Christmas Tobbagganing

This past Christmas we had an epic tobogganing experience at the farm before we came back to Ottawa.  I regret that it has taken me this log to post pictures and videos, but as per requests from my husband and sister-in-laws, here they are!

Kitchen Renos 1.3

It has been a bit since my last blog post, but that was partly because progress has been paced on the flooring due to work and being away on the weekends.  I am happy to report thought that we were able to complete the flooring last Thursday, just in time for the contractor to come on Saturday to install the cabinets while we are at the farm!  Looking forward to seeing how that went when we got back, but for now, I'll discuss the flooring.

John got started on the flooring May 6th.  He ended up having to rip up all the flooring.  Originally he was just going to put down the new flooring over top, but due to the two layers of flooring, John thought it was best to rip it up first before putting the new flooring down.

Unfortunately there were little bits of glue left behind from the original tile, which John tried to peel up, but in the end decided that it would take forever to peel up and opted for putting down some plywood to even the floor out.

Getting the plywood posed a problem because when John tried to do that this past Monday night, he found out that Home Depot's rental van was broken and their rental truck was going to cost more than the wood we needed to get.  So instead on Tuesday we went to Lowe's and took the Impala and hooked it up on the roof.  We strapped the wood to the roof through the window, however that became an issue when we tried to open the doors :)  John thought that if he could just reach in and turn the car on we could just put the windows down all the way and get it...I, however, did not want to crawl through the window, so we took them off and strapped it through the door.

Once we got home, we started laying them down.  I screwed down all the pieces of wood, while John helped and cut the small pieces.  We were able to get all the flooring in by 9pm and I was exhausted! I understand why contractors need knee pads to do any work that involves them kneeling!

On Wednesday John got started on the flooring.  He worked away while I got supper together and then afterwards he had me sit on some of the tiles for my "weight" as he put them in.  We put in a floating click vinyl tile, which was a bit challenging, but he was able to get them in.

Thursday night we continued laying down the flooring, along with getting things together to leave Friday evening.  Fortunately we were able to get it all done (although it was mainly John getting the flooring and some plumbing done).

Close up of the tiles

 

All done

That's it for now.  Stay tuned for a blog on the cabinets this week!!

Kitchen Renos 1.2

After a long and busy week for both of us at work, we finally were able to paint the kitchen.  Until most of our painting endeavours, this was the first time we didn't argue while painting and the painting went relatively quick.  I guess we must be getting more used to doing it together, because normally I hate painting with John, but yesterday wasn't too bad (some earlier prayers probably helped that situation out!).  John did the taping and cleaning up of the kitchen, as I emptied the dishwasher and made lunch.  After lunch we got our first coat done, waited 4 hours and then was able to do the second coat of paint after supper.  The paint colour, which is a shade lighter than the main floor, is perfect, as it's light enough that you can tell a different if you look at the two walls, but not so different that you can tell then you walk by.  It is very subtle, which is what I really like about it.  We both are really happy how it looks and can't wait for it to be finished!  This week John plans on laying the floor and finishing up the electrical so that everything is in place for when the contractor comes the long weekend to install the cabinets!

First coat done.

Second coat done.

A second attempt of a less blurry picture of the new light.

Kitchen Renos 1.1

Well it's been a busy week and a half since I last blogged about the kitchen.  John's been busy plastering the kitchen since the 20th, having to do a couple coats where the wall cabinets sat, as we are raising the new wall cabinets up and we want to make sure that you can't see the line where the previous paint was.  He's gotten quite good at plastering, I've thought back to when to his first plaster job and compared it to now and I must say he's definitely learned a few things.  It makes me quite proud of the things he's learned and mastered!

First coat of plaster done.

Last Thursday, John was able to get the new light for the eating area done (sorry for the blurry picture, I will try and take a better one later).  He waiting to put up the one for the kitchen part until after the cabinets are in, as there are 6 lights versus the 4 that are in the eating part, so we don't want them to interfere with the cabinets being installed.

It is hard to tell, but there are little leaves on the lights.
It matches the dining room light.

Saturday we started on taking out the base cabinets.  I unpacked the cabinets and found places to put everything (mainly the spare bedroom) and John began the demolition process.  The kitchen began to look a lot more bare very quickly!

