The 1/2" That Turned into a Full Bathroom Reno

So all summer we've been going back and forth over whether or not we should completely renovate the upstairs apartment bathroom in our house.  It has a great original claw foot tub that we plan to keep no matter what, but the layout is just awful:

The door swings the wrong way and hits the tub, the toilet is squeezed into too small a space and the sink is wedged behind the door and doesn't really fit.  But, moving fixtures (and their required plumbing) is expensive.  And with an old house like ours, you never know what you might discover once you start opening things up and how much it will cost.  So, we chickened out.  We decided to simply replace the vanity and flip the door around so it swings against the wall. 

Things were going along smoothly until Ikea lied.  That's right...lied!  You see, the vanity we bought claimed to be 23-5/8" wide.  We measured over and over again to make sure it would fit and it looked as though we would have a 1/4" to spare.  Ok, so maybe it was only an 1/8" to spare, but it should fit!  But it doesn't!!  The sink cabinet is nearly 1/2" wider than that Swedish guy claims.  He seems so trustworthy on their radio ads...  So, if any of you are planning to squeeze a Godmorgon cabinet into a space, leave yourself an inch or so of tolerance!

So, rather than spending money squeezing some new fixtures and finishes into a badly arranged space...we've decided to bite the bullet and go for it, rearranging the layout so it works way better.  It'll depend on what the plumber says and how much his quote is, but we're hoping to achieve one of these two layouts:

The top layout is our preferred one.  It gives way more room around the sink and allows someone to stand there without getting hit by the door.  The alternate layout below would still work for us though, and it would mean moving less plumbing since the sink more or less stays where it is.  In either case, the beautiful claw foot tub is placed under the window and will be much more visible from the doorway.

And so, we have tentatively started gutting things:

Now we await our plumber to come let us know what the damage will be to get things rearranged...fingers crossed we can make this happen!

Upstairs Apartment ... Let the Renos Begin!

Somehow, I don't know how, September is already here.  With the summer behind us and our tenants moved out, we are launching full swing into renovations of our upstairs apartment.  After just 3 days we've had some surprises, scrapped some plans, made new ones, and have already realized that our 1 month timeline is probably just a little unrealistic.  We've got lots of exciting stuff planned for this apartment, but first...here is a tour of how it all looked on September 1st:

On the left is the hall.  We painted this about a year ago when our tenants were on vacation and plan to keep the colour.  On the right is the oh so very red bedroom...not a bad shade of red, but it definitely doesn't fit with the colour scheme we chose.

The living room.  A good sized room with a great view of the street below.  Not a ton to here other than paint and hopefully refinish the floor a bit.

The tiny 2nd bedroom / office / whatever-else-we-can-fit-in-there room.  For some reason the previous owner went hogwild installing outlets in this room.  They're all over!  Even along the top of the room!  Who could need so much plugged in to one tiny room??

Ah yes, the 'kitchen'.  Before the house was split into two separate apartments, this would have been a bedroom.  Not a lot of cupboard space...we added the blue cabinets over the sink about a year ago, but will still probably need more.  We'll likely add some shelving here and there for extra storage.

And finally...the bathroom.  The claw foot tub is original and beautiful (though it could use refinishing).  The toilet is new - we installed it last year to help conserve water (it's low flow and dual flush!).  And that sink...is a throwaway.  We've wavered on how much to tackle in this room.  The layout is awful and could be so much better, but moving fixtures is expensive...but more on those plans another time...

So, there you have it. The upstairs apartment 'before' shots.  It's exciting and daunting at the same time to finally be carrying out some of the plans we've been making over the last few months.  Unfortunately we can't tackle too too much until our electrician finishes replacing all the old wiring.  Fingers crossed that process goes smoothly and we don't end up with too many holes in the walls!!

Upstairs Colour Scheme!

Planning is well underway for renovating the upstairs apartment of our house.  We have some boring but necessary stuff in the works (attic insulation) and some much more exciting stuff too (bathroom reno anyone?).  More on those projects later.

We've been digging through our fan decks and paint chips to come up with a colour scheme.  One blog that's been really helpful in the process is the Colour Collective.  Essentially the whole blog is a series of colour schemes pulled from inspiring (often fashion related) images.  Here are a few of our favourites:

There's a good chance it might change, but here is the colour scheme we have come up with so far:

The colours are all Benjamin Moore.  From left to right, they are:

• cc-670, Gray Wisp
• 2147-40, Dill Pickle
• 2034-50, Acadia Green
• cc-250, Seaspray
• 2063-20, Down Pour Blue
• HC-172, Revere Pewter
• 2051-60, Birds Egg

Once September rolls around, we'll be able to start painting!

Finishing off the Ground Floor Tour

With just a couple more weeks before we move into and start renovating the upstairs apartment of our house, I thought it was about time I finished off the ground floor tour.  Just like the kitchen, I wouldn't call any of these spaces 'done', but they have come a long way from when we first bought the house 2 years ago.

