09.10.09
Posted in Reno saga at 9:43 pm by jeci
The spare bedroom (seen here and here in varying states of spirit-killing squalor). But let’s go back to the beginning, just for full effect.
Before
As you can see, again with the beige (BEIGE). Grubby, depressing beige. Beige wallpaper, beige carpet, beige curtains. BEIGE. There is a certain efficiency to using the same non-colour for every surface of your home, BUT STILL. I’ve been over the nightmare that was that fracking wallpaper, so there’s not much fun to be had by way of a during picture, except perhaps to review this…this…STATE OF AFFAIRS THAT CAN ONLY BE SPOKEN OF IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE MY GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE LIVING LIKE THAT BUT ANYWAY HERE YOU GO, I’LL STOP YELLING NOW.
During, My God, the During
And now, several months of manual labour and an untold number of boxes later, here we are!
After
What you’re looking at: walls that have been de-wallpapered, patched, and painted “Zen Green,” which doesn’t actually photograph all that well, but it’s a really pretty, soft, airy green; new flooring that, of course, matches the flooring in the rest of the house; new floaty curtains; new baseboards; our old skool TV atop our antique sideboard that has been waiting to be refinished for the last year but is just going to have to wait even longer because, you know, RENOS; and our new (to us) futon that we got off of Freecycle because we had grown quite weary of spending money on the new home and, also, free! The room in general is a little…unfinished yet, in terms of giving it any real personality or flare, but we’re getting there.
Now, about that futon. I was wary of the free futon from strangers over the Internet. I felt quite certain that cat pee would be involved. However, like I said, spending money on the new home had worn rather thin at that point, and moreover, we’d resolved that all of the renovations would be paid for in cash and buying a new piece of furniture would have been stretching our limits in that regard. So we were willing to give the free futon a shot, figuring that at least we could get a free frame and buy a new, non-urine soaked mattress if necessary. But instead of getting a musty mattress saturated with pee (or wandering into an axe-murderer’s trap, which was my other fear), we hit the freecycle jackpot and found ourselves in one of the most immaculate homes I’ve ever seen, picking up a perfectly good, stain and odour-free futon. For free. The only downside to the whole transaction was that the mattress cover was rather ugly. So, I dug our old duvet cover out of the Goodwill bag and lo! It suited the paint in the spare room quite nicely! Only. Erm, by quite nicely I mean “matched exactly.” As in, “Where’s the futon? I see two floating arm rests and then a sea of Zen Green…” And so commenced my city-wide search for some throw pillows to jazz up the room a bit and, also, to outline the location of the futon so that unwary visitors wouldn’t go bashing their shins into our cleverly camouflaged furniture. And you’ll never guess what colour of cushion is widely available everywhere, from Ikea to Urban Barn and every big box and little store in between. ZEN GREEN. Zen green cushions in every shape and size imaginable! (And don’t even get me started on what it took to come full circle to those white curtains that are exactly the same as the ones in the master bedroom because do you want to know what is very popular right now for curtains? Yes. Of course. ZEN GREEN.) (But I rather love the look of those white curtains now, so it’s all for the best.)
Some other notes on this room: I’d wanted it to feel light and airy and with the colour, the natural light, and the sheer curtains it really does. The room is perfect for sitting and reading, which I love. I also love the whole idea of having another room. We lived in one bedroom apartments for years; this tiny room has become this lovely little sanctuary and the airy feel adds to that. We don’t have to be in the living room or the bedroom…or the living room…or the bedroom. We can, if we want, have a space to ourselves. It’s…a revelation.
We also wanted to try having the TV separate from the main living area so that the focus of the living room could be more on creating a “conversation circle” with the furniture, instead of just pointing all the furniture at the TV. This has worked out quite nicely on the whole. However, the spare bedroom is small and turned out to be rather narrower than we initially thought (I think it’s really designed to be either an office or a nursery) and as you can see, our TV is rather big. So when we do watch TV or movies, we’re uncomfortably close to the screen and we end feeling a little sea sick and cross-eyed. This situation would likely be rectified by a wall-mounted flat-screen TV, but given how very little TV we watch, it just isn’t worth spending the money at this point. I feel obliged to explain that, by the way, because a surprising number of people are resistant to our hesitation to rush out an buy a new TV to the point where I find myself apologizing for how we’re not spending money on a luxury item we don’t need or use. People are weird about it is all I’m saying.
