The Kitchen Saga Continues...

In my kitchen refacing reveal post, found here, I was very excited about the guy I found on Kijiji to do the job.

Today...less excited! You may also remember that I had mentioned a couple of cupboard doors had been mis-measured (see picture). The guy said he'd have them remade and ready in a week. Well, now it has been over a month!

I waited a week, and nothing. Then I sent about 10 e-mails, and called even more times leaving messages, and nobody responded. Just when I thought I was being screwed over, we got a call from the guys' son, who had some big story about how is Dad was no longer able to work and he was trying to tie up loose ends. (I failed to mention in my earlier post how these 'excuses' had made getting the cabinets installed the first time a frustrating experience, too). Although it was sketchy, I arranged for him to come today, at last, to install the cabinets.

Of course... he shows up late, and empty handed! Apparently the paint job isn't done. He asked if he could take the doors for reference, and I guess enough was enough. I told him I was extremely frustrated and he would have to leave the doors (I had a bad vision of him taking the doors and disappearing for good). He tiptoed out apologetically after taking a few last measurements, and said he'll be back tomorrow at 10:00 am. I will believe it when I see it. I might have also scared him away, since my ranting at him occured while I was also holding a screaming Henry.

The worst part of it all... I've been waiting around my house on this beautiful, sunny day! I guess I'd better get outside to let off some steam. Ahhh... I needed to vent! That feels much better.

All in all, I guess it has still been worth it. The kitchen looks good and was a great price. I need to focus on the positive! On that note, outside I go!

Kitchen update

Luckily for me, Joe is on March Break this week. That means we were easily able to finish the rest of the kitchen.

When we were given the estimate for refacing our cabinets from the guy who did it, he had put an extra $900 to paint the remaining surfaces. That put the estimate from $2100 (which included taking measurements, making cabinet and drawer fronts, painting them, installing and putting on hardware) up to $3000 (to do the painting on top of that). Since I am pretty comfortable painting, and on maternity leave income, we decided to do the rest of the painting ourselves, especially since the painting seemed a little expensive. I'm definitely glad! It took the two of us about 9 hours total (Me: 6 hours; Joe: 3 hours). And the finished product looks amazing! I was a little nervous doing the painting since there was no room for mess-ups, but we took our time and it worked really well. Plus, it saved us $100 per hour! Yes, please!

I am so excited to finally have my white shaker kitchen. I have been dreaming about it for a long time! Here are a few photos! We will probably add a window treatment of some kind to add a bit more colour. Otherwise, we are loving the way the granite and backsplash look now.

The only thing that is unfinished is the cabinet above the desk/ beside the fridge. Unfortunately they were measured wrong, so there is about 3/4 of an inch gap between the two cabinet doors. This is where we decided to add a large cabinet door to cover up the awkward shelving that was there before. Our cabinet guy said he should have it done in about a week. 

And here is a little before and after for your viewing pleasure!

Kitchen Progress!

So...Joe and I took a big risk and it has paid off!

Let me start from the beginning. When we bought our house, I knew that the kitchen needed a major facelift. I decided that I would try to go the refacing route in order to save some money and resources. Let me remind you of what our kitchen looked like before:

Not so nice, right?

In the fall, I had a lady from Home Depot come into my kitchen and give us an estimate for Cabinet refacing. To my astonishment, it was going to cost around $10,000! And was after a 10% discount promo. I was very disappointed and started imagining whether or not repainting could work. Or worse... whether or not I should just live with it! After a few more months I decided to try one more option: Kijiji.

I searched and found a handy man with years of cabinet making experience who was offering refacing. I called him up and he came in to take a look. His estimate was just over $2000. I could not believe it! It didn't include painting the sides of the cabinets, but I am happy to do that myself in order to save more money. This is where the risk came in, since he was asking for a 50% deposit. We asked and called references and asked for a GST #, and wrote the cheque, simply hoping that he would do a good job.

Now, about a month later, the cabinet fronts are installed! They look amazing. And the price tag still came in at under a quarter of Home Depot's estimate. I am pretty pleased. Now it's up to me to paint up the rest. I can't wait to see the finished product! It is already such a huge improvement. I will keep you updated on the rest!

Here is a sneak peak at the progress so far.

  

Bathroom Inspiration

I love glass showers. I dream of having one eventually. The problem in our new place is that the main bathroom upstairs is narrow and fairly small, so having a glass shower would mean potentially NOT having a tub in the bathroom. Considering Joe and I hope to start a family in the future, having a main bathroom with no bath could be a problem.

Today on Pinterest, however, I found a glass shower/bathtub combo that looks great! Here it is:

I LOVE the blue tile in the back of the shower. I don't necessarily like that the door only covers half of the length of the tub, as this would probably create many puddles over time. I also love the narrow linen closet beside it.

At our new place, there is only space for a shower/tub combo, sink and toilet. So this could work great!
Maybe bathroom reno's will be closer in the future than I realise :)

Before and After

This week I googled my address.
Somehow, there was the picture of our mud room before we re-did it on the net! (This was obviously from a previous sale of our home).

Anyway, in this post, I showed the make-over of our mud room, but I didn't have a before to show a before-and-after, to show how much we really changed it: So, here it is!

Before: (I know, quality is not great) This was before the flood, and before we ripped out everything including the ceilings and the walls!

After:

Projects for the week

Since I still have a week of holidays, I have a goal to get a few little projects done.

My first project was minimizing the draft of cold air that comes from our unheated 3-season room. For the past 2 weeks, we've had a towel propped up by the door to block the draft, comme ça:

As you can see, there once was a draft blocking door shoe which must have been removed during the summer renovations. So, we got a new one, and I installed it this morning. Since the door is smaller than most, I also had to saw a piece of the door shoe off, which proved to be the most challenging part of the task. And here it is...hopefully this will solve the draft problem and help with the energy efficiency of our home.

Unfortunately, this creates a new project...I was hoping the door shoe would cover the old screw holes but they do not. I may need to repaint the door.

Another project I have on the go is re-painting a second hand piece of furniture Joe and I bought this week for $10. Here it is:

 We thought it would be great to use as a linen closet in our upstairs bedroom. (As I may have mentioned before, perhaps the biggest flaw of our house is the serious lack of storage).

My plan is to paint it white. I am, however, considering painting the back of the shelves in a different colour, like in the two examples below:

We'll see. More to come!

Let the upgrades continue!

A couple of weeks ago, we had torrential downpour in Kitchener. (In December. Really? And we had it again this week! So strange) Anyway, during this downpour, puddles appeared in our basement. This brought back some awful flooding memories from last spring. So, I ventured out in the rain to find the cause of the problem... and found out that our eavestrough were pretty much falling off of the house, essentially causing a waterfall aimed right at our 150 year old stone foundation! I spent an hour in that very same torrential rain trying to use 2 by 4's to prop up the part that was sagging, unsuccessfully. Did I mention this happened while I was off on a sick day? Not the restful day I had signed up for!

So, I looked on good ol' Kijiji and found a guy who came today and replaced them. $600 later, they are as good as new! (Yeah...I preferred paying for this one... didn't feel like experimenting with eavestrough replacement in December!) We have now redone almost the ENTIRE addition of this house, (roof, new layout and 3-season room, new windows and eavestroughs), none of it bring planned or by choice. I feel this is the final step before I feel comfortable selling our house. Now all we need is a home to buy. Sigh!

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.