Perfect Timing

 Well, it's done.  Yep almost everything is done.  More or less we are done.... At least enough to move back into the big house.  It took us exactly 3 months and two days.  This past month has been almost entirely dedicated to the wood floors, well that and cabinets, counter tops, and a whole bunch of other little things.  Ever since the beginning of this massive renovation endeavor I have imagined these floors redone.  I knew we would get here but actually tackling the project that I've had on my mind for two years was very rewarding.

But like anything else it had to go in stages.  The idea has always been to try and make it look like the staircase was always there so it also had to get refinished at the same time.

Step One: Clear away all the crap that is stored in the bedroom and the endless amounts of stray tools and beer cans.

Step Two: Rent big sanding machine.... Return said machine and get the bigger one.


Step Three: Use 60 grit paper to really get down under the 70 year old stain.

Step Four: Break the machine, return, repeat.

Step Five: Repeat step three using different grits of paper til you get that smoothish rustic floor look.

Step Six: Put new treds on the staircase and sand the crap out of them with the handheld, including but not limited to the sides and underneath taking care not to sand all the edges off the steps.... not as easy as you would think.

Step Seven: Clear away beer cans.

Step Eight: Bring home the smaller corner sander, proceed to sand the corners and all the other little stuff you missed.

Step Nine/Ten: Vacuum. Clean. Vacuum.

So the floors were ready to take some stain!  Both an exciting and terrifying moment.  It's not like paint where you could just slap another colour over it if you don't like it.  After all that work sanding I wasn't about to restart.... So with a deep breath it was go time....

Oh. My. God. It's f-ing red!!!!! 

I panicked.... I'm not proud of that moment but I cried.... Hard.  My devastation couldn't be seen by the world, I kept it to myself and cried harder.  We had done so many tests, and it still wasn't the right colour I was dumbfounded, but I couldn't stop either.  I had to dig deep and just 'keep swimming' (in my ocean of sawdusty tears, hahaha).

• Wipe away tears
• Rally
• Stain Staircase
• Continue throughout the rest of the project with a beer fueled rage

The next day it was time to start the first of three coats of polyurethane.  I remember walking into the room of my crushed renovation dreams... as I hadn't slept all night I teared up right away, but this time in relief.  They weren't red anymore they were exactly what they were supposed to be!  Thank you stain gods and colour fairies!  Days later I finished the floors and finally it was time to start getting organized for countertops and kitchen plumbing.

Before we could really get going on the finishing of the kitchen I had to clean the house.  Seriously clean, that dust from sanding the floors got into everything!  We did our best to keep it controlled but it was impossible. If I've learned anything about renovation I've learned that cleaning is half the job.

It took a day but it got done and we moved back in on March 31st, 2015.  Many things still need to be completed including baseboards, trim, the island countertop, bathroom door... etc...  Finding a place for everything is my next goal, so pinterest has become my favorite time waster recently.  Reclaiming the house doesn't just give us all our privacy back but I get my studio back and Jeremy gets his shop back.  Now if the snow would just stop coming down there is a whole list of things to do in the yard too.  Including but not limited to: New roofs for all three buildings, a deck, flower beds, garden beds, fire pit reno, blah, blah, blah.

Resignation

Chimney Sheeted in

 I uploaded the photos for this blog post and promptly told Jeremy I had no idea what to rant about... Things are moving quickly around here,  At least in weekend warrior reno time.

Jeremy sheeted in the chimney (I know it would have been awesome to keep it Jenny, but the marriage came first).  Once the final finishing materials are decided upon we will pick some stacked stone to cover it with.

My lovely (if not necessarily compromising) husband has also been throwing hours into wiring... the entire house.

left to right: chimney, built in pantry (barn board door?), bump out for fridge. 

A year and a half ago (July 2013) we stared the attic renovation on the big house, and the electrical has all kind of been.... temporarily wired into the grid.  It's all properly done but hasn't been properly run into it's own circuit breaker.  And this theme pretty much sums up the rest of the electrical.  I would love to have met our 1950's counterparts just to ask them what the hell they were thinking...  Pushing bafflement aside Jeremy keeps plowing through old junction box spiders and is almost finished  What a relief it will be to know that all the electricity in the house is running though proper channels, also not showering in the dark will be a bonus.  Living in Canada can be a real pain during winter when the electricity isn't working, it gets too dark too fast to get anything done!

