Revealing Renovations

insta gate

2006-06-08T05:38:00.000-04:00

insta gate
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

don't ask me why but I thought that this was probably one of the funniest things I'd seen in a while. Well, at least today.

We're having some work done our gate. The folks who lived here before us built this horrible, heavy, silly gate for the fence. I think it was built from 2x4"'s and it weighed a tonne.

Later on in the summer (or possibly the early part of the fall) we're getting a new deck. Our old one was here when we bought the house. Not only is it not properly anchored to the house, there is a fair bit of wood rot happening. It'll be so nice to get it done. We' ll be expanding it too, so it'll run the entire length of the back of the house. So nice!

backyard - after

2006-05-10T18:40:00.000-04:00

backyard - after
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

the after is so much nicer than the before.

it's all neat and tidy and lovely looking.

yay!!

backyard - before

2006-05-07T09:24:00.000-04:00

back yard
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

Our yard is about to be "beautified."

I'll post some photos later today.

I'm so happy about this, it's LONG overdue!!

better than holes!

2006-01-08T11:50:00.000-05:00

bathroom - new lights
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

Our new lights were installed on Thursday. They are fabulous!!

I cannot get over what a difference that they make in our bathroom, it's so much brighter now, and the light is really nice. It's a very white light and it makes the room seem very shiny and new.

Even the tub glows more now, with the light reflecting off of it. I'm so happy that we bit the bullet and did this. We hadn't planned on it but when the fixtures were on sale, we just couldn't not do it. Now I really can't wait until we can get the living room and kitchen ones installed too...although it will have to wait, until summer at least.

In the meantime, the bathroom looks fabulous. Yay!!

more than just holes

2006-01-04T13:22:00.000-05:00

master bathroom lighting
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

They don't look like much but, by the time I get home this evening, they should have little pot lights in them. Really spiffy, directional, halogen ones even.

These four will be over our big bath tub in the master bathroom. We've also had two fans installed in the bathroom. This room is part of the addition and had little or no ventilation before. We should notice a huge difference in the moisture (or lack of hopefully) in this room and the bathroom will definitely be much brighter!!

red green, eat your heart out!

2006-01-03T14:56:00.000-05:00

project - improving the heating and cooling
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

You would not believe how much duct tape has been ripped out of our basement over the past week. I wouldn't have believed it, had I not seen it with my own two eyes.

The folks who lived here before us, knew just enough to be dangerous when it came to heating and cooling. The duct work had not been properly installed for the furnace. Had we not had such a good fan on ours, we would have had no heat at all at the back of the house.

The back part of our house (our bedroom, master bath and the kitchen) is an addition to the original part of the house. It's built on a crawl space and I think that the guy who lived here before us was just too lazy to properly distribute the heat / cool air. Our handy person, Pat, has installed five blowers and many many feet of brand new duct work. He has brought heat to many chilly corners of the house. He's also installed two fans in our master bath and will be installing four pot lights. It's all about ventilation. He'll also be installing a fan over our fish tanks.

Shortly after we moved in, I realized (or guessed) that the dryer wasn't vented out of the house. It seemed like it vented into the stairwell. Turns out, I was right. Pat's correcting that as well. The dryer, the fans from both bathrooms, the new fish fan, they'll all vent out a large van that he's installing in the attic. We should notice a huge difference as far as the moisture in the house goes as well.

Pat's expecting to finish up tomorrow. He's got some trim work to do for me, around one of the bedroom doors and in our bathroom (he and his crew painted our house last May) and once that's done, the house will be toasty, warm, dry and all trimmed out.

Of course, there are still a million and one things that we still want to do. Fortunately, this will be the last of the "absolutely needs to get done" stuff that absolutely needed to get done this winter. We should notice a huge difference in our heating and cooling bills when it's all done too, which is always good!!

a few steps up in the world

2005-12-30T20:50:00.000-05:00

a few steps up in the world
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

They might not look like much but we have fantastic new back steps.

They are super solid, built on a steel frame and made out of proper, thick pieces of wood.

The ones that were on our current deck were totally crap-tac-ular and they actually came apart from the deck. The deck is in pretty shabby shape, the boards are spongey in spots and hope to do some repairs on it this summer. One day, we will knock the whole thing down and built a fancy new one but, for now, it'll have to do.

Right now, I'm just so happy that we have safe, solid, back steps. We can actually use our back door again, will wonders ever cease??

I sure hope not!!

warm and cozy

2005-12-29T07:31:00.000-05:00

snowy house
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

As all homeowners know, when you purchase a home, you also become the owner of a never-ending "to-do" list for your home. We are no different.

