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!!

And the demo-ing has begun....

Ok, it's been several weeks, almost 2 months now since we last posted.  There was a 2 week trip to Italy (I will post pictures later but they aren't downloaded on this computer I am using today) work trips and then a move temporarily into a condo as we waited for Sanford to close and to prep for our renos.

We took possession of Sanford last Wednesday and we have been up to our eyeballs in reno's and cleaning.  After finishing work at 6 we have headed straight to the house to begin, well, more work.   It's been a lot of work and it's been busy but we are extremely happy with the progress we have made to date.  At first we couldn't believe the undertaking we had gotten ourselves into but are already seeing the fruits of our labor...it's really been satisfying to see things come together!!

For the renos specifically, we have demo'd the old tv room (honestly not sure what that room was used for ) along with the existing kitchen. All these rooms are on the main floor and were quite closed off from one another and our goal is to create a more open concept look and feel along with a flow that "works".

Here is a picture of the Kitchen (what will be) Wednesday once we took possession.  Unfortunately all other pictures are on another computer so this is all I have at the moment, but you get the point right? :-)

Here it is mid-way through construction on Friday.  I just noticed this wasn't yesterday (Saturday) but Derik pointed out that he decided to take his lunch break and do a little extra demolition. According to his schedule we had already fallen behind, he is definitely the brains of this operation!

And here is our "soon" to be kitchen with the flooring and drywall removed.  Can you noticed the tongue and groove on the far wall?  This used to be an exterior wall and once the extension was built, they drywalled right over it.....it's yet to be removed but I have been advised that saws can cut right through those things with ease (reciprocating or circular depending on the mood) so no need to worry :-)

Now if you had studied our plans closely you would remember that the kitchen is adjacent to the tv room (or should I say our soon to be laundry room adjacent to the soon to be kitchen) on the left.  And here is our before......

 The kitchen with drywall removed:

and more drywall removed(sorry for the pics being so dark - we had turned off the electricity at this point)

the view from outside (or from the future living room)

Down to the studs. This is the view from when you enter the house

It's only now that I am realizing that we didn't take any pictures after we took down the framing yesterday.  I think we were so tired and mentally finished we were looking forward to dinner and a hot shower.  Heading over today so we will take some pics of the open space.  Wish us luck!

Some new additions

We have continued to make additions/purchases to the kitchen so that once we are ready to go (i.e. cabinet and countertop installation) we will have all pieces sourced.  Since the last post we have purchased a 30" 16 gauge undermount sink.  The 16 guage means the thickness of the metal (our current one is 20 gauge) and the less likely it is to dent or make noise when dishes and pots bang around.  You can read more about what the guage number means here. 

We also decided to go with a single bowl instead of the double bowl.  First of all, most/all of our dishes go into the dishwasher right away and any larger pots and pans are then washed in the sink.  The problem is that in the double bowl scenario there is never enough room to jam the dish into sink and to get it under the faucet or get it completely soaked is next to impossible. We figure that it would be a lot easier cleaning pots and pans in a single than a double.  We also like the design of it too :-) 

We also picked up a range hood that is pictured below.  The company is Soreli and I haven't been able to locate their web site.  They are supossedly Canadian with operations based out of B.C. I haven't been able to find much more info on them.

Our design plan is to build a wall of tile right behind it (instead of cabinets) that would (hopefully) look something like this:

source

Of course our cabinets and backsplash aren't similar in color but the idea is the same, running the backsplash right up the wall to the ceiling.  It may cost a little more for the tile but it will definitely be worth it.  As we are selecting darker cabinets it will definitely help with keeping the kitchen looking bright and open.

Seems like we have a lot of the missing pieces taken care of - we will be taken bit of a break for a couple of weeks so it will be nice to get our mind off things and then it will be back into the tick of it!