Carpet

After hauling home dozens of sample boards and eliminating three carpet installers, we have finally ordered the carpet! Shaw Tuftex "Living Touch" in "Natural Wool".

Pictures just don't do it justice - it is a lower cut, dense pile saxony carpet meant to imitate the look of high-end wool carpet with nylon carpet price and durability.

At $40 per square yard it is still substantially more pricey than builder-basic carpet but not as expensive as the $65 per square yard patterned carpet I first fell in love with...

I had convinced myself and Dave that, despite knowing that looped carpet does not mix with dogs, I REALLY wanted the expensive patterned carpet. However, the installer took one look at Scout and Jersey (in the midst of a weimaraner ultimate fighting challenge in our empty living room) and said "as much as I would love to earn the commission on $65 carpet, I am going to recommend you not buy that carpet"... so back to the store we went, luckily to both fall in love with the less expensive, more durable Shaw product.

I can't wait to see it installed!

Amy

A Little Colour

I finally broke down and decided maybe I should paint at least one wall in the house something other than white... 

The Powderface colour still looked to brown against the grey and white tile in the bathroom so it became the obvious choice for introducing some "colour". I chose General Paint's "Monday Morning" CL3011W which prompted Dave to call me from the paint store in a rant... "you promised me that you had picked a colour for the bathroom, you must have wrote it down wrong because I am looking at the paint and it is white..."

In fact it was not white but a soft grey. Thankfully this time he had the patience to wait until the whole room was painted and was quick to admit that it was not white and was the perfect colour for the bathroom.

I managed to do a little better with the "colour" for the feature wall in the office... almost as far away from white as you can get! Trying to pick a colour to compliment the red brick that will go on the chimney, Dave and I both quickly gravitated to a deep blue-grey. We settled on "Joe Batts Arm" CH094 from General Paint's Historic Canadiana series (apparently Joe Batts Arm is a town in Newfoundland). 

That is as brave as I get with colour for awhile... the next task is picking the carpet "colour"... white of course!

 Amy

Paint Goes On, Paint Comes Off

With the last of the paint on the walls, we decided it was time to move on to removing paint.

Before finalizing our carpet order, we needed to verify that it was actually possible to refinish the hardwood stair treads to accommodate a carpet runner, otherwise we would be forced to carpet the entire stair. So out came the paint stripper and heat gun!

With a little elbow grease and lots of paint fumes - we successfully managed to remove the countless layers of paint and stain to reveal the original hardwood underneath. Now we just need to check that the wood will accept stain... but the carpet runner is definitely looking promising!

Feeling confident with our success on the stairs, we then decided to turn our paint stripper and heat gun against the fireplace.

We had never even considered trying to remove the paint from the brick on the fireplace until I stumbled upon 1912 Bungalow looking for inspiration for a new mantel. Since we intended to re-paint the brick anyway, we figured it wouldn't hurt to experiment with restoring the brick first. 

Much to our surprise - it worked! The flat brick easily comes clean with the heat gun and a little patience but the split-face brick in the centre is turning out to be a little more of a challenge. However, we are inspired by the initial results and are hopeful that a higher strength stripper and, worse case, sandblasting will get the brick clean.

Guess what I am going to be spending the next week doing...

Amy

It is All About Compromise

Dave has vetoed the use of wallpaper anywhere in the house but I still want to add some interest to the wall behind the bed in the master bedroom to help anchor it against the high ceiling.

Therefore I was quite excited to find these fantastic wallpaper stencils on etsy - he can't say no to paint!

Moroccan Dream Cutting Edge Stencils, Rabat Cutting Edge Stencils, 

Endless Circles Royal Designs Stencils, Geometric Olive Leaf Stencils, 

Zagora Cutting Edge Stencils

Amy

Progress - Day 100

I feel like we should celebrate. Surviving 100 days of renovation with out any major arguments, injuries or disasters (knock on wood) seems like a momentous occasion. Unfortunately Dave is working tonight...

In the end Powderface redeemed itself and looked much more white once all the walls were painted. I guess I have to admit that Dave was right on this one. After 7 days and 20 gallons of paint we are finally done painting the walls. Now we get to start painting doors and trim...

We had originally ordered our bathroom tile from the Home Depot but when it arrived the chair rail and pencil peices looked more honed than polished. So after hauling all of it home, we got to haul it all back to the Home Depot and then headed online to re-order it from the ebay seller - Marble Outlet - who we bought the kitchen tile from. The second batch of tile arrived last week - thankfully with a beautiful polished finish - and Dave plans to start installing it tomorrow.

We seem to be speeding right along into finishing! Hopefully we can keep it up!

Amy