"Look honey, our woodpecker is back!"

When we lived on Roncesvalles, our wildlife experience was limited to pigeons, cockroaches, mice and the odd possum or raccoon. Now that we're up by Cedarvale Ravine, we've been host to a whole new set of critters! My favourite is the resident woodpecker that spends his days at the very top of our tree. I'm not sure where he's been for the last couple months (I assume he flew south or hibernated or whatever for the winter) but he's totally back!

If like me, you are have never had a woodpecker before, you probably thought they looked like this:

Turns out, there are several different kinds. I'm pretty sure that our is a Hairy Woodpecker or Picoides Villosus. He looks like  this:

My Google searching has turned up the following information about our new friend:

1) He's a dude - Only the male woodpeckers have the red spots on them.
2) He pecks because he's hungry - Woodpeckers feast on sap and bugs under the bark of the tree.
3) When he finds a lady, they will most likely have babies in our tree - This type of bird will make a big hole in the tree to lay eggs in once he has found a mate.
4) He may start to peck our house - Woodpeckers have been known to peck the wooden parts of your house  to get at bugs and such. Guess we won't be putting wooden siding on the addition!

Pretty cool, huh?

Um. Yeah.....

So I haven't blogged since November....
Whoops!

Since that last blog, we've drywalled the basement, built a laundry room, trashed the old big cement laundry sink, put in a beautiful bathroom, ripped the ugly carpet off of the basement stairs and  built a pantry. And by "we" I mean my Dad and Ian. I've been kind of helpful....but only kind of. There's something about renovating a basement that has me scrambling for other projects to do. To be fair, we haven't really gotten to the decorating part yet (read: the best part) so I haven't been inspired to blog about it. Maybe I'll be ambitious and take some pics to post later.

The really exciting stuff is coming up over the next few months. Our wee house is getting an addition! Basically, we are adding a whole big room on to the back of the second floor which will be our master bedroom complete with big windows, a big closet and an en suite bathroom. WAHOO! The addition will also affect the kitchen since we'll be able to open it up to the mudroom which will then become a little sitting area with more windows! Outside, we'll add on a small mudroom and a landing with steps leading down into the backyard - which will be a wooden deck with dropped in planting areas. And maybe, just maybe we'll get around to installing storage cupboards in the front mudroom, building a front porch and putting in a new walkway and garden - maybe. I'm exhausted already.

Also since November, we got engaged! That means that amidst all of the renovation insanity, we get to plan a wedding! If you know me, you know I love love love planning parties and this one will be my biggest undertaking yet. Here's hoping that the fella, my folks and my ladies are ready for it all - it takes a village, right?

Sunny days spent underground

My office was closed today to observe Remembrance Day and after some remembering, Ian and I got down to business and tackled the mess in the basement. We inhaled a crazy amount of dust but we managed to organize, move and purge a lot of stuff. Once the basement reno is done we will have some proper storage and the remaining boxes can be unpacked once and for all.  I can't wait! As I type this my Dad and Ian are framing the walls-to-be for the bathroom, laundry room and furnace room.

More tiles!

Totally loving what I saw when I popped in to visit Apartment Therapy today!
Looks familiar :)

The hunt for the bathroom vanity...part deux

The vanity hunt for the upstairs bathroom was frustrating to say the least. There are a lot of ugly vanities out there. Oh and there was that super fun time we accidentally bought the wrong one and had to take it all the way back to Rona. Sigh.

Here's a pic of the ugliest of the ugly.....so far

We're leaning towards this:

Whaddaya think?

Yay and Yuck

Yay: Reno work has started in the basement. The plan is to have a second bathroom, proper laundry room, rec room/guest room and work space in the back. But before any of that can happen, the cement floor needs to be dug up so that the old clay pipes can be replaced with new plastic ones.

Yuck: The beauty of removating an old house is in the surprises. As in, "surprise! The dirt under the cement floor is soaked in oil from a leaky furnace!".  The only thing to be done is to dig it all up and get it out of the house. The whole place smells like oil. Ian and my dad have been digging like crazy and the buckets of oily dirt are collecting in the back yard.

The window saga

A couple months ago, Ian and I took the plunge and bought a real piece of furniture. By "real" I mean something expensive and not second hand or from Ikea. It's like we made a grown up investment (in comfort). We bought the couch at G.H. Johnson's on Dupont and I'd proud to say that it's not only Canadian-made but Toronto-made! Take that 100 mile challenge!

When talking about the new couch with a friend we learned that he too had purchased a couch at Johnson's and this couch did NOT fit through his front door. We had a good giggle about this experience and strongly assured everyone (mostly ourselves) that our large couch would fit right through our front door - no problemo. Well, low and behold...BIG PROBLEMO. No matter how hard they tried, Ian and Dad couldn't fit the darned thing through our front door. By the time I got home from work, the sky was dark, a storm was approaching, the couch was under a tarp on the front lawn and Dad, Ian and Sam were making some serious efforts towards taking off the glass in the front window so they could lift the couch through it. Stripped screws lead to high stress and despite extra careful hands, the outer pane of glass broke just as the sky opened and the rains poured down. But as you can see, the window came out and the couch came in and it's more perfect than I had even imagined.

We were without that second pane for some time and then we got new windows! I can honestly say, I never would have imagined that something like new windows could be so exciting. Not only do they look good but they'll go a long way towards keeping the heating bills down.

 

So now we have gorgeous new windows and a perfect couch that will never leave the house in one piece thanks to our gorgeous new windows.

AND we got the chimney swept so as it gets chilly outside, we can curl up on our new couch in front of a roaring fire. Love!