New floors

Plan A: To have the floors refinished. The house has original oak strip flooring and having them refinished would be the least expensive option. Unfortunately, the oak flooring was pretty thin in areas and wouldn't stand up to another sanding and refinishing. Plus, some areas were pretty badly stained (dog pee?) and other areas were badly patched. On to Plan B.

Plan B: To do nothing for now. With the cost of the renovations adding up, we thought maybe we'd just live with the floor as is for now and have them replaced at a later date. However, the more repairs we did, the sadder the floors looked in comparison. Also, if we do the floors later, we'd have to re-pack everything and clear the rooms. We've been living out of boxes for six months now and the thought of packing and unpacking again in the near future made us cringe. On to Plan C.

Plan C: Bite the bullet and just do it. So we did. We chose a nice cinnamon ash to replace the oak strip. Similar colour and grain but we're told ash is much harder than oak and the floor place was having a sale on cinnamon ash. We're sold!

Here are the before photos...

Stained floor in the den

R's dusty work shoes

Fresh air return in the bedroom

 ...and the in-progress photos.

The new floor is a pleasure to walk on and looks lovely. We'll be posting more photos after the baseboards and trim are done.

While Kevin was away...

...our job was to paint, paint and paint. Nothing spruces up a place like a fresh coat of paint. The living room was originally a light yellow colour which R didn't care for (I didn't mind it as much but I'm still happy to have it gone) and the dining room was a dark green colour which we both wanted gone. Before K left for another job, he removed the French doors that separated the living and dining rooms. It really made a difference and opened up the space.

Here's the before photo. I think this was our second official visit to the house and the day we decided to put in an offer. That's our wonderful realtor, Amanda, sitting at the dining table. She was extremely patient and helpful, even when we were driving her crazy with endless questions and concerns. We can't say enough good things about her.

Here are the in-progress photos. The French doors are gone and the dining room is primed. We decided to paint both rooms and the hallway with the same gray mist that we used in the kitchen. The warm, neutral gray will be a great back drop for hanging artwork, mostly Randy's cool abstract photos.

 

After the living and dining rooms, we moved on to my office/den. The rest of the house gets to neutral but for my office, I wanted a punch of colour. My thought was something green. I had a sickly green bedroom as a kid. My parents weren't much into decorating and we lived in a housing project in one of the roughest neighbourhoods. So basically, when the city decided it was time to paint the units, we had limited choice in colour. I ended up with green (my parents' choice). For a long time, green was not my favourite colour but lately, I've been thinking green is good, especially a nice, fresh green. I did my research and picked Benjamin Moore Pear Green. At first, I thought, wow, that's really bright but after it dried, it was wonderful. I love it! It's bright, fresh, colourful and will look absolutely fabulous with the dark bookcases and white desk. We'll be posting more photos of the finished room soon but here's a sneak peak at the colour for now.

Next came the bedroom and hallway. The hallway continues with the gray mist and the bedroom will be cloud white. We patched, sanded and the day we were set to paint, R had a pile of work to do. That left me painting solo for most of the day which was fine. I haven't been getting to the gym lately so I welcomed the workout. I also planned the have Marianne over on the same day to help me get rid of the poison ivy in the front yard (did I mention we have our very own patch of poison ivy?). That didn't happen. The weather, which started out a little overcast, worsened over the course of the morning. At one point, when I was painting the ceiling in the bedroom, there was a flash of light outside the window, followed seconds later by a loud, and I mean LOUD, crack of thunder. I froze in place. Hmmm, probably not a good idea to be holding a long aluminum pole in front of a window during a thunderstorm. Probably not a good idea to be clearing poison ivy while standing under a big tree during a thunderstorm either. I dropped the painting pole and called Marianne to cancel. I didn't have the good sense to stop painting the ceiling, however. I figured there were more attractive things in the neighbourhood for the lightning to hit.

After R was done with work, he came up to finish the ceiling while I put a second coat on the bedroom. Painting done, R washed up the rollers and brushes (my least favourite part of painting) and we admired the newly painted rooms. It's feeling more and more like our home every day. We love our house!

The master bedroom

Taking a banana break

Second time's a charm

Our counter top is in and it looks beautiful. Yay! I had several calls back and forth with Mark (the guy overseeing our counter installation) about our counter and the issues we had with it. We didn't like the seaming job they did (the seam was very dark and not a uniform width) and there was an issue with the counter being very dull on one side of the seam. Mark was very helpful in correcting these problems. He had a Caesarstone rep look at our counter and the rep agreed that there was a defect in the slab we bought so Caesarstone gave us another slab. I have to say, I'm impressed with Caesarstone and their customer service.

The second installation didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped. When the crew showed up to install, the counter pieces had the same problem as before (one piece was thicker in profile than the other). After the first go around, we thought for sure they would have checked the product before bringing it out but I guess not. Anyway, they took it back to the shop asap, had the pieces redone to the right thickness and brought it back. The installation went smoothly from there and it looks fabulous!

Not only is our counter top finally in, but we've been able to unpack a ton of boxes and organize the kitchen. Even though we have way more storage space than we did before, we have doubles of everything (two sets of dishes, glasses, pots & pans, bakeware, etc), so there's going to be some more de-cluttering to come. For now, we're just happy to not have to root through a dozen boxes to find something.