Crown Molding

This past week Dave, along with our amazing friend Rob, installed the crown molding on the main floor.

It is amazing what a deadline and a little motivation will do ;o)

  

Considering we started the kitchen renovation in the summer of 2008 - five years ago! - it is quite rewarding to finally see the last piece of the vision fall into place.

Our Ikea cabinets suddenly look a lot like custom built cabinets.

Just a sneak peak for now...

The whole house is getting painted this week and then I can finally start sharing 'After' photos.

Yes, after five long years of renovating, we are *this* close to being done!

Amy

I ♥ comments...

Never Seen Before "Before" Photos

We have been slowly working at unpacking all of the boxes of stuff that have been packed away since we started renovating... after two years I really should just throw it all away...

However in a box of random photos dating from back when people actually printed photos, I uncovered the photos we took the first time we viewed the house before we bought it and shortly after we moved in...

Looking back I seriously wonder what actually drew us to the house... I guess we were just able to recognize a diamond in the rough!

Amy

I ♥ comments...

Unpacked

Only 487 days after we packed up our house, we finally took the last boxes out of storage in the neighbour's garage.

The best part? We have a dinning room table!

Unfortunately looks can be deceiving.... the table is actually hiding an assortment of living room decorations and random pieces of furniture that don't yet have a home. And of course Dave's work bench.

The living room still needs a lot of work. It is still missing a couple pieces of baseboard. The walls and trim still need one more coat of paint. And of course crown moulding.

The fireplace is only about half done and we have hit a snag in our soapstone plans. Turns out that in the six months since we ordered the last piece of stone, the quarry has shut down and now we don't know if we can get matching stone. We are trying to stay optimistic that Dauter Stone will be able to locate a matching remnant in their yard.

The hallway is pretty close to complete less some touch up near the front door and, again, crown moulding.

Still a long way from being *done* but it feels good to have some place to sit down to dinner again.

Amy

And the Winner is...

After much debate we have finally commited ourselves to something to go inside the fireplace mantle.

It was not an easy process....

We both quickly decided we were not in love with the red brick. At one point I may have even suggested we install the red brick and paint it either white or black - Dave just laughed, called me crazy and reminded me that this whole process had started with a painted brick mantle!

We hauled home dozens of tile samples but could not even come close to agreeing on one - Dave was drawn to the green ceramic tiles, I was drawn to the neutral glass mosaic tiles. Both of us were extremely hesitant about any significant amount of grout.

Thinking that we were never going to reach a concenus, I remembered that there was a third category of photos I had collected on pinterest... so I showed Dave the photos and instantly he agreed.

The winner?

Drum roll please....

Soapstone!
 

Via Green Mountain Soapstone


We are having Dauter Stone cut a peice of soapstone to match the soapstone hearth we got from them back in the summer. Not the cheapest option we could have gone with but we should know by now that we never choose the cheapest option...

Now we are having second throughts about painting the mantle white.... but that is just paint... I can change my mind on paint as many times as I am willing to re-paint!
 

Black Mantle via Pinterest

 Amy


 PS This now means we have about 100 peices of brick veneer available to a good home.

Renovating with Baking Soda

When trying to restore an old house, paint stripper seems to make a frequent appearance. We have already gone through gallons of the stuff taking the paint off doors, door trim, the stairs and the fireplace brick (which we ended up tearing out anyways...)

We have recently been inundated with paint stripper fumes all over again as we try to restore the return air vent covers to their former glory.

We were blessed with having seven beautiful original cast iron vent covers in our house. But were cursed with the fact that they had each been painted several times over the last 100 years to the point where they were no longer operational.

Since the bright yellows and muddy browns no longer work in my bright white house (and we would like them to actually function), all of the paint had to go.

Because they are so large and intricate, the only reasonable method we found to take off the layers of paint was soaking them in buckets of paint stripper. It was a horrible process.

Soak in paint stripper for a couple hours...

Scrub with steel wool and a wire brush...
Take Advil for pounding headache...

Soak again...

Scrub again...

 Vacate the house due to the intolerable level of noxious fumes...  

Then I happened to read a post by Mrs. Limestone about boiling off paint using nothing but water and baking soda... anything that avoided paint stripper was worth a try.

So one night last week I set myself up in the kitchen to test 'poaching' the paint off of the vent covers.

Sure enough after about an hour of simmering on the stove, combined with a little bit of scrubbing, the majority of the paint was gone!

Still a lot of polishing is required to make them shine but that is nothing that a little sandblasting won't fix!

Amy

Progress Report

For the first time in three months we have progress to report on the house! Nothing huge as we are down to the time-consuming final details but still progress.

Dave has been hard at work the past couple weeks installing trim on the main floor. It turned out to be extremely time consuming as each piece had to be custom scribbed to the un-level floors and un-straight walls. There are still three pieces of trim waiting for us to complete the fireplace mantel.

We took advantage of a cold Sunday to get the first coat of paint on the trim. Unfortunately Monday it got too cold (-38 C with wind chill) to paint around the windows and doors without worrying about the paint cracking.
 

At least the living room and dining room are starting to look a little less like a wood workshop. If only I could get Dave to remove the compressor and router table.

Amy

Fireplace

This week it has been a balmy 15 C in Calgary... perfect timing to get our new gas fireplace working!

After a failed inspection and a series of delays (contractor holidays, our holidays, the holidays...), the gas fitter finally returned on Thursday to complete the installation.

For such a tiny fireplace, it sure puts out a lot of heat! I can hardly wait until we have the mantle complete and some living room furniture so we can actually enjoy it!

One Year Later: Living Room & Dining Room

Now:

Still outstanding:

• fireplace mantel
• install base board and crown moulding
• paint the windows
• paint trim
• touch-up paint
• return air vent covers need to be stripped, refinished and installed

Fireplace

Last week the gas fitters installed our beautiful new cast iron gas fireplace.

We were both surprised at how well it seem to "just fit in" with the existing house. And it will only look better once the mantel is built.

Now we can enjoy romantic evenings in front of the fire. Maybe once our living room is not being used to paint trim...

Amy

Hardwood

Due to our troubles with the first batch of hardwood, progress on the main floor has been stalled for over a month. The replacement hardwood arrived right before Dave left for the Yukon so it was able to acclimatize just in time for him to return home and pick up where he left off.

Three days of hard work later... and the hardwood is done!

Now on to the trim work!

Amy

Presto Chango

Getting soapstone is a bit anti-climatic. Even though the stone has been cut and polished is still not shiney like granite or marble. It arrives looking more like bland concrete than lustreous stone.

In order to give soapstone its luster you have to treat it with mineral oil. It is pretty amazing what a little oil can do!

Before

After

It is still not the deep black that I envision when I dream of soapstone but it is still a gorgeous peice of stone and is going to look fantastic against the walnut hardwood.

After all of our fun with levelling cement, the soapstone hearth is finally in place. Unfortunately the fireplace doesn't look like much yet...

Rest assured - we are planning to build a new wood mantel similar to the one below that I spotted at Rouge Restaurant. Except we will be painting the mantel white with the top ledge in walnut and will be installing a cast iron gas fireplace insert.

The best part - we have exactly enough brick veneer left from the chimney in the kitchen and office to complete the fireplace front! I love anything that doesn't require us spending money!

Amy

We Have Progress!

Window trim in the entry, living room and dining room.

Wainscoting and storage bench in the front entry.

Best of all... the start of hardwood in the dining room!!!

Both of us are finding it hard to wrap our heads around the visual of our kitchen flowing into the dining room... we have lived with the ugly gap between the two rooms for so long. It is still strange for us to see something we have been visualizing for so long to become reality!

Amy