Holidazed

Okay, so yesterday I watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas in an attempt to force this kid out. (Kids like Christmas, right?) And then I decided to put up the tree.

My love of Christmas knows no bounds. I go truly bananas when it comes to holiday season fun – I frigging love it. The lights, the glowiness, the happiness, the music, the baking… there is no down side, I tell you! In any case, I decorated said tree tonight and am totally loving it!

Somebody else loves it too. (Darby is clearly managing sleigh operations this year – she’s worked really hard and I’m pretty sure beat out that ridiculous drunk Blitzen for the gig.)

Eeee!

A Tale of One Old Hallway

So I know hallways seem like small reno jobs, but this one was a huge amount of work, thus leaves me filled with (labour-inducing?) giddiness. To date, we’ve finished the glorious bathroom and the master bedroom, and the kid room is 80% finished… meaning the second floor of our house was nearly done. That crafty husband of mine still has to add trim to this hallway, but by some miracle, it is now basically finished before the arrival of this (admittedly late) kid!

Three shots – hideous when we bought it, totally gutted, then under construction…

And now… basically done! (Shot from the other side of the hall with my cruddy camera instead of his good one like the other shots, but you get the idea.)

That banister alone is a work of art, as far as I’m concerned. I swear, this man I married was a celebrated craftsman in another life. He managed to save the original handrail and shoerail and totally stripped them, did the glorious black and white, had to rebuild and reangle the entire thing to make it structurally solid and so very pretty… I am in love with it! And I have no clue where he learned to do this kind of thing!

He will also be doing the staircase to the third floor – of which I showed you in-progress shots a little while ago, and are now long done! – to have black treads and white risers to match that banister, and we’ll be doing the same again with the stairs you see in that second shot (the ones from the first to second floor) in the new year.

Ah, renovations – how I love thee!

Baby Steps

So the bathroom renovation is done but for a minor patch-job on the wall where the plumbers had to make some changes due to ongoing vanity/sink issues (don’t get me started), but I can’t get pictures yet as we have way too much to finish before this kid arrives.

Like what?

Oh, just his adorable room. The hallway floors. A second floor banister. The staircase to the third floor. That kind of thing.

Anyway, I love this shot of the staircase reno in progress – you’re seeing behind the stairs what will be the baby room closet. The room itself couldn’t be properly closed up ’til the staircase was redone. And we had to get custom treads made, because they don’t make them thick like they did 150 years ago, so there was waiting and deliberating and sizing and shimming and gluing, but it’s nearly there!

The poor husband is working like a total maniac to try to get things finished. I, in the meantime, am staying still like a maniac in hopes that this kid arrives late enough that we can get things done!

Approaching the Finish Line

More bathroom reno updates!

Here’s the view when you walk in the room – note that the pipes sticking out of the wall on the right are where the vanity will be installed after it arrives. Also note that the red wall looks redder in these pictures – it’s more of a rust than cherry tone in real life!

And this is the view from the corner where the toilet is – and I promise that empty corner will look more fleshed out when the vanity comes in! Note that we need to put in some kind shelving thing on that wall on the right of the picture – we haven’t even started looking yet, but it will be something lovely that will hold towels and other bathroom paraphernalia.

Now the view from the tub – check out that great door! When we lived in our condo, the bathrooms had these doors in natural wood – and the previous owners left two extras in our storage locker. Dave took them when we moved, as he thought we might want to use them one day. Painted white? Et voila! Perfect door to let the sun to the hallway!

The tub is my favourite tub of life. Look at these stunning faucets! Look how pretty! I just love this shot.

A closeup on the shower tiling, which I fully love. Note that pipe sticking out – the rainshower head and handheld shower with slide bar are both scheduled to be delivered in the next week, so we’re still waiting on those. Additionally, the glass door for the shower is being built – we couldn’t order ’til the glass guys (who are also doing the mirror for the vanity) could come do the exact measurements of everything else in complete state, so that is about two weeks out as well!

So yeah, we have a few more pieces we’re waiting on, and still have to buy the shelving, towel racks and hooks, and toilet paper dispenser (completely forgot to look for these small pieces today) but it’s very close to done. We also need to figure out the window coverings, but I am thinking we might do a super sheer vertical blind type thing. Or maybe just sheer drapes would be better. Thoughts? Other suggestions are welcome!

Love! Love! Love!

Edit! I feel compelled to add that this was our original vision of what we’d do – before any design planning, but after we’d chosen the key fixtures.

While my renders are clearly more circus-cake baker than designer, I still think these are fun.

In Tile

Yay! More reno progress shots. I know, the week isn’t even done yet, but they have gotten a lot done this week already and, well, Dave did a photo shoot without me even asking so I am thrilled to have new pictures!

This first shot captures a major level of reno in progress. The tile in the shower hasn’t been grouted yet, but it’s all laid – the grout itself will add another element, as it’s a lovely grey shade that will act as another accent. The floor is started and will be finished this weekend. The paint is done. (For the accent wall, we went with the unusual choice of a contrasting colour to the blues/greys/etc. found in the tile which should also look great with the walnut of the vanity, it’s a rusty red-orange. We ended up also using the same glass tiles as act as an accent colour in the shower for the floor of the shower – the dark grey slate tiles were too big to ensure flatness on the shower floor, and the small glass tiles allowed us to reduce the volume of separate elements happening in the room anyway, which is probably a good thing considering the various design risks we decided to take!

