Phase II: Library.b.

Boom.
Damn things took a century to paint. But oh-so fabulous!

Still to do:
Electrical face-plates & light installed, shelf inserts installed, curtains & decor/move-in.

Future:
Wallpaper (ahem).
Bigger window @ East end. More light!
More storage: tossing around the idea of a slim fauxdenza on the North (the big blank one) wall... will see how the current layout works once move-in has commenced.

But at the moment... we're busting asses o'er here to get the house together for the great annual influx of far-away friends! This year... house is so different than the last... it's pretty frickin' amazing what can be done in a year if you cut out the non-essentials like sleep and fun haha *sigh*.

Merry Merry & whatevers y'all. We hope you find sweet second-hand/handmade-local scores for your kids to play with, gift the grown-ups in your life food/shelter with hugs/smiles, and give & receive to each other your time & attention... keep it real & out of the landfill, folks!

Phase III. Family Bath.b. (update)

Ooh-la-la! Sexy Plumbing!
What a mess.
But on our way...

Budget dictated, at $450 we are scrapping the lux towel-warming goodness... for now. Still wiring for it according to the specs, and hoping the magic renovation-fairy will grace our hard-work with it's shiny warming happy glow sometime soon :)
Until then... normal-temperature towels for us! #firstworldproblems

...and a Library update:
We're installing & painting out those bookcases like a boss.
Budget also dictated no wallpaper this time around... hooboy that magic renovation-fairy will be busy @ our house!


While the work is truckin' along... we celebrated our 2nd anniversary here @ the House on Sunday. Although we're still in the thick of it, and with little time to come up for air (with no prospects in the near future), it's nice to take a little time & reflect upon what we've accomplished. Not so lazy after all! Gold star right here, folks.

Opinion Poll: Library

While we complete the drywall, still chuckin' around the wallpaper schematic... and running out of time to order & install! Feelin' the white rabbit vibe over here. Needless to say, we've gone from black to blue to orange with our colourway... a little throwback from the audience would be helpful. What say you? A stunner with rich orange wallpaper (Pomegranate), or the adorable Abigail Edwards black & white with the orange punch of colour in a rug? #firstworldproblems

Pomegranate

Winter

Elements to consider:
Dining Room is white on white w teak & lucite bling, cowhide & natural fibres... with the serious consideration of Emerald velvet curtains (but these are not visible from the Library).
Bookcases are white with medium-dark grey backboard.
Hardwood is an expresso stained Bamboo.

What else is kickin' in the digs? Well... Plumber gave our house an ill-bill, so we're replacing our stack & moving our water meter (while installing the expansion tank) + the usual waiting and flakiness of trades-folk in this Boomtown. So, we're busy waiting and agonizing over Library wallpaper as we drywall :P

Phase III. Family Bath.b.

Since we did more ripping apart of ye ole Humpty Dumpty House this past year (year 2!!!) than putting back together again, we are down to one bathroom for the three of us for a while. Yay.

Bustin' ass here working on getting this guy up & running b4 the Winter break...
at the same time as this guy...
and a little of this.
Ambitious? Of course.
Aim high.

We'd like to thank our friends, for allowing us the space/time to be completely head-embedded-up-ass involved with House and still be our friends. We know we've neglected you for the sing of the tile saw, flaked out for Roxul insulation installation, and out our own painting as priority instead for helping you with yours... we're selfish pricks. Thanks for being our pals anyway. <3

Next Up:

Plumbing. Plumbing also going into the Basement @ the same time (no progress pics of that folks... still looks like a Dead Zone). 

We chosen some interesting options for the bath... used to be that "interesting" yielded kickass innovative results, but confidence is shaky after 2 years non-stop snot-dripping ugly-bawling House renovations (not gonna lie, us poor saps need a capital H-holiday). 

Bath/Shower: modern style tub with side-mount faucet & shower-ring. We've done the whole shower-ring with a clawfoot thing, and despite being mildly cumbersome it's worth the vintage-feel (and style over those awful plastic surround-shower inserts any day). Will it pull-off the kickass vibe without the essential vintage element of the clawfoot tub though? We'll see...

Walls: 3/4 wainscoting. We have plotted to overrun this house with wainscoting. Will the added character make up for painting out all the original woodwork for you folk who wagged your finger @ us? Honestly... in another 5 years, when the bulk of the work is complete and the level of awesome blows your mind, let us have another little conversation about that, shal we? Mmmmmkay ;)

Lighting: Still sussing it out... but bustin' brains o'er here to do that fast (need the electrical in b4 walls go up!). Droolworthy lighting link.

Heated towel Bar: because we are little pussycats and like a warm towel in the winter. It's the little things. If it was new-build, we'd heat the floors. It gets cold way up here, folks.

So... pulling it all together? Only one way to find out. Giddyup.

Phase III: Exterior.b./Front Porch

Exterior painted. BOOM.

Ignore the rough&tumble state of our yard... we were kinda busy.

Snooty McSnooters may not like the colours, but we are over the moon. More importantly, we are rockin' it. Boohyeah. So y'all who hate it, you need to travel more. We don't care how much you have travelled, you obviously haven't travelled enough.

This was an experience. Not only did we do all the scraping & painting by hand (the condition of the cedar siding was delicate enough to not be accessible with electric scraping or paint spraying), but we were essentially on display. Lots of staring. Lots of commentary. Lots of compliments & encouragement. Lots of meeting our more further-radius neighbours. Didn't expect that, and it was good.

the FRONT PORCH:
On the wind of inspirations, we painted it to co-exist with the Exterior palette (in olive & lime green + white), creating a breezy feeling to the space and blurring the lines between interior/exterior.
Currently housing shoes & such outdoorsy things front porches ought to do, it will probably suffer through several incarnations of furniture & placements at whim.

