything hehe) He is rather excited to get this done haha. (Especially since I said we could make a secret entrance for him) Off the man cave is a cold cellar, which I told Jason he could use as his beer fridge…because it’s not like I do much “canning” haha. Then finally we come to the utility & storage room. We are also adding storage under the stairs, and there is also a storage shed type thing on the back of the garage.

Last up we have the master suite! The biggest changes up here are in the bathroom.

 

We are going to use the closet space (and a bit of the room) to bump out the bathroom. We have big plans for this bathroom – a large 2 person shower, double sink, some storage – like I said before, we have a thing for bathrooms. There was a small closet on the other side of the room that we’ll make enlarge, and add some built-ins and more hanging space (for all of Jason’s t-shirts). Even by shrinking the room, we’re still keeping it large enough for that king size bed we will be soon getting.

There you have it folks. The modified “tour” of our new house, it’ll probably be 5-10 years before we have the place looking like we have it here haha. And even then, I’m sure our plans will change. Stay tuned for all of our kitchen remodel play by play - we'll get right into the nitty-gritty as soon as we can!

 

The first house tour

OK, in a bid to tide all those over who haven’t seen the house yet, and won’t get to see the house until we get possession, I have set up a sort of virtual tour for you. Floorplaner.com is a site that makes it easy to design the floor plan of your house (or whatever dream house you have in your head), and it allows you to easily visualize the changes you want to make. Dragging a line to see where a wall can go is a heck of a lot easier than taking a sledge to said wall haha. I used floor planner with every house we went through to help me visualize how I would make changes – and Jason made fun of me every step of the way – he’s just jealous that he’s not as cool as me. Now that we actually have a house that we’ll be moving into, it was even more fun to plan out our changes.

First up, we have the main floor as it currently is. As you can see, there are two front doors…the door into the living room is the original front door to the house, and where the small front porch is, the front door into the family room (the converted garage) is the main front door. The colours on the floors are the best representation I can get of what the lovely carpets look like…yes, there is that much blue! The opening from the family room into the kitchen is actually some crazy half ramp, half step combination, which just begs the question of, “WHY?” Why choose to make a ramp at all, why not just do a step? Or the opposite, a ramp and no step? I just don’t know why you’d want to attempt both haha. The kitchen really is that small, which again brings up the question of why??? Why only have a kitchen take up 6ft x 5.5ft in a room that is 10ft x 20ft? The fridge & stove were sized somewhere in between trailer & apartment size, and you wouldn’t be able to get appliances even close to that size now. (They also have some ugly, random built-in thing goin’ on in there.) The bathroom is very small and poorly laid out, which is unfortunate because it’s the only 3pc bathroom in the house. (there isn’t double sinks, that was merely to show the size of the vanity). You have about 9in of space between the tub and the vanity, which I suppose would help with our ballerina style spins that we’ve been trying so hard to master.  The door to the basement is at the end of the stairs close to the back door (but it confused me when I put the door beside the stairs – I kept wanting to think it was some fun magical transportation door halfway up the stairs. There isn’t really too much else on this floor that is noteworthy…the bedrooms are fairly small, while the laundry room is ridiculously large.

I’m not going to bother showing the basement, because it’s the same as the main floor, but unfinished, so there’s no walls up (with the exception of the main support down the middle)
  

 

The upstairs was an addition they added over the converted garage, and it just houses the master bedroom and a random 2pc bathroom. Everyone say it with me now, “WHY???” Why, when you were building an addition, would you only put a 2pc bathroom in, why not splurge on the extra $300 to add (even a crappy) corner shower? I can’t complain too much though, because at least I won’t have to attempt to go down the (fairly steep, and turny) stairs the 9 times I need to pee in the middle of the night. (this rendering of the bathroom is being slightly generous on size…there isn’t quite that much room between the toilet and the vanity.) Not too much going on here at the moment, but it is a good size, so that is a plus.

I hope that helps some people see what it looks like, and what we have to do, to make it ours. Kitchen is obviously first on that list of ours, because it is not only not functional in it’s current state (we’ve asked them to remove the appliances, and our plates won’t even fit in the upper cupboards!), but it’s bloody ugly haha. To quote my favourite, feisty, red-head, Ginny Weasley, “I’m not wearing that, it’s ghastly”…and no, I’m not being ridiculous when I say I want to wear my kitchen. I’m going to be spending more time in there than I will in most my of my clothes, so I think it’s a perfectly logical jump. I’ll take all the cricket chirps I hear as my cue to leave, tomorrow I’ll show you the altered layouts of all the changes we want to make.