Boy, being frugal can take the wind out of the design-revelation sails, can’t it? “Ta-da! A room with a discarded futon with an old duvet cover that had been headed to charity…all of it facing another second-hand piece of furniture and a hand-me-down TV that is generally considered a mockery to middle class living! Oprah? Are you calling Nate?”
Anyway, I’d also wanted the spare bedroom to serve as an office/space where I can write, which it may well do yet, with a little rearranging of the furniture to accommodate a desk. Although it would have to be creative rearranging once a new piece of furniture was added, wouldn’t it? It’s a small, small space…albeit a small, small space that’s somehow added a whole new dimension to our living space in general. If it came down to it, I’d give up the en suite bathroom (as handy as it is) in a heart beat before I’d give up having a second bedroom.
Permalink
08.26.09
Posted in Photos, Reno saga at 7:21 pm by jeci
For this is all I’ve been doing with my time, lo these many months. Tonight, the en suite bathroom.
Before
What you’re looking at: Well, not much. It is but a wee room that is rather tricky to photograph. Anyway, first allow me to draw your attention to that mirror/medicine cabinet combo…thing. That’s glued to the wall. Glued. Yes. We’ve also got going on a faintly musty, yet decent and sturdy vanity; a deplorably chipped beige (BEIGE) sink with ugly faucet; a surprisingly unstained counter top that is unfortunate only for its old skool “pork chop” that runs over the toilet; a rather clunky, big ol’, water guzzling HOG of a 13L toilet that’s also a wee bit on the drippy side; some actually rather lovely blue paint that had to go anyway as it matched too exactly our towels — but, really, we also wanted the colour to be the same as the bedroom; and some truly hideous, asbestos-era linoleum that’s topped by three (3) different types of mismatched baseboards. Oh, and you can’t tell, but the knobs on the vanity doors are a slightly weird size and somehow indescribably odd and ugly, even though they look like they should be cool and modern.
There are no “during” pictures because of the cramped quarters, but the during part did include me applying four (4) coats of paint. Not including the primer. All the other walls took two coats of paint, so this remains a mystery…our only going theory is that yellow paint just doesn’t cover blue paint all that well. My blood pressure is going up thinking about that, so moving on before the ranting overcomes me.
After
What you’re looking at: more Moonlit Yellow paint (four layers of it — ahem!); a proper medicine cabinet (switched out from the main bathroom, actually); a scoured, cleaned, and painted vanity (that has new contact paper on the inside too!), cured of its mustiness and affixed with appropriately sized knobs; the same counter top after undergoing a pork-chop-ectomy; a white sink also switched out from the main bathroom that is sans chips(ish) (I touched up the one chip that it had and you can’t see it at all!); a pretty, new water saving(!) faucet; and a bad ass (so to speak) new, water-saving(!), dual flush toilet. (You’re also looking at poor lighting due to the fact that one of the bulbs in the light fixture burnt out and we…just can’t right now. Too many balls in the air to attend to routine household maintenance, you know? Anyway.)
And in this picture, you can see a little more clearly my pride and joy:
The new tile! Tiling is the one renovation we didn’t take on ourselves because for the tiny amount of square footage we needed covered, hiring a professional was only marginally more expensive than doing it ourselves (once we factored in the cost of the tools we needed for the job). And with hiring someone, there was much less swearing and feeling put-upon, what with all the First World problems. The tile is accented by new baseboards. That all match.
Now to briefly switch gears, a wee glimpse of the living room — the merest hint of a preview — because you need to know that Kes and Logan are fully in love now. They’ve been flirting for years, but now it’s come down to openly snuggling and grooming each other’s faces.
Nermal usually sulks when they do this, as she is convinced that Logan is her nemesis. Nermal still gets tons of Kes cuddles, though; she just wants ALL the Kes cuddles. Here is Nermal, not sulking but demonstrating why we sometimes think she’s a spy from the cat home planet.