So...in case you missed them, you can see the kitchen here and the Living and Dining rooms here.  Now onto the bedroom, bathroom, and vestibule.

Here is how the bedroom looked when we purchased the house (all furniture belongs to the previous owner).

The previous owner actually apologized to us for this colour before handing over the keys.  Oh well, that was an easy fix.  We had ambitions to replace that acoustic tile ceiling with drywall...but that never happened...hopefully someday!  Anyways, here's how the bedroom looks now, or rather how it looked before we rented the downstairs apartment out last month...

If you're wondering why this room lacks the high ceilings and beautiful detailing of the rest of the house, it's because it was an addition added on at some point (though it's still very old).  Still, it's amazing what a little paint can do.  Oh, and that dresser was a great find at an estate sale.  It's a 1960's made in Canada piece that Tessa sanded down, stained Walnut, and switched out the original hardware with something a little more modern.

The biggest project in this room was adding built-in closet space.  For a solution, we looked no further than...Ikea:

Using hardware from Ikea's Kvartal line, we made six sliding fabric panels - much less expensive and less permanent than building in a wall with doors.  Ikea sells pre-made panels for this system...but we weren't too crazy about any of them, so we sewed these up using a few yards of fabric...still bought from Ikea.

Beyond paint, we didn't do too much to the bathroom.  The previous owners had installed the shower not long before we purchased the house and thankfully their taste in shower doors was much better than their taste in paint...here's the before (left) and after (right):

And here are a few more views.  You just can't beat the character found in these old houses - like that beautiful stained glass window over the bathtub.

Having a bathroom this large on the ground floor of a Victorian house is rare and was definitely one of the features that sold us on the place.  This space would have originally been a hallway leading from the front door to the kitchen...I think this bathroom is a much better use of space.  Speaking of the front door, that brings us to the last space on the ground floor...the front vestibule.  This is the best before shot I have:

In this space, all we have done so far is paint and hang a new light fixture.

I wish I could say that we bought that light fixture while travelling in Morocco and that we met the artisan who made it and he was a really cool guy...but that would be lying.  We've never been to Morocco...we bought it at Home Sense...and it was on sale...only $50 I think!

So, there you have it - the rest of the ground floor.  We've been itching to tackle some projects upstairs in the fall and have been making lots of plans...stay tuned!

Oh, and here are the colours we used in these rooms:

Bedroom:  Benjamin Moore, Boothbay Gray, HC-165

Bathroom: Benjamin Moore, Gray, 2121-10 (really!  they couldn't come up with a better name?)

Vestibule: ICI, Shakespeare

The Kitchen ... So Far

As promised, here is a tour of our kitchen.  I don't want to call it a 'before and after', because there's definitely more work that we plan to do down the road in this room...so it's more of a 'before and so far'.

The biggest change we've made to the space is the addition of an island.  We both love to cook, so having the extra counter space is helpful...even more helpful is the dishwasher we added in the island.

The kitchen also sort of doubles as an office space, though more often than not, we end up just using the laptop in the Living Room.  That clock over the french door is our great-grandfather clock (it was a gift to Tessa's great-grandfather when he retired in the 1970's).  (Lots more photos after the jump!)

Porch Restoration Part 2: DONE!

The porch is finally done!  It's taken a few weeks for the finishing touches, but we finally made it.  Of our Porch Paint Possibilities, option #4 was the winner (but with a few tweaks).  We ended up painting the floor of the porch black rather than light gray.  Keeping it gray just made for too many contrasting elements.

We also ended up with a bit more yellow compared to any of our concept schemes.  We struggled with this.  We kept going back and forth on the whole black and yellow thing (all the while having this song stuck in our head).  Would it make the house look like the home of the city's biggest Hamilton Tiger-Cat fans?  Or like some sort of Victorian haunted house.  Hmmmm, what to do.  In the end we went for it....but not without toning down our Stuart Gold by mixing in some of the Sandy Hook Gray. 

I can't tell you how happy I am with how it all turned out - especially the front door!  It's hard to believe we left this incredible wood door concealed behind an ugly brown screen door for so long:

Porch Restoration Part 1: wash, strip, sand, fill, repeat

Finally...FINALLY, we got to work on restoring our porch this weekend.  Remember all those Porch Paint Possibilities?  Well, we chose one...sort of (more on that later) and with the perfect collision of gorgeous weather and a long weekend, we (nearly) finished returning our 120 year old Victorian porch to a more dignified state.

And remember when I said the work needed on the porch was mostly cosmetic?  Ha!  Not quite.  It took a full day and a half of washing, stripping, sanding, and wood filling before we even started painting.  I suppose that's not so bad in the grand scheme of things...but man, it was so tempting to just start slathering on shiny new paint.

After a light power washing, it was time to scrape.  Thankfully we bought a '14 in 1 Universal Tool for Painting and Projects'.