Anyway, this is the view from the corner opposite where the door will hang. Purty!

The view from the toilet corner, this goes to show the spaciousness of the room – that wall on the right is the side of the shower. Those things sticking out of the wall are the plumbing and sconce things where the vanity will be.

And the lovely view from the corner where the tub will be. I think the neutral walls are just a stunning colour, just the right amount of tone to offset the white of the subway tile but still super, super neutral in order to ensure good lighting on the face when doing makeup. Indeed!

So remaining to be done? Well, the tile gets finished and grouted, baseboard and trim get laid, lighting is hung, and fixtures get installed. We are calling the glass guy about doing that part of the shower tomorrow, as we couldn’t have him in ’til the shower was done enough to get exact measurements, but that only goes a week between measure and installation. The vanity and showerheads don’t come ’til later in the month so we have a bit of a wait on that finish line. That said, the rest of it will likely go into mid-to-late next week to and, in short, it’s a mere week tops ’til I don’t have to take those occasional middle-of-the-night bathroom breaks all the way downstairs. Whoo whoo!

Walled In

Another week down, and only one (!) to go in the magic that is our bathroom reno.

The plastic to your left is where the door will be, and the big metal frame thing is the wall that the vanity goes on. You can see the shower in its grey cementboard glory.

This shot is taken from the corner where the toilet will be – look at those glorious walls!

And this is taken from the corner where the tub will be – you can see the general layout probably best in this shot.

Isn’t it thrilling? This week will consist of tiling, painting, and installing the fixtures. The vanity and sink unfortunately couldn’t be rushed, thus aren’t being delivered ’til between the 23rd and 26th of the month, but the rest should theoretically be done this week. We still have to pick up all the small pieces (extra shelving, big glorious mirror, new towels, curtains, toilet paper dispenser, etc.) but the guts of the room will be complete!

I can’t believe it. I am ecstatic!

Two Weeks Down…

Two or three to go!

The insulated wall is where the 5′ long vanity will be set. The door is directly across from that insulated wall, making the vanity the first thing you see.

The room looks skinnier than it actually is here because of the lens Dave used to capture the whole thing, but you get a sense! The freestanding tub will be on an angle in the corner where the big window is – then I will sit in that tub staring out the window at the glowing CN Tower. Dream!

And a shot from the croner – the wooden box-looking thing in the top middle-to-right of the shot is where the spacious shower will go. The toilet will go in basically the bottom right of this shot, in the corner of the room farthest from the door.

It smells so good in there right now with all the freshly cut wood! With the subfloors fully down, electrical ready, and plumbing roughed in, this week will consist of finishing building and insulating the walls, prepping the floor for tiles, and then we get to tiling and installation. So exciting!

Our Answer to Babyjail

We got a call from Ella + Elliot on Friday that this little bug’s most important pieces of furniture have arrived – and in far less time than the 4-6 weeks we’d been anticipating, no less!

We (and by “we” I mean I, not like the renoland version of “we”, which means Dave) spent a fair amount of time investigating the bazillion options out there for baby furniture. Convertible versus non-convertible cribs! Cribs whose sides slide down versus ones that don’t! Round cribs versus square cribs! Dressers + change tables versus dresser change tables! Crib change tables! Classic woods and whites versus colourful pieces! There were a lot of options – and not the kind that make you excited, but the kind that make you feel like you’re going to have a mental breakdown if someone doesn’t just bloody tell you what to do. Anyway, after months of back-and-forthing (and harassing everyone from girlfriends to store clerks to our moms), we set our dial to the Classic series from Oeuf NYC.

Here’s the crib (only we didn’t do this change table) that Jen still swears looks like babyjail (perfect for imprisoning this little creature!). This crib changes into a toddler bed at some point – though don’t ask me when kids change from crib to bed as I have no flipping clue and refuse to research things so far in the future.

And here is the dresser/change table combo.

This is the corresponding hutch for the dresser that we plan to order later on!

This unit will last through his lifetime!

We can’t pick it up quite yet, as the future kid room is currently filled with contractor tools and equipment (there’s nowhere else to put that stuff!) but surely will in a few weeks.

After finding a picture of a baby room I liked on the Ella + Elliot site, I did some major hunting and found the exact wallpaper they had used that made me so into that room. For your reference, it’s called Frames by Taylor & Wood, and can’t be purchased in Canada – but I found it at Graham and Brown’s online store, where they were happy to ship up here when I put in the order request this week! As a point of reference, this is the general layout we’re going to pull together in this room.

Whew!

Pretty Little Things

Another day of stalking around, resulting in more pretty little things!

We got two of these wall sconces, and one will go on each side of the mirror.

In other lighting news, I took a quick shot of the pendant light we got to hang over the tub. (Apologies for the quality, but I can’t find any good pictures online!)

And we picked up our sink faucets.

Finally, we confirmed the tiles, as we didn’t find anything we liked better – just have to go in Monday morning to make the order. All that’s remaining to find are the mirror/medicine cabinet (depending on what we find), towel bars and hooks, toilet paper dispenser, and shelving. Miracle!

All Tiled Up

I almost forgot to showcase where we’re at with The Great Tile Hunt of 2009!

This is the winning palette thus far, and we found all of it at Olympia Tile. The brownish fabric looking tile is floor, the dark grey is the shower floor, and the glass is the shower accent. For the bulk of the shower, we’re looking at subway tile in some shade of white, though remain unsure on the matte versus glossy question at this point.