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:

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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!

Kitchen Progress?

We have definitely been making strides with our kitchen in the past week, with multiple trips to Home Depot/Rona and Lowe's to source materials.  We have also been really heavily on online shopping as well.  Being close to the NY border it makes it easy to drive and pick up items without having to pay the hefty international shipping fees.

We have now started picking out faucets and we seem to be leaning towards one like this:

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We definitely don't want to go cheap here as we will be using this thing A LOT and the the last thing we want is for it to break or just be completely flimsy.  we are still on the hunt for one of these bad boys.  I just love the way they look!

We would also love to have a pot filler next to the stove but as the stove will be against the exterior wall (as you remember from our layout :-) code does not permit us to have pipes running through an exterior wall....bummer. 

Determined to have a pot filler, we thought, why dont we have it in the counter and have it run through the cabinet?  This way we don't have to worry about freezing pipes and looks like we can do that so we are totally pumped.  It will probably be used twice a year but love the aesthetics of pot fillers, just seems like such a nice addition to a kitchen.  Here is the one that we found from Danze

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Love this thing!  Definitely will be nice to have to fill up a pot at the sink and jiggle it all the way back to the stove with water sloshing around everywhere and around anyone else in the kitchen. It will definitely make cooking a lot easier.

We also bought a new front loading washer and dryer yesterday (did I mention they are front loading?  - woot!).  They are now stored in the garage so pics can come later.

Happy with the progress we are making.  As we are leaving in less than a week and a half to go to Italy...another woot...we really need/have to get our ducks in a row for move-in.  This week e also look to purchase our range hood.  So far we are keeping our purchases under budget so that is definitely a nice relief when ho knows what kind of suprises can be creeping around the corners with renos.

Out with Old and in with the New!

As I have already mentioned, we have a fixer-upper.  I have included the layouts below so you can have an idea of what we have to work with today and how we envision the main floor space.

Here is the current layout of the main floor of the home:

As you can see, the house is pretty disjointed and the rooms don't really flow and honestly
each time I've been in the house I have gotten a headache because it feels like you are in a maze.
Once we move in we will demo the existing kitchen and move it to the far right room in the house.

Here is the proposed layout:

This layout now opens up the main floor by taking down a lot of the walls and that yellow dash that is somewhat in front of the stairs to the left (I hope will be gone) so it opens it up even more!! We will also include main floor laundry which will also double as a mud room. ill be nice not to have to run all the way upstairs and then down to the basement to do laundry anymore :-)


As the kitchen will be the first to go in, we have already picked out cabinets and countertops. For the tiles we will be going with travertine but not decided on the color as of yet, should we stay lighter or go with more of a darker chocolatey tone. 

We have decided to go with the Templeton Maple Cappucino cabinets from KitchenCraft:

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As the house is south facing and lots of big windows and plans to put in A LOT of pot lights in the kitchen we aren't worries about it being too dark.  I think dark cabinets add a nice richness to a kitchen.

As for the countertops we have decided to go with Kashmir White Granite. We had originally looked at a browner granite but I really wanted to get away from the brown on brown on brown look which you typically get from the floor/cabinets/counter...ugh.

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You can see little bits of cranberry coloured specks in the granite which turned me off at the beginning but against the dark cabinets it really works together well.  We are now waiting on quotes from several local suppliers. (Well, I actually contacted 14 local reputable stone suppliers, so whoever can give us the best offering we are now just waiting!)

Here is a shot (not sure if it's Kashmir White) with darker cabinets.

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For the flooring we will go with a travertine tile and the options are either a light or darker color which we plan to do 12x16 or 24.

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The crema (the bottom) seems a lot lighter than in the store but we do have more time to make that decision.  The great thing about the darker color is that it doesn't pick up as much first as the lighter, but this is one decision that we have some more time to take.  Stay tuned!

New move-in date!

We close on our house on September 26th, less than 2 weeks from when we get back from our 2 week holiday in Italy, which should be challenging to see how fast we can finish packing and clean the house for the new home owners.  

We originally agreed to a close date on Sanford of November 2nd which would mean we would have to find a rental for at least 2 months as we planned to get the new kitchen in before we move-in.  Which would mean that we would move in at the end of November or beginning of December.  The homeowners came back a few days ago and requested to move the date up earlier so now we are looking at an October 10th date which we are waiting for them to confirm.  This would mean we could spend less time and money in a rental and move in earlier (i.e. not have to move in when snow is on the ground, and plenty of time to decorate for Christmas!).

Which means this weekend we need to get the ball rolling on finding cabinets, appliances, tiles, you name it.  We have a few ideas in mine....pictures to come!

We bought a fixer-upper!! And wow that's a understatement.  Looking for a "project" and to see if we can "flip" a house,  we endeavored and enlisted our real estate/friend to help us find a house that we could (cross fingers) flip.  We located the Sanford House and immediately loved the neighborhood (well we will need to live there for at least 2 years so it needs to be somewhat liveable as he took us to some dodgy spots).  The lot is quite large for it being close to the Rideau River and downtown with a pretty impressive 60 x 100 lot size and a smokin good deal.  With some TLC (a grocery list of maybe 40-50 items of TLC) and lots of weekends spent at Rona/Home Depot/Lowe's we hope to make this "fixer-upper" a great/fun/stressful experience.

Here it is

Some items that we will tackle
-tearing down existing kitchen and building a new one in another part of the house
-renoing all bathrooms
-building a master ensuite in an existing bedroom
- removing cat/dog/smoke smell from house
-tearing down walls and creating a more open concept
- finishing the basement
-adding a fireplace
-new flooring throughout
-new deck out back
-creating a main level laundry
-replacing most windows

you get the point....and the list could go on but here are a few more pics of the beauty.....


this is the front room on the main floor when you come in.  There is a big bow window and we look to tear down the wall where I am standing to connect with room behind it along with wall that you see that is begind that standing lamp

one of the 4 bedrooms upstairs that has a lot of junk in it but still a good size, maybe 10 x 11 feet and nice light coming in

this is a bedroom in the basement that we look to convert to a tv room

the room of our future kitchen, this will be our first project.  we have already selected cabinets and have started the design of the room

 The one bathroom upstairs that seriously needs work but is a good size

This is the cuurent kitchen that will be gutted which will be replaced by a laundry room

So there it is, more to come of course but lokking forward to the project that will unfold for us!!!