Light It Up

For far too long the dining room sconces we uncovered, and even hoped to DIY, sat empty and bare like this...

 

Not very inspiring and they definitely did not help to create an ambiance during formal dinners.  Finally we came across some lights, at a price we were happy with, that we both liked.

A closer look at the before and after...

Much better.  I love their industrial, and even a little bit old look.  They can swivle to point either up or down which is nice for changing things up.

We got a few more lights installed that I'll take some pics of next week too.

Do you have sconces in your home?  What style did you go for - I'd love to see a link if you do!

Movin' On Down!

On Wednesday night we made the official and final move downstairs!!  It has been 1.4 years since we have lived in our main floor space and now we are officially using the kitchen and the dining/living area as they are meant to be used.  All in time for Christmas!  Wowee!  While we were working away on this, Darryl said "it's like we're in the last 10 minutes of one of those reno shows before the reveal and we've got so many little things to get done and we're on the clock"...or something to that effect.  But I thought, soo true!  And I'm so glad the reveal is finally here!  Honestly, every time I come down the stairs it's like a new reveal all over again because I just can't wrap my head around it all! 

Here's how our living space is looking now...

(mind the sheet serving as window coverings...they're on the to-do list as well!)

This doens't mean that we are done though.  It just means it is liveable finally.  But there is still plenty to be done, like window and door trim...

(no, your eyes are not deceiving you, that is a sock on the door knob...our temporary solution to stop the knob bashing into our brand new pantry)

On the back of the peninsula, the cabinets are exposed so we have yet to make it look more built-in....

We need to put a door on the downstairs bathroom (we're hoping to restore an old one from in our garage)

We have to fix a huge crack in the mudding on the beam...

This area above our ancient stove is waiting for an over the range micro-wave and a cabinet, but before we can do that we have to remove this wiring and re-route some of it...

And a few other things like putting toe-kicks on the cabinets (we're thinking of making them) and a backsplash in the kitchen.

So there's still lots to be done around here, but we are no longer banished to the second floor and my what a feeling that gives!
Have a great weekend!

Any big moves going on around you?  Still have those nagging "little things" to get done?  Any exciting weekend plans?

Trim the Tree and Wrap The Presents...

...Okay so I'm not on the present wrapping stage yet, but the last thing we got done on Sunday (after the baseboards and the couch) was to put up our Christmas tree!  I have such great memories of decorating our tree as a kid.  My mum, my sister and I would crank the tunes (Mariah, Kenny & Dolly, the Judds, to name a few favs) and set to work.  We always loved reminiscing over each ornament as we unwrapped it.  We also always loved that our parents kept every ornament we ever made them, at school or at home - it makes you feel so proud as a kid!  Then when we were done, we'd call our dad in and he would put up the angel.  Our tree was always a good mix of some of my mum's nice ornaments and our homemade ones (as well as some my mum made!)

Now that I've moved out and have my own house - and that I'm not great with change, especially when it comes to tradition - I've tried to keep a lot of our traditions.  I knew that I didn't want a perfect looking tree for our house.  I wanted a tree filled with memories and stories.  When my sister and I moved out, my mum unloaded a lot of those homemade ornaments on us, and we were grateful as we had none anyways!  So now, on my tree, I have many of the ornaments that I made when I was little.  They always make me giggle when I take them out. 

Here are a few of my favs, most of which I made in elementary school years:

A safety pin beaded angel (one of our uncle's mom was really into crafting and she would have us over to make ornaments, so a few of these were under her guidance)

A sparkly beaded spider

A mod-podge wrapping paper ball from I think Grade 4!

A creepy red-eyed bunny thing

A dough painted snowman

And then a couple of years ago I went through a phase of making ornaments out of burned out light bulbs...

The (unfinished) Grinch, he's supposed to have a Santa hat on

Cindy Lou Who - ghost eyed and mouthless...I forgot about her and never got around to finishing her

I always loved the way the round part of the bulb played up the roundness of her cartoon-baby head

(these lightbulb reindeer guys I had seen someone do on the internet somewhere years ago and wanted to try them out)

And our tree (with the tree skirt!)...

I'm sitting downstairs right now - because last night we officially moved everything back to the main floor!!!  And I can't even describe to you how happy I am about that.  Last Christmas we had a little 1 foot tall tree as decoration in our upstairs bedroom-turned-living-room because our regular tree wouldn't fit.  So this Christmas is extra special.

UPDATE:  I got home from work today to find that our tree had randomly toppled over and the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who didn't survive the fall...I guess I can scratch finishing them off my list!