So as Jeremy wrestles with drilling holes in seriously old hard wood, I start to pull up the floor in the kitchen... dun dun dun, the defining moment!  We have planned this renovation since day one when we pulled the carpet from the living room and found extremely well preserved gorgeous wood floors.  We knew they would carry throughout  the house, and damn were we stoked.  So with a heart full of optimism and a mind full of 'shabby sheak country kitchen'  the battle for the floor began....

• Layer one: lino circa 1990's 
• Layer two: particle board circa 1990's
• Layer three: lino circa 1945 - 1950
• Layer four: sticky glue possibly made of tar
• Layer five: a lot of black crap
• Layer six: ENDLESS BLACK SH*T!

One of many spots filled with plaster, averaging a quarter inch deep

I spent 4 hours on hands and knees scraping with a 4 inch metal drywall knife one of these past days (so far the best tool, and yes I even tried an attachement for the resiprocating saw, too sticky).   Jeremy came home from work and asked what I had done all day... I didn't stop ranting for a good 20 minutes, it went something like this: 

"LOOK AT THIS! No, come and look.  See. See. Hahaha, I think I may be loosing my mind to this floor.  Damnit get down here and look.  I've been in this spot for 4 bloody hours and this is it!  Oh my gosh, I totally zoned out I haven't even cleared off 5 square feet! This is ridiculous (tool throw)!  Ugh, well maybe I'll just try another spot..... Ahhhhhhhhhhh (explicit swear words telling a floor where to go and how to get there)"

How we found the living room floors

Floors in the kitchen after 14 hours of labour.

So it is with a heavy heart I regret to say I have decided to scrap the original kitchen floor.  My heart is literally breaking, I wanted this so badly.  This renovation has been completed in my mind for over a year and I always saw these floors.... I based all my design decisions up to this point on the restoration of these floors.  But it just cannot be done, not because I haven't the tenacity but because the floors themselves are in just too poor of condition, so many broken boards and splintered holes.  Spending another week on hands and knees is a waste of time and effort (snif).  We didn't even really have a plan B for this eventuality.  Every time I walk into the room I take a look at the floor and start thinking... maybe just if I... But it must end here, not everything is going to work out the way we want but damn I'm sad.  Tonight we are going to yank out the boards and start prepping for tile.

In other news we had a friend of ours come in and texture the ceiling in the living room and kitchen.  He did a great job and we learned a lot from him (don't you just hate it when you learn that you have been doing something the hard way for years?).  The kitchen should have enough light in it, 1 light above the sink, 2 pendents over the island, and 4 pot lights.  Well I suppose if the floor can't go the whole way at least the ceiling does.

The race has been on since just after Christmas!  We have been racing to the renovation 'finish' with some friends of ours back in B.C.  So just over a month and here is where Steve and Robyn find themselves:

They decided to remove two walls on their main floor and turn their U shaped (extremely small) kitchen into a open concept living space.

As with any renovation they had some surprises.  No insulation, construction garbage in the walls, and general head scratching WTF moments.  Both Steve and Robyn work and they have two kids, and they had to live in the construction....   How the heck did they get so far so fast!  I have a couple of theroys but so not to appear as a bitter cow I'll keep them to myself hahaha.

I's a huge difference and a great reno.  I'm so beyond jealous I should really just end this damn post.

Blizzard of Demolition

Just when I thought it was over it is actually only just beginning.  Happy New Year to all, by the way.  It's new years day today and we kicked off 2015 with a sledge hammer.  December was no joke either.  between Christmas concerts, dinners and decorations we started the main floor demo and floor plan.  First we had to remove the door and build the new walkway between the stairwell (our old bedroom) and the living room.  I must mention now that the layers of this house must make up for half the damn insulation!  Seriously once we started to take off the layers it became abundantly clear that this demolition was going to be the biggest of all.

Door into stairwell: before

• Layer One: Panel board
• Layer Two: 1/4 inch plywood
• Layer Three: Weird textured 'wallpaper'
• Layer Four: Old crumbly dusty dirty drywall.

We are gaining an inch to the whole room just by taking down all this crap.  I haven't even told you about the ceiling (about as bad as the walls...).  

The Onion House

Completed Walkthrough

The fun continued when we invited some friends over for dinner, with ulterior motives of hanging a particularly painful piece of drywall... So how many men does it take, three.  Yep three.

Jeremy, Bryce, and Clint

It may have been the wine, but damn did I laugh.

 So Christmas went of without too much drywall dust getting into the chip dip, but there is no rest for the DIY renovators.  The time had come.  It was time to throw in the towel get out of the mess and get er' done.  Time to move.

