Yes before I get anymore phone calls or e-mails I know I'm exceedingly slow on writing up this post (three months). So what goes on around here in three months well....
April 2015 the month of money
Before stain and endless coats of poly
April turned out to be the most frustrating of the renovation (as proven by my blogging absence). It wasn't exhausting or even heart wrenching it was just calling ourselves out and putting on a couple new roofs that we never planned for nor budgeted for. We had our buddy Jim do the work, and damn did he do a good job, but double damn it still set us back. Other finishes have been happening around here too. Things like staining the bathroom and bedroom doors and other miscellaneous tedious things. The counters went onto the cabinets in April as well and all the hardware, plumbing and a couple fixtures went up. Things are finding their place more and more everyday.
After
My pretty sink (the colour is truffle if anyone cares)
Putting the new (extremely fancy) sink into the new countertops was one of the most nerve racking moments I've had during this impossible renovation task. I chose to go all out and buy the granite sink because it's so pretty. Holy shit it wasn't that big when I picked it out. See those little white dots those are the knock outs for your taps or whatever you decide to add onto the sink. The way you make those holes is to hold a dowel on them and smash it with a hammer.... it says in the instructions that no matter if you follow them, if you break it it is not the sinks fault.... well shit. Luckily for us Jeremy is a super genious with a hammer so we are good.
May 2015 the month of lost time and that feeling of helplessness you just can't shake
May was just a black hole. Working for real money really blows. Jeremy got swamped by seeding and left the majority of the bathroom (almost the last room!) in my hands. Now I'm not adverse to a chunk of demo but as anyone who has ever read this blog before may remember the layers here are just phenomenally incomprehensible. Layers of plywood, lino, blown in insulation, ship lap, batting insulation, drywall, extra walls, and built in cabinets. Add the thickest layer of nails (I'm not joking I had a layer of nails) as thick as my wrist (that is an exaggeration) and yeah it was super fun. Now I could be just a little disillusioned with demolition.... OK fine I'm just tired of it all. But with that in mind it did get done.
Finished Roof of the Studio
Here is a clean photo of the kitchen
Although we have had a rough month I am loving the new kitchen. When we first installed the cabinets and doors we did have one really big problem, they were pink. Not bright pink but just pink enough to make you look twice. After a long deliberation we decided that pink wasn't the end of the world and if it really got to us we could just wait for summer and paint them. So we bit the bullet and put the counters on. Once the counters were there it's like the cosmos came together and my cabinets didn't even have an iota of pink. I know it's there but luckily enough no one else seems to see it.... If you do I really don't want to hear about it.
Missing from the above photo is my new custom built (by Jeremy) island countertop.
June 2015 just another month to loose the mind
So that brings me to June, another black hole if I don't say so myself (and I do). It has only just begun but now with the rebuild in full swing I'm hoping we start to feel that high of accomplishment. It just keeps looming everyday as I step over more boxes and more building supplies just to get in the fridge I can't help but feel the desire to just break for the boarder.
The bathroom progress although slow is coming on daily now. We have all of our materials so hopefully we can stop bleeding money (for a while at least). With mudding and taping drywall around the corner I should really wrap this gigantic update up and get at it.
It can be felt in the air! Yes that's right Spring is coming. Along with a hard hitting Spring we appear to be moving with leaps and bounds.
I finally finished the mudding and taping after quite a few hair raising moments where I was sure the whole f**king wall had to come down to fix a crack 3 inches long. The depths of my drywall insanity were becoming perilous to say the least. So with the primer up and a couple of deep breathing exercises it was time to get on to flooring.
The tile we picked out for the kitchen is really random and super interesting but I suck at picking colours at the best of times and Jeremy just refuses to do it, So I decided to wait until I could see the floor before committing eggshell finish related suicide.
Drywall and Primer Done
We have tackled some new projects over the last few weeks. Things like installing a heated tile floor in the kitchen. It was relatively simple to do. It wasn't an easy decision as the heating systems can be quite expensive but we caught a sale one day, and pulled the trigger. Everyone who has heated tile said we would regret it if we didn't do it. I believed them. The only part of the process that really held us up was a tiny little step in the directions which stated that we needed to use a hot glue gun to place the sensors down... Well... Do you know where your glue gun is? We didn't either and apparently neither did half the bloody town. I called and messaged everyone I kinda sorta knew and finally was able to locate an ex-co-workers mother who is super crafty and not only knew where her glue gun was but actually had glue for said gun, whew. So about 30 seconds of hot gluing and we were ready to lay some tile. Note: Wet saws and -15C are not a great mix.
We had a nice day in February (well not as cold or windy as most at least) and Jeremy tackled the installation of the new front door. Shockingly everything went as planned and the door looks great.
After a lot of elbow grease we got the tile all done and I finally picked a colour for the walls, Scroll Beige... Sounds boring... Looks boring. But, throw some white cabnets and all the other frilly stuff in there and I'm sure it will be a great back drop.
Walls and Floors Complete
More Floor... I really love the floor :)
I finally feel like we are making headway. We are in a place where every hour spent in the house is manifested into a visual difference. So it's easy to find the effort within to push just a little harder or longer.
Some of the cabinets
I suppose my good mood may be encouraged by the looming of Spring. Time to bust out the gum boots, spring coats, and bikes.
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.
Well the time has come. Why relax when there is demo to do? Jeremy got the itch, he just couldn't leave it alone. Hahaha jokes on him though, it's not as much fun as it used to be! I started this blog in September 2012... We have been hair straight back pretty much since then. Jeremy spent his evening last night reading through the blog... I peeked over his shoulder every once and a while and I get tired just looking at it. But as I said Jeremy just couldn't let it be so here we are again renovating.
The second bedroom on the main floor of the house (our room) is pretty teeny so with a couple of long conversions filled with animated over zealous gestures we decided on an action plan. Step one was demolition (as always). We took our the closet between the bedrooms and decided to (with a suggestion from Jeremy's dad) to move the door into the bedroom to the stairwell instead of the living room.
The closet.
From bedroom
After packing endless amounts of drywall out of the room we gained an extra two feet to our bedroom.
We are sleeping in the living room again... sigh. Jeremy promises that this is the last time... until we do the floors... Speaking of floors how lucky are we that the hardwood runs seamlessly throughout. Drywall overtakes my every spare moment and mostly because it's been sitting in a neat little pile in the living room (also where I sleep). It's been there so long that the kids have drawn targets on it and proceed to shoot their Nerf guns at it whenever I leave the room. Jeremy has been preoccupied since the weather took a turn toward Spring (a balmy -15C).
My much repressed objections towards this recent lapse in renovation bliss is stifled by his sending me to Peru in November with various members of my family... I just can't bring myself I force him back to it... although it was he who started this whole process again. Well for the moment I will keep my seething silence (with the casual dig veiled in sarcasm once in a while). Hopefully the weather will co-operate soon and we can get outside and keep the momentum rolling, although I foresee many more hours in the shop working with his other wife (motorcycle).
Yes before I get anymore phone calls or e-mails I know I'm exceedingly slow on writing up this post (three months). So what goes on around here in three months well.... 
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