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?

Behind Every Door

After we had our countertops all on and gave them a few days to set, we got to putting the doors on the boxes.  Tres exciting!!  Ikea made it very easy for this step.  It was just a matter of unpacking the boxes, attaching the clips and then snapping them onto the cabinets.  Super easy.

So we quickly went from this (head's up these are so not glamourous pictures!)...



To this...

(not finished yet, boxes everywhere, no window trim, no hardware, but...one step closer!)

And from this...

To this...

We chose two upper cabinets with frosted glass doors because our main floor doesn't get a whole lot of natural sunlight, and we didn't want our kitchen to feel heavy and boxed in.  The glass door cabinets sit on either side of the kitchen window. 



We knew we would need a pantry to store things like canned and packaged foods, supplies like saran wrap and aluminum foil, paper towel....we're so glad we got this guy.

We also picked up Ikea's slow closers which are so good!  We are definitely feling spoiled.  At 7$ a pop we couldn't resist.  If you're thinking of slow closers, you can save some monies by putting only one closer one each door, as opposed to two (they are sold in a two-pack).  We have just one on each door and it's great.  I think if we had two on each door, the doors would just close too slowly . 

So next week I'll show you the hardware we ended up going with - and then I'll be able to show you fuller pictures of the kitchen, as opposed to close up shots of certain parts of the kitchen because I'm trying to hide the stuff I haven't revealed yet!)

Do you have new cabinet doors, do you prefer solid doors to glass ones?  Have you tried slow closers?

Boards on the Base

So this weekend we got a few big visual changes done downstairs.  One of them was having our baseboards put up!  Wow, it's crazy how much of a visual impact they make.  They make a room look so polished and finished.  We gave them our full attention on Saturday.  While Darryl made all the cuts and nailed them in (using his new and uber fast Brad Nailer), I would follow him along and fill in all the nail holes and seams.  We got them all attached on Saturday, and on Sunday morning I went back and sanded the filled holes down.  Then I went back around the room and vaccumed up all the dust.  Then I went back around the third time and painted the little patches up.  (They still need a second coat of paint so, technically, they're not done, done.  But with everything else we got done yesterday, I didn't have time to paint again).

Here's a reminder of what the room looked like without baseboards...

And then after lots of painting like this...

Our room is now looking something a little more like this...

(you can see the white haze where the trim meets the wall from some DAP we used, I'll touch that up with paint...sometime)

We are so happy with how it all turned out!  They have a fairly simple profile, but they're just like they would have been 90 years ago and that was our goal.  We love the stream-lined look they have.  The room is actually feeling finished, and like a room again instead of a renovation site.  We're hoping to move our tv back down sometime this week so that we will be fully functioning downstairs again!

I'll be back this week with some kitchen updates, and to show you what else we got done on Sunday.

What did you get up to this weekend?

Countertops

One of the main things we had to take into consideration for our countertops was this pole-like support thing...

We knew we wanted to have a peninsula here, with an 8 inch overhang on the dining room side where we could add a couple of stools.  That meant that that part of the counter would be 8 inches deeper than a regular counter, which = a custom cut, which = more $. 

So we priced out a few different options and quickly realized that having even the simplest of custom cuts was increasing the price more than we cared too.  So we fell back to our go-to reaction...could we somehow do it oursevles?  It wasn't very complicated...But if we went the laminate route, we didn't want to have a seam if we could avoid it.  Then we considered buying a deeper laminate counter and cutting out what we wouldn't need, and avoid the seam issue altogether. 

We also had a cousin compare prices at Direct Buy, and the price was pretty close to what we ended up going with, but we didn't like any of their laminate options. 

So what did we end up going with???

 

IKEA pulls through again!  Here's why we ended up going this route:

 

1.  We like the natural look that it has

2.  We would be able to add the 8 inch overhang, sand it down and make it look seamless and custom cut, without having to pay extra for it

3.  We loved the combination of the white cabinets and wood countertops

 

We bought 3 of those counter tops (two 8 foot pieces and one 4 foot piece) and got to cutting.  I don't have too many pictures of the process, but for the most part it was just straight cuts and then the sink hole to cut out.

