The after?

I mentioned here that wall pictures were to come...I failed to point out the new wall in my post for today so please check it out!


So pretty, I can't wait to paint it up and match-up some of our reclaimed molding.

I'm in Love with our Kitchen Floor

So whatever happened to our kitchen floor? Well, after over a month, we finally got our crap together and booked the install of our marmoleum floors (marmoleum, the new linoleum) with The Healthiest Home. Though a bit disorganized, we managed to get it all done just last week and I have to tell you - I love my new marmoleum floor!!! For colour, we picked Serene Gray and I think it is fantabulous.

So on to the befores and durings -

This was the brand new floating ikea floor that was installed to help sell the house - notice the faux oak look and imagine how well it coordinated with the maple (I think) flooring everywhere else. Not only that but there was a noticable step up into the kitchen...

Before:


At first, we thought about keeping it but we were going to demo multiple kitchen walls and that would have required patching the floor. Knowing that, we just thought "To hell with it, lets get a NEW floor!" At the time, we were still in Reno-Love (the honeymoon phase).

So we ripped out the walls! And the floating floor! And discovered peel and stick tile (noooo!). Impossible to remove, here are a few durings. With our wall demos, we ended up having to move not one but two heating vents. The far wall in the first picture was the previous home of the closet, just to give you some perspective.

During:



And here is the brand new sub-floor! The night before this install, the hub and I spent hours (and I mean hours) hunched over removing nails and screws.




And here it is! Brought to you by our in-house model, Kelly. Our new, medium gray (serene gray) marmoleum floors:

Current!



Kelly ensured that her stuff was moved in first -

Thank You, UsedOttawa

I've been hunting and hunting for a matching pair of comfortable, nice arm chairs for in front of my fireplace. Something small scale but fabulous, something that doesn't scream "The Brick" or "Ikea", you know, something unique. After months of looking in Ottawa, Montreal - hell, even Toronto - all the stores came up with a big fat Nothing. I was starting to think we would never come together - and then I saw em. Ah, Used Ottawa, we will be friends forever.


I know, I know. Most of my friends would smile politely at me and wonder why I have a love for other peoples garbage. Well, let me tell you - these are fricken CLUB CHAIRS! In leather! With oak! I mean, they are gorgeous! Imagine when they get all fixed up, they will seriously be FANTASTIC. And comfortable, they are sooooo comfortable.


And no, I don't love vintage because I'm cheap. I love it because it's well made, unique and perfect for my space! I can't even tell you how excited I am about this.

After I get out of renovation purgatory, I'm going to get these redone to match my fricken hot sofa (which, yes, I am also getting redone). One day my living room won't be lilac, pink, brown and beige!

So what is the secret to second hand shoppin in Otown?

Seriously, I have no idea what the secret is to vintage shopping in Ottawa. Like everything else about this city, I think the strategy is alllll about time. How much do you have and how long are you willing to wait around for the right piece?

For me, my favorite place to shop is - by far - a website. Sad to say but true - I prefer to go somewhere and touch it all up, fantasize about where it should go and whether or not it needs to be refinished. You know, all that jazz. But in reality, I just never have the time or am not willing to go to anywhere but Homesense more than once a month. So where do I go to feed my need to hunt for all things vintage?

Well, there are three good websites for OTown -

The every classy Craigslist is always popular but to be honest, I hate the format of their ads. A better site is the Ottawa version of Kijiji - I like being able to see photos with every post but to be honest, I find their indexing system awful AND I really hate their advertising.

So all in all, that leaves UsedOttawa. While I greatly appreciate their indexing system - I have to admit that I really don't get things like "MyLists". Not an alerting service, it looks to me like MyLists is just a list of lists. And you can make your own but you won't get email updates when stuff gets added - no, it's your own virtual garage sale. Yes, I do think that is lame.

For me, the dream website would include the following:
1. Ads with Photos! Yay, if an ad doesn't have a photo I don't even bother to look at it. My advice to these websites: less description, more pictures. Demand a photo, damn it.
2. The ability to set up alerts, love that option on kijiji! Wish I could do it on sections of usedottawa. Le sigh. (edit: I should specify that I mean alerts and not RSS feed reader capabilities. I like to keep it simple and prefer everything in my email box, it's bad enough that I already have a blog reader - I am not that into RSS feeds, sorry)
3. The ability to expand my search to whatever location I feel like. I mean seriously, there is a kijiji Montreal and a kijiji Toronto. If I could default to "Five hour drive from Ottawa", I totally would. And that, my friends, is truly Canadian. I'm willing to drive great distances for a deal, damn it.

