les toilettes

I was really hoping to write a post announcing that we had (finally!) completed one room of the house.

Alas, the course of home renovation never did run smooth.

Finishing touches on the dining room were usurped by toilet shopping. In order to maximize our ecoENERGY Retrofit grant, we needed to buy water-saving toilets to replace our lovely pink and green water-losing toilets. The receipt for the new toilets needed to match the date of our energy audit, which happened on Monday. This is how we ended up at Home Depot on Monday night, getting a crash course in toilets. Things to consider when purchasing a new toilet include the number of litres per flush, seat height, and MaP score. For the uninitiated, a toilet's MaP score is "the number of grams of solid waste that a particular toilet can flush and remove from the fixture in a single flush". (Imagine our conversation in the toilet aisle of Home Depot. Married life is so romantic.)

One additional thing to consider if your house is built before 1960, like ours, is the size of the trap. Or, as I like to call it, the hole in the floor underneath the toilet. Today the standard size of a trap is 12 inches, but pre-1960 there were three different sizes. If we didn't have a standard size trap it would mean a special order toilet, likely doubling the cost. A quick trip home confirmed that our toilet trap is the standard size (yay!), and we were able to buy our toilets.

Unfortunately we were not able to take them home with us, because two toilets do not fit into a Honda Civic. Which is how we ended up at Home Depot again on Tuesday night.

"You're not putting this on the blog, are you?"

Luckily they fit into a Mazda 3, which we borrowed from my sister and brother-in-law (thanks guys!).

zoom zoom zoom

Just when things were finally starting to look less like a construction zone and more like a home . . .

stripping for dummies

This is how to strip the woodwork in your home, in 9 easy steps:

step 1
Remove all the baseboards and trim.

May 6, 2011

step 2
Arrange baseboards and trim in your garage. Apply stripper.

August 27, 2011

step 3
Scrape stripper off. Then repeat (up to three times if necessary). Sand off the stubborn bits (hooray for power tools!).

September 18, 2011

step 4
Arrange baseboards and trim in your garage. Apply stain (three coats is required).

October 10, 2011

step 5
Bring the baseboards into the house. Try to remember where they go.

November 8, 2011

Just kidding.  I should have mentioned this in step 1 - as you remove all the baseboard and trim, write on the back of each piece what number it is, and create a corresponding map.

step 6
Attach baseboards and trim (more power tools!).

November 19, 2011

The photo above was taken the day before we hosted my extended family (dad's side) for dinner. Aaron was installing the last few pieces in the front hall about half an hour before our guests arrived. A note to all home renovators/procrastinators - inviting people over is the perfect incentive to get jobs done.

step 7
Stain the few random pieces that somehow got missed.

November 20, 2011

step 8

Attach baseboards and trim on the upper level. (In case you haven't figured it out from the timeline provided, we're not exactly the speediest renovators.)

December 10, 2011

The photo above was taken a week before we hosted my extended family (mom's side). See? It's all about inviting people over.


step 9
If necessary, cut baseboards to fit (even more power tools). This particular piece had to be cut because we took out a built-in bookshelf and therefore needed a different size. It also happened to be in the spot where our Christmas tree was going to be, which was the incentive we needed to install it.

December 18, 2011

This was definitely the biggest job we've tackled so far. And it isn't even one we realized we would have to do until after we moved in. It turns out that on closer inspection, every single piece of baseboard and trim in our house had a smidge of robin egg blue paint.

The end result is so worth it. We now have gleaming baseboards and trim to match our floors.

Of course, now we have to do it all again for the quarter round . . .

project 760 - day 366

Today is the one year anniversary of our house!

This was the scene in our living room one year ago . . .

February 9, 2011

And here was the scene earlier today. . .

Feburary 9, 2012

Yes, still drudging. That's me, putting wood stain on the trim around our new windows. And yes, it has been two months since those were installed (a very happy day at 760). Let's just say that we took an extended Christmas break.

But to celebrate our house-a-versary, we have devoted the past week to getting things done. Things like (clockwise from top left): capping the electrical where some fluorescent lighting used to be, installing a dimmer switch in the dining room, patching the wall where a light switch used to be, and installing a light in the front entrance.

Our moms are probably reading this, so at this point it is important to mention that whenever we are performing electrical work we turn off the power to that part of the house, and double check with Aaron's electricty tester thingamajig (yes, that is the technical term for it). Also, the pink wall patch fades to white as it dries. (Hi Moms!)

All this project completing is not without cost. This was our third trip to the hardware store on Saturday.

I remember when we were weekend regulars at Stella's, our local breakfast place. Now we're regulars at Home Depot.

happy (ukrainian) christmas

Today we took down the tree (surely one of the saddest household chores), marking the official end of our first Christmas at 760.

We were able to create a retrotastic tree with a few vintage ornaments. . .

. . .sourced from Antiques and Funk and Holland Home Hardware. Yes, the ornament on the bottom right is from a set my mom bought at her local hardware store. It was tucked away in the back, and was spotted by a friend of my mom who knows about our adventures in retro home ownership. I love small towns.

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