We're baaaaack

After a summer of fun, we are back to work!

We have hung pictures! All of our kitchen drawers and cabinets have handles! The kitchen has kickplates and trim!









We have a new couch!




We have a wood fireplace! The gas insert is gone, and we've been enjoying wood fires every evening. Replacing the ugly mantel is still on the to-do list, but we're enjoying our wood fires so far!

As a reminder, here is what it looked like before:



And here it is now.




The kickplates and trim in the kitchen require a bit more caulking and after that work will begin on the new baby's room. Time is flying!

Finishing touches

All that is left in the kitchen are some finishing touches. The kickplates and crown moulding need to be fully installed, and some cabinet hardware remains to be installed.

But, we are inching toward the finish line.

The bulkhead above the breakfast bar is complete and has been painted. You can see that the ceiling still needs a bit of sanding, as well as some way to make the transition to the stipple ceiling in the dining room a bit smoother.



The final remaining cabinet, to the right of the microwave, has been installed.



And the front entryway and stairway have been painted.







In other news, Rob had a birthday.



Luckily, Alistair and Patrick were on hand to help him blow out his candles.





Work on the will be taking on a slow pace for the next few weeks as we try to enjoy what little summer is left, so updates won't be terribly frequent. We will update when there is news to report, though, fear not!

Grout and Trim

The backsplash is now officially complete, having been grouted and cleaned.

Here is the grouting in progress.







And here is the finished product.





As well, trim has been added to the cabinets to hide the bottoms.



All that is left is painting, kickplates, and the remaining cabinet hardware and we'll be able to call the kitchen complete. Hats off to Rob, he has worked hard and it looks great!

Backsplash and Baseboards and Trim, oh my!

After a couple of weeks of not-much-work, we've had a week of much-work. Thanks to a visit from Rob's Dad and a holiday long weekend we've made some incredible progress. There is still a lot of finishing work to be done, but here's where we are at.

Rob and his Dad formed a two man team and made short work of the very difficult backsplash. Why so difficult? It was a very intricate tile pattern, and almost entirely made up of custom cuts due to windows and corners and outlets.

The Job in its early stages:





The full wall done:



Tile set, and ready for grout (which will take place today and tomorrow):





Close up:





Once the backsplash was tiled, they got to work on the baseboards.

Rob's Dad operating the saw.



The compressor-nailer thingy that scares me.



And the installed baseboards. There is still some detail work to be completed around the door trim in rooms upstairs, and the baseboards will all need to be caulked and painted before we can move this job to the "Completed" column.







The baseboards look great, and really make the rooms look much more finished. Once the backsplash tile is grouted there is just some painting, trim, and kickplates to complete the job. A stark contrast to the nearly year long adventure of our last kitchen reno, to be sure.

In other news, I have a fairly obvious baby-bump at 17 weeks, and Patrick turned 3.5. We had a party to celebrate this momentous occasion (the 3.5 birthday, that is, not the baby bump, hee).

Not much work, lots of fun

With me out of town and Rob on single-parent duty in my absence, not a lot of work has gotten done around the house since my last post.

There has, however, been loads of this type of fun:









Not to brag, but the pool hit 80 degrees today. We like it here, yo.

Primed

Life goes on, and work continues.

As fair warning, this will be our last update for a week, as I will be heading out of town. I have no doubt that Rob will accomplish a lot of work while I am away, and I can't wait to see his progress.

In other blog-related news, I have finally installed a proper spell-checker on our home computer, so my mis-spellings like bannister and lovley will plague you no more.

Speaking of the banister (proper spelling), now that the it is in place, the stair risers have been primed and are ready for painting. Please note my fabulous taping job. Applause, applause.







The kitchen is almost prepped for painting and for the backsplash to be tiled. The drywall has been mudded and sanded and mudded and sanded and is ready to go.



And, we have plants in our garden. Patrick has been a huge help planting the garden, and clearly inherited his ChiChi Grandma's green thumb. The green leafy things are day-lilies which were split and given to me by a coworker. I can't wait to see what they look like when they bloom!

Progress

Things are coming along in our new home.

Much to my excitement I saw a photo in Thursday's paper showing that the couch we had purchased just days before was now on super-sale. When I was in the store getting refunded the difference between what we paid and the sale price, I snapped a photo.

You can see the colour we chose (Cappuccino) on this swatch:



And here is the couch itself. Not too big for the room, but plenty of room for us both to stretch out.



We also got a new table for the dining room. It seats four, with an optional leaf to seat six. Since we got six chairs, we've been keeping it larger than the photo below shows.




We also got new stools for the breakfast bar, which makes reading the paper in the morning so much more pleasant.



Meanwhile, in non furniture related news, Rob and Patrick worked hard on installing our new bannister. Here are my two Batmen hard at work!









Meanwhile, I kept busy putting feltac on the legs of our new chairs to prevent them from scratching our newly refinished floors.



And, after a full day's work, we have a bannister!



Here is the view from the top of the stairs. The green tape is me prepping the stairs for the risers being primed and painted.



Up next? More painting, and the kitchen backsplash. We'll keep you posted.