Just a little update!

Oh heeey! Where have we been? Enjoying our house! Is it done? Nope!

I was really hoping that this house would be 100% complete by now, but hey, the weather is nice and we just worked our butts off to get the house to where it is now... We'll get back to working on it this winter when the weather is crappy! :)

So what's left?

Fireplace mantle: Our kitchen guy is doing it, and he's swamped. I made the mistake of saying we weren't in a rush. We aren't, but it would be nice to have that done! 

Here's the drawing. It will be white to match our kitchen cabinets with a reclaimed wood piece on the top. 

Trim: our trim is all just primed. So it will need 2 coats of paint. That is definitely a winter project! EVERY piece of trim. Baseboards, window casings, door casings... Good thing we didn't go for any crown moulding!!

We are also missing a few pieces of baseboard because we're waiting for the fireplace! 

Stairs: we ran into an issue with the treads on the stairs so it's taken A LOT more work and time than it was supposed to. 

Darby ran up and down them with muddy paws after I took the plastic off, but before we had a chance to stain/protect them. I thought I cleaned it all up until I put the stain on! You could see 2 paw prints on EVERY STEP!! I debated whether to sand it right away or put another coat of stain on to see if they'd disappear. I went with stain. Let's face it, I'm impatient and I wanted to get the stairs done. Stain was the wrong choice! It just made the paw prints darker. 

So then I sanded Every. Single. Step. 

And started the staining process over again. 2 coats of stain, 3 coats of polyurethane and then I still needed to paint the risers and stringers!

I decided to use Annie Sloan Chalk Paint on the risers. I did that next because I wanted to see how they looked dark. 

I think I chose the wrong order again!  For anyone who has used chalk paint, you know how you're supposed to apply a finishing wax once the paint is dry? Well how do I do that neat enough to only keep it on the risers and not get any wax on the stringers? Because if I get wax on the stringers, then the latex paint for there won't stick! Agh! What have I done?! I've just made more work for myself! So I've left the wax for another day and am slowly tackling the stringers. Slowly. Baby steps. :)

Attic hatch: sounds simple enough? Put a piece of wood and some insulation up there and call it a day. I wish it was that easy! We have the supplies, but we don't have a bazillion foot ladder. No idea how or why, but our garage ceilings are 12' high. We have 12' ladders. But you can't lean them in the attic hole because then they're too short! Story of my life!

We also have so much sh*t in our garage that we can hardly walk around. 

This one is actually at the top of our priority list so hopefully we'll get it done this weekend. 

Cladding the LVL beams: huh? See the yellow horizontal beams? 

Those are all structural and need to be covered in pine boards to look like more timbers. We have been waiting for a quote from the timber guy since May... Despite reminding him, I don't think he's really interested in doing them for us. So we borrowed my dad's table saw, and we're doing it ourselves! 

Landscaping/Grass: I always thought that this was something that could wait. Let's finish the house, get settled in and worry about the yard next year. Well... After living in Weed City for a few months, I realized that that plan was not a good one! 

We have a landscaping company from town coming to put up Armour Stone retaining walls in the back walkout area and 1 in the front garden. Our lot is so sloped! We thought we could get away without retaining walls, but every time it rains, the water runs right down in front of the basement patio doors. Retaining walls it is! I'm kind of excited for them! We chose a dark stone like this:

Grass... Well we seeded the front 1/2 of our property in the spring. It has grown in nicely. But because we have SO many rocks in our yard that we never got a chance to finish picking them and planting seed before the weather got too hot. So we are planning to get the rest of the yard seeded within the next few weeks. They say fall is best for planting grass seed anyway! 

Let's see... What else is there?

Insulation: we had some water issues this spring. 1 was a leaky outside tap that was fixed within hours and the other was from not having our yard graded before the snow melted. So we (ahem Jake) ripped out a lot of the basement insulation as part of a very thorough investigative process ;)

So we need to put that back together. 

We've also submitted plans for a detached garage permit and should be hearing back about that any day now. Because we need more projects!! I think we'll be hiring this one out... 

Now that I've made this list... I feel like I need to go do something! Hopefully I'll have a progress post a little sooner this time :)

Quick Update!

I have been seriously slacking on blog posts lately. We've been frantically trying to tie up loose ends so we can officially move in on Friday!!!  I thought this day would never come!

So what's been happening?

1) We have doors! They took a little longer to install because most of our rough openings were just a hair too small. Great... Oh and our pocket doors were also framed incorrectly so we (by we I mean Dave - our finish carpenter) had to remove drywall, cut studs, change the pocket door frame and repair so we could repaint. Nightmare. 

2) We have trim! It's not 100% done yet but it will be by Thursday!

3) We've started finishing our stairs. It took me a few days to get the GIANT staples out that were holding down some protective plywood. It mostly took me so long because I was frustrated that anyone would intentionally use such an annoying method of securing plywood. I dented a couple stairs trying to get them out too. 

Any that I gave up on got covered in tape and left for another day! 

We conditioned and stained every other stair so we could still get up and down. That was a recommendation from my sister and it was great!

The risers will be black and the stringers will be white. Eventually...

4) The man we bought the barnboard from dropped off some goodies for our house! They came out of century old barns just like our floors... I can't wait to decorate!

There are spade hinges, a door latch, a pulley and a cart thingy. Technical term :)

5) OUR KITCHEN!! It's soooooo close to being completely done. I am SO in love. Don't mind the mess... We have cleaners scheduled for Thursday morning. I just can't clean up construction mess anymore. I've been doing it since October!

6) Our bathroom is taking shape too! The plumber is coming tomorrow to install the sinks and toilet. 

7) Our walk in coset is a work in progress! It took me pretty much an entire day to put it all together and figure out the best design and use of space. I  am quite happy with how it turned out. 

See that gap behind the shelving? I didn't like it... So I cut a piece of pine around the baseboard and am going to paint it white and attach it to the side. I think it will make a huge improvement. 

On the wall straight ahead will be a little white 3 drawer Ikea dresser and above it I'm going to hang a large cork board. I want to hang jewelry from it and also tac up any important piece of paper to avoid clutter! 

On Friday we have two 8'x8'x20' shipping containers full of 2 households of our stuff... Time to unpack and prepare for the worlds largest garage sale! Jake has had his stuff in storage since July! He can't even remember what he has. The girls are dying for all of their stuff and I can't wait for the day when I can stop saying, "it's in storage"! 

Wish us luck!

We're Kitchen Up!

We finished the floors just in time! The last coat of polyurethane went on around midnight, and the kitchen guys showed up at 9:30 am!

We applied the the polyurethane using a "T-bar" and lambskin roller which worked really well. Jake went ahead of me and poured it on with a watering can and I just kept "pulling" a puddle as I walked. 

This morning we noticed a couple of spots that will need to be sanded down and touched up, but not too bad considering how exhausted we were applying the final coat!

The finish is SO beautiful and it's hard to believe that we did this!  We love them! They're better than I'd imagined them to be, but everything I had hoped for! 

Before the kitchen guys got here this morning we laid down some Tank Board we bought at Home Depot to protect the floors as much as possible. It's basically a thick piece of cardstock/cardboard. 

Just as we finished putting the Tank Board down the truck I've been waiting 6 months to arrive backed in! OUR KITCHEN!!!!

 They started bringing all the pieces in and I wanted to jump up and down I was so excited!

The kitchen started to take shape pretty quickly! 

The pantry/desk wall got started today, although it's not exactly what we were expecting. We wanted the microwave hidden in the pantry, but it ended up being showcased in a pantry... We're going to discuss options to change or hide that tomorrow morning. I hate dealing with this stuff... I always feel bad. But at the same time, it's not what we wanted. 

See the opening in the middle? It's where the microwave goes, which is fine. I'd just prefer to have it behind closed doors. 

This is the drawing, and I love the symmetry. 

We also got the first glimpse of the island colour today too! Jeff, the "kitchen guy" admitted to me today that he thought I was crazy for picking it for any cabinetry let alone the center of our kitchen. But now that he's seen it, he likes it. Or at least he says he does ;)

We love it, and that's all that matters! It's very subtle, and looks almost white. Not the best picture, but you'll be able to see it more once it's installed!

Our bathroom vanity install has begun as well. 

They'll all be Benjamin Moore "Pewter".

Looking forward to the progress tomorrow!

Totally Floored & Disappointed

Well... The last 24 hours have been HELL!!!  We wrecked our floors!!

Our kitchen is scheduled to begin install on Monday at 8am, so it was crunch time to get these floors done. We didn't have a second to waste. I don't even think I can write all the issues we've run into in the last couple days, but I'll try! 

We loved the natural age and patina of the old barn boards so we decided to initially do a light sand (120 grit sand paper with orbital sander) over the entire floor before vacuuming and applying the polyurethane.

It was a lot of work. We sanded, vacuumed, vacuumed again and mopped, mopped again. The floors looked great!! 

Kitten approved!

Then we applied the polyurethane and HATED them!! They turned out so dark, and the light pieces were so stark. We went to bed hoping for the best... But they still looked awful in the morning. 

 

Just awful. 

So we sanded them again. But first we had to pick up some coarser sand paper. We also picked up 10 gallons of a different polyurethane because we used way more than we thought we would and the stuff we started with could only be purchased in Kitchener or Toronto and we didn't have time for that!  

We started resanding with 80 grit until the paper kept gumming up. We made it 1 full length of the "big room" using 2 pieces of sand paper. And each piece of sand paper for this machine is $10, as Jake would remind us often ;)

So Jake just did 1 quick pass using 120 grit again and it seemed to be ok. 

We made an executive decision to stain the light pieces in hopes of having them blend in a bit more. I ran up to the local hardware store, where they actually know us by name now, and grabbed a light stain. I knew that I didn't want them to match exactly, just something to age them a bit more. But this put us back by a full day. 

They looked good! We were so thankful that Jake's dad and friend came to help because it turned out to be a big job. We went to bed exhausted but happy that things were back on track and we'd still be able to get 3 coats of polyurethane on before Monday morning. 

At 3am I got up to pee and to my surprise, the stain was still wet. What the hell?! It had been 6 hours! We were planning on getting up early and putting the 2nd coat of polyurethane on so I felt kind of panicked. I grabbed some paper towel and started scrubbing the floors hoping they'd dry some but it was like a waxy finish and the paper towel kept sticking. Nightmare!!! Jake also came up to pee to find me on my hands and knees scrubbing. 

After an hour and a half of dealing with this mess, we gave up.  

Before going back to bed at 5am Jake had the brilliant idea of reading the can... Here's a lesson for EVERYONE, read the F$*#%! directions!! In giant font, it said not to let the stain sit for more than 5 minutes and to wipe dry. We did not do this. We slopped it on thick and left it to sit for a good 6 hours. Oops. Big oops. 

After reading countless forums and blogs for possible solutions, we decided to try using paint thinner. I set my alarm for when the hardware store opened and we went back to bed. 

With our fingers crossed we brushed on some newly acquired paint thinner and started wiping away. To our surprised, IT WORKED!!! 

It took us the majority of the day, but we got the sticky waxy texture off hundreds of square feet of stained floor. 

Things were finally starting to look up. 

Being that we were now 1 and 3/4 days behind schedule we didn't want to take any more chances of messing things up so we decided to give the floors one more quick sand. 

Then I carefully vacuumed every last speck of dust and we FINALLY put our second coat of polyurethane on. 

We have redeemed ourselves!! The floors look AMAZING!!! We are once again thrilled with our floors! 

The floors are still wet here. I rolled myself out the door and snapped a pic before closing the door. The polyurethane we went with is actually a matte finish so it will be interesting to see how it looks in the morning. I'm kind of nervous... 

Here's a comparison of 1st vs 2nd coat. Huge improvement!

Wish us luck for the morning!!! 

Knot All Fun and Games!

Our floors are all installed! One seemingly large step forward... Except now we have even more work to do!

Today we filled knot holes. We are leaving the nail holes and small knot holes as in for that added character. Just basically filling the toe stubbers. 

We made a few test fillers out of glue, sawdust, paint, wood filler and every combination possible using all or some of those ingredients. 

We settled on a glue, saw dust and paint combo. It was our favourite look, and it dried the fastest. 

On our test boards we used a puddy knife. It applied well, but when it came time to sanding, we realized how big of a pain it would be to get the glue off of the edges. So I thought we should try piping the filler in as if we were icing cupcakes. And it worked beautifully!

Photo credit goes to Tatum!

Piped in

Smoothed out with a puddy knife. 

We have our rented sander all lined up and are picking it up today. We also have the fancy little application tool we'll need to apply the polyurethane called a T-bar. We decided to go with the same finish my dad used on his floors at the cottage.

 

I have never finished hardwood floors before, and it's slightly overwhelming. But we figured that if our floors could withstand 100+ years of Canadian weather, they can withstand our attempt to finish them!  I've watched a YouTube video a few times, so I should be good, right?! 

I'm not sure if you remember, but we had decided a while ago to use the same hardwood in our master bath. After we almost ran out of flooring, we switched to tile and had it installed this weekend.

We really like it. And feel a lot better about it requiring less care and attention than wood in the bathroom. We didn't quite run out and now have an extra 3-400 square feet of reclaimed flooring piled in the garage. 

They're still dirty from the grout, but they're just matte black 12"x12" tiles laid in a diamond like our mudroom. 

We also got our first "pop in" compliment today! A man stopped in to ask who our builder was because he loved our house. I used to stop in and do this to people all the time, so it was nice seeing I'm not the only one who does that! He's building a house near by so we're going to send him some of our contacts and colour choices. I wish I offered to contract it for him :)