Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy Everyone!

Big updates this week:

• We got the keys(!!!)
• We demo’d 3 rooms in the house
• Contractor started this week
• Designs are SET!

Getting the keys to the house was an awesome experience, everything went well and we were off to check out our new digs!

That night, after 4 hours, we had quite the amount of demolition complete! We ripped up all the laminate floors, (which we are recycling and using in our basement for now) and took down the drywall between the kitchen and living room. Once that was done we could really finalize our design.  We taped it out on the floor, which was helpful because Kaara was able to troubleshoot any design flaws. Kitchen Design Tip: Take good mental notes of how you use your current kitchen and the patterns you move in! This helped us determine a few things that were slightly impractical. As a result, we decided to go with a wall oven and a separate cook top, which is AWESOME because we get more big pot drawers and who doesn’t love a fancy wall oven???

Stacy and her brother worked together this week and were able to find us FOUR more inches of space in the kitchen due to a pipe that is WAY bigger than it needs to be. Erik is going to pull that sucker out and when he puts the wall back, it’s going to be 4″ narrower.  This is a huge find for us, because our dimensions were quite tight.

Furthermore, the electrician came, took notes on what we wanted and where.  He also got right to work and made deletions so we could take the wall down. People, it is SO important to hire professionals – we can’t stress this enough. Kaara zapped herself nicely on a socket, bringing us back to reality that while this is fun and exciting – it’s also some seriously dangers sh*t! So be careful, turn off the power source if you’re working around exposed electrical and now you know not to touch exposed electrical sockets. Good thing her hair is already curly. 😉

When we demo’d the kitchen, we were careful so that we could donate the cabinets to someone in need and keep them from becoming garbage in the landfill.  We posted the cabinets on Kijiji in the “free” section and within MINUTES we had about 8 replies. We ended up giving them to a family who desperately needed them due to issues they had in their apartment with mold and it honestly was an awesome feeling. So just an FYI, it’s true, one person’s trash really can be someone else’s treasure, so save what you can to donate to someone in need.

Now with renos, you often get bad surprise after bad surprise… and we certainly had one unexpected hump, but also two good ones! First, the bad. The ceiling in the living room is an INCH higher than the ceiling in the kitchen. This is problematic because we are joining the two rooms! Yikes. Good thing our contractor is an expert because he had the best looking, lowest costing solution hooked up in minutes.  Call the dry wall guy – we’re strapping the ceiling. We hated that popcorn/stipple ceiling anyways!

We were lucky to find two good surprises however! Apparently, there used to be a window in the bathroom and for about $100, we’re putting that baby back in! Secondly, Stacy uncovered this little gem…

We’re going to leave the brick of this old chimney exposed, clean it up a bit and see how it ties in. We may paint it down the line, but as Stacy pointed out “You can never unpaint it”. Touché. Right now, it just may be our favourite part of the house!

The bathroom is almost all ready to go; we picked up the tub, floor tile and the hunt for the perfect shower controls has come to an end. It’s really hard to find a shower kit that is everything you want…and then a tub spout! We settled for the Pfister Fullerton collection in Brushed Nickle (purchased from Lowes) and are quite happy, but more so relieved – our Contractor needed the controls and we needed to make a decision! It’s cost effective and good looking (~$300).

We’ll write another post entirely about white paint once we’re done as well. There is a LOT to know about white paint apparently! We are opting for Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace after comparing it to BM’s Simply White in multiple rooms in the house.

Stay tuned ladies and gents and follow us as we transform this tiny little house in Ottawa, Canada into a Scandinavian retreat!

Cheers,

Kaara & Stacy