Blue Background Part 2

Home makeover reveals are always better with a "before" photo.

It seems I forgot the before photo.

Here's the best I can do- a photo of our family room from 3 Christmases ago. Ignore the decorations and look at the built-in bookshelves at the back of the room. Rather boring and messy, despite numerous attempts at staging.

Here's what what we did last weekend: 

Happier, brighter and, after a book purge, lighter. And bluer. It's a lot of blue (Benjamin Moore's Electric Blue to be exact) for someone who has painted the last three rooms in her house white, pale grey and white, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

Back to the Laundry

With both of us busy at our day jobs during the week, progress has slowed in the laundry room. The cabinet doors are up with new hardware (except for a few drawer pulls that will be recycled from our soon to be gutted kitchen) and the tile is all cut and measured for the landing. We should be able to finish cementing it down tonight then grout on Thursday night.

In the meantime, I'm starting to sort through everything previously stored in the laundry room to determine what needs to go back and what can be purged. It's a cathartic but slow process that I enjoy because it restores chaos back to order! I'm not so good with chaos. And yes- we're already making plans and decisions for our upcoming kitchen renovation. This is going to be our most ambitious renovation yet- moving walls, closing up exterior doors and refinishing old parquet wood floors. It's a level of chaos that hurts my head to think about.

Laundry Progress

Our laundry room makeover continues moving forward, although slowed with us both at work during the day. Here's what we've accomplished so far this week:

We repainted the pantry shelves. I still want to go back and fill the nail holes but the difference in these from their original rough dark state until now makes me happy. We're going to give the shelves a coat of urethane tomorrow night for some added durability.

Jeff added tongue and groove pine paneling on the back entrance wall with the hanging cupboards. 

We painted the paneling it the same colour as the wall (Benjamin Moore's Wickham Grey), added chair rail trim and added the end pieces and trim to the cabinet. 

We also installed the wardrobe cabinets in the laundry room. Jeff had to build a support platform for them because the Ikea feet raised the boxes 3/4 inch higher than the sewer pipe running right on top of them. We decided building a support platform was easier than moving the poop pipe. 

Jeff said the other night that he's already forgotten how the room used to look. It's quite a transformation so far. 

Progress

Progress in the laundry room is trucking along. There is a fresh coat of Benjamin Moore "Wickham Gray" that has livened the whole place up. It's fresh and light and we both like it very much.

The first cabinets are up! Ikea's mounting system for wall cabinets is BRILLIANT and they are easy-peasy to put together. Jeff chose the "Stat" door fronts and they work very well with the whitewashed ceiling and cottage-y look of the room.

Jeff also made square panels to hang real light fixtures. Goodbye bare bulbs! We got the idea when we were looking at Ikea model kitchens and it looks great.

Jeff and his dad also stacked our washer dryer. Tracking down the right stacking kit took 2 weeks and five more phone conversations than it should have required (hear that Sears Canada?). Nevermind- it's up now and it works great. I love being able to see lost socks in the bottom of the dryer. Here's a full view of how things are shaping up. Those light fixtures are such a big improvement and the room no longer feels like a cave. 

Suckers for Punishment

After completing our bathroom renovation earlier this year, I'm pretty sure I promised we were done renovating for a while. We must be suckers for punishment because we have two renovations planned for this year... the laundry room and (gasp) the kitchen. Going over to "the mainland" for our cousin's wedding was the push we needed to start on the laundry room; on the way home we stopped at Ikea and filled Jeff's parent's truck with new cabinets.

I've not shared a lot of pictures of our laundry room here for reasons that will soon become obvious. If you remember, we replaced the basement stairs a year and a half ago. Jeff also built "The Enorma-Closet" 4 years ago (on the right side of the picture below) to address the crazy lack of closet space in our house. We call her "Norma" for short.

While these two things made made a HUGE difference, the laundry/utility room is still a little haphazard and we aren't making use of the 9-foot ceiling for storage. There's also a mess of plumbing behind the washer that drives me nuts. And notice how dark it is in the photo above?

That's because of the ceiling. It's old, dark, rough wood that sucks every ray of sunlight away. The lovely light fixtures (if you can call them that) weren't really helping the issue, either.

So that's where we started. Jeff moved the junction boxes so they were in line with each other and added a third junction box by the pantry. Voila! We had a little light! 

After we painted the ceiling white, we had a LOT more light. We kept the ceiling open because the kitchen is directly above and our kitchen renovation is going to involve moving a lot of plumbing and electrical.

I wish more projects started with paint. We're now quite motivated to keep this project moving along.

Puddles and Bathrooms

Thanks for your kind compliments on our bathroom. We love it too! Jeff found some photos he took just after he bought this house (before he took possession) in 2002. Check out the bathroom progression:

The Original: January 2002

After Facelifts in 2002 & 2008:
Jeff took down the towel bar, peeled off all the fish stickers (notice the dolphins above the shower), replaced the toilet, mirror and vanity light, and repainted when he moved in in 2002. In the months after I arrived, I repainted the vanity, replaced the door knobs, painted the black tile grout white and stripped & repainted the counter edge dark grey. Also during 2008, we replaced the sink and repainted the walls a second time. Jeff's parent's renovated their bathroom that same year and when they removed their old tub surround, I called dibs on their shower doors (which were exactly like our old ones but without those crazy fish!)