Features include:
A new ceramic-tile floor that was interesting to install. We used an orange dimplex over the subfloor and a silicone grout to assure the ceramic tile would be durable over the freeze-thaw climate here in SK (otherwise, ceramic tile & normal grouts will crack/break due to the temperature changes). The tile is meant to mimic the look of hardwood... pulling the dark-brown decking through into the space (furthering the exterior/interior breezeway) and in the future will pull the eye through to the dark hardwood interior flooring. Noice.
Mid-Century dresser holds some bits/bobs (reuseable grocery bags, sunglasses. etc.), but functions as a freezer in winter. Oh winter... *le sigh*.

Still deciding on a light fixture... need to find some other pieces to give this space character: an old creamer for umbrellas, a fantastic chair (or dreaming BIG: a MCM bench) and whatnot.


Next Up:
Completing the front facade: next summer (fingers crossed!)
That monumental task includes: exterior lights, side-entrance facade, tons of mulch to replace the grass, and new border wall (current wall fondly referred to as the "seagull shit" wall... apparently-as told by our neighbour Dave-this was a common technique a previous resident of 619 brought over from her home in Wales. Mmmmmkay whatevs... it's fugly & gotta go).

Then... plans for next year.

We've soared through our 2nd summer here, and are ready to dip into debt (uncomfortable territory! eeep! but thought we might join the club) to get the GARDEN in for next year... and start producing our own foods again. It.is.time.
Chickens? Where do we put the mushroom-logs? The compost bins? The bees? Many very exiting questions are beginning to be allowed to surface as we have gained some serious confidence in completing the monumental task of painting our Exterior, because it was crazy difficult, but we did it. Gold star right here.

Intermission: Autumn 2013

With the chaos of ripping our house apart & piecing it back together again slower than desired, it's easy to get a little lost, shucked, raw. Then we wake up & see something again as if for the first time, but with the warm comfort of HOME in the mix... and smile. With winter on our coattails, and hunkering down again for the long sleep indoors, there's a few nooks & crannies we want to remember from this dwindling time of season...

Phase III: Family Bath.a.

Family Bath

Here's what she looks like now. 

What you cannot see is how the floor bends (the last remaining tell-tale signs of the previous vortex that existed in this house: where we can only assume behaved like some House of Leaves entity and felt as though it was converging into one sci-fi singularity very very slowly. Inspection could not explain the anomaly, but we have been reinforcing structural as we go, and the changing of the main floorplan remedied the situation almost completely). Which is quite disturbing while on the throne. This will be fixed.

Demolition (complete) will commence in a week or so.

Reconstruction:
When renovating the Master Bedroom we stole some space from one of the rooms to extend this Bath into. Thank goodness... although as is isn't terrible small, it's not conducive to being the only Bathroom servicing 4 bedrooms. So bigger we go!
Plumbing will be shifted to accommodate.

Dreams:

This one was a no-brainer. We saw a magazine photo that was perfect for what we wanted & stopped thinking about it after that. Designwise, not a challenge... patience-wise we've been waiting/putting other urgent projects ahead of her for over a year... so not doing so well with that virtue.

Here's the magazine photos:

We'll be omitting the floor-ceiling subway tile (going in the Main Bath later) in place of bead-board wainscoting plate-rail height. Possibly introducing some colour in the wall on-top... vintage-inspired Robin's egg blue anyone? Also the bathtub/shower will be freestanding.

The previous clawfoot bath, pedastel sink, and "torpedo" throne? They will migrate to the Basement Bath (paired with a diamond checkerboard ceramic tile) and be gorgeous again. 

Other inspiring photos? Don't mind if I do!

Phase II: Library.a. (again)

Library:
(previously Phase I) April 2012 was our last update on this room.
This room (my personal favourite room) has been a point of contention, as the roofing debacle resulted in it's flooding (spring 2013) and subsequent demolition of all the work we had invested to that point. Boourns.
So... here we are again.

Thankfully, we can save the Bamboo flooring (installed 2012).

Newspaper insulation: circa 1971! Oh house...  <3

When this addition was added, the exterior siding was not removed! Holla!

We added extra structural to the walls & ceilings so as to support a "Green Roof" in the future..

Next Up:
Insulation, drywall, yada yada.
Hang in there, baby.

Phase III: Exterior/Yard (update)

Summer blew across the prairie and kept us mighty busy with houseness.

Apart from this, that, and the other things, some projects were noteworthy of completion (or near-to).

old & busted

new  hotness

Fence:
Our neighbours rock. With 9 month old Beth in tow, we ripped out & built a new fence together (no panels here, all from scratch!). New to power-tools, those people were impressively fast learners & good beer-swillers to boot. Thanks, neighbours to the North! Let's chum around again soon :)

Exterior:
We are still painting the Exterior (3 sides this year are almost complete: West-facade, South, and East) and fingers-crossed to update soon on how utterly smashing it looks. There were problems challenges to overcome as we went along (replacing much of the roof joists), but she's a healthier house now even if a little late.
Hey... ya know what? 3 storeys up is a helluva height. Who knew the Missus wasn't a fan of way the fuck up there? Well, a week of crying in fear of falling to death was worth it, that gingerbreading looks incredible (will show ya that later). Here's to doing things that scare you, Bravo!

Phase II: Living Room.c. (update)

Ah hahahahahaaaaa....heeeeeheeeeeee.... oh sorry... was just browsing through this young and ambitious dreamscape of our Living Room and couldn't stop laughing... hahaha........ yah didn't work out that way. Oh process... you beautiful thing, you.

But... spring-summer has landed here on the great expanse of prairie and with it another tweak to the Living Space (plus a borrowed chair while it waits in cue to get new upholstering). Here's some eye-candy & layout clues: