This Little Light of Mine

With our basement done, and the upstairs projects underway, we my dear sweet handy father finally got around to poking me with a big stick and we got a simple item crossed off the list that had been annoying the heck out of me since the dawn of time since we moved in ....... changing out our kitchen light(s).

With the purchase of our house we inherited two bleh light fixtures.  Although we were thankful that they worked (yup, there's a silver lining for ya), they in no way 'went' together in any stretch of the imagination.   My least favourite, was what I dubbed the "spaceship light" in the main kitchen area... the large rectangular fluorescent light by the sink- ugg!

Followed closely by it's neighbour the "Roman Special" the forest green faux aged copper wanna be over the eating area!

Note: you can tell my immense love for these fixtures since the only pics I can find are from our home inspection day 1.5 yrs ago!)

Months and months ago, I scored a great large (14" diam) retro-clean lined-tastic opaque glass globe light from our local Restore for a whopping $7.50- win!  But instead of doing anything with it, it languished in the black hole (aka the bookcase area of our hallway).  To be honest I'm totally amazed the darn thing survived considering the lack of care we took with it.

The other night during one of their visits to see us help us on our never-ending to do list, my Dad and I decided to just get 'er done (notice a new trend around here?  Less procrastinating/thinking and more doing, I love it, but I'm not sure H is always so keen!!).  So,  down came our "spaceship light", and up went my almost free treasure..... and what a treasure she is.  Daytime or night time, she floats my boat!  In the evening she looks like the moon, with a great warm glow perfect for ambiance and task lighting.

Can I get an oooooohhh and an aaaaahhhhh?!  I mean, hello ... that's so much better no?  Love.love.love!  The only problem with the new light is that I now want to:

1. Get a matching one for the eating area- man I got a great deal on that baby!
2. Repaint the kitchen ceiling (we have outlines of the old lights)
3. If we re-paint the ceiling we may as well re-paint the whole room
4. If we are doing all that why not switch out our hated (by me) sink?!
5. .....

Gotta love the renovation snowball effect!

For now we threw up a smaller brassy topped globe that I picked up on Freecycle over the eating area, so for the short term I no longer have to stare at the Roman Special.

And already if you squint your eyes, you can see how it will look when we have two matching lights...

 



 PS- We managed to sell the old Spaceship light on Craigslist, which means we are $30 closer to getting a second one.... only another $100-ish to go!

Furry Peppermint Chocolate Love

Not too much to report around here so this will be a bit of a random post on miscellaneous unrelated recent happenings....

 

1.  H and I are still plugging away at Operation Wacky Tobacky.  the walls in Part 2 were completed last night, wahoo!  We still need to finish the ceiling in Part 1 (oops!) and trim by Dec 10th (when we are hosting a large group of friends at our place, so it's a self inflicted deadline to get 'er done before the holidays are really in swing).  Here's hoping we have it all wrapped up and our house back to "normal" by then end of the weekend.

 

2.  The real news is that is that we have a new (temporary?) resident at Casa Waffles....   Meet Nevada:

Surprise! As of Saturday we are fostering a 9lb mini Dachshund named Nevada for a local rescue association.  I've been wanting a dachshund forever, and lucky for me H is totally game.  Our little furry resident is such a doll, so if all goes well may be a new permanent addition to our family. 

 

She's been a sweet distraction from our painting labours, but neither of us can complain about the delay as she's been such a fun treat.

 

3.  Around all the painting and dog walking action I managed to get in some test baking for an upcoming cookie exchange (you know... test out new recipes before giving them to 10 strangers!) .  I've actually been bugging my friends for ages to do a Christmas Cookie swap, but they were never really as excited as me (hello, who isn't excited about eating sweet baked goods?! It's crazyness people!). So when a new foodie friend invited me to hers (an annual affair), I wanted to make sure I didn't let the team down (hello, I married a chef- no pressure here to be a culinary whiz!).

 

The first batch (Ginger Molasses cookies, were "ok"...   But the second recipe, let's just say if I could marry a cookie it might be this one!  Two of my favourite flavours all in one chewy mouthful.... I'm lusting for one even as I type this!

 

 

 

They are Peppermint Brownie cookies.  They even looks delicious no?  I love the white crackle-y surface.  Now to re-create the magic (6 dozen worth) for Sunday's cookie swap!