And Today (after the great renovation of 2012)This was nearly a total gut job. We kept the toilet (which Jeff had replaced just a few years ago), the window and the little bit of gyproc that was not sacrificed in moving lights and electrical; everything else was replaced.

Jeff has seen a lot of real estate in Nanaimo and categorizes bathrooms here into three tiers: Mud Puddles (absolutely awful), Water Puddles (not as awful but still far from wonderful), and Real Bathrooms. We don't think our bathroom was ever as bad as a Mud Puddle... maybe just a sad Water Puddle. Nevertheless, Jeff has officially declared it a Real Bathroom so I think our project can be considered a roaring success. I'm just happy to have a drawer to put my hairbrush (and a few other things, too).

Reveal Day

The day is here- the day we declare our bathroom officially finished. Forgive the slightly grainy, grey photos- we don't have sunshine expected here for a few weeks (I really miss natural light). Our spirits, however are not as damp as the weather because this bathroom is DONE! Here is our masterpiece:

And YES! I finally found a shower curtain last weekend, at Home Depot of all places. I tried several all white curtains but with the white walls and white tile, a white curtain looked a little blah. Here are some more of the details:

It's not the bathroom we thought we'd build (remember our inspiration photos back here? And our vanity disagreement here?!) but we're thrilled with the end result. Our favourite elements? Jeff loves the stone floor and the new tub; I love the heated floor and all the additional storage. Somehow, we've made this room more functional- it just works much better. And it feels so much better, too. Jeff says it feels like a spa, and I think it feels much more spacious than it did before (amazing, since we didn't change the square footage or size of the window). It was a bigger project than we thought but it's been incredibly worthwhile.

I promised my dad I'd show before and after photos with the final reveal so here they are:

I will admit, there was a time when I thought the new tub would permanently live in our dining room.

Somehow, the tub challenges were overcome, and everything slowly got finished. Inside the wall, on the side of the recessed wall cabinet, I left a message for whoever renovates this space next. I think it applies to the whole project. 

Let There Be... Reflection

It's been a month since I last updated progress in our bathroom renovation. In the last post (click here), you'll notice that we were using a tiny old mirror while figuring out a permanent option. We had our hearts set on a large rectangular mirror framed in the same alder wood as the vanity. The only problem? Custom mirror frames are shockingly expensive (more than three quarters of the cost of the vanity). My super handy and very handsome husband took matters into his own hands and after several hours of making loud noises and mess in the garage, created this masterpiece.

We hung it last night and couldn't be happier with how it turned out. And, at less than 1/12 of the cost of a custom frame, our bank account is very happy, too.

Didn't Jeff do an amazing job?!

Back in the Bog

Our bathroom renovation stopped for Christmas and has remained so ever since. We finally mustered up enough motivation this weekend to get back to the renovation and tackle the recessed cabinet door. I had my heart set on an inset door (a door flush with the wall beside it) and Jeff searched for months to find hinges that would work (he wanted to attach the hinges to the plywood cabinet and not the gyproc wall). He finally found hinges that could be bent 90 degrees to the right shape and with that, cut the door and hung it up. There's another coat of paint still to go but doesn't it look great? It's a solid wood door we recycled from Jeff's parent's old kitchen. I'm really excited about the latch- it's a fingertip release and works like a charm. Half way through the renovation we debated ordering a door to match the vanity for this cabinet but in the end, I'm glad we kept it clean and white.

We also FINALLY found shower curtain hooks last night. Until now, we've been using a length of craft rope that to hold up the shower liner. We just need a shower curtain (we've been using just a liner) and a mirror, and we can call this room DONE!

Christmas Recap

I did fairly well, taking photos up until Christmas dinner. That was when we started getting sick.... and the photos stopped. Here's a recap of our holidays, with the few photos I managed to snap.

Cheap & Cheerful- ivy cut from the backyard for this year's front door wreath

FINALLY ripe! 29 pounds of kiwis picked in early December and made into jam.

This year's tree in green, white and gold.

The new addition this year, inspired by a photo I saw on pinterest and created by a very handy husband. 

Staying with the green and white theme

My first attempt at decorating sugar cookies. Not bad, eh?!

The only craft this Christmas, also inspired by something I saw on pinterest

The family room tree in every colour under the rainbow

Christmas dinner table. After being gifted with red flowers, I made the centerpiece, added some beautiful napkins my mom sewed me a few years ago, threw on some candles and called it done. I'm not usually a big fan of red but for this year, I think it was just perfect 

Someone (AKA Jeff) has been in the candy dish... 

Celebrating the New Year with a cross-country game of Ticket To Ride

Build-A-Bathroom Week 11

It took 11 weeks but we finally have a working, 3-piece bathroom. After the counter and sink were installed last Tuesday, Jeff and I had a strict schedule of tiling, grouting, sealing and plumbing (extending pipes then installing the faucet and drain) to get everything working in time for the Apparent Project sale I hosted on Sunday afternoon but we did it! On Saturday night I brushed my teeth in the bathroom (instead of the kitchen sink) for the first time in almost three months and I can't tell you how great it felt.

I haven't been able to capture it well in a photograph yet, but the vanity tile ties in really nicely with the shower tile and pulls the whole room together

There are a few minor things left to do (recessed cupboard door, floor heating thermostat, kick plate on the vanity, hand towel bar, mirror etc.). We're going to work on those items in December and when everything is done, come back to show the final reveal. Some of you have asked about a materials list- I'll include that with the reveal as well.