Time for Trades

Our house is all framed out and ready for trades! ... but the trades are not ready for us : (
We have had the house framed for awhile, but we were waiting on manitoba hydro for our electricity and natural gas to be connected again. Thankfully those two things have now been installed! Yeah!

 So our electricians say the house should be wired before Christmas, the duct work men said this week... but they never came (they started a few weeks ago, but still have lots more to do), so we will see how that goes. And then our plumber said he is coming next week.

The above picture is a crack in the seam of the drywall sheets. We have a few of these upstairs from the lifting of the house. I often get asked about the damage... it was what we expected. (well, honestly I was expecting mush worse... like the ceiling to fall down)

Hopefully my next post will be a picture of running water and blowing vents and insulation!

Arm Party!

I love the look of lots of bracelets.... and when I saw the bead and leather wrap bracelet I knew I had to have it! (Forgive me if I posted about this before... I couldn't remember)

I bought my leather from etsy and used random beads I have collected over the years. I love them... maybe a good christmas gift idea?? Click here for a great tutorial.

Disaster!

Sorry for not posting for so long, but I have a good reason. There has been a disaster! Ok... I am play with you a little bit. It's not a house renovation disaster, my camera broke! I always like posting pictures with my posts... and now I don't have any. (I have been borrowing my moms camera... I just need to get all the picture off it now.)
Also I have been sick. I never used to get sick.... I blame my snot nosed kid. (and myself for kissing that snot nosed kid... I just can't help it!) So what's a girl to do when she is sick.... quilt!
Here is me, sick and quilting. I bought some of the pinwheel squares from the mcc craft sale. I had to make a few.

(my mom took this picture with her camera)
This reminds me that I have not posted about my last blanket I made. I love it...hopefully I'll get my camera situation resolved soon, then I can share!
Oh, house renos are going good! More on that another time : )

Looking Glass

The windows are looking so good! 

I love the windows... and just imagine how they'll look when the whole house is sided!
We did have a little problem with them... but it has since been solved. Originally we were planning on having a bay window in the front of the house, and so I ordered my windows accordingly. I had two slightly skinnier windows on the outside and a larger one in the middle that was a picture window(no grid). But then we changed our minds on the bay in the front, so the windows looked off to me. The fix was to move the middle window and trade it with one from the other living room, which would make the three windows the same. (Below are the windows in the first arrangement)

design time

I am trying to plan the layout for our main floor bathroom. This is going to be a busy room... I want it to look sharp. We are planning to have our laundry in it, toilet, sink and a shower. Why a shower in our main floor bathroom you ask...
Our upstairs en suite bathroom has a shower and bath, but the other upstairs bathroom only has a tub. The angled ceiling doesn't allow for a shower. So we thought instead of always having our kids use our bathroom we would put a shower in the main floor bathroom. Also... if we ever have a hot tub, then guest don't need to use our en suite either.

The dimensions are 7 feet by 8 feet 10 inches. If need be I could steal space on either direction, but I am trying not to.  But this is what I have so far. The only thing i don't really like about this layout is that you walk in and see the toilet wall... I don't even know if that is a thing... maybe it's just my thing.
The pink space is the shower, the blue is the washer and dryer with the sink above. I have been trying to search for picture were people have done this, (used the washer and dryer as the base for the sink vanity) but its hard to find. I think it because the w & d are deeper then a normal counter. (w & d are 32" deep normal counters are around 22") We are going to hide this with a dummy wall for uppers, with cupboards on either side and a mirror in the middle. (Bottom right of pictures) W & Ds are also highier, but we are tall people so this maybe would be better for us anyway.
I don't know... this is just what I am think now. But I have to decide by the end of the day because plumbing is getting done this weekend!
Also done this week were the basement wall, where the beams used to be, were poured. Windows are in... deciding on the front windows still. (A whole other story... I'll write about it once the problem has been solved) The doors are not in yet though. And interior framing is being done. Getting quotes on electricians.
It's moving along!

Reused and Refurbished

With our upstairs renovation I was so excited to refinish the baseboards. Baseboards are one of the key selling points of a century old house... at least they were definitely one of the reasons I fell in love with our home! So I decided it was worth it to strip down the 5 layers of paint and save these gorgeous detailed hunks of wood.
I think i finished 3 baseboards and then me and my husband were blessed with the best surprise... I was pregnant! Needless to say, dealing with old paint was not advised for me and my lovely husband finished my task. I think this probably added an extra 3 months on to our reno... but look at the pictures... totally worth it!

We are planning on reusing as much of the solid wood from on main floor too. We have taken down all the baseboards and window trim and i have started sanding them down already. It's much easier this time because they are stained and not paints, and they do not have as many groves.

 

 These are the baseboards I have sanded...

 

 This is my huge stack that I have left to sand!

We are also saving our oak flooring. They came out pretty easily, it took us (me, jonas and his parents) two days to get all the nails out. We wont quite have enough for the whole main floor, so we will have to try to match them up and have a seam somewhere that is not too obvious. Hopefully this works out and doesn't look patchy.

Now I have to think about stain colors for the floors and trim work!

I've got the joy joy joy....

Joy deep down in my heart.
Thats a lyric from a song we sing at church.... but what I mean to say is happy thanksgiving everyone!
(photos are my thanksgiving table setting, this is at my parents house, were we are currently living while our house in under construction)

We had my husbands thanksgiving get together last weekend and my parent went on a trip this week, so my siblings and I decided to have our own thanksgiving and invite friends. We decided this on Friday and invited people for Saturday. We had a pretty good turn out considering the short notice. I think on thanksgiving weekend everyone thinks everyone else is busy with family, so no one makes other plans... which worked out perfect for us!

