Reno day Nine

Day nine would have been last Friday but we took the day off to celebrate my Dad's birthday with a game of golf. He did go by the house in the morning to do some work in the basement but we spent the afternoon on the green in the sun. I haven't golfed in years so I wasn't sure what to expect. Turns out I'm pretty ok. Turns out I am also horribly out of shape and much like the toll reno has taken on my body, I woke up Saturday morning with sore golf arms. I logically figure that all my sore arms needed was a day of work, so I headed up to the house to meet Sam and Dad to put down the sub floor. I am the drill master! I sure put those arms to work drilling countless screws into into plywood floor. Here's a photo of me in action:


















I started to get a blister on my thumb from all of that hard work and when I asked my Dad for a band-aid to protect my skin, he presented me with a make shift alternative:


















Yes, that's kleenex and duct tape. It actually worked pretty well! I have a small blister, but it could have been worse.

Sam took off to go boating with some friends in the afternoon so my Dad and I were left to get the job done. It was hard work.

Here's the pic of me and the finished product.






















We managed to get plywood down in every room except the bathroom and the spare room. It is so wonderful to have some sort of a floor down. It not only signals the start of construction but it means that when we work or sweep, the dust doesn't keep travelling through the floorboards to the floors below.

Furniture shopping

Awhile back I spotted a listing for a teak dining room set on Kijiji. It seemed like the style and colour I was looking for and it was reasonably priced, so I sent Ian and Sam off to check it out while I was at work.

The set was is worse shape than the photos suggested. In fact, about ten seconds after the money changed hands, the table pretty much fell apart. Luckily I know so many handy people who can help us re-build and reinforce the table. The whole set could use some refinishing too. Sigh. More hard work. So satisfying but seemingly never ending.

Reno Day Four

Ahhh. day four. I awoke on day four with a seriously sore back and very tight and painful leg muscles. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and I was dragging myself out of bed for a morning at the office. It was a lovely day. Did I mention how hot it was? The second I moved from my spot on the bed in front of the fan, I knew it was going to be a loooong day. After a morning of work, we left the office at noon and I promptly fell asleep in the car. It was loverly. After a brief stop at a flooring store, we were at my parents house where there were Churrasco of St. Clair leftovers to eat. Yum. After lunch, Dad and I made a stop at No Frills to buy many many water bottles and we were off to the house! Tio and Sam were already hard at work tackling the kitchen floor and cleaning up the plaster rubble. Man, was it dusty. I picked up my trusty hammer and got back to work pulling the many nails out of the floors. This time, I tried Ellis' technique of working on my knees to save my back - I was a little more careful about it than he was and managed not to kneel on any nails. Speaking of Ellis, he will no longer be helping us with the house as he was finally managed to secure gainful employment. He will be selling...ahem...intimate items on Queen Steeet.

The best part of the day was getting to use a power saw! I cut through the wooden beams that were in the wall between the spare room and the bathroom. We didn't get any action shots because Sam was busy standing by to make sure I didn't break anything, but here's a shot of me posing with my power tool in the backyard:























And here's a shot of the closet in the hall. I ripped off all of the laths (sp?) a.k.a. wooden slats that are nailed between the beams to make a wall. It was pretty fun and very satisfying. The plaster dust was gross - but I powered through.























Turns out, that gross two layer kitchen floor was REALLY stuck on. Dad had to really go at it to get the floor up. Here's the satisfying after shot:



















The bin was gone after day one so the rest of the rubble ended up getting piled in the backyard. Tio was very helpful - carrying out bucket after bucket of rubble and broken wood.























So all in all, things are going well. Progress is being made. Not much else can happen until the roof is done - that should be going on this weekend. It's an overwhelming job but it's pretty awesome. I can't wait to see the place start to take shape as floors and walls go in.

Unfortunately, our move may be hitting a snag. Roncesvalles is undergoing some serious renovations too. New streetcar tracks, digging up the roads and all new watermains. Yikes. The construction has closed the southbound lane and the block just south of us is now only one lane northbound. If they move up and make our block one lane we will be screwed as we won't be able to park a truck outside for all of our stuff. Ian and I have vowed to start the purging and packing process ASAP so that we can move a little bit at a time in the evenings. We can store a lot of our stuff in the basement at the new house.

Reno day Three

Day three was Thursday. I went to work in the morning and then over to the house with my Dad in the afternoon. I had vowed to tackle the backyard jungle and took this vow very seriously. Clippers in hand, I battled bees, wasps, mud, spiders and snails to take the big overgrown vines back to a reasonable size. I think I did a pretty decent job. I also cleaned up the piles of old wood and the broken fence. The fence behind the vines is really old and will need to be replaced eventually. Parts of it are only being held up by the massive vines.

Here's the before:

















And the after:

















I unfortunately had to really cut back the vines. It should look prettier in a couple weeks. For now though, we can enjoy a yard with less wasps and bees. We also now have lounge chairs in the backyard (courtesy of my mom) that got well used on day four - it was a hot one. More on that later.

Here are some more pictures from day three:

















Here's what the bedroom floor looks like now - I pulled out many of the nails that were in here. It took me a while to get my groove going but I'm like a pro now when it comes to pulling nails out of floors. A very useful skill, I'm sure.






