Parts of our list include major things that can wait for a while (new deck on the back of the house, patio doors from our bedroom leading to the new deck, finishing the basement, new flooring throughout the house). Other things are small and we're working on them ourselves (installation of dimmer switches in some rooms, unpacking of boxes, organizing of closets and shelving units).

Of course, there are a number of "medium sized" things that we need to get done. Some of these things we can do ourselves but many of them require a little more expertise than either Mark or I possess. For these things, we turn to professionals. Recently, we had a new humidifier unit installed on our furnace. Two weeks ago, we had four new windows installed in our basement. These types of things we leave to professionals who not only know what they're doing, but who will guarantee their work.

Today, I'm waiting for Pat, our handy-person, to arrive. A few weeks ago, we sat down with Pat and made a list of things that he's going to help us out with. I'm sure it'll take him at least a couple of days to get through the list which includes:

- new steps for the back deck (he has built these already and we'll be able to use them again when our new deck is constructed

- repairing some of the furnace duct work in the basement (the folks we bought the house from did it themselves and, let's just say it wasn't done properly)

- installing additional heat vents into our master bathroom and the kitchen (these areas are both in an addition to the house and we think that the previous owners used baseboard heaters to supplement the heat in these areas)

- installing ventilation fans in both our master bathroom and in our fish tank area

- mucking about with the insulation in the attic (I'm not 100% sure what he's doing but I know it's to do with the ventilation issue - Pat and Mark have it all figured out)

There are some other things too but off the top of my head, those are the main things. These aren't cosmetic things, rather they are functional things that need to be done to keep the house warm and cozy for the rest of the winter. We have a very good furnace but the heat isn't being properly distributed so we're getting that sorted out. It's not sexy but it is practical.

In the spring, if money permits (after all, we've had to pay for windows, furnace stuff and now this), we'll think about the deck issue. Right now, I'm just quite enjoying being the house, finally.

Last week, I rearranged the living room furniture, again. We also hung a bunch of photos in the living room and it's feeling really "homey."

Once I get my Christmas decorations put away, I'm planning to get seriously organized. I'm tired of seeing boxes piled up in the basement and in my office. For once and for all, I'd like to get things sorted out and put away (or chucked out). If I do it a little at time, by spring I should have it all done.

Of course, once that's done, I'll have found something else to work on, painting and such I'm sure (I'd like to paint our 2nd guest bedroom and the smaller bathroom) but for now, today, I'm just happy to be here, sipping my coffee and enjoying the house!

curtains, finally!!

2005-11-14T20:06:00.000-05:00

living room window - after
Originally uploaded by Julep67.

Over the weekend, we took a drive up to IKEA in Ottawa. My brother lives in Ottawa so we got to visit him and do some shopping.

Seriously, I'm so glad (at times) that we don't have an IKEA store here. I'm afraid that our house would be even more IKEA-y than it is. Since we moved into the new house (in May), we've been making do with sheets on some of our windows. The house came with window coverings but some of them were in very bad shape.

In the living room, the window had a grubby looking lace sheer on it. The folks who lived her before smoked so you can imagine the colour of it! Not nice. For the first month or so, we made due without anything on the big window. Eventually, I broke down and found a blue sheet (because the sheets must coordinate with the furniture!) and hung it up. I use the term "hung" extremely loosely because I just sort of tucked it in around the screens.

In our bedroom, we got a little more creative. I bought a tension rod for the smaller window and we picked out and installed a really nice curtain rod over the large window. Again, I was able to coordinate sheets to the room (thank goodness we have a lot of sheets!!). On the large window, I clipped matching green flat sheets to the rod. This created two panels. On the tension rod, I hung a folded sheet over it and it didn't look that bad. I mean, it didn't look horrible but it was obvious that they were sheets. At least it wasn't newspaper (which is what I'd put up those first couple of weeks).

At IKEA, we picked up some really nice, heavy cotton, navy blue curtains and a neat grey/silver rod. The curtains have large grommits at the top so I didn't need to purchase anything more than the rod. In the bedroom, we got some funky, patterned curtains. They were from the children's section but I don't care. They have green in them that matches the paint, blue that matches our towels (in the adjoined bathroom) and gold that matches the fleck in the tile in the loo. I need to purchase a new quilt cover though. Our bedding (which was just something we picked up because we needed something quickly for our newly purchased king size bed) doesn't match. Not at all. I haven't taken pictures of the bedroom yet but I will. It looks amazing, I think. I also hung red star "holiday" lights between the curtains and the window so it looks like a really sparkly sheer. The room seems a lot bigger since they went in.