Permalink
08.25.09
Posted in Hmph, Photos, Reno saga at 7:52 pm by jeci
I am aware that this couldn’t possibly be as exciting for you as it is for me, but please bear with me anyway. Because it’s exciting! To have a home! That is not squalid and filthy and covered in grit, not to mention a home that doesn’t have a miter saw on the dining room table (or toilets in the dining room for that matter!).
Annnnnnd, I’ll stop there. Because I could go on all night about the hating and the hate with all the hating of living in a mess. Which is over. So it’s okay, self, shh, shh.
Tonight I have for you the master bedroom. Complete! Clean! Yellow! My favourite colour!
Let’s start with the before, shall we?
Before
What you’re looking at: a poorly lit shot of a very drab, grubby room. The poor lighting has something to do with the fact that there is no lighting. The walls are filthy beige — and by filthy I mean when I washed them down before painting them, they turned out to be an entirely lighter shade of beige — and a filthy beige carpet. There was also, for the record, no baseboards, no closet doors, and the door to the en suite bathroom had a sizable hole in it.
During
The first order of business was to remove the filth sponge carpet. And, dudes. Carpets are gross. There were PILES OF DIRT trapped under there (you can click here to see, if you want). I was truly horrified and have sworn that I will never have carpet again, if I can help it. Next up was painting the walls with fresh paint and — hey! — a colour. OTHER THAN BEIGE.
Then it was time for new flooring…
And then ceiling paint, and closet doors, and doors, and baseboards, and curtains and…voila! A MERE THREE AND A HALF MONTHS LATER…
After
And we have a beautiful new master bedroom! With lighting and colour and cleanliness. SWOON. Aside: See the bedside tables? They used to be green and last weekend I painted them white to match the bed frame. This was a task I put off for several months because I thought it would be fussy and annoying, but spray painting turns out to be quite the opposite of fussy (although, I’m afraid, extremely toxic). I put it off to the point of considering buying new bedside tables, which would have cost at least $100 instead of, like, uh, $5.
Here’s a less artful shot of the room from the other side, if only to demonstrate Kieran’s handy work in that we now have closet doors that, you know, exist and entry doors without holes punched in them. It also nicely shows off the colour of the paint (it’s called Moonlit Yellow, which is apt because it has a delicate silvery undertone to it). The paint! Which is yellow! My favourite! Did I mention that already?
Tomorrow: the en suite! But for now, bbs, I have a date with Harry Potter. Oh, did I tell you? We’re relaxing this week and not doing renos. We were both gravely run down. Besides, what’s left is so negligible, I won’t even bother boring you with it. But for this week we’re enjoying what is as good as done.
Permalink
06.26.09
Posted in Meh, Reno saga at 7:50 pm by jeci
Life is kicking my ass right now. I…I wish that I had some stunning “after” pictures indicating our triumphant completion of the renovations and unpacking, but no. Things don’t look especially different from the last set of pictures. There are still boxes everywhere, only now the boxes have disheartening tufts of cat hair collecting around their bases. In short, everything is a mess.
It’s not for lack of trying, you see. We unpack. Constantly. AND YET. The boxes, with all the boxes, with all the stuff, everywhere. I also make dispirited attempts to quell the cat hair with the vacuum, but it never fails that just as I turn the machine off, a new cat hair tumbleweed will come billowing out of some corner I couldn’t reach. ON ACCOUNT OF ALL THE BOXES.
If there’s one thing that will crush my spirit, it’s actions with no countering measurable outcomes. This is what the unpacking has become. Someone (JG!) very aptly compared moving into an apartment to those tile games that have the one missing tile. You know the ones, where you have to move a bunch of tiles out of the way in order to put one tile in its right place. But this creates a cascade of tile moving and shuffling and you end up having to remove that tile from where you put it in order to move around another two tiles, but then you can’t get that original tile BACK because there’s now FOUR tiles in its way. AND SO ON.
Well, anyway. I won’t keep you. I’m just saying. I’m not enjoying this. I know one day it’ll be done—probably quite soon, actually. (Ever notice how when you get to the point of being all “ZOMG I hate this and I can’t STAND IT ANYMORE and I’m so upset I’m going to COMPLAIN ABOUT IT to the INTERNET” it’s usually when you’re about to crest the hill, only you don’t realize it yet, mostly because you’re just feeling the whole lotta hill behind you.)