Deck Defeat

So I mentioned last week that before putting the suite on the market we did a little exterior beautification.  While the bark mulching of the flower beds was a big win, our attempt at tackling the back deck was a unfortunately a loss.

But first, let's backtrack a bit. When we bought the house, we inherited a perfectly good back deck. 

Having lived in the house for a year we realized that we almost never used that deck, preferring the deck on the front (sunnier south side) of the house, which leads straight off our living room.

Also realizing that the tenants bathroom and living room back right up to that other deck, meant we were even less likely to use the space moving forward (insert potty/peeping tom joke here!).

While structurally sound, the deck was not looking it's best.   The red itself was not my first choice of colours, but I could have lived with it.  But, the red finish was peeling off in spots and it left the deck looking pretty sad, dingy and dirty looking.

 

While strolling through Rona one Friday night (yup, we're that cool that we cruise the DIY stores Friday nights!), I spied an "Oops" can of dark grey/black opaque deck stain for $10 (please tell me I am not the only person who checks out that area every.time I am in the store, hoping for a jackpot colour?!), and thought bingo- good buy sad red deck!!

 

Later that weekend, we prepped the deck (sanded off any loose bit of old finish and debris) and cracked open the can of stain.  Unfortunately, about 10 minutes into the application process, H and I realized the error of my plan... 

 

 

The stain was absorbing and "working" on the raw wood, but not fully covering the red, resulting in a darker black tinted red deck.... Boo!  Two coats later it looks.... better (and our prospective tenants didn't seem to be bothered by it), but not what I had in mind.  I guess painting deck (with deck paint not stain!) is another thing to add to the To Do list for next spring!

 

 

So, I guess it's not really a defeat, but actually the loss of Round 1... here's hoping I can deliver the K.O. punch during Round 2 next year!

Little Black Dress

Okay, confession time....  H and I are rookie gardeners.  We have just wrapped up summer #2 in our house (we bought in June last year), and we are still winging it.

Some things that have not been helping us are:

1. We bought the house as an estate sale, the previous owners being on older couple who hired their garden work out to pros! yeah no pressure!
2. The children of the previous owners scalped our garden removing we estimate 10-15 mature plants/shrubs (yeah, nice huh!)
3. We are on a corner lot with mucho exposure to the street (aka nowhere to hide)
4. The most we have had to work with in the past was a planter or two
5. We've been stuck doing our basement reno

With the basement reno coming to close, we realized that the first impressions of our house count a lot when trying to find a renter.  We figure that our house's exterior is a symbol of us, and a sign of how we treat our house and our things.  And that if we want a tenant who will take care of our/their space, then we need to show them we care.  There are a lot of outdoor makeover items on our to do list (like painting the house, new walkways, adding a new patio area with a trellis/awning...), but they are mostly too expensive or would take too much time/energy for us burnt out DIY-ers.  But, there was one 'quick and cheap fix we did decide to tackle......

Our flower beds.

Yup, that's right we whipped those suckers into shape.  From a distance they were not looking too bad....

Probably, helped by our new roof  and getting rid of the big cedars woopwoop!  But up close was another story....  neglect at weeding and general garden maintenance was showing.  It just looked sloppy and kinda uncared for.  Not the best impression to potential tenants as they walked up to our house.

So, we hunkered down and did a big weeding blitz. Which helped a lot, but was still not very polished or welcoming.

Yeah.... I wasn't kidding!  So, I got my thinking cap on... and I pondered our quick fix options.... and then I had a light bulb moment - bark mulch, but not just any bark mulch, ideally black bark mulch!

So I researched our options - from our local transfer station, Home depot, Rona, etc.... and the black stuff was expensive... and we needed a lot so there went the "cheap"check box....

But, I still pined for my black bark mulch.... I scouted it out everywhere we went gazing fondly at the bags every time we were at the home improvement stores... yup, you could say I lusted for it.  But, my frugal finger just couldn't pull the trigger.

That is until I spotted bags at Walmart for $2 per bag (vs $6+ per bag at the other stores), and they even had black- booyah!  So, I loaded up our Matrix with as many as I could fit, and dragged those suckers home to a sceptical husband.

A few trips later and he's sceptical no more... 'cuz now our flower beds look like this!

Crisp and clean, just the way I like it!  So far we bought 18 bags if bark mulch (we cleaned the Greater Vancouver stores out of their remaining stock!), so at $2 each, we spent under $40 with tax, and we were able to do about 1/2 of the flower beds on our whole property.

