Living Room

Our living room is FINALLY done!
I refer you to the before and after (it's too bad I can't find a picture with holes in it, it was much worse before the patching started):

Look, the dirty yellow walls are gone. Yay! Everything is shiny and new. The colour [Night Frost]...well, its not quite what we expected. It turned out to just be gray. Like we're painting most of the house (can I at least get a Hooray from Auntie Jan, who also paints her house gray?). But it'll do. I think the fireplace actually looks nicer now, with the white mantle, instead of the pukegreen mantle.

This took FOREVER, due to Olympics. I hope the dining room/hallway will move along at a slightly faster clip without Olympic hockey to vie for Adrian's attention. Dining room priming starts today - many more days later than expected....

And now we need a couch. Actually, we found a lovely couch we both liked...but then we decided we needed new eavestroughs more. So, couch, you just wait for us, we'll come get you soon.

Upstairs bath is DONE!

Our upstairs bathroom is finally done! w00t! Our before and after:

LOVE it. Really, I'm surprised at how much different our place feels now that we can use the upstairs bath! I mean, the downstairs bathroom is fine... but having to hike downstairs to have a shower sort of makes you feel like you're camping, you know?

The before picture doesn't even tell the whole story - alas, I don't have one showing the gaping hole around the light switch - you'll just have to trust me, it's much improved.

The thing that really makes the bathroom though is without a doubt the towels - thanks to Aunties Ladi and Carol for the thoughtful wedding gift!! Seriously, I have never used such towels. They make me feel like a rich person. If it wasn't Chinese New Year today, I think I would go have a shower just so I could dry off. :) And these beautiful bathroom accessories courtesy of Shavaun and the Hohs, very lovely! Thanks, guys!

I mean, sure, the bathroom is still ultra small, and you do get a mild claustrophobic feeling when you're "answering the call of nature", but at least now its plush! I'm also having a bit of issue with the brown - we all know brown is on its way out, I wish I had the foresight to ask for these lovely gifts in black, but overall, I'm giving my *new* bathroom 2 thumbs up!

You'll notice the cadence of the blog posts is much slower now - that's because everything takes so LONG when we are both working full time! Sorry! Up next, look for the kitchen - its actually done, but we're still unpacking into it, so I'll post when its 100% done and set up. The living room is scheduled for priming on Family Day - wooohoo! (Its about time, one would say).

Ta!

Slowly but surely

Work progresses - its not terribly interesting at this point, sorry! We taped the kitchen last night, today, first coat of primer will go up. Adrian and I had our (hopefully) last sanding party in the kitchen, with a billion drop clothes, and me madly trying to vacuum up all the plaster dust as it was made.

Household temp still sits at 66'F. I set it to 68'F. Sooner or later it will hit that setpoint! Perhaps once massive drafts aren't coming in everywhere? In particular the kitchen has a new switchplate that seems to be directly connected to the outside, a refreshing stream of air is coming in at all times.

I notice the upstairs bathroom has no heating vent. So it can't really be blamed for how chilly it is. Maybe we should look at some shrink wrap on the window for now? I fear its outside wall of the upstairs bath ought to be ripped down at some point too and insulated. Perhaps next year. We're still using the downstairs bath for showering, since we have one more plaster coat to go upstairs, and the faucet still needs caulking. Oooh, maybe we should put heated floors in when we remodel the bathroom, that would be awesome! They are freeeezing now.

The upstairs bathroom also smells like cigarette smoke on occasion. This is a wee bit of a mystery. I thought someone the neighbour smoking was coming in the wall holes, but when I sniffer them, I detect no smoke. I think the smoke is coming in from our exhaust pipe from the bathroom. This is how it was done before exhaust fans - just a pipe out to the roof. Mayhaps this pipe lets in cigarette smoke from the attic? But when I sniffer the hall closet that has a HUGE GAPING hole in it to the attic, I detect no smoke.....

And a Happy Birthday to Justyna, my only loyal blog "Follower"!

Excellent Brown Couch

Well, the big move happened! Only the bedroom is painted and sans holes, so the rest of the house is chaos.

Our living room is filled with dust and construction accoutrements, the dining room is piled with furniture, the middle bedroom is FILLED with boxes, and the back bedroom houses scattered furniture and boxes and painting supplies, and the kitchen is draped for painting!

Controlled chaos, it is - camping for another week, I'm ready for it. I even bought all processed food to eat this week, so cooking can be kept to a minimal before the kitchen is painted.

Oh, and our new house is also COLD. So Cold! I think all those walls we have punched in outside walls are doing it - we have not yet hit room temperature. We're idling around 65'C...and the floors are freezing. Yikes. So in the next few days, we're prioritizing some hole patching!

As I took the inaugural shower Saturday night, I noticed lovely warm steam going into the bathroom walls and ceiling through the massive holes in them, and I'm thinking this isn't such a good idea. So we're off showers in the upstairs bathroom until the holes are patched and the cement is dry. Meaning we may end up painting the bathroom, or else we'll have a massive white primer square on the wall. But you probably know we lived with that in our old house for like 2 years....

The bedroom is an oasis (cold oasis) of wonderful Turquoise-Mist. Mmmm. I love it. I spent time before sleeping on Saturday night just looking at how lovely the walls are. They look almost new! There are just a few wee spots the paint peeled off with the tape. No worry. I can fix that this week. Poor Adrian has a lot of mudding to do.

Our excellent brown couch -
(If you recall it was no slouch)
She didn't fit in the door
She is no more.
our excellent brown couch.