This is what the landing upstairs looks like. That's only radiator that hasn't be carried to the mud room yet. The mud room looks like a radiator grave yard right now - and will until they are taken to a scrap metal place. And as you can see, the floor planks are all crooked here. It's kind of scary to see what the bare bones of a house really are. There's really not too much to it! I'm looking forward to having some beams reinforced and the new floors put down :)






















Above is my artsy shot of what's left of the bathtub. As planned, it got shattered and carried out in pieces. This piece stayed in the bedroom for a while. I guess the novelty of shattering a cast iron bathtub wore off and this piece got left behind.


















And last but not least, here's Sam doing his classic muscle man pose in the dining room.

Reno Day Two

Day two involved a lot more of the walls coming down as well as the floors being ripped up. If you've ever torn up hardwood before, you know you can expect a lot of little nails all over the place. These have to come up before the new floor can go down. Ellis had the bright idea of crawling along on his knees while pulling up these nails - needless to say, it was really easy for him to figure out which nails he had missed. The hardwood on the first floor really wasn't in terrible shape - aside from the rows upon rows of 3 inch nails they had put in to them. We assume this was to minimize squeaking.

Here's some pictures of what the first floor looks like without the walls and the hardwood.


































Ian and I both had to work at our paying jobs on Wednesday so we weren't able to help out. Part of me wishes we had been there but my muscles and my bank account are thanking me for spending the day at BizzyB's instead. We did swing by the house in the evening though to check out the progress. It is so much fun to come by at the end of the day and se e the transformation. My favourite aspect of the visit was when my Dad turned on the basement lights and the hardwood-free first floor lit up like the night sky. I took a picture of it....but it's pretty crappy compared to how cool it actually looked...so I'm not gonna bother posting it.Once the dust settles a little more, I'll start bringing my DSLR to the house. For now, my point and shoot will have to do :)

Reno Day One

SO exciting!

The crew was out and in fine form for the big day. Those gents are serious demo machines. Every time I turned around another wall was down. I was very torn about taking down the living room wall but when I saw the walls separating the first floor hallway and the dining room come down, I got really excited about the "open concept" look and finally gave in to the pressure. We are now without walls on the first floor and I LOVE it!

Mom and I were pretty absent when it came to the actual work on day one. It was a really dirty day with the water rotted ceilings and walls as well as the old plaster walls being torn down. We spent the day at Home Depot and Lowes making the tough decisions. I decided on a nice medium-dark brown for the new hardwood. The hardwood will run right into the kitchen and we'll be going with white cupboards from Ikea. Oh and we found some nice bathroom tiles as well - and they were on sale! One of the best parts of the shopping trip was getting to use that customer service button at Lowes. It only took a couple minutes before a nice gent named Danny came to our assistance.

Here are some pics from day one:





















Sam takes a union sanctioned Timmy's break. It's only 9am and he's already filthy :)




















Ellis working on the kitchen demolition. He and Daniel took the cabinets down and discovered a window and the old milk delivery box.


















Little known fact: Our current living room on Roncey was painted in these beautiful ketchup reds and mustard yellows when we first moved in. It was the condiment room for about a week until we painted it a lovely green (thank you Ian). This picture is of the original kitchen floor...as you can see, the condiment colour scheme has follwed us to the new house. As mentioned before, this will be hardwood eventually.























Here's my fella hard at work.



















The gents in the demolished living room after a hard day's work.























The cast iron bathtub made it as far as the hallway. Sam and Ian made a good effort but it was quickly determined that the thing was not only insanely heavy but too big to get downstairs. It will be broken into many many shattered pieces later.



















Yucky yucky water damaged ceiling upstairs. Thanks to Sam for getting up there and pulling it all down and out of the house. As much as I love the house, you couldn't have paid me to do that.

So....we're moving

It begins:
On August 10th, the whole house dream became totally official!
It is cute and in a nice neighbourhood and there's parking and a backyard....however, the place needs a lot of love and work and we've got 6 weeks to get it move in ready!
I've been snapping pics like crazy so I figured it might be fun to document the reno in blog form.

A little background on my experience and history when it comes to home renovation:
If you know my parents, you know that I have never lived somewhere that was really "finished". Don't get me wrong, we have always lived in beautiful homes that look perfect and finished to the untrained eye, but trust me....they are not done. There is always some construction project that needs to be started or finished, and if there aren't any projects to start or finish, you can better believe my mom will come up with something to upgrade. I only moved out 6 years ago and their place looks different. Now, one may assume that living in this environment of constant change would mean that I am a total pro when it comes to the whole home reno business. You would be wrong in this assumption. I am no pro. But I figure you've got two stages here before we are move in ready. Stage 1 being the actual knocking down and building and stage 2 being the decorating. While I pledged to be involved in Stage 1, the plaster dust, rusty nails and sheer yuckiness of this stage thus far have kept me on the sidelines, flipping through Ikea catalogues and perusing design blogs. This brings me to Stage 2...or the comfort zone as I like to call it. I have ideas, I have plans, but man am I spoiled for choice! More on this later.

The plan (for now):
New roof
New floors
Take down the walls on the first floor
Make the front mud room more functional (closet space)
New kitchen
New bathroom
New furnace and ducts and stuff
New electrical
Cut back the crazy backyard jungle

And of course, the before pics:




















Front of the house (and tarp on the roof)





















First Floor Hallway
















Living Room






















Kitchen
















Looking into the Dining Room





















The Messy Backyard





















Water Damage in the Spare Room
















Bedroom (it came with a TV! Score!)





















Bathroom
















Gross Basement