When John disconnected the sink, he quickly discovered that there was only a shut off valve for the dishwasher, the only want to shut off the water to the sink was to the entire house!!  That made for an interesting work around....he hooked up the old tap so that we could still have water to you know go to the bathroom or bath...

 We ran into another surprising discovery.  As John took off the base cabinets, we discovered that the flooring in the kitchen was not the original flooring and that it had actually been put on top of another flooring and the flooring that we have now was done after the cabinets were put it.  We began to think that this was going to become a huge issue since we are planning on putting our flooring on top of the existing floor, under the cabinets and the new cabinets are bigger than the old cabinets, meaning that there will be some overlapping, ultimately meaning we could run into some issues with the cabinets being level....turns out that once John took out the corner cabinet, he could that the cabinet was leveled with some wood, so he's assuming that the contractor we have hired to do that can do it.

This flooring seems awfully familiar....Mom/Dad, did we not
have this or something similar in our old house?

With all the cabinets out and the sink gone, it meant that we had no places to wash dishes, but thankfully John was able to hook the dishwasher back up so we had it for a few more days!  He had to do something a little fancy to make sure it wouldn't tip over though, since it is a built in dishwasher and it's since turned into a free standing one!

Hooking the dishwasher back up
so that we have it for a few more days!

 

Clever man used his ladder and a
2x4 to stabilize the dishwasher!

Since the weekend, John finished sanding the walls and washed them down to prepare for painting.  Tonight we went out and got some shut of valves to shut the water off so that neither of us would hit the tap while painting.  We're hoping to get the painting done Friday/Saturday and then start on the flooring and then we are all ready for the contractor!  Hopefully the time will go quickly, because I miss being able to cook properly!

Kitchen Renos 1.0

It's been a while since we have done any renos on the house or anything too exciting this winter, so my blog has been really lacking in the recent months.  However, we have just begun the reno process on our kitchen!  We decided in the new year that we want to finish the house up this year, so we thought that we would start with the biggest project and work our way down the to-do list.  

The kitchen planning process began back in February.  We found a kitchen place in the east end which was really good and affordable, as they are geared more for those who are doing a kitchen on a budget (aka you have to pick up the cabinets and install them yourself!).  After many layout revisions, we finally placed an order and waited for them to arrive.  The cabinets came into the store this past Monday and we were able to arrange for someone to deliver them to us on Thursday, so John stayed home to receive them and now our living room looks like this....

We decided that on Friday we would begin packing up and dismantling the kitchen.  Before we began, John wanted to check all the cabinets to make sure we had everything.  It was a good thing we did that, as it turned out that the blind corner cabinet that goes beside the stove is not going to fit, meaning the bank of drawers beside it is also the wrong size.  They didn't give us enough clearance to be able to open the cabinet door with the stove door, so basically we won't be able to open the cabinet because the stove door will prevent it.  After this discovery, we went through the rest of the cabinets and laid out the kitchen as it is to be installed and then decided not to move forward as we didn't know what was going to happen with the wrong cabinets or how long it would take to get new cabinets and we want to have a functional kitchen for as long as possible.

A last look of the kitchen before dismantling!

Alas, a new morning, a new start and I decided that while I waited for breakfast to bake I could at least start packing some of the cabinets up that we don't use that much.  John came down a few minutes later and decided that not only could we pack up but also start dismantling the kitchen....so much for waiting to hear back for the kitchen place!

He started at a couple cabinets before breakfast was ready and then finished taking down all the wall cabinets after breakfast.  It took him a couple tries with the first cabinet to figure out how to get them down, but then they came down pretty quickly after that.  I packed up and moved the things out of the cabinets while he took them down and I would help him take down some of the bigger cabinets.  Here are some pictures of the dismantling progress and how things look now!

You can tell that I'm a baker.  I used the largest box I had to pack up
my baking cabinet and it was still overflowing!

The dumping ground.

She's bare!

Won't be having dinner parties any
time soon!

That's all we got done today.  Not as much as we would have liked to get done, however the rest should come out quickly, so hopefully we will be able to stay within a reasonable timeline despite the set back with the two cabinets.  Pray it goes smoothly, because I already hate having the kitchen like this, so I'm sure it will only get worse as everything comes out!