I made the little turkey with an oreo that i stuck 5 candy corns to with icing. (i cut off the white tip of the candy corn) then I used a white tip of the candy corn for a nose on a chocolate malt ball, stuck on with icing. The red part is a cut up jujube and icing for the eyes. Reeses pieces iced on to the oreo, and the malt ball iced on to the reeses pieces. Kind of cute, eh?

It was so fun... here are a few photos to prove it:

Feeling Encouraged!

 Sometimes I stress out about our renovations, but when ever I get a chance to stop by the house and take a look I feel so encouraged! It is really starting to take shape. I know we still have a long way to go, but it is great now because I can visualize everything.  (Above are some older pictures I should have posted of us pouring the footings for the basement, and then the beginnings of the framing of the addition)
What we have done this week: frame the addition roof, continue gutting main floor and we changed the plumbing from the city access to our house (which meant having our front yard completely dug up).

Us standing in our "living room nook"

Jonas in our dinning room

 Seeing what it will feel like to sit in our dinning room... feels good!

 Our main floor - standing in old kitchen

Hiccups we've had this week: We had a noise complaint. It was our neighbor. Kind of sucky because we used to have a good relationship with this lady... but she is just a renter (meaning who knows how long she'll be our neighbor), and all our other neighbors have been really encouraging. The safety people paid us a visit. They told us we needed to post a sign saying it was a boot and hard hat area, and we need a bathroom for the workers. Luckily one of our workers lives just down the street, so he posted the sign below. I love it!

Sporting the hard hat and "boots"

DIY Toy Planter

I made these little guys for my husbands office. I just bought toy plastic dinosaurs from the thrift store, cut a whole in the top (actually a little but difficult), spray painted, put in dirt and plant and done!

I used hens and chicks type of plants (or succulents) because they thrive on little water.

Down House Down!

So much has happened, house wise. The photo above is when we had set up the forms for pouring the basement walls. You can see the two huge beams that are holding up our house... the opening is where our addition will be.
We poured the walls, the house was put back down and the beams have been taking out. The floor has been added onto the addition space, and the walls have been framed in the addition. The trusses (roof frame) have been put up too. The front porch was completely taken away and re-framed. It's awesome to see it all take shape... I can see where the window and doors will be and walk in the space and dream that one day I will being sitting at my dinning room table here.
Next step is completely gutting the main floor, it is about half done right now. Also, inclosing the addition space, then pouring the concrete for the floor in the basement.
Tomorrow I have a meeting with an inspector from the Secondary Suites Program. This is a governement program that gives money to people making secondary suites for low income families. We are really hoping this will work out for us.... but for some reason I am very leery that it will work out. I guess I will just wait and see.

Button bowl!

I made these with my cousins Kendra and Cailey, when they came for a visit in summer.  We took a small bowl turned it upside down, covered it with parchment paper and hot glued buttons, making sure to use lots of hot glue. They are pretty cute!

Entertainment for the Commute

Today on the CBC facebook page they had this photo with the caption:

Do You Know Your Winnipeg? This caught my eye this morning because, you know, it's a house up in the air, so I thought why not see if it caught anyone else's eye. Do you know what street I was on?

To my surprise many people had the correct answer! I think it must be kind of fun for people that commute past out house to watch the progress. Also they talked about the house for a bit on the radio show too. Sadly I didn't get to hear it, but I think that's so cool!

Character Windows

We are just finalizing our window order right now... and I am so excited about it! I wanted the windows to have the character of on older house, so we decided to do most of the windows single hung (which means they slide up to open) with a grid pattern on the top half. (Like the second inspiration photo) We are also doing a skinny top window with the one diamond in the middle. (Pretty much exactly like my first inspiration photo above) These skinny upper windows are custom, so they add a little to the cost, but we tried to always go with standard size windows so that helped. Also, single hung windows are way cheaper then awning windows... which is great because I love the look of single or double hung better!

Up in the air!

I picked up our foundation permits last wednesday and Saturday our house was lifted! We were so worried about tons of cracking upstairs, since we already renovated that area, but there were only two little cracks! There may be a few more when it comes back down, but these cracks will be easy to fix.
Things are moving so fast now, I am currently looking at windows because we have to order them by next week. (They take 5 weeks to arrive)

While He Sleeps...

Max is sleeping so I thought I'd give an update. We are still waiting for permits... and we also have to apply to have a secondary suite, so yesterday I went downtown to get the last of the 5 documents I needed to apply. They told us 6 weeks to get the permits, it's been 4 and a half, so we are getting close!
We had a little (have) a little bump with our insurance, apparently they wont cover us during renovations, so we are looking into a different company.
I am now working on disconnecting everything that is connected to the house... which is a lot of things: electric, natural gas, water, air conditioner, furnace, hot water tank and of course the brick chimney! Jonas actually did the chimney yesterday and the electric was just cut. Natural gas was going to be the same day as electric, but I am pretty sure they forgot about us... so they said they would call this week. It's thursday. No call yet. I have also learned that air conditioners are SO expensive to deal with! I have gotten 3 quotes, the average is 500$ to disconnect and then reconnect it.
Other then all the secretarial work I have been pulling off trim. We are planning to reuse the oak trim, so I take it off and remove the nails. Later we will sand them down and re-stain them.
That's all for now. I will have to take some demo picture and post them. soon I promise! (famous last words)

My Son is One!