 

Then we sanded down the roughness

Then we drilled it into place from underneath and clamped it down over night...

and gave it a couple coats of food-safe sealer from IKEA (if you're ever going this route, make sure not to apply too much sealer at once or the counters feel tacky after...I've learned that one already...but the good thing about wood countertops is that any dings, stains and marks can be sanded down)

 







For the 8 inch hang over we first put a regular 8 foot counter on the cabinets and then, after much measuring, darryl cut the extension piece out of the 4 foot counter we bought.  We borrowed my dad's biscuit joiner kit because we didn't want any nails to be seen and biscuit joiners are all done in the middle of the wood, kind of like this...

 

source

 

 

 

Once we cut all the holes, filled them with glue and inserted the biscuits into their adjoining holes, we clamped those suckers together good and tight for a secure fit and left them over night

 

 

 

The next day, we sanded the seam down so that only we know it's there.  Still on the to-do list is to buy some MDF to cover up the backs of the cabinets underneath the overhang and trim it out to make it look more built-in.

 

You can also see in the pic below on the left side of the counter, we cut the corner off. 

 

 

 

We did this for three reasons, first it gives the entry to the kitchen a few more inches of space...second, it maches the shape of that end cabinet of open shelves...and third, it perfectly mirrors the angled wall of the bathroom right across from it. 

 

This is the only picture that kind of shows the angled bathroom wall, I'll have to remember to take a better picture, but it's the wall on the left, it's not a 90 degree corner...

 

 

The black mark on the part we cut off are I guess burns from the blades, but it was easily sanded off.  That's all the pictures for today because the final counter pictures all have the cabinet doors on them, which I will share with you next week!

 

NOTE:  If you are buying these countertops, resist the urge to open the packaging on these until you are absolutely certain that you are ready to install them.  We made that mistake with one of them and in the August heat, it swelled and warped slightly.  Luckily we knew we'd have left overs and were able to not use the warped part, so it all worked out in the end.

 

I hope you have a great weekend, any plans???

 

Hanging Cabinets!

After the kitchen floors were installed and had time to set - and after a camping/cottage trip or two, as this was back in August - we were ready to start assembling our cabinets!

Oh wait, first I primed the walls up...

(the stack of boxes were our bamboo floors)

We bought our cabinets from IKEA during their kitchen event so that we received 15% back in gift cards (and bought an over the range microwave with it).  We loved the Adele White doors, and they were pleasantly one of the more economical choices too, so that made it an easy decision.  We had also gone to Home Depot to compare and their prices were quite a lot more money.  We had also seen in a flyer that they had $99 cabinets for any size, so we checked those out as well, but they were very basic and on the low end in terms of quality.  So we're really happy we went with IKEA.

No strangers to doing things ourselves thus far in our renovations, putting together 10+ cabinets was a money saving no-brainer for us (you can have IKEA people come and assemble and install them for an extra cost).  My job was to assemble all of the cabinets, so for a while my work station was a sea of cardboard packaging, tools and cabinet pieces...

...while Darryl was using a laser level to mark up the walls...

Soon we had some boxes put together and up on the walls...

That black plumbing pipe is what is running our temporary kitchen upstairs, but it will be removed, very soon I hope! The same goes for all of the wires, they too will be gone at some point.

It actually took us longer than we thought it would just to get all of the boxes hung.  So much time was spent measuring and levelling, which is all important, we just didn't realize how long it would take.

We didn't want to put the doors on the cabinet frames until we had installed the countertops, to avoid any dents and bangs.  We bought the countertop about a week or so after the cabinets bases as we were not yet sure what type of countertop we wanted - we knew granite was not an option for us, even though it is so gorgeous, we didn't want laminate but decided we still had to consider it and see what was out there and what prices they would be going for, or we could consider butcher block type counters...decisions, decisions! 

So I'll be back in a couple of days with a countertop post and then soon after that the cabinet doors! 

What kind of countertops do you have?  Are you happy with them or looking to upgrade?