And yes, there are stores. Where are they, you ask? Well, there are a few on Wellington (near the Plant Bath, I think) - I also like the Antique Mall on Bank Street as the vendors there often confuse vintage with antique. There's also the always awesome White Monkey and Found Design - and, of course, Value Village (the Bank Street location is my favorite).

To be honest, Gatineau intrigues me. I am POSITIVE that there is shopping to be had there, and I am DOUBLE-POSITIVE that it must be fricken fantastic. Hmm.

So tell me your thoughts - where is the best place to hunt down vintage finds in Ottawa?

Getting it all Releveled...

So after buying the house, we decided that we would be doing a lot of renovating and that we would definitely need a lot of help. First and foremost, our bathroom and wiring needed a major overhauling. With electrical and plumbing, we both agreed that there are just some things left to the professionals so we decided to hire Gordon and McGovern to help us along the way. When they came for their first home visit, Rick (the McGovern) pointed out that there appeared to be a slight slope on our main floor and suggested that since we were painting everything, we might want to correct the structural problem and repair wall cracks at the same time.

This seemed to me to be a good idea - and generally speaking, the cost for the repair was low (two guys, one day, jack up the house - no big deal, really!) so we signed up and prepared to get it done. To help along the way, we demoed a wall in the kitchen (non-load bearing, apparently!) and ripped out the entire ceiling in the basement. Our end result looked a little something like this:



Look at the beautiful, open concept kitchen! I was so excited about it all, I came home from work at lunch and caught these two guys in the thick of it. The first thing I noticed was that they had ripped out a basement wall (one I had dreamed of removing), the moment was all Win Win for me!



This was before their Oops moment, I believe. So they jacked up the house (a very traumatic experience for my hub - if you ever get it done, I recommend you go to coffee during the process). During the jackin-up of the house, it was discovered that maybe, just maybe - the wall we had ripped out might have had some load! So the guys built in a beautiful bulkhead - and this is the end result:


It all took a bit longer than a day but now our basement is a bit more open and it all looks like this:


Check out the hardwoods - under the stairs!


Of course, this doesn't even begin to reflect the damage caused throughout the house. We had dozens of cracks, some meters long. The repairs were a bit intense, more on that to come!

Merry Christmas!

To celebrate our new home and getting through some critical steps in our renovation, we decided to adopt Sunny via the Cat Rescure Network here in Ottawa. So from our home to yours, Merry Christmas!

Our office and kitchen wall - part of the process

Here is one of the walls that we have demo'd in the house - the view from the kitchen:


And the view from the office:


Pre-wall demo, we removed all shelves and random bits. Now you can see the pretty pink closets and the bright yellow wallpaper!


Check out these pretty hardwoods! We salvaged all of this for use in future projects...



During the demo - here are the guys hard at work. I was doing work too, really!


We took out a TON of this crap, let me tell you.


And after the demo, a large open-concept space! There was a heat vent hidden in the wall of one of the closets - we had this moved. Of course we knew that we would be rebuilding a wall between the two rooms, I just wanted to show you how open it was (even if it was just for a moment!). Wall photos are to come, of course.

Embracing the Art Deco Lover Within

As you may or may not know by now, I am in love with Art Deco design. I was just cruising through my latest posts (dog run? entry way? bathroom?) and none of these really offer even a taste of what we have done (and will do) to the overall look of the house. When I first saw the house, I have to admit that I hesitated. Built in the 40s, it was the right age and I could see (especially if I squinted) the potential of it all. It had obviously had some serious work done in the 60s and been redecorated in the 70s, there was a lot of wood panelling and even more pastels. The kitchen was incredibly ugly, the bathroom a total eye sore. But the original hardwoods, the funky original moldings and a million other little details that were all still in place is what captured my desire to get my hands on this house. Needless to say, I wanted to let you know that it is coming!!!!

