Finishing Touches... Finally!

I wish I had about 8 months worth of work on the house to write about... But we've been moving at a snail's pace! Maybe even slower than a snail. 

The weather is warming up, so we're diving right in. 

Over the winter we did manage to install our backsplash. We decided to go with a 3"X11" faux marble tile with white grout. I love it! We have purchased all of our tile, including this one, from Tile Town on Hamilton Road. They have such cool products, great prices and the staff is so friendly and helpful! If you've never been, go! They even lend their tools for free when you buy tile. 

 

We had a change of plans about halfway through which resulted in a tile shortage and some waiting until we could get more. 

Initially we thought we would just keep the backsplash at the same height all the way around, even the wall without upper cabinets. But once I saw the tiles up, it just looked unfinished to me. So we decided to order more tile and take the backsplash all the way up to the ceiling! 

 

 

 

 Excuse the mess!

And here it is! Finally finished!

 

 

We're so thrilled with how everything has turned out. 

I also finally installed the last of the closet organizers... No more digging through garbage bags of towels and linens! It's only been a year. 😂

The mudroom is close(r) to completion as well. It's organized! 

 

I'd like to build, or maybe buy, lockers to hide the upstairs laundry rough-ins like these...

 

Image courtesy of www.ana-white.com

 

Of course Jake's detached garage took up a bit of time as well. It's not done yet either... But it's close!

 

 

We've even put up a few pictures on the wall! Haha! This is huge actually. We worked so hard on those walls that it's hard to put holes in them!

 

The plan for the next 2 weeks is to tackle the lawn and our huge list! We need to re-do our front landscaping thanks to two puppies. One digs holes while the other eats plants, including a whole tree!! She chomped it down like she was a beaver! Hopefully we can get it back looking like this, ASAP! 

 

Our bedrooms and bathrooms are all done too. We had been putting off caulking and painting trim. Cleaning primed only trim is such a pain. Everything sticks to it! So this weekend I painted, and painted and painted! 

Rylan's room:

 

Tatum's room:

 

Our room:

Master Bath:

 

 

Girls' bathroom:

 

 

We worked all weekend and finally decided to call it quits when the sun went down!

 

We want the house to be 100% complete by mid-May... Because it's going to be for sale! 😬😬😬

Details coming soon!! 

Getting stoned... You had to know that one was coming!

It's true, it's true. The last 2 days have been spent getting stoned. Obviously I'm talking about the house!

We actually changed masons last minute which made us a little nervous, but those nerves are gone now that we can see the stone on the house!  The mason we had previously hired works alone, and would take 4 weeks to finish the stone. This time of year, we couldn't afford to take that long, so we hired a local guy from Lucan who was happy to postpone his other jobs to work close to home. Best part is, it's him and 2 others which means he'll be done in less than 2 weeks! Since the weather is hovering around zero, they need to tarp the house and use heat to keep the mortar from freezing. Another reason we need the job done faster... 2 weeks of heat will end up costing about $700-800. Yikes! 

We are still waiting for our arched kitchen window which I'm told will be here on December 12th. I had no idea this window would be such a pain. It's going to be beautiful, but had I known it was such a specialty item, I would have compromised!

I guess the complicated part of this window is having the 2 parts open as an arch. Hopefully all the deer I'll see out this window will be worth it! 

One of our great room windows had some damage to the bottom jamb, so we've been waiting all week for someone to come fix it. 

Of course they show up once our framers are gone... So now it will have to wait until the 12th too. 

Oh well... It wasn't the worst thing that happened at the house this week! More on that later. 

We've got shingles!

Don't worry, not the infectious rash... Just the roof!

The roofers started shingling on Monday and they'll likely be finished by the end of today. Hooray!  They have been really good and we are quite impressed by them. Super nice guys who are getting the job done well and on time. 

The house looks great. Everything seems to be coming along quickly now. Framers are finishing, which is good because the house inspector is coming today!

Our mason has everything set up ready to go. The stone arrived this morning. 

Drywaller came out to measure today too. 

Plumbing, HVAC and electrical walk through was yesterday to make sure we're all on the same page before they start. 

Jake and I even did a bit of work ourselves! We had to insulate, vapour barrier and hang a sheet of plywood in the mechanical room for our hydro panel.