So, I’ll be seeing you soon, BBs. With pictures. AFTER PICTURES. Dammit.
**Nothing like whining publicly to light a fire under one’s ass. I…well, I never quite feel comfortable after I post about my frustration with something. Although it certainly helps me to vent (better living through sarcasm!), I’m not entirely sure it makes for the best read. But! Anyway! You wouldn’t believe how much better things are right now. We busted through the log jam of boxes and we’re getting close to living like normal humans again. I’m very excited! And—AND!—we scored a free futon for our spare bedroom! And—AND!—we found out that we were grossly misinformed about the cost of replacing our bathroom counter. Like, the lady we initially talked to must have taken a long, burbling hit off of her Home Depot bong before talking to us, because what we thought would cost, oh, $1000 plus change will ACTUALLY cost us $60. Sixty bucks. That’s it. That? We can afford. On with the renovations!
Anyway, it was a good weekend, a productive weekend, and it was AWESOME. And I’m feeling much better because, hey, I can walk from one end of the spare bedroom to the other. Now, isn’t that something?
Life lessons learned from the last two months: a) Moving is hard. Use sparingly. (Starting…nnnnnnnnnnoooow.) b) Clutter: I can’t. I CAN’T. It makes me want to PEEL MY FACE OFF, but whether that’s before or after my stabbing spree, I can’t decide. In short, I need a clean, peaceful space and I need to STAY THERE.**
Permalink
06.02.09
Posted in My Life Is Punctuated by Useless Bouts of Panic, Reno saga at 9:24 pm by jeci
Well, you’ve seen the before shots of the contentious spare bedroom and here we are, a few weeks later, annnnd:
Ta da! Just like in the design shows! (Sigh.)
Anyway, in the spirit of not curling up dispiritedly amidst the rubble of my belongings, let’s focus on the positives of the past week. First, a rather triumphant beginning to the bathroom renovations, with new tiles that look smashing and, even better, that didn’t involve our ripping down or putting up anything. The tiles before in, you guessed it, grimy beige:
And the tiles now, in gleaming white. And also aren’t they cool and funky all big and rectangular like that? Why, yes they are, if I do say so myself thankyouverymuch:
We also got the surround tiled all the way to the ceiling, which makes the room look bigger to a ridiculous degree. When we finally get to the point of putting up curtains*, I’m going to try to see what I can do to achieve something similar with extra long curtains that go to the ceiling or something.
As an aside, eagle-eyed readers will note that our tub is, like, the shallowest tub possible. We’d wanted to replace it with a soaker tub or, at least, a non-stunted tub that doesn’t look like the tub version of a creature missing a few chromosomes. Then we found out what was involved in getting a new tub: first RIPPING OUT THE WALLS (this is where they lost me, to be honest), next shutting off the water for the ENTIRE BUILDING, then cutting off pipes and sautering pipes, etc., etc., THEN putting in the new tub, and finally new walls and new tiles. HAHAHAHA. Not happening. Stunty, shallow tub it is! And that makes me sound more bitter than I actually am, since I’m basically too exhausted to be bitter and am quite simply pleased to be relieved of having to take on another project. I’ve also managed to retain a certain amount of rationality and that whole gong show just for the sake of an entirely unnecessary, (thoroughly and blatant) luxury item? It’s just laughable, really, up there with complaints along the lines of Chandler’s “My diamond shoes are too tight!”
Anyway, where was I? Positive things. The move that I was so dreading was, indeed, dreadful, and we were inevitably up until the wee hours of the morning frantically throwing things in boxes the way you always are the night before you move. All the same, the cats did cute things that warmed our cold heart cockles. For example, Logan took the time to demonstrate how bookshelves are better off sans books, since they make such nice, cozy sleeping nooks that way:
And all three cats made us feel loved by going to great lengths to ensure we wouldn’t leave without them, namely by climbing into our suitcases at every available opportunity (again modeled by Logan):
Finally, our friends and my tireless mother-in-law gave up their Sunday on the first day of perfect beach weather to help us haul furniture and boxes. And somehow our friends ended up with our camera and between the old place and the new place, they took the liberty of snapping pictures so that we would have surprise shots to ponder, successfully cracking my shit up. To wit:
And that’s all I can muster at this point, lambs. I’m off to bed because, weirdly enough, even though my life is upside down and rather squalid and chaotic right now, I still have to go do that whole job thing.