 As you may have noticed I'm gung ho and ready to rip in the video ( I actually had to do another take because the first was a bunch of whooping and swearing).  Now what I didn't film were the tears of loss as I packed up my beautiful and peaceful studio.  All sewing and tranquility has left the building.  We had been preparing for this day pretty much as soon as the ink was dry on the ownership papers.  But nothing could really prepare us for the reality of living in a house of 400 square feet with 2 adults (who both really enjoy their space, hence the house, studio, shop setup we've been working on for two f-ing years), and 2 kids (little whirl winds of crumbs and any projectile toy they can find or build).  But the food is drywall free... even if it is cooked in a microwave.

Living in such a small space is challenging but also strangely satisfying.  Everything is always clean and tidy.  There are no doors to close or corners to hide things in.  It took a couple days to get everything in it's place to really make everything run smoothly, but so far so good.  That said I can't wait to have the big house back.

Half a kitchen.

The day after we moved we took a trip to Edmonton, Alberta in search of most of the makings for a new kitchen... During boxing week.  I can't even start to tell the horror stories of shopping, it's just too fresh.  Yet we came out with a good deal and half a kitchen.  The other half is on order and will be here within the month. 

We have accepted a challenge from our friends back in B.C. (Steve and Robyn).  They are also ripping out their kitchen and a wall (or two, I'm not positive of the details), So its a race to the finish.  I doubt we will win because our demo is becoming more and more complicated as we 'progress' (blown in insulation in particular in the entire ceiling). 

But for now I'll let the photos tell the tale.

The layers are unbelievable.

After the cabnets were removed we finally had confirmation of the wood floors under the entire kitchen.  This was thrilling to say the least since we had planned the entire renovation around this one unknown.

• Layer One: Lino
• Layer Two: Sub floor
• Layer Three: More lino
• Layer Four: Back breaking scarping of the floor to remove ground in glue while somehow preserving the existing wood floors.  Ugh.

So all in all the demolition is in full swing and the blizzard outside is a nightmare but the dump is open and weather waits for no one.

What Lies Beneath

Well, the most important thing to do to our new house was to make it livable.  This basically required a bathtub full of bleach, and stack upon stack of sponges.  I actually thought the walls and fixtures were different colours... Ewwww.  Anyhow, the carpet was obviously the biggest source of the smell, so the day before we moved in, Jeremy and I tore it all out.

So, whenever you buy a house this old (somewhere between 75-85 years) you can be optimistic that there will be some happy surprises along with a lot of "WTF?" moments.  Today was a happy surprise day, for under the carpet we discovered this.

 The hardwood is pretty awesome; and with the living room carpet out, the smell in the house at this point was beginning to reach a tolerable level. Luckily, Jeremy and I both had colds and couldn't smell much... but we could still pick up the unique odor that permeated the entire house, a smell borne of decades of cigarette smoke, non-existent building maintenance, and (cannot emphasize this enough) poor, poor housekeeping practices... it was everywhere!




I wish we (Jeremy) could have just pulled the staples out of the floor and that would be it... a big shout out to Kirby for helping out by the way!  Unfortunately, remember those "WTF?" moments I was talking about? Well, we are still scratching our heads over this one. Somebody, somewhere, knows why this plywood patch is dropped in the middle of the hardwood floors...  It's only a foot square, and we have ideas of how to fix it, but it's sad.  At this point, we were losing daylight so we had to move into the bedrooms and see what lie there under those wicked awesome orange carpets...

WTF?

"This isn't as bad as it looks"... That's what we told ourselves too.  Some weird floral linoleum that looked like it was printed on a giant computer printer...the flower prints were all pixellated, we'd never seen anything like it before... The first bedroom was relatively straight forward, the lino came up in large chunks and required a minimal amount of scraping to get the glue off (6 hours worth).  It took me 4 days to scrape the lino off the other bedroom floor, it must have been a high-traffic room as the lino was pounded down right into the wood beneath it.  As you can see, it was well worth the effort because the hardwood continued from the living room right into both bedrooms (and the wannabe closet that separates them).  By the way...this stuff smelled just as bad as the carpet, but it was worse because we had to kneel in it for almost a week trying to remove the remnants.

With only one of the two bedrooms suitable for habitation during this days-long floor scraping
chore, the kids got the room and we were relegated to camping out on the living room floor surrounded by  boxes of unpacked stuff. The picture's cluttered, and there's some dude laying in the middle of the room... but you can see how nicely those floors cleaned up with just a good washing (and we had thought that we'd be moving in onto plywood floors after we lifted those carpets)...guess things could have been worse!