Guest Bedroom reveal

Merry Christmas everybody! We had a mini white one this year and then last night it started snowing and still hasn't stopped. We have about 8" I think right now.

Patchin' up ceiling holes

Once our second floor is complete and we move our bedroom up there, the current bedroom we're using on the first floor will become ...a guest bedroom, maybe?

Hardwood in the BATHROOM?! crazy..

After much deliberation and against much opposition from Home Depot associates, Dan and I have decided to install hardwood flooring in the master bath.

Dining Room sneak preview

It's not done yet, but verrry close. Just a sneak peak:

Itty bitty projects around the house

In comparison, these projects were pretttty insignificant, but they definitely made me happy.

Master Bath update 1

It's been a little quiet on our blog, but that doesn't mean it's been quiet on Elm Street; that's right, we've been doing some late-nite drywalling again. Aw, shucks.

Unglamourous but necessary

= ventilation.

Second Floor update 1

As of today,

Windows galore

We got new windows! from Gorell! Triple-paned!

Second floor gut job

Husband Dan, our resident demolition-er, has been hard at work weekdays after 6 and weekends gutting our second floor. Now that everything's been cleared out, carpenter Dan has been able to start leveling the floors in the old bathroom and old kitchen, and plumbers have finished their rough-in (approximate locations of drains and water pipes.
But before we could get to that stage, there was a LOT of work.

Dining room moulding

Carpenter Dan came by today to put up the ceiling moulding we picked out from Home Depot.

AllState grrrrrrr

That deadline for fixing all of our "major" issues for AllState (grrr) is this Friday, September 14.

More lemonade

Norm (again, shirtless guy) had this brilliant idea to turn a sunken in hole in our yard into a ~*rock garden*~ with our old bricks.

Dining room electrical

I upped my electrical challenges for the dining room: three-way light switch (light switched from TWO different locations) and chandelier. If you recall, we really wanted to put a chandelier into our parlour, but couldn't get the wire to it without ripping down our tin ceiling. This time, we pretty much ran into the same problem, but because I think a chandelier in the dining room is absolutely essential, I was dead-set on finding a solution, even if it meant tearing out the wood flooring in the floor above.

The Veritable Plumber

Not for the weak of stomach, I suppose. Of course I would usually put myself in that category.

Storm door

Home Depot showed up with our new storm door this morning. It took the guy about an hour and a half to install it and it looks grrrrreat. Cats love it as much as I do.

Old door from the inside

Slight hiccup, but I'm willing to make some lemonade

WELL. We've been pretty happy with our progress in the dining room, so far. But earlier this week we got a letter from our home insurance provider warning us that they're gonna cancel our insurance in two weeks because the inspector found a bunch of issues.

PLANS

Second floor renos are right around the corner. Our contractor Kim estimates he'll start last week of September~first week of October. And I am starting to feel the pressure!

Dining Room doorways

Today our carpenter Dan (not my husband) opened up our two dining room doorways by about 6 inches to the side and 3 inches up.

Next up: dining room

We're not quite done with the parlour yet - we have to fill in some gaps with caulk, barf - but we thought we'd just move along anyway (caulk can do itself, eventually).

Parlour: DONE (practically)!!!

OK, so, since drywalling, much has been accomplished.

Country living

So one convenience that city people take for granted

Parlor almost ready

Oh baby, have we got a blog post brewing for you. The parlor is almost done! We want the next parlor-post to take you pretty much to the end. Eventually, we'll also give you the cost breakdown, in case you're curious.

In the meantime, I've gotten started on the second floor demolition...

"Last weekend we drank some beers, hung some drywall, played some poker..."

Remember when kids used to say "I hung some drywall" along with a list of other manly activities to joke about being manly? I never really got it back then, but this weekend, Dan and I hung some drywall, and I guess I feel manly for it.

Wall Sconce!

We've been visiting this lighting shop near our house, which I call the Lindt chocolate shop because they have a bowl of delicious Lindt truffles sitting out for customers (yumm).

Insulation: the end is in sight

 So...we tackled insulation on Friday despite lingering uncertainties as to the type of insulation. We decided to go with fiberglass (as opposed to blown-in cellulose or foam), because it's the easiest and by far the cheapest (maybe not the best reason). You have to be very careful to get all the cracks so that required a lot of measuring and cutting the batting to the right size. You also have to be completely covered (goggles, mask, long sleeves and pants) with fiberglass, which gets really uncomfortable pretty fast. After we put up the insulation, we further covered that with plastic as a vapor barrier. gah. Hope it's ok.

Sneak preview

fun times with paint. This is what I've been thinking for the parlour: half royal blue, half white with a chair rail dividing the two. One wall sconce between the two windows with maybe a bookshelf below. The double doors currently closing off the parlour will be removed.

Cart before horse?

Premature (adjective) 
1. occurring, coming, or done too soon.

2. mature or ripe before the proper time.

Currently our parlor looks like this:

BIG problem... solved-ish!

My favorite, favorite, favorite piece of furniture is our restoration hardware leather couch that we paid an arm-and-a-leg for. In Durham, Ayumi and I hung out on it a lot. When Ayumi was out of town, I slept on it. I like it more than I like the cats. Okay, so me gusta couch.

Auction Delivery!

W.A. Smith Auction delivery guys came by today with our purchases...for free! Dan and I thought we'd have to get a U-Haul, bring it to the auction place, load up our heavy things, bring them to the house, unload, then bring back the U-Haul for a not insignificant price - so now, of course, we love W.A. Smith Auctioneers :)

New dining table with 6 Fugly chairs (will be posted on Craig's List ASAP). Mango immediately tracked dusty paw prints all over it.

Electrical

 We got the go-ahead from the permit people to start wiring on Friday, so we started drilling some holes in the 2x4s that afternoon and continued the next day. The difficulty for this project lies in the arrangement of the 2x4s: normally, the 2x4s are set in so that the skinny side is facing in and electric code dictates running wires through the walls is best practice. Unfortunately, the two interior walls in the parlour have 2x4s laying flat, with the wider side facing in - I can't drill holes in the 2" side, so I had to find a way around that...by going into the basement.

Connected below at a junction box then to main power

Floor plan for 2nd floor

We've been talking to a contractor - Gary - who pushed us to come up with layouts for the two bathrooms on the 2nd floor.

I love this free program at floorplanner.com; it even lets you choose flooring and colors and whatnot!

Dan's addition to the post
Currently this bedroom looks like this:

demo = weekend project?

For our first *big* project, we've decided to tackle the parlour in the front of the house. We bought ourselves a crowbar and bagster and chatted with 3 electricians about rewiring and the city renovation folks for permits and such. We're now thinking of doing the electrical ourselves and decided to start with demo ASAP (Sunday). All the people we've talked to kept saying the demo would take a weekend...but we smugly told ourselves weekend for ordinary folk = 1 day for us.

 So we stuffed our couches outside the parlour doors into the hallway - the thing about old houses is that the doors are so darn small, you can't get modern couches through them.

hoping we get this room done soon so we can use our front door again.

Auction Day

Last Saturday (June 16) we went to our first (technically, our second) auction. We were prepared to bid big bucks for this beautiful Ralph Lauren chair and ottoman, even though, really, we have no business buying furniture at this point in our house reno (yet to begin).

start small

 We thought for our first project we would start small and work up gradually. Expert spray painters that we are (a tricky skill we learned back in Durham) there was no pressure. We bought a frame at a consignment store and had a print in mind I'd bought a few years ago.

Dan busted out his German hat for the occasion