The sunroom dream

Our house has the "cute" sunroom on it that needs a serious makeover. The hubs dream is to have a wall of windows that "opens up all the way" - this is what I think he is talking about...found via this post on apartmenttherapy.

Okay - is this ugly cool or ugly ugly?

This past weekend, we went on the hunt for a buffet for our dining room (if you read my favorite and my best, you know what I'm talkin bout). In the process, we found this house that was being cleared out for sale. It hadn't been touched in decades and on the wall hung this:


(beautiful clips are from Lee Valley!)

Now I, personally, love it over what used to be there:


And check out the hot now:


I know you covet my sofa...


But my hub thinks it is tacky tacky tacky. What do you think?? And yes, I did replace an original painting by Paul Cloutier with a $10 rug.

Thank you, eBay!

Okay so most of you know that I typically totally fail at eBay - probably because I'm not a collector, I'm a bargain hunter...But recently, I ventured out and decided to apply my ability to parler en francais to the France edition of eBay. With that, I finally scored!!! And yes, I did the entire transaction en francais. You have no idea how proud I am of that! After I won it, I just had to have it shipped to Canada (ouch). So with glass in hand, I set about trying to figure out the whole fixture situation.

After searching online, I had settled into thinking that I may just have to build my own - and then I found Alex. eBay struck again! I picked my size, colour, finish. Everything - and I think it's beautiful. What do you think??



Here's a shot of where it is - at the top of the stairs. It's so nice, I think it makes the upstairs look a little blah. That and the pink clashes just a little bit with the blue carpet...

So we ran away to Kingston

Yep, we took off last weekend to Kingston and didn't work on the house at all. That said, we decided to go and look around for "inspiration". We have this incredibly ugly addition on the back of our house and have been thinking about what colour/changes we can make to improve the overall look and feel. So we drove around, meandered through the Queens campus and found this smokin hot house:


(love the fence and gate!)


Check those colours - yellow and charcoal gray. LOVE IT. I am so making my addition yellow. Then I just gotta make all the trim on the house gray. That should be easy, right?


My house has so much in common with this one, right? Curb appeal AND a pool!

(Don't I wish)


We've been chatting about our garage door and really liked theirs as well:

School house lights

I was in Home Depot (my second home) and I noticed that they now offer school house inspired lights...gotta buy the fixture separate though. I think it could end up setting you back a whole $10 to $15...

(oh and I am so sneaking this in late)

Yet another iron fence

With spring in the air, it's obvious that I have my yard on my mind...I really love this fence - I saw it while waiting for a hot lunch date.


Check out the balls!

Our office flooring

The current state of our office has totally been made by the addition of two things: our cat Sunny and this hot rug from Homesense.

The backsplash has arrived!

What? What's this? It's the marble for my back splash! OH YEAH, we so got a move on that! After talking and talking, fixing and fixing, repairing, preparing, etc etc etc - we finally got it together and went from this:


To this:


A man that tiles is a man I can spend my whole life with...



That said, we still gotta grout. Still gotta paint out the trim and the ceiling - then what? Then we are done! I mean - almost! I still have to do one final coat of paint on the white cupboards, get someone to build some doors...

Fence inspiration from my walk home.

On my walk home from work, I stopped and took this shot of the Chateau Laurier and canal bridge - then I turned and noticed this fence:


Wouldn't this be perfect for separating my pool from my backyard? I want it, now!

Check out the detail:



(and yes, I said walk! I can walk home from work now, yay! along a pretty canal, I know y'all envy that)

And paint!

Okay, okay - you've seen the lights, you've seen the demo, you've seen multiple phases of the during... (wow!) now you can see that we are steps away from actually being done - check out the pretty paint job! Yes, it's yellow - the name, you ask? Ginger by Benjamin Moore. I had narrowed the selection of yellow down to three or four, the hub picked the final colour based on name alone (of course!). To be honest, we went to a local paint shop and had them copy the colour...I think it looks good!! You can also see that the cupboard doors have been added to the uppers and installed a new sink (with functional faucet, madness I know!!)


I stripped almost all of the moldings down to the original wood and we resized them. I still have to finish doing the ones for the window closest to the stove.


With all of the electrical, we had a plug added behind one of the cubbies that my hot hot hub built - we even bought a brand new microwave. Our first ever! It's hard to believe that I've never owned a microwave before, I hope the technology doesn't break my brain. I am going to paint out the bulkhead to match the ceiling, I hope it looks okay. Eventually we will have a new door - but right now, I think things look pretty good...


You can see that the fridge is no longer plugged into an extension cord and we are still contemplating on who to hire to finish the cabinets. We're going to get doors custom made to match the original kitchen - anyone have any suggestions on colour? I was thinking of going with the gray of the lowers...it's hard to decide though! Eventually the cupboards will go right up to the ceiling. Yay.

I'm hoping to tackle the backsplash and paint out the moldings this week, then it really is DONE for a while!! What say you?

An update just for Martina

The electrician has moved out! He finished the kitchen last (AH!) - and yes, this drove me a bit insane as that was the room I was most excited about. Now look! We've added two pendant lights (from Rona) to highlight our windows...


And...


Wait, did you miss it? We also added a super fancy vent (from Rona as well).


And here, of course, you can see the finished pot lights that I previously posted about. It's all on dimmers, there are multiple places to turn em off and on (madness, I know). The fridge is no longer plugged into an extension cord AND the electrical mess that used to hang by the basement door is gone, gone, gone!

On a side note, I noticed that Rona had really nice lights (compared to other big box stores) and a strong preference for offering locally made products (always a win in my book).