How is your Christmas decorating going?  Are you into making your own ornaments or do you prefer to buy them?  Do you like to keep all the old ones you made as a kid at school?

Karl's Dad Is Here!

Last week I shared with you our sad news about going from 2 couches, to none.  Well the rest of Karl's Dad has finally arrived and we now have comfy seating restored in our living room!

We were worried that we ended up having to buy a new couch long before we were planning to, we had only started saving in the summer!  But we also remembered that at the end of the summer we had a nice little monetary surprise come our way.  We didn't come into free money by any means, but rather had our own money returned to us.

We had a scare in the summer with the water company telling us that we somehow owed them over half a grand!  I knew that just couldn't be right because I am a religious bill-payer.  So after a quick call to the company, it was established that our meter reading that they had was off and that, in fact, we had been over paying for the last two years.  In the end it turned out that they owed us over $600!

When we got that cheque we hemmed and hawed over what to do with it - save it for future renos, put it towards the mortgage - and it sat on a shelf for a month or two.  We're thanking our lucky stars now that we never spent it because it meant we could buy a new couch with no financial strain.  It was like all this time we had a secret couch-savings account and didn't even know it....thank you water and sewer people!  So after taking the $600 off the total price, we were just left with $50 each to pay.  Easy peasy!

So this was another thing we got done on Sunday.  While Darryl was working in the bathroom I began putting the couch together.  It took surprisingly longer than I had expected (though it was by no means difficult).  The skin on my knuckles had rubbed off by the end and were stinging from pulling all of the material onto all of the cuchions and frames.

So I started out with a bunch of large boxes...

And here's the corner of the room where the couch would be going...

I set to work, putting the fabric on all of the pieces and then assembling the frame...

...and then called Darryl to check that things were okay before we flipped it right-way-up.

Right where his hands are in the above picture is where there was, strangely, no leg.  It seems like that exact spot would have people sitting on it often and it seemed odd to have such a long run with no leg support.  So Darryl grabbed some scrap plywood, screwed it to the frame and moved an extra leg to that spot. 

Either there was a lot of dust floating around, or we had some spirit visitors with us - see all the 'orbs'??   :s  Since this was before I vaccumed, I'm going to go with the dust theory...

Welcome home Karl's Dad!  We're so happy you've arrived and hope you'll be happy here!

Any furniture changes or purchases happening at your abode?

Baseboards

Over the last couple of days we've been working on some more finishing touches from our to-do list.  We've started the process of re-creating baseboards to match the originals (the majority of the original 7 and 3/4 inch baseboards had been removed and replaced by tiny 3 inch ones).  We love those little touches of character that the house has so it was important for us to try to restore the baseboards as best we could.  And what we couldn't restore, we would try to replicate. 

Here's some of the trim when we moved in (original)

And some of the much shorter, new trim that they had replaced...boo

We took a trip to a near by lumber store, Peacock Lumber, to price out how much it would cost for them to cut some matching trim.  We brought a piece of the original with us and they confirmed that it was made out of mahogany.  I'm told that new mahogany has nothing on the old stuff which is much more dense.  Either way, mahogany was not in our budget.  Especially since we plan to paint all of the trim white, we're not so concerned with keeping the type of wood the same.  They quoted us $90 for 20 feet of trim.  We would need quite a bit more than that and we weren't overly keen on the price tag that would add up to.

So we headed to Home Depot to price out some MDF.  For a 4x8 sheet of 3/4 inch thick MDF (same thickness as the originals) it would be $35 + tax.  Once we cut a board that size up it would give us 48 feet!  With our previous discussion of being careful not to over-renovate in mind, we knew this was the right fit for us.

Luckily (in terms of having to replicate them) the original baseboards have a very basic profile and Darryl and his dad knocked all 48 feet of them out in under 10mins

We had Home Depot cut the big boards into 7 1/2 inch planks

When we got the pieces home Darryl was ready to kick some baseboard butt

All done the cuts...

Then I gave them a quick sand-by-hand.....then realized that wasn't good enough so the next day I tackled them again with the power tools.  Then I brought them in, set them up in assembly line fashion and started to prime and paint over a couple of days...

Sorry for the dark picture...

Right now, the living/dining room is still looking like this, but we're hoping to be able to start putting some baseboards up on the weekend so that we can make room to set up Karl's Dad.  We're eager to have him put together!

Are you getting any finishing touches done?  Tackling anything on your to-do list?  Ever tried to replicate something original?

Goodbye Dusty Rose...

