Sick Day Number Two: More time to dream....

I spent the night in Emerg last night. I'd feel bad for me, but I feel worse for Joe, who came along and then went to work this morning. I'm feeling much better this morning...just a scare when my cough/sore throat made it feel like I couldn't breathe properly.

Anyhoo, I decided I'm going to talk to you about some of the renovations of my past. There aren't many, as I'm a fairly new home-owner. Of course, I was lucky to have a handy Mum and sister growing up who taught me a lot about house 'stuff', but it's still a huge learning curve!

When I moved into my beautiful, brick, 2-story Century home 16 months ago, I was in love! It has a 250ft deep lot, and was all renovated on the inside. It has it's quirks, such as a bath-tub in the master bedroom and a creepy stone basement, but it just has such a great feel to it. However, at the end of last spring, disaster hit during the first big snow melt. Our side storage room (which doubled as our entrance) leaked right through due to an ice jam. Water was literally pouring through the roof, comme ca:

So started our ideas for our first, large renovation project. Originally, the side part of this addition was split into 3 small and awkward rooms. The first was supposed to be an entry, and the other two were more storage-like.

After we started tearing out, the walls were open, which gave us the idea to tear out the two middle walls and create one, large space. We also decided that we'd rather have a functional 3-season room. Unfortunately, the state of the "bones" was in serious need of help. The windows were sliding old panes of glass, and the walls and floors were completely wonky. Besides that, the insulation was either soaking wet or old and rotten.

So, we needed to replace the windows and replace all of the insulation. For this, we sought out the help of my mom's handy partner, Rick, and his equally handy son, Craig. We spent 4 full days on this part of the process (admittedly...they did most of it!)

They also helped us to drywall, and we helped where we could. For example, Joe helped to sand the mud from the drywall.

He also helped by baking pie for us all to enjoy during our break! (What a man!!)

The next part of the renos involved mudding and sanding, replacing the floors, and painting. Again, we needed help. So this time, we called on Joe's aunt and uncle, Jane and Dan, and Joe's parents, Sandy and George. (For some reason, I don't have any photos of this stage, although I know some were taken...) We helped with the beginning parts of this, but when we went on our summer holiday to South America, these 4 finished all of the painting, trim and floors! I couldn't believe it...we owe them big time!

My favourite part, of course, was deciding how to decorate. Voila!

Believe it or not, we learned a ton through the process and feel much better prepared to independently (well...mostly) do our next renovations.