Working with Linoleum Flooring | Floors | This Old House

Working with Linoleum Flooring | Floors | This Old House

Prior to choosing linoleum (or marmoleum), I researched and researched what would be ideal for my kitchen. I wanted to find something that would suit the age of my house (1940s, with streamline touches) and that would blend well with hardwoods. I also wanted to find something that would go in a modern kitchen (with retro influence!). The more I looked at vintage photos, the more I loved the idea of linoleum. Plus, it's green! The article on This Old House is a great reference point.

Bathroom - Before and During

Our main second floor bathroom - when we bought the house, it was a mint green colour with a hanging ceiling, no mirror and a custom blue carpet that was older then I am.

Here are a couple photos of the before:



This was a little bit after - we had already removed some unnecessary cabinets, the ceiling (and discovered that it had never been finished) and the significant number of towel racks (that I now miss greatly).





And finally - what we will currently live with until we can do the full renovation. We painted out the walls, tore out the carpet, found a random mirror and added privacy film to the window. I think it looks a lot better!!

Our entryway

So what to say? Our entryway was ugly with it's faux oak door, mismatched molding and mirror tile wall. I have to admit, it drove me a bit crazy. Although everyone tried to convince me to embrace my home reno as a one room at a time process, I finally snuck off when nobody was looking and started painting it all out one colour.

Here are the before shots:



Check out the mirror wall on the left and the soft blue colour throughout. I should tell you that under that blue carpet is deep red linoleum, original I think though probably not salvagable.

During:

Here's when I got busted in the act, notice how I don't look guilty at all. I had also managed to rip down all the mirror tile without anyone taking note. Score one for me!


And, of course, the key to all home renos - friends that help!

After:

Having a model helps. I hadn't put up a mirror yet or the mail slot cover, but you get the general idea. Now a nice warm cream, yay!

Basement stair inspiration via Rang-Decor blog

I recently started following this blog and noticed this photo which offered different way of approaching stairs. We plan on openning up the stairwell into our basement as it is cramped and small - originally I had thought of just doing a smooth, angular openning that matched the slope of the stairs. Then I saw this - I love the idea of having it stepped, creating a place to highlight objects.

The Dog Run - Before and After

Winter has already hit here - we did manage to finish one critical thing before the snow fell. We built our dog a little yard to run around in (and to keep her out of our pool, of which she has already had a close encounter!). To do this, I decided to eliminate one of our sheds and added a small section of fence. The shed demo was a lot of hard work but the end result is great.

Before (the guys were strategizing, beers in hand):


After (a spot for our dog to play!):


We plan on adding more concrete spacers or something green in the spring but this works for now...the fence was from the cat run we used to have in the backyard of our townhouse (yay for reuse!)


The piece of metal from the old shed is now gone, it's open and our dog can check out what is going on in the neighborhood. At first, she was a little afraid of the space but now she seems pretty happy with it (and yes, that is a boarded up door to our garage. I guess freeing that will be a spring project).


This is the view from where the dog house currently sits, the kitchen window looks down on this part of the yard. We are hoping to renovate our sunroom in the spring - when we do that, we will be stuccoing it up and will hopefully be able to have the shed done to match.


(concrete slab put in by Paul and Steve in 1985)

Doh, sorry for the ignore!

I promise my lack of writing is entirely due to renovating. Everytime I've sat down to make a post, I have found myself thinking "Where do I even begin?!" as we have done SO MUCH. So for your reading enjoyment, I will simply start with outside and then go from the entrance.

So to start the before and during (cause nothing is really done, if you know what I mean), I thought I would offer up the current floorplan of the mainfloor. Feel free to check out the original here.



It might not be clear but as you know, we've ripped out two walls in the kitchen. One had originally included closets which we've now eliminated (I didn't bother to include them in my original drawing, they were on the wall between the kitchen and the office). We've also removed one the of sheds and added a little enclosed yard for our dog.

More ideas from Eddy Ross

This is one guy that is all about entertaining - and he really is organized. I saw this picture of his butlers pantry and wow, do I ever envy him! It's beautiful and well-laid out, with lots of space for everything. I want it!!!!!

Ideas for host(ess) gifts via Eddy Ross

On his blog (Eddie Ross), there is this great post titled "Hostess Mostess". In it, Eddie suggests bringing together thrift store and flea market finds to create one of a kind host(ess) gifts. Perfect for the holiday season! The photo is from my favorite - he combined sugar cubes and pretty packaging with a sterling spoon he found to create a beautiful little thank you gift.