More of the main floor....

Happy Saturday! I don't know about you but why is it that on weekdays I can barely pull myself out of bed at 7 and probably capable of sleeping in until 9 but then the weekend rolls around and I am up at the crack of dawn. Its 8am right now and have already been up for 2 hours. I have already watched back to back episodes Timber Kings. I decided I had watched enough of watching log home construction in the BC interior and after a quick caffeine fix I decided to to spend time on this blog.

I want to share bit of a side by side comparison of shots that were taken when we originally walked through the house, during the renos and post reno. Here is a view of the main entrance looking into the foyer and kitchen from the dining room/living room area.

As you can probably tell by the faux fur cushion and the blanket on top of our basket, I love faux fur pretty much anything :-) I love adding texture to a room, it makes it seem a little more cozier. And here is a shot below from somewhat the same place, maybe a few steps back. That wall straight ahead is no longer there along with pretty much everything else. Hmmm, speaking of faux...

For vanity reasons here is a shot of my Ghost chair which I coveted for a very long time. I need to give it a shout out. I knew it would fit somewhere in the house but I couldn't decide where I would put it. I realize one day that the space next to our front door needed a spot where you could sit down and put on/take your shoes. It's nice because it also doesn't seem like it's taking up space either. It was a great find at Structube. We also fell in love when we saw this art by Sara Caracristi that we found at a local gallery. I love the perceptive that she takes with her art but also how it feels playful and not too serious. And speaking of faux fur, I also like real fur.... a lot.  I know it's not for everyone but hey it keeps me nice and toasty on the minus 26-35 days. I picked up these seal boots on a recent trip back to Newfoundland and they are uber comfortable, incredibly warm and the bonus feature? No salt stains...that goes a long way in my books. Nothing worse than pouring vinegar on shoes to remove salt stains and then you smell like fish and chips rest of the day.

Ok, I digress. Back to the matters at hand. Here is a shot from the living room looking into the foyer and kitchen.

Same shot from same location. There was a wall AND kitchen that we had removed.

Another angle from the same spot. Our cat manages to get in most of the shots but I guess it's not hard when you are as large as she is :-)

Ok, so I thought this post would be on the shorter side today but I rambled a bit.  Hope you enjoyed!  We will back soon again with more. Not quite sure with yet but maybe the exterior...see you soon!

We didn't forget about you.....

We have just been enjoying not inhaling dust 24x7 and getting out of our house and enjoying our neighborhood. That said, that is a little more difficult to do this time of year when it's -26 outside, but having completed the majority of the house last Fall we have been taking advantage of weekends and free time. But wow, do we have a lot of catching up to do! Let's start with the Living Room/Dining Room shall we? I do need to track down more pics of the "original" Sanford so we can do a cross reference but I do have some pics posted in earlier posts on this blog, in particular this one which was the  First Sanford Project post

A view looking into our Living Room, We switched up the furniture and got rid of the clunky stuff that was there before to make it a little more formal, to create more seating options and have furniture that well, fit the size of the room :-) We picked up the Sofa and the arm Chair from a Canadian furniture store EQ3, they have a great selection, good prices, comfy and en trend pieces. Ok, and I know the carpet is all scrunched up, will fix that right after this post. I am honestly afraid that if I stop typing, I will never come back to finish. Need. to. keep. typing.

Here is our view into the dining room, as you can see we invested in some art to jazz up the space, curtains that I purchased from this store on Etsy and a "fun" chandelier.

I like how leather gives a more masculine feel to a room and I fell in love instantly when I saw them at Maison Corbeil in Montreal Speaking of masculine, I am sure that you can tell that those white mohair cushions in the background don't fall into that category ;-) And yes, that is a book on the floor that I moved to take out of the shot of the entire room, forgot it was there when I was taking this shot I guess. 

Speaking of cushions, I love this sparkly one I picked up at Home Sense. Very festive for the winter but being that we are a few days into Spring, time I switch that out right?!