I'm not entirely sure of the other 13 things this tool does, but as far as scrapy things go, this tool was among the scrapiest.  After a good 6 hour scrape-down, it was time to bring out the big guns:

What?  Your drill doesn't come with a medieval torture device attachment?  Upon closer inspection, it turns out that this is actually an 'Original Easy Stripper'. (as seen on TV, so it must be good, right?)

I was hesitant to go at it with my easy stripper (as one should be), but somehow, the easy stripper doesn't damage wood, even 120 year old wood.  Just look at this before and after of one particularly nasty section of wood soffit:

Yeehaw I said.  Yeehaw indeed.  Now some of that paint just wasn't coming off.  I'm sure we could have gone out and bought some toxic paint eating chemical...but that's just not our thing.  Instead we accepted imperfection, and cleaned up the worst of the 'topography' with some 'Dap Drydex Spackling'.  It goes on pink and dries white!

Thankfully, this stuff dries fast.  So after some serious sanding (followed by some serious damp mopping), we were ready to paint!

Oh, and I almost forgot, check out our ugly mailbox and the amazingness we discovered behind it:

Needless to say, we decided not to put our mailbox back up, opting to stick with this original mail slot.

Now I know, if you've read this far, you must be patiently awaiting some sort of reveal of the finished product.  Well, as I mentioned, we're not quite done.  After 50 man hours (I mean person hours), we still have to put a second coat on the base of the porch, paint the actual porch floor, and touch up some of the details.  We'll get there soon.  In the meantime, to quench your curiosity, here's a sneak peak:

La Pièce de Résistance

Last week on Citify I mentioned that we had installed what I consider to be 'La Pièce de Résistance' in our Living Room. Did you spot it? Well, it's the new light fixture. It may sound strange, but finding a light fixture for this room has been a pretty big challenge. You see, there were many requirements that said fixture had to fill:

• it had to be light since there is no electrical box to attach it to (originally there would have been a gas fixture here, it was converted to an electrical fixture later by poking some wires through the centre of the plaster medallion)
• it had to have a small ceiling plate so as to not cover too much of the plaster medallion
• it had to have both an uplight and downlight component (without any uplighting it would cast a shadow on the plaster medallion)
• it had to be just the right scale, not too big / dominating and not too small / wimpy
• it had to complement the light fixture in the nearby Dining Room as they can both be seen together

We spent many a hour scouring stores and the internet to find a light fixture that was just right.  Here are a few of the finalists:

1. Alhambra MES Spherical Suspension Light  2. Cactus Pendant Light  3. Modulo S35 Pendant Lamp

4. Ossy Pendant  5. Propeller Lamp  6. Saucer Criss Cross Lamp

In the end, we chose a Link Suspension Light in American White Wood by LZF - a company that works out of a converted winery on the outskirts of the village of Chiva in the province of Valencia, Spain.

The fixture is made up of Mobius strips piled on top of one another.  This arrangement makes for an incredibly sculptural piece that takes on different forms from every angle it is viewed from.  While the form is decidedly modern, we like the fact that it is made from wood, a natural material.  It gives the light so much warmth and helps it to 'fit in' amongst the many eclectic pieces of our living room.

Installing it was no piece of cake.  In fact, it took my dad and I 3.5 hours and several test installations before we were happy with the final product.  In the absence of a electrical box, we drilled into the no longer active gas pipe for support.  However, this left the ceiling cover plate hanging too low with a gap in between the cover plate and medallion.  Our choice was either to cut the gas pipe off higher, requiring us to also 'chisel' away at the delicate plaster medallion or to improvise.  We chose to improvise:

Thankfully, my Dad saves everything and he had another cover plate that was identical in finish and similar in size to the one that came with the fixture.  We used this to mediate the gap.  Essentially, the final product has a double ceiling plate.

Be honest now, if I hadn't told you that, would you have noticed?

We're quite pleased with the final result.  Lighting is such an important part of space design.  Horrible lighting can make a great space incredibly unpleasant while great lighting can really elevate an already great space into something, well...greater!

-kyle

Citified Laundry Line

Finally it's springtime in Hamilton and we can start hanging our clothes outside to dry.  We rigged up this clothesline last year along the side of our house.  It was pretty simple to make as we were able to use the metal stair that leads to our second floor as support.  The clothesline is fished through a drilled 2x4 at one end and hooks at the other to make four hanging lines, each spaced about six inches apart.

It's a really compact design with 50 feet of hanging length in a 12 foot space and it makes use of an area that isn't really usable space anyways since it's narrow and under a staircase.  We find that it's just enough room for a full load of laundry and still long enough for queen sized sheets.

Look at that fresh laundry, blowing gloriously in the wind!  In the winter we don't use our dryer either as we hang our laundry on a clothes rack in the basement, but there's nothing quite like laundry dried outside by the sun and the breeze.

With washing in cold water, using Sunlight Green Clean detergent, and hanging our laundry to dry, we're doing our best to reduce the carbon footprint of our laundry.

-kyle