Paint, paint, paint

We're doing so much painting!  You know, after all the scrape, scrape, scraping. We're using General Paint primarily for our paint and paint supplies, with a few specialty items from Benjamin Moore from time to time. We decided to go with a blue/grey theme in our bathroom and the main part...

Cabinets are in

 Thanks to everyone who weight in on my cabinet handles request for help a few weeks back.  We decided to go with the handle pictured here.  WE LOVE IT!  It looks so good!  It's sold, you can get your whole hand around it, and it's 8 inches long - so it doesn't fade away on...

Each Peach Pear Plum

Guys, you need to try the Food Network, Paula Dean Peach Cobbler recipe. I'm not going to write it all back out, but just take my word for it, click the link, and get baking! http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/peach-cobbler-recipe.htm...

Duraceramic - Tile not Tile

Duraceramic is a vinyl tile product that is super durable, and looks like tile when it's finished.  It's not as cold, or hard as a a traditional tile either. We are super happy with how this turned out.  It looks great, feels great, and not a single scratch from dog paws!   Here's...

Shower Tile

Love, love this tile! We were inspired by some pinterest boards that had the tile running vertically instead of horizontally.  We knew we wanted a shampoo cubby, but my cousin who works at the local flooring shop upsold us on the double box.  He said that one is good for one person,...

Sweet Heat

We debated quite a bit about in-floor heating.  Well, it was more of an internal debate.  Jordan really wanted it, and I had to decide if I did before deciding if it was a debate.  Adding in floor heat, added about $1,000 to the flooring bill.  That's for both the installers, and...

Wallpaper, it hides many a sin.

If you're ever doing renovations, please, please do not put wall paper on unprimed drywall.  It's just not kind, and primer is cheap. This wallpaper is everywhere in this house.  EVERYWHERE.  We knew it when we bought it, but didn't really think about the work involved in getting...

My Money, My Choices - Level 5, 6, & 7 Done

In January of this year, I mentioned that we needed to get our wills and powers of attorney etc. updated now that we were moving to BC.  We also needed to name a guardian for Little Man.  We finally took care of the updating, and were able to move along in the My Money, My Choices program. I...

More Drywall

Oh Drywall! So!  You know that we had a drywaller come in and do the walls that were rebuilt in the bathroom and master bedroom.  The shots in this post are in my dining room and living room.  You can see under the large window, in our peeling wallpaper efforts (which is bloody everywhere...

Sexy Kitchen Sink and Sexy Savings

That's right. I said it. My kitchen sink is sexy. This is a 9 inch deep, cast iron, 130 pound beauty! I bought it online from Lowes for $344.  A bit of a splurge however; we felt like this was a really excellent statement piece for the space. It get's better though.  Jordan and...

Drip, Drip, Drip

We're on to plumbing!  The list was long, but there were not nearly the surprises that we had with the electrical.  With plumbing we needed to move the sink drains/water lines in the kitchen, add in for a dishwasher and a refrigerator.  In the bathroom we moved the sink - added lines/drains...

Kitchen Cabinet (Doors)

One of the ways that we are saving money in our renovations is tackling painting all of our kitchen cabinet doors.  We did look at buying stock cabinets from IKEA and a few other big box stores, but we found the cost difference between that and a custom fit solution to be pretty negligible...

Electrical Smetrical

Have you ever lived somewhere that didn't have an exterior plug outlet?  I haven't.  Neither had Jordan.  Neither of us thought to look for one when we bought the house.  So of course, there wasn't one. Of course, our lawn mower is electric. Sigh. So another add on...you know,...

Structure & Drywall

Perhaps the biggest structural change that we made was to the wall in between the bathroom and master bedroom.  There was this little one foot by one foot cubby in the master bedroom.   We took that space for the bathroom and had the wall rebuilt.  This gave us the space we needed...

Sub Floor Woes

Pretty, pretty sub-floor. Not only did we find a lot of random holes in the original sub-floor, we also found an electrical outlet that had been covered up by old flooring.  Whenever you undertake renovations of this size, you're always expecting some unexpected finds...but the outlet...that...

August Spend Report

This one is a bit of a doozy!  I paid most of the bills for the house this month, we had deposits in June and then a reprieve in July - but this is the big hit. Gas and eating out were higher then normal because we had a couple of trips to the city to shop for things for the house - lighting,...