Guess who's going to be stalking the Walmart garden center next spring for her next fix?!

Stained and Still Kicking

By far the most popular post I have ever done (possibly definitely helped by the big promo by the lovely Pam), heck you may have found my little ole blog because of it, was my fireplace beautification post.  Ummm, it seems that pictures of it it even made it onto pinterest without me even knowing it!!?

Well, we stained the brick dark grey last November, and I bet all you f-ugly brick owning people out there are wondering how it's doing today.  Over the last 10-ish months we have certainly put that brick through it's paces - have I ever mentioned my dear hubby's fire obsession?  Hmmm, I don't think so.... but to keep it short, let's just say that having the fire going 6 evenings a week would not be a rare occurrence in our household - the fires are for ambiance not heat (yes, we do live in Canada... but no, it's not -1 million degrees here like many think, and... our fireplace being a 1961 special lets more heat out than the fire creates, even after sealing up the whooping great cracks).

But, I digress.  The big question is, how has our $30 face lift held up?? 

 Amazingly!!  I still want to hug it on an almost daily basis (yup, I mentally hug my fireplace and my outdoor light.  Yeah... I'm weird, I know!)

It looks as good now as it did just after we first applied it.  We have seen no fading/change in the colour, bubbling, peeling... nothing!

All that we have changed is added some art (yeah, it's not Christmas all year round around here!), which is unfortunately hard to photograph thanks to the abundance of windows in our living room (wah wah wah, I know I know natural light is not something to complain about!)

Would we do it again?   Heck yeah, not only do we still love it, we still have friends and family come over and marvel at how great it looks.  I only wish we'd followed our gut instinct earlier instead of waiting a year before pulling the trigger!

Laying Down da Iron

So, as you might have guessed from the title of this post, the next big job in our basement reno once the floors were prepped was laying the floor.

 

I already talked about what types of products we picked and why, they had arrived at the flooring store, so now we just had to lay the darn things!  We started off with the tiles, figuring that the more forgiving nature of tile + grout vs. the planks in regards to imperfections (well at least that's what we guessed), was a good idea for us rookies.  We used the Mannington Adura Elements Manhattan White Iron (yeah, long name eh!) tiles in the 12"x24" format, with a light grey grout (pewter).



In person waay nicer than this pic!
source 

We went with grey grout for a couple of reasons:

1. Hide dirt- the tile is in our downstairs hallway (which leads in from our carport/garden) and our laundry room which is shared with our tenant so probably won't be the cleanest/driest areas
2. We have light grey/greige walls in both rooms
3. We just liked the look better with our tile choice
    

Due to the small square footage of our laundry room we chose to start our adventures in laying floors there. Now, I could lie and tell you that we carefully read the instructions and watched a bunch of YouTube videos.... but ... we didn't, we just listened to the flooring guys, and kinda winged it.  So, I won't go into too much detail about how we did it (but, if you want details just let me know). 



We went with a running bond pattern (aka brick pattern), and after playing around with a few tiles to see if we wanted them running width ways or length ways down the hallway (our hallway is next to the laundry room so we wanted to the two areas to work together)- we chose width ways to make it feel larger- we were ready to kick the flooring party off.  One evening after work, we decided to tackle the laundry and I have to say that this flooring was suuuuper easy to lay. 

From start to finish the laying of the glue and tile was less than 2 hours.   For cutting the tiles to size, and putting down the glue, the only tools we needed were: 

• pencil
• straight edge
• box cutter
• the finest glue spreader available at Rona/Home Depot

The next night I tackled the grouting solo, as it is too small of a space for the two of us to be working in. Lucky for me, the grouting was even easier, taking no more than 1 hour to complete.

 

Laundry room completed!

After living with our laundry room for a few days to make sure we had done the install right ok, we moved onto the hallway, which again was done over two after work evenings.

 

Above is the phase 1 (laying the tile) completed, see how the grout lines kinda jump out at you due to the dark concrete floor underneath?  As a side note, the lovely (can you sense my sarcasm?!) blue doors and trim is stunning no?!! 

 

Below is H in progress of grouting the same hallyway (but looking in the opposite direction down the hall).  In the background you can see the pre-grout look and in the foreground you can see the post grout look, a nice subtle contrast that brings out the grey tones in the flooring.