I haven't taken up the living room curtains but I did do the ones in the bedroom yesterday. The living room will have to wait until the weekend.

Oh, also, we purchased two (matching) birch shelves which Mark installed in our bedroom last night. The room just looks so much better, totally different. I really love it. It feels really good to be finally decorating the new house. For the past few months, we've just been so busy that we've done basic maintenance and had biggish things done (like to the furnace and the eaves). Now we're "nesting" and making a mark on the place. We have finally started to put up some artwork too so it is feeling more and more like home all the time!!

good golly

2005-08-20T12:14:00.000-04:00

Boy, I really do keep forgetting about this blog!!

Trust me, I won't be forgetting it for much longer. I hope to start updating this regularly again. A lot has happened on the home front since I last posted here. For one thing, we sold the house we were living in and moved into a new house (new to us) in the same neighbourhood. Our moving day was May 25 so we've been here almost 3 months now. It's been a busy three months and we probably did more to the new place in the first month we were here than we did to the old place during the first 18 months we were there.

You learn a lot when you buy your second home. We learned that it's easier to paint the whole place before you get moved in and settled. Fortunately, we closed on the new house a week before we closed on the old house. As luck would have it, our contractor was available that week and he painted the living room, kitchen, master bath and two bedrooms. He also painted the ceiling in my office and primed a third bedroom. Non painting jobs included installing a new toilet in the second bathroom, replacing the faucets in both bathrooms and the kitchen, installing our new fridge and dishwasher and some small plumbing/electrical jobs. Of course, there are things we have done ourselves since then. Also, a few things have cropped up over the summer that we need to deal with before winter settles in but we'll get to those in the next few weeks.

Right now, we're just really enjoying the new place. It's a four bedroom bungalow so we have a lot more room than we had before. It also has a full basement which is a pleasure after not having one (our old house was built on a concrete slab. Our lot is smaller but we have a huge front porch and a nice deck (off the kitchen at the back of the house) so we now use the outside way more than we did at the old house. It's kind of nice to not have a football field sized backyard to look after too.

We literally worked our asses off all spring, between the rush to fix the old place up to sell (we had bought the new house before we even thought about selling the old one) and then the stuff we did to this one when we moved in, we were both a little renovation fatigued. When we decided to sell the old place, we packed up all of our books, cd's, dvd's, videos, pictures, posters and extra dishes (and just junk) and put it into storage. We then had the whole house painted, two coats of white primer through out. It looked a bit barren when we were finished. The house itself was kind of small so removing everything and painting the place white (not to mention cleaning the place from top to bottom until it sparkled) made it look huge and it only took about 14 days to sell. It felt a lot longer than that but the listing became active on April 18 and by May 1, it was all done and dusted. We had a short closing and actually got $1100 over our asking price. It was really stressful and exhausting but well worth it in the long run.

I have some photos posted of the before and after shots at the old place and some before, during and after photos of the new house here:

Old house - Before
Old house - After
New house - first viewing
New house - under renovation
New house - settlin' in
New house - out in the yard

hey

2004-10-01T12:55:00.000-04:00

So I totally forgot about this blog. Obviously it's not something I've kept up, even though we have been working on the house.

Since I last posted we have purchased some additional cabinets for our kitchen, installed really nice bookshelves in our foyer for a start. In our bathroom, we painted, installed a new floor, new mirror, new light fixtures, ventilation fan and oak plantation blinds. We've also done some work on our bedroom and on our guest room.

I'll have to dig up some before and after photos and show you all how it looks. It's been a lot of work but it's been fun and so far, it's looking pretty good.

news

2002-09-22T13:06:00.000-04:00

23 months ago we moved into our first home. It's about 50 years old, give or take a few. Our neighbourhood is really cool, the homes in it are referred to as "war time" homes. These homes were built after World War II for returning veterans and their families. The neighbourhood lies on the east side of the local aluminum factory which at one time, probably employed most of the neighbourhood residents.

Since we've been in our house, we've done a fair amount of repairs and improvements. Some of them we knew we'd have to do when we moved in, some we did just because we wanted to.

We've put a new roof on our home, replaced the hot water heater, replaced the plumbing for our washer hook up and our sewage drain. Almost all of the light fixtures in our home have been replaced and we redecorated our guest bedroom.

At the moment, we are in the middle of renovating our washroom. We've replaced the subfloor and toilet seal, installed water resistent dry wall on the ceiling and installed new pot lights and a ventilation fan. At the moment, we are repairing the plaster and preparing to paint. Once the painting is done, we'll have our new flooring and trim installed. We're also planning on replacing the mirror and installing some shelves along the back splash, above our vanity.