When we first moved into our house, long before any demo, our living room was where we spent most of our time.  Here are two pictures of our first night (hence the pizza box and and my work bins all over the couches)  But the important things to note here are, in fact, the couches.

We call her Dusty Rose

Tons of seating space right??

Fast forward two years to this Halloween...my sister, bro-in-law and my parents decided to come to my house to hand candy out to the wee ones.  Here's how the living room looked before they arrived...

The problem?  No where to sit!  My family is often over, so I wasn't worried about the mess on the floor, that could be (and was) easily pushed to the oppsite side of the room, but I did want somewhere decent for them to sit.  I figured since the walls were all painted, the floors were all down, maybe I could actually start to bring some furniture out of storage!  Darryl was away for work, so I asked my dad if he would mind giving me a hand when he came over.  Before everyone arrived, I went into the mudroom where the couch had been stored for over a year to clear a path and tear all the protective plastic dust-covering drop cloths off. 

I thought I'd get a head start and at least bring all the cushions in.  After lifting a few up, this is what I saw...

 

HORROR!!!!!!!!!  Apparently our 91 year old mudroom is not mouse proof and last winter they must have sought haven in our couch arms.  At first I thought they'd just gotten warm under the cushions - that would be manageable with a good clean.  But after a closer look I saw this...

Clearly they have tunneled and nested all the way inside the couch!  Needless to say I opened the door to my family arriving on Halloween with tears in my eyes for several reasons:

1.  We would have to buy a new couch... $$$$!

2.  I wanted a nice, comfy (albeit pink) place for my family, and preggers sister, to sit!

3.  Only one or two short months prior to this I had convinced Darryl to put the old black leather couch to the curb as it had suffered during much of the demo phase.

How did we go from 2 couches to none!?

Luckily my family worked with me and we all enjoyed our night, despite being sat on various camping chairs, stools, benches and kitchen chairs.

While we never loved the look of our inherited pink couch, it offered a heck of a lot of seating space, and it was pretty darn comfy.  We did not think we would be buying a new couch for a good year or two.  But after clearing our family out of hand-me-down couches, we realized we were going to have to bite the bullet much sooner than we had anticipated.

Last weekend we spent a day shopping at all of the usual stores, Leons, the Brick, United Furniture, to name a few.  I learned that 1. couches are pretty expensive, and 2. man those stores sell a lot of dated-looking couches!  Nothing in our price range suited our style, so we headed down to IKEA, and the couch gods must have been watching over us because it was the last weekend of their couch sale!  Buy one get one 50% off!

I had been loving on the Karlstad series for some time (or as Darryl calls it "Karl's Dad"), I like the straight lines they have.  Darryl wasn't sure about the quality, sturdiness and comfort, so we decided to go do a little sit-test.  We loved it!  So we bought a love seat and chaise lounge attachment...and then found out the chaise lounges were out of stock.  So we had to drive back later this week to pick it up, but hopefully we'll have an assembled couch to share soon!

Have a lovely weekend!!

Any couches in your future?  What do you look for in a "good" couch  (price, style, comfort)? 

Little Things

Happy Monday!  I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  We had a great weekend, mainly because Darryl is back from three weeks away for work.  And look what he brought home with him...

I was a giddy little girl at the sight of those beauties, because in all of our 10+ years this is the first bunch of flowers Darryl's given me!  I've never been much of a flower girl, so that's a good part of why, but I'd be lying if I said they didn't make my day.

We have a long list of things to check off our to-do list before we can live downstairs again, and we were able to check 3 of them off this weekend! 

Remember these?

We had 23 to finish up, and while we didn't finish exactly, the main part is done.  The plugs are all in!  We thought we had the plate covers here but late yesterday afternoon, we realised we didn't.  So we'll be sure to pop those all on ASAP....but for now, here's how they're looking.

I'm a fan of the no-hole-and-open-wires look the walls are now sporting!

***UPDATE: The next day we went out and bought the plate coverings and put them on.  Eventually we'll invest in some dimmers too...

Much better!

And remember how the potlights were hanging down from the ceiling?

Now they're right where they're supposed to be...



The empty hole is where we still need to find the main lighting for the room, but I promise all the potlights are really done!

Another thing we checked off our list was to put handles on all of our kitchen cabinets, so while I can't show you pictures today, they are coming soooon!  (I can't show you hardware before I show you the kitchen!)

When I say "we" checked three things off our list, it was really Darryl who got these done while I was giving the bathroom its second coat of paint.

What did you guys get up to this weekend??