Three months later, what do we think?!  We still love it, both the look (clean and modern-ish grouted "tile") and feel (tough and easy to clean like tile, but warmer and more flexible so better at handling our slightly imperfect base).  So, it's safe to say both H an I give it a big thumbs up, and have no regrets about not getting a pro in to lay the floor.  We I even have another wee project that I have been thinking about using this product for.

Doing it Like a Canadian

Question:  How to you know when your Belgian husband is acclimatizing to life in Canada??

When he starts acting like a lumberjack!

H got a new toy the other day, an electric chainsaw, and his excitement lead to this!  I didn't even get a chance to grab a "before", before H and my brother R started going chainsaw happy! 



It was a evergreen tree that had been pruned to death by the previous owners (like these, but into a ball shape, ooh la la!).  I wasn't a fan because it closed in our side yard and served no real aesthetic purpose (aka no pretty flowers or foliage), so I sure wasn't crying when H decided to take it down! 

Ahhh, so much bigger feeling!   The grass seed has been sown (a few months ago, shhh ) so the dirt patch is now green.  Don't worry, we have plans afoot for this side of our house, something that is much more "us"!

Flat not Level

With the walls done and the flooring ordered, it was time to prep the floors.  There were a few different issues to deal with when it came to our floors:

1. Old asbestos tiles in the hallways, bedroom, and bathroom
2. Cracked and peeling sheet linoleum in the ex-laundry “room”
3. A random drain in the laundry
4. Areas where the pro’s had to cut through raised foundations (new bedroom and laundry (doorways)
5. Slope into the living room

All of the above lead to uneven floors.  Part of the attraction to the floors we picked was that they were flexible and therefore could conform to minor imperfections in the floor, but they aren't magical, so we still needed to do some work on our floors to get them ready.
After discussing with the guys in the flooring store, we determined that the floors needed to be ‘flat not level” aka, a marble may slowly roll across a room to a low corner, but the floor had to be smooth with minimal lumps and bumps.

Old asbestos tiles prepped and ready to skim coat and the living room slope at the doorway

So, with our flooring guys we came up with a plan:

1. Old asbestos tiles
• leave and cover with new concrete .  Due to the asbestos and super strong glue they’d used getting them up would be very expensive
2. Cracked and peeling sheet linoleum
• We would take care of the removal
3. A random drain in the old laundry space which was no longer needed
• Cover and remove the slope with self-leveling concrete- which would also seal it
4. Areas where the pro’s had to cut through raised foundations
• Self-leveling concrete
5. Slope into the living room
• Some feathering out with a skim coat to reduce the slope's angle and make it less obvious

removing old laundry lino

So, it was a combination of floor leveling compound in the really dippy places (like by the “laundry” drain and former raised foundation), and thin concrete “feathering” for all the less pronounced dips.  We decided that this step was better left to the pro’s so we paid them to do it.  The whole process was a bit of a saga with me having to pull the “I want your boss to see this” card because they tried to take us for a bit of a ride, but in the end we got things sorted out.

On day 1 of the floor "flattening" our flooring guy asked what our plan was for the old drain... a quick call to our contractor later determined that the drain was not necessary and we could cover over it (a round of high fives and fist pumps - and weird looks from our flooring guy!- may have occurred).  A little on the fly imaginative problem solving later and our flooring guy was ready to even out the whole sloped section of the floor. 

Our high tech drain cover

What the heck is that you ask....  why yes it is a jar lid covered in waterproof tape!  Yup, we so did that!!  It isn't fancy, but it did the trick, they do say that necessity is the mother of all inventions after all.  Hmmmm, I wonder if we should look into patenting our solution?!

With the “flattening” done, all that was left was for the flooring to dry and cure and then we could tackle the flooring install. Unfortunately it was in the middle of the winter, and we had to get the temperature in our, at the time, unheated basement above 20 deg C ….. Ummm, yeah small problem there when the temperatures were around 0 deg C.  Luckily thanks to my company’s old poorly heated temporary accommodation during a recent office reno (sigh, the joys for working for a small tech company...), I had access to several small space heaters, so we hooked those babies up and a week and a half the floor was cured and we were ready to roll.

Come on Baby Light My Entry

In writing the new roof post, I realised that I had never posted about the inexpensive entry updates we've been making.

But first of all, let me introduce you to my entry way.

Yes, it has great architectural lines and lots of windows bringing light into the house, but it's not sporting such great accessories.  Let me explain, and as pictures speak a thousand words....

