Kitchen update

The kitchen is moving along. K & B have updated the wiring and added some outlets for the new range location. Moving the range meant having to run a new dedicated line from the circuit box, located in the basement, under the front kitchen window. Unfortunately, the joists run crosswise, meaning more work.

The wall to the left has been insulated. Since it's an old bungalow, none of the walls are insulated and we find this wall to be very cold when the wind blows. K & B also built it out a few inches, meaning we lose a few inches of width in the kitchen. As we've been discovering, the walls in this house (and pretty much all old houses) aren't straight. The corner of the kitchen, where the head space for the stairs is located, isn't square. A big problem if your corner cabinet has to be located here so to square it up, we give up an inch or two of floor space. That's fine; it's a fairly wide kitchen.

The walls were a dark mustard yellow colour which really made the space seem small and dark. I'm happy to say the yellow is now gone and white primer is in its place. Already, it seems more roomy. Our final colour choice was a warm gray from Benjamin Moore, called Gray Mist. It'll pick up the subtle gray bits in the counter top we've chosen and contrast nicely with the cabinets.

K suggested cutting a tall, narrow window in the wall between the kitchen and the entry area. I'm amazed at how such a little thing has given this area a much more open feel.

Last but not least, the tile floor is in! Yay! It still needs to be grouted and we're short some tiles for the entry area (our fault; we're still learning how to use a tape measure) but we're happy with the results so far. The extra tile should be here next week and we'll post more pictures of the final product then.

Miscellaneous bits

Back tracking a bit, here's a photo of R's temporary office while the basement was being done. The smaller iMac is mine since this is my temporary office (the study is being used for catch-all storage room). The larger iMac is R's. Looks like we're ready for a game of Battleship.

R has since moved back down to the basement so I have my temp office to myself again, minus Kevin and Bryan when they're here working on the house.

Here's a picture of our new travel mascot. He has yet to be named. We've been wanting something that's small and light to take on our trips with us, and this little guy fits perfectly. We're planning to photograph him in different locales and put together a travel blog. I found him at the One of a Kind Craft Show and my friend Lynda bought him as a birthday present for me. He's really adorable and I love his wide-eyed surprised look. If you have a name suggestion for him, let us know.

Finally, here's the baby blanket I've been working on since last summer. It's a gift for R's co-worker who's currently on maternity leave. The baby was born last October and I just finished it a few days ago. It would have been done sooner but selling the condos and moving got in the way. I'm really happy with the results. I may need to make one for myself, in a larger size.

Almost there

The main bath is almost done. The light fixture is in and the new vanity is up minus the drawers since the plumbing still has to be connected. After that, the new window gets installed (we have to wait until next week for that) and the tile can go in the tub area. We're sticking with a simple white subway tile there for a nice, clean look.

It's gone!

Renovating an old house is a little like excavating an archeological site. You never know what you're going to find, how layers there will be and how far down it goes. The kitchen demolition went off without a hitch. I wanted to be home to take part but there was too much going on at work. R was home, though, and got to swing a hammer and destroy some stuff. Very satisfying for him.

Before the kitchen was gutted, we noticed that we had a regular mouse visitor in our sink cabinet. How do we know? There were chew marks on the garbage bag and little bits of chewed plastic around the garbage bin. One morning, I went to open the bin to throw out some garbage and came eye to eye with a cute little brown mouse sitting on top of the garbage. It was a toss up as to who was more surprised. We admired him, even as we evicted him from the house (he was really cute!). I don't think he understood he was being evicted, though, since he was back a couple nights later. Now that the kitchen is gone, our running joke is that he poked his head up, looking for the garbage bin and thought "What the...! Where's my garbage?"

Bryan demolishing our kitchen

Off to the dump!

So what did we learn from gutting the kitchen? Kevin found a few layers of door framing around the two doorways into the kitchen. There was the original door frame that was put in when the house was built and then a couple more nailed on top of it. He was able to reclaim a few inches of doorway. There was, again, some questionable wiring in the walls and ceiling but the real bonus was the discovery of asbestos vinyl floor tiles. Lucky for us (or should I say Kevin and Bryan?), the vinyl tiles were glued to a plywood sub floor that was very loose so they pulled it up and disposed of it. No more asbestos!

The asbestos vinyl floor tiles

Day 1

Day 2

Warm tiles

Since we have so many renos going at once, Kevin brought his cousin, Bryan, in to help out. Things are moving along and while the kitchen is undergoing its transformation (stay tuned!), the main bath is coming together nicely. The floor tile we chose is 12"x24", in a dark mocha colour, with a subtle, variegated stripe running through it. The colour name is 'chocolate'. That can't get any more perfect as we're big chocolate fans. A heated floor was installed under the tile and now the floor is nice and warm on our bare feet.

Wiring for the heated floor control panel

Deciding on the layout

The finished floor! (Yes, it needs cleaning)

Auto-destruct in 60 minutes. There will be no further audio warning.

The kitchen reno is about to begin. We're gutting the whole kitchen down to the studs and rebuilding it but first, some pictures of what it looks like now.

The stupid corner

The other side of the wall with the fridge is the stairway leading down to the basement. It's a small house, so the headroom for the stairs cuts into the kitchen space. It's hidden in the corner base cabinet where the microwave sits. That's a lot of prime storage space gone. Oh well, we'll make do. The fridge is currently where our new dual fuel range will go and the fridge will go in the corner where the old range is now.

The fridge's new home

The counter is one of my least favourite features. It's a tiled counter with wood trim. Kevin asked me what I thought of the counter when he first came to look at the job. I told him it was breeding ground for bacteria. Not only is the grout difficult to keep clean (coffee stains it easily and only comes off with lots of scrubbing) but the tiles have a semi-rough surface, also difficult to keep clean. When we first moved in, it took me a couple hours to scrub down the counter. Then R came up from the basement with a box that had been sitting on the floor of a moving van. He went to put it on my clean counter. I think I scared him when I yelled "No! Don't put that on the counter, I just cleaned it!". Sorry, honey.

The tiled counter, with my favourite mug

Being a bungalow with ducts running under the floor, the bulkheads are empty wasted space so we're having them ripped out for taller wall cabinets. We're also planning to extend the counter to the far wall with the window. Originally, this was used by the previous owner as a little eat-in area with a small table for two. We decided we'd rather have more storage space. The slate floor is also going. On the surface, it looks nice but it's not very well installed and I had a slate floor in my last place. I'll admit it's a great look but it's another hard-to-clean surface. The irregular surface was great at chewing up my floor mop. I'm looking forward to having some nice, flat floor tiles.

Our cabinets are here!

For our cabinets, we went with Ikea. We like the look and the price. I can't wait until they're in.

We have a big soaker tub...

...in a tiny bathroom. We didn't realize exactly how big the tub was when we bought it. Yes, we did measure it and the space, but sometimes things are larger in real life. I think the tub is deeper than the one I had at the condo. Either way, we love the clean, minimal lines of it and the depth is good for those post-massage, epsom salt baths (ahhhh!). It'll be a cozy bathroom. R wasn't crazy about the tubs with all the wavy decorations on the front (there are lots of those and I have to agree, they're not the most attractive) so we were happy to find this one.

Good insulation makes for warm walls!

The new soaker tub and dual flush toilet

The toilet's a bit close to the tub but there's a floor joist to the left of it so that's as far over as it can go. The only other option is to have it on the other side of the joist but that cuts into the vanity area and creates other problems.

The corner for the vanity