Month: February 2015

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Let’s Do Laundry!

Who knew that one day I would actually look forward to doing laundry! I never would have thought it was possible, but let me tell you… after going 2 months without having a dryer installed, the fact that I now have one working may not quite be reason to celebrate, but it is definitely exciting enough to want to do laundry! On Friday, Rich finished drilling the hole through the cinder block wall, and installing the plug, so that I could finally use my new dryer. I don’t know if I mentioned it previously, but the day after I moved in I had my new Samsung laundry pair delivered. They are High Efficiency, Super Capacity machines and this time, instead of buying the front load machines, I got the top load washer. so far, so good! Seriously though, I can not fathom a family spending all of their lives without proper laundry machines. It is so incredibly convenient to have a dryer, and to know that you can quickly get your clothes, bedding, etc. clean and dry without having them hanging all over the basement.

Anyway, aside from that, I have some progress to report on the kitchen… the tile is pretty much all in place, except where the wall will be coming down, and I think that Jim is coming tomorrow (possibly with a mutual friend, Mark, to help) to do the drywall. So exciting! Here is an in progress photo of the tiles.
IMAG1693
By next week, the cabinets should be in place so that I can order up the counter top, seeing as they’re going to take a few weeks to come in. In the meantime, Jim can finish up the other bits – like taking out the wall and putting in the beam.

Oh… my super fun purchase this weekend was these bar stools, which will sit at the island!
barstools

I think that’s it for now!

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Island Life

Hi guys,

Tuesday night after a long weekend, Leafs game is on – they just traded Franson and Santorelli today – and instead of giving it my attention I figured it’s time to post an update on what’s happening with the renovations.

With this past weekend being a long weekend, I was able to make some progress on a few things. On Friday night, my electrician, Rich, was still here when I got home from work, so we spent a bit of time talking about the renovation to the kitchen, the island configuration, etc. Unfortunately, the way the ceiling and rafters are configured, when I have the wall removed between the kitchen and living room, there will be a need to add 3 posts. Between the posts, I’ll position the island, but openings between the posts need to be about 36 inches to be to current building code. That pretty much dictates that the island is going to have to sit up against the two posts on the fridge side. I think that’ll be okay. Lowe’s was advertising 20% off this week, for the cabinets that I’d picked out for the island, so I ordered them. I also ordered a new exterior door for the ground (lower) floor. The door that is there now is not an entry door – it has no insulation value and really isn’t safe – so I took advantage of the $75 off sale for that, too. Those were delivered on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was Valentine’s Day. Since I don’t officially have a Valentine, I swapped a few texts with some friends (and my crush) and then set about smashing down the wall between the kitchen and living room. Well, more specifically, opening up the wall. It was all cement/plaster over gypsum board, so lots of layers of mess and filth. I grabbed Stanley and started smashing away – including smashing one of my fingers and actuallly breaking the skin. I then had to bag up the mess and take it out to the garage. I’m really excited about how it’ll all look once it is taken down, because as of now it is already much brighter and sunnier… IMAG1688

I am not excited, however, by how much garbage is in my garage right now!

On Sunday morning, Rich showed up to finish up some loose ends. He also insulated the exterior wall of the kitchen – a very welcome task seeing as the temperature dropped to -40 that day with the wind chill. It was crazy cold. I actually headed over to the US (Buffalo) with my good friends Theresa and Rob for the day. Rich is going to come back another day and finish up installing a GFL plug for the washer, a new plug for my dryer (there wasn’t one) and also drilling a hole through the back of the house for the dryer vent. I can’t WAIT to have a dryer. It’s been almost 2 months since I’ve been able to do anything except hang dry my clothes! Then, he’ll have to come up for the final stage – switching over to the all new electrical panel.

Next step, hopefully tomorrow, Jim will have to put up the vapour barrier on the exterior wall and then start installing the new tile on the floors. I’m really thrilled with the tile choice… you never know for 100% sure how it’ll look when you’re just standing in a hardware store trying to imagine it with all of your other choices, but this one has lots of colour variations that will go great with my slate appliances and with the hardwood floors. It’s going to look great.
IMAG1630

After the tile, Jim will do the drywall and then it’ll be time to actually start installing the cabinets, at which time I can take final measurements and order the countertop. Jimmy has a contact for that, so I might go to a little guy, instead of going through Home Depot. Oh, speaking of the Depot… I ordered my light for over the island and it was delivered today.
island_light
I’m planning to paint a red accent wall in the dining room, so this will coordinate well.