*Our current window treatments are garbage bags artfully tacked up with painter’s tape.
Permalink
05.26.09
Posted in Reno saga at 10:31 pm by jeci
It turns out a highly effective cure for a fairly serious case of The Sads over having to move is to get yanked out of your malaise by a rip tide of DIY renovations on your new home. We took possession of our new place on the 15th (the same day, naturally, that we had house guests arriving from out of town, because isn’t that always the way?). And since roughly the moment our guests left until, well, just now, I/we have been scraping, spackling, repairing, priming, or painting something…with the exception of hauling things in and out, of course.
While this would seem the perfect place for some “Before and After” shots, what I can offer you are some “Before and What Things Look Like Right Now” shots. There were certain things that needed to be done before we could move in and, so long as all goes well, they should all be done sometime today. The rest, namely the bathroom renovations, but also a small number of fussy little things like, say, installing doorknobs or putting up baseboards have all been put on ice so that we can pack and, you know, MOVE IN. On Sunday. (Glack.) But first, indulge me in a brief word on the new digs?
The good:
- We’re moving across False Creek, from Yaletown to Mount Pleasant. Another way of putting this is: We lead a charmed life and we’re moving from one awesome neighbourhood to another.
- My 15 minute walking commute will be replaced by a 15 minute cycle commute that takes me along the sea wall. Ditto Kieran (see above re: charmed life).
- We live right on the bike route.
- We’re on the top floor and we have a stunning view of the Lions and the North Shore mountains. I would attach a photo, but unfortunately that’s not possible right now (see below).
- We’ll have a nice roomy balcony again to enjoy said view.
- There’s a sky light in the dining room that lets in an unbelievable amount of natural light.
- We will have two (2) bedrooms. [Ed note: I am not pregnant. Please stop surreptitiously trying to eye my belly when I announce that. Thank you.] [You wouldn't believe how often I get that.] And two (2) bathrooms. Well, 1.5 bathrooms, if we’re going to be technical. This is the most space we’ll have had, like, ever.
- The kitchen has already been nicely renovated and some rather lovely flooring was put in the kitchen, dining room, living room and hall. Which, in addition to making it a lovely space, might I add THANK GOD I DON’T HAVE TO DO IT. (So over renos.)
The bad(ish):
- The balconies are under repair and the entire place is enshrouded in scaffolding, suffocating our stunning view. This situation will persist for a few months yet. It’s a bummer, but it’s actually a really good thing in terms of rain screening and other important, grown-up details one has to care about when one is getting a mortgage. And, also, the seller had to pay for the totally expensive repairs. Heh.
- That’s pretty much it, actually.
The ugly: Picture time! I will stick to the areas we’ve tackled so far, namely the two bedrooms. First, and most contentious, is the spare bedroom. The drab, dreary, and grimy spare bedroom.
Grimy beige carpet, grimy beige wallpaper, and a grimy beige curtain. Beeeeeeige. I hate beige. Pardon the poor lighting, by the way—I’m not sure what happened with the flash. Anyhoo, Our plan was to tear down the wallpaper (Hahahahaha. HA. HA.), paint with a pretty colour, rip out the carpet, and put in flooring that matches the rest of the place.
Is the phrase “tear down the wallpaper” echoing in your head, perhaps hissed by a menacing voice that sounds suspiciously like a scary clown? Yes? Then I would say you have an accurate grasp of what tearing down wallpaper is like. In short, three days (or 40 hours) of three of us doing this:
And this:
I literally had nightmares (or at least weird, Sisyphean dreams) about it wherein I was ripping down wallpaper in a never ending room—wait, OR WAS THAT REALITY?—with recurring images such as this:
Annnnnd, I’m out of time. To be continued…
Permalink