santa claus is coming to town

This is how everyone starts their holiday decorating, right?

i can see clearly now

Today it was Aaron's turn to stay home for the windows. He's a man of few words, so there isn't really a story to go with this post. But he did document the whole process with pictures . . .

 Perhaps it was better that this all happened when I was at work. Apparently things got a bit chilly in the house, with the giant gaping holes in the wall.

When I got home, this is the view that greeted me . . .

I was immediately in love. The window looks huge! Even thought it is the same size as the old one, it feels so much bigger. After my initial excitement, I thought, "we really need curtains."

Here's a shot Aaron took from the inside:

And finally, here are the garden doors (we plan to build a deck next summer):

Just for fun, here are some "before" shots:

Now that the windows are in, we want to do a happy dance. But we can't, because the neighbours would see. Maybe when we get some curtains.

baby, it's cold outside

Yesterday was the first truly cold day of winter. It also happened to be the day our new picture window and garden doors were scheduled to be installed. I had booked the day off work, and was so excited that they were finally here. (I was like a kid at Christmas - I even had trouble sleeping the night before!)

We ordered the windows over two months ago, and there had been a bit of a delay in getting them made, so we weren't expecting them until January. When the window guy called last week to book our appointment, I'm pretty sure I was the most excited customer he had talked to that day (possibly ever).

I was just finishing breakfast when the window guy called to say it was too cold to do the installation. (Seriously? It's Polar Windows. They have Polar in their name. Surely they can handle working when it's -20C.) I was so disappointed.

But at least the day wouldn't be a total write-off. We also scheduled a pick-up of all this:

Renovations create garbage - that's junk that has been hauled out of our living room, basement and garage.

Shortly after the window guy called to cancel, the junk guy called to say he was on his way. Yay!  One minute later he called back to say he couldn't get down our back lane because of all the fire trucks. Of all the days for my neighbour's garage to catch on fire.

Unlike the window guys, the junk guys were willing to come back in the afternoon. Which is a good thing, because with garages in the neighbourhood catching on fire we didn't want a giant pile of wood and garbage sitting next to ours.

As for the windows . . . we're still waiting.

project 760 - day 282

After living in a perpetual state of renovation, you start to get used to the half-finished look of things.

Like light switches without covers.

Or ceilings without light fixtures.

Doors without trim.

Closets without doors.

 Walls without baseboards.

 And pictures not on walls.

Three quarters of the way through our first year in the house, things were looking a little unfinished. To motivate us to get moving again, I sent out invitations for a family dinner to be held on the third Sunday in November. These photos were taken a few days before our guests were due to arrive, and I am pleased to report that over the course of that weekend we got a number of things done. Not everything on the list above, but enough to impress our guests. (They don't need to know that Aaron was putting up the trim around the hall closet half an hour before they arrived.)

bye bye blues

The May 2010 issue of Style at Home featured a living room with a wall colour very similar to ours. It's true what they say . . . eventually everything comes back into style.

But we are not that stylish. The robin egg blue had to go, to be replaced with a soft white.

Choosing the right white was agonizing. There are hundreds of different shades of white. Some are bright white. Some are creamy white. Some are more gray.

After much soul searching (by me) we settled on Cloud White by Benjamin Moore.

Covering the blue took a lot more paint that we originally anticipated. The staff at the paint store promised we would only need two coats, and 4 gallons. It took three quotes, and over 8 gallons. We kept having to run back to the store to buy more. By the end, the staff recognized us when we walked in the door and started  giving us the discount normally reserved for interior decorators and professional painters.

In the end it was worth it. Painting the walls was the most dramatic change we made to the house.

before . . .

. . .and after

I love the second photo because it shows how far we've come. Look how smooth the ceiling is; how shiny the floor is; and how bright the room looks. You might notice that it's not completely finished - there's a baseboard is missing. But that is a whole other story.

project 760 - phase 1

Pulling up the carpet was the first in a list of things to do that we've affectionately dubbed "Phase 1". (You can see the complete list here.)  During this time we were nomads, moving from place to place, avoiding drywall dust and varathane fumes.

We didn't know where to start, so we chose the messiest job first - drywalling over the popcorn ceiling in the living room and front entrance. This coincided with a dog-sitting gig, so we could move out and leave the job to the experts - Handy Andy (our contractor) and Gary Taper. Sadly no photos exist of the drywall project, but here is Eddie with Aaron.

Our next project was re-finishing the hardwood floors. The floor guy wasn't able to start right away, so in the meantime we got ready to start painting. This plan came to a quick halt after chatting with the paint store lady about all the projects we were tackling, including the floors. It turns out that paint needs to "cure" before it is completely dry. If we painted right before doing the hardwoods, all the dust from sanding the floors would stick to the walls and make a big goopy mess. Disaster averted; Phase 1 delayed.

Eventually it was time for the floor guy to come. All of our worldly possessions had to be jammed into the basement, the kitchen or the bathroom (the only places without hardwood floors). All of our doors, including closet doors, had to be removed. And we had to be out of our house for at least a week while the floors were sanded down, sealed with an oil-based finish, and left to dry. We spent one night in Aaron's parents' basement, a weekend at my cousin's condo, and finally treated ourselves to a few nights at a hotel. It was totally worth it. Our floors look amazing. (Here they are after the sanding, but before the finish was added.)

Total time elapsed since Day 1 - 84 days

aloha!

After our first day of successful renovations, we decided we deserved a break. Here's Aaron enjoying some refreshing coconut water. In Hawaii.

Yes, right before we bought a house, we booked a two week vacation to Hawaii. Because really, who buys a house in January?  And even if you buy a house, don't you have a few months before you actually move in?

Not for us. Our timeline went something like this: book a trip to Hawaii, buy a house two weeks later, move in three weeks after that, leave the country one week after that.

If we had known we were going to buy a house with a February possession date, we probably wouldn't have booked a trip to Hawaii. So we're really glad we didn't know . . . because we would have missed out on a fantastic trip. We swam at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, hiked through Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island, and watched whales from the balcony of our condo in Maui. All while escaping the coldest weeks of Winnipeg winter.

Then we came home to this:

Yes, that is our bed in the living room. Apparently houses in the 1950s were not built to accommodate queen sized beds, because our box spring wouldn't fit up the stairs no matter how hard we tried.

As for everything else, we couldn't really unpack until we had re-finished the floors, drywalled the living room ceiling, and painted. It would be another three months before all that was done.

project 760 - day 1

The day we got the keys to our house was a very exciting day. And we didn't waste any time starting the renovations! On the first night, we pulled up the carpet.

When we bought the house we knew there were hardwood floors underneath the carpet. I'm an optimist, so I assumed they would be in good condition. In hindsight this was probably naive. But we were lucky.

The good news . . . the floors didn't have any water damage or stains. The bad news . . .the carpet had been in place for over 40 years, and in some spots the underlay was completely stuck on.

There were also a lot of staples to be removed. (My lovely sister helped us with the  job.)

But by the end of Day 1 we had already checked one thing off the list. This was going to be easier than we thought.

retrotastic

We knew that to buy a house in the neighbourhood we wanted, in our price range, we would have to find a bit of a fixer-upper - a house we could work on over time, and a  house the nobody else wanted.

When I first saw the real estate listing for our house, I had a good feeling about it for two reasons: the description included the words "long-time owners" and, unlike most listings, it didn't have any photos of the interior of the house. In our experience long-time owners + no photos = old carpet or pink bathrooms or wacky wallpaper.

Our house had all three.

It was completely retrotastic.

Luckily for us lots of people couldn't see past the carpet and the wallpaper and the outdated colour scheme. So on February 9, 2011, the Van Tates became the proud owners of a pink toilet (and the house that went with it).

The rest of the house was just as, um, colourful.

(to see even more "before" photos, click on our photo album below)

our house

In January, after months of searching, we bought our very first house.

Three weeks later, we moved in.

Our house was built in 1955, and it hasn't changed  much in the last 57 years. Although we love the mid-century 1950s vibe, we knew that some things would have to change. This is the story of how we turn this house into a home.