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!! 

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 :)

 

Interior/exterior update

I struggled to come up with a catchy title for this one...

The house is coming along! 

The siding is 2/3 done... 

All those shakes we stained are up too

I'm so glad we went for real cedar. The colours are amazing. We plan to stain the timbers a bit darker in the spring. We used the same stain for both, but they're two different species so we were expecting to have to redo it. We just wanted them stained and protected for the winter.  

Our back timbers SHOULD be up in the next few days. But I've been saying that for weeks it seems...

On the inside, all the mudding and sanding of drywall is done. So once we clean all the dust off the ceiling and walls, we'll be ready for primer and paint! 

Jake bought a sprayer so hopefully it will move things along faster! We want to paint our basement ceiling/floor trusses black eventually so it will definitely be needed for that!  I found this picture on Houzz and we both love the idea. 

On to even more exciting progress... We have some floors and tub/shower surround up!

This is our mudroom floor. We bought these tiles for $0.30/tile at Home Depot. We decided to lay them on a diagonal/diamond pattern to make them more interesting and I'm pretty happy with them!

Our ensuite shower so far...

I love this little alcove! I feel like I'll need to buy some fancy shampoo now. 

The floor in our main bathroom turned out so well. We absolutely love it. Now we're considering using the same, only black, for our basement laundry room. But that's a DIY project for down the road. 

I'm excited for it all to be grouted. Our installer said he'll be done by Wednesday. Yay!

Stairway to... The laundry room!

Our stairs are in!!! Yay! Finally we don't have to climb up and down a ladder that barely reached the top! Totally safe :)

Our stairs were made by the same guy who's doing our kitchen and bathroom cabinetry and fire place mantel. So far, I'm really impressed!

We went with rustic hickory treads and we'll be painting the risers black. It's all unfinished now and we'll need to stain/oil and paint them ourselves. 

It's hard to see because they're all protected, but there is lots of colour variation in the wood, which I love!

You can see how giant these stairs are... He installed them by himself! That's right, just 1 guy. I was there, but I was almost afraid to watch!!

Our basement is going to be unfinished for a while, except for the laundry room, but we faked it because the staircase is open. There's drywall all the way down, and along the wall directly in front of the stairs. 

We'll put a piece of carpet down there for now and nobody will ever know! Except for anyone who reads this blog and anyone who comes over :)

The outside is progressing well too!

The drywall will be 100% done tomorrow and our flooring installer is starting the tile work at the end of the week.

Jake and his Dad worked hard all day today to get our floors ready for tile. 

Our trim is being delivered on Friday so we can start painting it. Doors will be delivered the following Friday and we'll hopefully start painting early next week!!  

I can't believe we're painting already! Woohoo! The end is in sight!