A close-up of our built-ins and my little fishermen in their Nor-Easters. We were able to score those leftover pieces of marble for either side of the built-ins for 300$ from a local stone reseller. Score!

Ok, so there you have it, Living and Dining Room update complete.  I can't promise anything but there could be an update on our basement, upstairs and exterior coming soon as well! Happy Monday!

A few steps closer....

Happy Sunday!!  Here are the pics as promised of the living room,  we actually got our dining room delivered today but I guess I had taken this shot before it arrived.

Right now, that back wall where the tv is sitting is looking pretty bare, but our plans for this Fall is to create built-ins, with a fireplace.  Would love something like this:

 via Bella Mancini Design

or something like this:

via Inside-Out Design

As I was writing how I didn't have a pic of the dining room, Derik took one for me :-)  Here you go!  

The table was custom made out of barn board from a small town outside of Ottawa.  It was made by the same lady who made the bench that is sitting behind the sofa in the first pic above.  It is so great to have furniture that is one of a kind and custom for what we want and like, we love this table, it ahs so much character.  We also ended up buying a ceiling light for the dining room today. As they didn't have any in stock, we will need to wait about 2-3 weeks for that to arrive. I have ordered curtains from Etsy for the dining room that have yet to arrive.  They are similar to these, if not, these ones.

Here is a shot from the living room:

Unfortunately, the painting of the main floor is delayed because the bathroom door we ordered is taking about 4 weeks longer to arrive. womp womp.  That's ok as it frees up time to do more shopping :-)  Left on the list, is a mirror to go on the console in the entrance, an ottoman for the living room to replace the existing coffee table, a mirror and sconces the main floor bathroom. Not much more to get now for the main floor, it's so great to mark things off a list!!

Well have a great rest of your week!!

***It just came to my attention that in the first pic, the actor is taking a swig out of a flask.  I had no idea, and wasn't really paying attention as I was taking the pic.  Without having to go through the process of a more "family friendly" pic, I thought I would mention that it we had been watching the movie Warrior this morning.  It was really good actually, pretty entertaining. Definitely recommend it :-)

Main floor progress

Happy Easter Monday from 224 Sanford! It's so nice to get a long weekend.  We took today off instead of Friday as it was month end on Friday and in sales it's very hard to take that day off from work.  That is pretty much when ALL the business that you have been working on for that quarter comes in. So we decided to roll the day off over to today. It's definitely nice to start the week knowing that it's shorter.

My last post was a little pre-emptive as I completely skipped over the installation of the hardwood.

 The below picture on the left is a little dark because it might have been later in the day as we had set out all of the hardwood the (Friday) night before to help make installation move by quickly on Saturday.  The idea was that we could grab planks as they were installed. And again by we, I mean Derik as I head out to have a dress fitting for a wedding and head to upstate NY to pick up some furniture pieces we had shipped to the local UPS.

When I had come back by noon progress was moving along nicely.

Once the floor went down we were able to start moving furniture in....for some reason right now I only had a picture of the rug, no furniture. We were pretty ecstatic to have new flooring that wasn't covered in drywall dust, sawdust and plaster.  It was 60 year old hardwood that probably had never been maintained so it was very worn and tired. We are very happy with the results and getting new hardwood and not saving what was there, well worth it! I'll get some pictures later today of the room with furniture.

 This weekend, we also started the main floor bathroom, we fell a little behind as plumbing took a little longer than expected. Here is the radiant flooring going down.

 Not sure if I have already mentioned but our house was built circa 1950, so some of the walls and floors tend to be a little crooked.  To correct and level the flooring in the bathroom (had to do this in the laundry room which is adjacent to this bathroom) we had to put self-leveling cement to correct about a 1 inch discrepancy from one side of the bathroom to other.

Today's agenda includes tiling the bathroom floor and hopefully get a few more furniture pieces.  I'll also get pics of our new living room!!

Back to the Living Room!

Happy Easter weekend!!  A quick post today but wanted to post pics of the hardwood that went in a couple of weeks ago.  I took the pics from my phone and it seems that the resolution isn't the greatest but you get the point, right?!

 I am surprisingly bummed with the resolution but we are loving this hardwood!!

Our cat has given her stamp of approval and loving the new space and rug, here she is rolling around on the rug (note to self - fix the ripples in the rug)

I won't subject you to any more pics as these didn't come out so well unfortunately.  This weekend, we will be working on the bathroom on the main floor which will hopefully be fully functional by weekends end...woot! And by we, I mean Derik as I go for a mani pedi and shop for furniture :-) Have a great weekend!!

Pot lights and a bucket o' glass

Short post this evening - we have made some progress since the beam was removed a couple of weekends ago.  The City Inspector came gave their approval yesterday which means we can continue to finish the main floor.  The potlights are now up (this is the view from outside the kitchen) in both the front room/tv room and dining room which is in the back.  

We did finish off the shower in the main floor bathroom last weekend and were hoping to get the glass door installed but unfortunately there was a mishap.....

and this is now what is left of the shower door:

My heart sank when I saw the door in thousands of pieces but unfortunately there is nothing that we can do and now I have new door that should be going in this weekend...cross fingers.....when i look at this glass it reminds of the Consumer probe skit/Bag O'Glass skit with Dan Akroyd...maybe we could package this up like Mainway Inc, and sell it to kids so that they can learn about light refraction and prisms...lol.

 So that's it for this week, we are getting the beam boxed in and hope to start the hardwood next weekend #civilizedlivingaroundthecorner.

Have a great weekend!!

A post of the post

Happy Sunday!  So the beam when up last night which means that we are that much closer to finishing our downstairs.

Here is the beam in our driveway Friday (was too cold to go outside and snap a pic) which is 600 lbs, 19 feet, 12 inches deep and 6 inches wide.  Derik claims that it was lighter to lift than our bathtub that he removed a couple of weeks ago. I know, not a very exciting pic...

And here it is up supporting our entire 2nd floor and the roof

It's funny, we get so excited when we finish a project (we even went out last night to celebrate) but the excitement quickly wanes and we get ancy to tackle the next project (like this morning). It may be another month before we actually start laying down the hardwood, I know bummer, right? Next we need to have the city inspector come in to ok our permit, wire both rooms with about 12 pot lights, box in the beam with drywall, get it taped and mudded and then we will be able to start putting down our new floors.

During this time we will also be finishing the main floor washroom which has now been tiled and grouted. We found a vanity and sink yesterday which we will be picking up today, woot! The reason I am excited is that the vanity needs to be no more than 20" wide which is extremely small for a vanity as they are typically 24" or larger. We have to get creative and are going with a cabinet and then installing a vessel sink on top, crossing our fingers that it will work out.

Well, that's it from 224 Sanford, enjoy the weekend and Oscars this evening!

Our piece de resistance

Today was/is the day we have been waiting for for a lonnnng time, the removal of the load bearing wall that devides(d) our future dining room and tv room.  For the past 2 months we have jammed our sofas in the kitchen with our 50" tv propped on our counter which is needless to say getting a little tired.  We can't wait to move back to the Living Room and live like civilized people.  But that could still be a month away but today was very exciting, by bye load bearing wall and hello, open concept!

This is the before

before looking in from entrance

this was last week just down to the studs, this let in so much more light than before as the back of our house is south facing, oh wall you are such a tease.....

Can I have a drum roll please........

Ok, it's still pretty much Crazytown but we are so pumped, we are now that much closer to laying the hardwood which you can see on the floor to the left and painting and putting in baseboards and crown moulding and, and and.....the guys are still downstairs working on the posts on either side of the beam, so hopefully will be back tomorrow with more pics that don't include scaffolding!!

Guest bathroom

Unfortunately, since our contractor is about 2 weeks late in removing our load bearing wall  we decided to tackle the main floor bathroom.  To give you an idea of size it's 9 by 5 feet.  This used to be the only bathroom in the house until they added the second floor and there are houses in our neighborhood who still have this model house.  We are lucky we have a bathroom upstairs....that remodeling picture/project, well maybe later this year. Right now we are focusing on our main floor b-room.  Now because right now we only have 2 full bathrooms, removing the shower would be bold.  We decided to remove the tub and build a shower....turned out that the tun was made of cast iron and woohoo that took a sledgehammer to take apart, it was so unbelievably heavy!  Here was the before when we first had our walk through of the house:



and when the demo began it was a little like this:

How am I ever going to find a small mirror to fit this small space!

notice the tub on jack?  We had no idea it was made of cast Iron which meant it was a good 300lbs plus. Jacking it up we thought we could create some sort of leverage to haul it out...no way, that thing wasn't moving.  Well, after a few minutes on YouTube, it taught us that a sledgehammer is the only way to go.  3 hours later the tub was in pieces and we were able to cart it way....

So the tub was removed and started to build our shower......and now tiling has been completed on the walls. Flooring and the shower installation should happen this week.

Unfortunately, we have both been fighting a cold and bathroom construction had to end early today so that we could rest up. We have been loading up on garlic and Viatmin C and hopefully will be in full force tomorrow...back to work tomorrow so no choice I guess right? ;-)

Kitchen updates

Happy Family day!!  It's so nice to have an extra day off on a weekend to catch up.  Stores are closed, so now I don't have an excuse to go shopping and now can send some updates :-)  Can't believe I haven't included kitchen updates but the kitchen has been in such use (this our main living area) it's hard to get a picture when there isn't some sort of mess happening.  But I was able to take these.....what a difference, hey?

We have a few finishing touches left in the kitchen as we work on the main floor bathroom and wait until our main floor load bearing wall is moved next week (fingers crossed as it has already been pushed out 2 weeks).  Once that's removed and replaced by a steel beam we will be able to lay the hardwood, install baseboards and crown moulding and then paint.....and then use those rooms which have been unhabitable for the past 2 mos already.   That wall is going to be a game changer for the house and it's just around the corner!!

Laundry progress

Quick post here tonight. Our laundry room has made some significant progress this weekend since last weekend there were office Christmas parties and of course had to catch the latest Bond film so little was done in the reno department and it was nice to take a quasi break from the renos.  Besides the appliances being put in a couple of weekends back, we wired the under cabinet lighting, tiled the backsplash and put in a countertop.  Here a are a couple of snaps....

We plan to put a bench on the right handside to handle more storage which we hope to be completed before Christmas but we still have a few things to cover off in the kitchen; i.e. backsplash is the big-oni.  Enjoy!!

Living in dust

I can't believe the last post was over 6 weeks ago - it's been pretty busy over here and finding time to post pics has been few and far between.  We are starting to see the end of Phase 1 - Kitchen/Laundry Room reno but there are still a few items left, mostly aesthetics but it's nice to finally have a functional kitchen. woot!

We removed the existing patio door and window....this was only a month ago and it seems like years at this point.

This is the view from the living room looking towards the kitchen. We removed the existing kitchen (on the left where Derik is putting up the drywall) and have now built a future laundry room/mud room.....I have been promised that today is the day that the appliance go in.

This is the view into the future Laundry/Mud room which at this time was used as our break spot (you can see the water bottle and Tim Hortons bag on the floor, how far we have come since those days!

Unfortunately we don't have many pics of the kitchen construction but as you can see the floor is down (we went with 18x18 travertine which turns out are very heavy and awkward to install) and we have pretty much completed the installation of the cabinet.  As you can see, we don't have any lighting yet (in these pics) and have had to use one of those industrial lamps borrowed from my brother which has served us very well as we have spent many days working into the wee hours.  That said, we have installed pot lights and as well as under cabinet lighting, but that will have to wait for a future post.

Here is a pic with the granite installed which is about 2 weeks ago.

View of the sink/future dishwasher and fridge area.

Well - off to tackle tasks for today (which did I mention includes a finished laundry? cue fist pump....and hopefully won't be another 6 weeks before the next post :-)  Happy Sunday!!