We just happened to take my car today, and the dog... Which wasn't the best idea since we had to go buy insulation.  

This was the only spot left for me!

I was laughing in the beginning. But then I started to feel trapped and panicky! Who knew I had confined space issues?!

All the more reason for me to NEED a truck! The want is now officially a need. :)

I Heart the Heart of Our Home

They say the kitchen is the heart of the home... Well I know where my heart is!  Actually it's kind of a toss up between the kitchen and the floors.  But I guess the floors are also in the kitchen... So the kitchen it is!

We just got the drawings of our kitchen this week... I am thrilled!!  I know I shared a little detail about the kitchen in an earlier post, but here's where it all comes together!

This is the basic floor plan of the kitchen:

My kitchen must haves were an island, and an arched window.  You can thank Houzz for the arched window idea.  

The window faces the back of the house in front of the sink where we've actually already seen deer! It's big, and round and well... I like big windows and I cannot lie.

We have chosen a white, stepped shaker style door for our cabinetry.  We wanted something simple and classic in hopes that it won't become outdated in a few years, as opposed to picking something super trendy.  Here's the door style we chose, but obviously not in our colour choice!

I was so excited to get the drawings of our cabinetry. Now we can order the handles and knobs we picked!  We ordered samples and are really happy with them! 

We've decided to go with 2 different colours. Black for the perimeter cabinetry and brushed nickel for the island. 

These will be for all the perimeter drawers.

And these will be for all of the cupboards. They remind me of the nailheads on leather furniture, love them!

And these are for the island drawers. They are the same as the black ones, just a different colour!

In an earlier post I showed a picture of our island colour, but I'll show you again! It's call Icy Moon Drops and I think it will look great against the white cabinetry and reclaimed floors. 

Our island top will be a variety reclaimed wood species like this one:

Since we are kind of going to be living in the country, I didn't want our house to be too contemporary, so we've added some legs to our island to add some character. 

And lots of drawers!! I have 1 small bank of drawers in my house now so I'm excited to have big ones! And lots of them!

And we added the same legs to our desk on the pantry wall and the open shelving will be reclaimed lumber as well. I can just see all my cute tea cups on display :)

I'm excited to have not 1, but 2 pantries to be able to store all of our jars of PB. 

On the floor plan the fridge is kind of in the center of of the main wall. It was cutting up the counter space, so we moved it to the far side. We're also taking our cabinets right up to the 9' ceilings so there isn't that awkward dust collecting space. I don't own any fake ivy to display so this seemed like the best choice for us! ;)

And my FAVOURITE wall of all... The window!! 

Ignore where I had drawn the handles... They'll actually be in the middle. 

What's missing? Counter tops! 

We've decided to go with laminate counter tops for the perimeter. And we're actually picking the ones I have in my house now. So I know we'll like them!

We would have loved to have gone with a quartz counter top, but we decided to splurge on other parts of the house that can't be upgraded down the road. 

 

As for a backsplash, we don't know what we're doing yet. I want to wait until everything is up to decide. 

So there ya go... The heart of our home! 

 

 

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

In this case, those words are actually only one word. 1000 times... SORRY!!!

So the "crisis" with our roof, is no longer a crisis. Why? Because it's perfect!! It was just a really, really bad camera angle!

Just a refresher... This is what our house is supposed to look like:

This is what I thought it looked like:

And this is what it ACTUALLY looks like:

Ahhhh... Big sigh of relief! After apologizing profusely to the framer, my dad, the roof truss guy and the house designer. All of whom put their regular days aside to meet the crazy girl with an imaginary roof problem... 

I won't even get into my 7am visit to the roof truss manufacturers office. 

Let me tell you the embarassment I felt when I pulled up to the house to see a roof completely different than the one in the picture!!

So now we can move forward instead of starting over! 

All but 2 of our windows are boarded up in the garage waiting to go in, the missing ones will be here tomorrow. Shingles are on the roof waiting to go on and the back porch is a work in progress!

The peak of the covered porch is on now too... But my phone died last time I was out there.

I went out to label windows. We have a lot of windows that look the same, but open differently. I wanted to make sure that they went into the right spots. Hopefully I labelled them correctly!!

Look at that beautiful black window! :)

Ok! Off to get the kiddos from school... Just wanted to update now that everything with the roof is fine!!