Ok, that’s about it for now. Leafs are already down 3-1 in the 2nd and it doesn’t look like they’re going to recover. Terrible! Time to go an fold some laundry. More in a few days!

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Little Things

Hi guys,

I know you are probably anxiously awaiting updates on the kitchen. Well… here is one photo of how it looks pretty gutted.

kitchen_gutted

That’s my cute little fur ball, Pippa, doing an inspection of the demo. Notice that all of the bulkhead is gone. The floor was still in place there though. The next one is after Jimmy (and Stanley) smashed their way through the floors.

tile_removed

What a filthy, dusty mess that left. Like a giant litter box for the cat (thank God she didn’t see it that way!)

Tomorrow, my electrician will be here to start running the new lines for lighting, for the dishwasher, etc. Afterwards, Jim will have to insulate that wall and drywall it. I can’t wait to have a beautiful kitchen. I have been using Lowe’s virtual kitchen planner to plan the layout, so I know exactly what it will look like!

Besides the kitchen, I have been working on a few little things…

I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore on Saturday, up in Brampton, and picked up a couple drying racks. These are made to screw into your ceiling and you can raise or lower them as needed. I bought two and installed one over the dryer and one over the laundry tub. I may not have as much need of them once the dryer is running, but for only $15 each, they were totally worth it!

drying_rack

Yesterday, I decided to take on a task that I’d been wanting to do for a while… install a programmable thermostat. I was fortunate, a year or so ago, to pick one up for almost nothing (under $2) when Rona was going out of business near me and had 90% off the lowest price… I just needed to install it. I googled instructions, and it was easy:

1) Turn off the power at the furnace. I just flipped the switch, so I didn’t need to pull the fuse from the electrical panel.

2) Remove the face plate from the old thermostat… it even had mercury unit!

3) Remove the screws holding the thermostat into its base.

4) Remove the screws holding the wires in place, while being careful to note which wire was attached to which terminal… W, Y, RH, etc.

5) Fully remove the mounting plate from the wall and replace it with the new one. I was lucky there… I could use the same screws and holes (plugged).

6) Once the new plate was mounted, insert the wires into the new terminals and tighten the tiny screws.

7) Install the batteries.

8) Program the temperature settings.

9) Turn the furnace power back on.

That’s it. Pretty simple.

Now, I think it is time to sign off. More on the kitchen next time!

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Bathroom Before and After

Today is a snow day. It was the first day in the new house where we’ve actually had a significant snowfall, and therefore the first where I actually had to shovel. It took me about 1.5 hours, because there was so much of it down, but I have to say, it felt like a good workout!

I’ve been meaning, for the last few days, to post the before/after shots of the bathroom, so that you can see just how much of an awesome difference it is. Take a look:

I still have a couple of bits and pieces to put into place, like a mirror and perhaps a cabinet over the toilet, and some sort of decor on the far wall. Plus, I’ll need to add a shower curtain (right now I just have a vinyl liner in place). I’m really happy with how it turned out though – it’s a classic look, with the travertine, that won’t become dated quickly, but with the neutral colour palette, the paint colour could be changed at any time to give it a totally different feel.

Thanks to Brandie for coming over this weekend and painting the trim, while I was doing some work in the kitchen!

Also wanted to update you all on the status of the fireplace. The house came with a wood burning fireplace that had an insert installed. The insert, unfortunately, was not up to code. My fireplace guy, Mr. Hartt, said that they called them “slammers” in the industry, because back in the day (probably the 80s) when this was installed, they’d slam them into the fireplace without any proper chimney liner, etc. This created, over time, a very dangerous situation because they creosote would build up inside the chimney and create such heat and potential for massive chimney fires – some even got so bad that they’d explode and blow the chimney or the insert right out. Well, I had the thing removed, and when he pulled it out (a bill that was over $400) he uncovered the fact that in order to install it originally they’d smashed the firebox out. In order to restore it, that has to be rebuilt, or I could choose to have a different insert installed with a proper liner, or convert to an electric insert, or a gas insert. He said that would run in the $3800 and up range. I chose to go with the $2200 rebuild the firebox and replace the damper option… he’ll come back in March to complete the work. The problem is, the Insurance Company is pretty hard nosed about this – they want to make sure that they’re not insuring a home that has a huge potential of burning down (if I were stupid enough to use the fire as it was).

The fireplace is just one example that I’ve found, in so many examples in this house, where things were done in half measures… not done properly. I’m fixing that, but it’ll take a while! Oh well… lots more content to write about.