Step #1 in our entry makeover was to tackle the house numbers and light.... these guys.  The light is visually f-ugly and it had one light bulb and a max wattage of like 10, so we literally had guests almost falling down the stairs it was so puny!  We have this big huge expanse of brick, and one teeny weeny light!

Looking at these pictures the numbers don't look too bad (other than that they are brass- ugg!), but up close and personal was a different story.  After poking around online for new cool numbers (like these or these), I figured  why not try and work with what we've got for now to keep costs down (hello basement reno!).

So, I busted out some chrome spray paint I had kicking around, and a few swipes later I had some clean and presentable house numbers.



The light problem was a little harder to solve, and I was on the hunt for a light for ages. I knew exactly what I wanted, my criteria were:

1. Bright enough to walk safely
2. Clean, modern, and simple design
3. Shine light both up and down to show off our house's cathedral design (my favourite feature) and our orange brick wall
4. White or chrome coloured to work with the rest of our exterior "accessories"

I scoured lighting shops and the web for designs, and I found fixtures that would work, but I also found their $150+ price tag for the big size we wanted a bummer when I could see it in my head but wasn't sure if it's actually look that cool in real life.  So you can imagine the high-fives and fist pumps that went on when a trip to our local Restore resulted in H and I taking home the EXACT light of my dreams for only $30.  So, sorry to any bystanders that may have been trampled as I raced across the store to get to it, but it was love at first sight!

And... the result we L.O.V.E.  Super simple, modern, and non-distracting during the day .....
But uber high impact at night. 

And, something crazy happened which I like to think proves that this light was our house's destiny... The first night we turned it on, we realized that the downward beam of light perfectly illuminates our house numbers!

See, it's destiny I tell ya!  Total budget on the entry makeover to date was only $30 (for the light) since we already had the chrome paint, but if I throw that in then it's be ~$36, not too shabby, eh! 

Next up for our entry, is a new mailbox (something similar but in white like this), but my big dream is for a new door and sidelights.  For the door, I'm thinkin' something by these guys like this:

The Grover (A) - but staggered to the left to follow our roof line

The Langston - love the pop of colour this brings!

But with clear sidelights kinda like this one on the left (both also by these guys):

Sigh.... house p0rn at it's best no?!   Hey honey, if you are reading this, this'd be a great gift for our wood anniversary?  Oh wait.... that's 5 years of marriage... I am not sure I can wait 3 more years for a new  door..... maybe for Valentines Day and Christmas next year?

Guest Bed inspiration

For ages now H has been hankering after a traditional chesterfield sofa, ala this

source

Although I love the history of this sofa, to me it always gives a 'mens smoking club' kinda feel.... especially in dark leather.  So, I got to work using my wifely charms to convince H that our mid-century house needed a more modern approach to be play nicely with its surroundings.

My proposed version was a chesterfield in fabric, ideally something like this.

source

After days of scouring the local furniture shops/the interweb for a new (or new to us) chesterfield that would suit both of us by being:

• Practical (I'm honestly not so sure about those deep tufts I'm worried they will be dust/stuff collectors and hard to clean when something gets spilt on it)
• Comfortable for lying down while watching TV (H)
• Aesthetically pleasing in its own right as well as in our space (me)
• Leather (H)
• Not Leather (me)
• Small enough to fit our room
• Not crazy expensive (hello, have you seen sofa prices these days, nutso!)

... we weirdly enough ended up both falling for a totally other style, yup, you could say another style had us at hello!

While the fat lady hasn't sung yet on the great sofa debate (aka we haven't bought anything due to el budgeto being strapped from the basement reno), and because we do both love the tufted look, I think I have found a new place to bring it into our home... 

In our spare bedroom.... what, you didn't see that coming?!

Well, while hanging out with my bloggy friends lazing about when I should have being doing something productive, I  found this tutorial on making a button tufted headboard.  And, wouldn't you know it, I happen to have a perfect candidate for this treatment.

Do you remember this bed? It's kinda like the more formal cousin of the one in the tutorial (we also have that bed's fraternal twin hidden in our basement I think!!)

Anyways, I digress...  I'll let you in on a secret, I've never been a fan of the headboard fabric and, even though everyone else who's 'met' our bed seems to disagree with me (I'm assuming that they are just being polite), have been plotting its makeover since the day I bought it years ago.  I find the fabric kinda too outdated for me and generally not a "wow" enough statement.  Now to decide the colour scheme for that room, and then find the fabric.... lucky for me I like fabric shopping,