The stone is finally beautiful!

The saga that was our kitchen and bathroom floors is finally over. The tile company sent the stone refinishing contractor out again to finish the job on our floors and they finally look as beautiful as they should. They are now also sealed so we are finally completely done with those floors. Just in time too as the finish mouldings and counters for the kitchen are due tomorrow... well all the counters minus the island - the blank for that was delivered to the kitchen guy damaged, so another had to be ordered, but we can get mostly moved into the kitchen with the counters on the main cabinetry and the doors can finally be installed once the crown mouldings and fascias are up.

Finally - Beautiful floors.

From entry looking into kitchen

This shows the colours of the floor and cabinets well.

I can't wait to see this kitchen finished, I doubt I'll be able to fill all these cabinets though LOL. When DH asked the contractor if we had a lot of cabinets (while he was installing them ;) the contractor replied "Kitchen's with half the cabinets you have have a lot of cabinets"... auh well - go big or go home right!?

The siding is coming along.

We are waiting for moldings and counters for the kitchen, which has slowed down the inside work on the house, so they have been working outside and wow does that stuff get done fast once the trim work is complete! The pictures below are from Thursday as they were working on the side, but by quitting time Friday the entire new addition was complete right down to the fascia and gutters. I was a little nervous about the colours as you only get a small swatch to choose from, but I'm so pleased with the siding - it looks even better than I hoped. I can't wait to see the whole house done.

West wall of addition (11/03/2011)

North wall of addition (11/03/2011) 

In other news the floor sealer that the tile company gave us to try on the floors did not have the desired effect unfortunately. So they are sending the contractor back out to fix the floors. They actually came today and finished the floors, sealed and all and they look great - more on that tomorrow once the sealer is dry and I can get in there to take pictures.

We are moving in bit by bit.

Small victories, first we moved into the walk in closet... well our clothes did ;-) but today we moved our bedroom into the new room. The bathroom still needs finishing, cabinets are in, but the plumbing fixtures still need to be installed and we are still waiting for a custom glass shower enclosure to be made and installed. But on to the pictures.

Taken from the door

Taken from the bathroom

I love that light fixture, we will be getting matching lamps for the bedside tables as well. Here's a closer look:

In other news the kitchen is nearing completion as well. All the cabinet boxes are now installed, the crown mouldings will be installed before the doors are put on, but the doors have been delivered and are here.  The flooring saga is hopefully nearing an end. The tile company did a trial at their warehouse using a special sealer which basically leaves the floor looking wet which should leave the floor looking as beautiful as it should. You can see in the pictures of the kitchen below that the floor looks good when wet, but looks dull and bad when it dries (I was in the process of scrubbing the floor when I took the pictures). So we will be getting the sealer from the tile company tomorrow and doing a trial run on the master bath floor, hopefully this fixes the issues.

Pantry and fridge cabinet (on left) - looking toward garage entrance.

Fridge opening  and stove opening on the left (the microwave has since been installed too)

Rest of cabinets, you can see the floor wet and dry here too.

This last picture shows the extreme difference in the floor from dry to wet, hopefully this new sealer will keep this wet look and we can move on from all this drama with the floor.

Hopefully we will have finished kitchen pictures to share soon - fingers crossed.

The saga of the floor.

I have mentioned that we bought travertine tile floors for the kitchen and bathrooms, we love the flooring, but wow what a saga.

The floor was bought in June from Home depot for $32/8 sq ft bundle, it is a cobblestone pattern floor made up of 4 different sized tiles. The floor was bought and stored in the garage all summer. The saga starts a couple of weeks ago when we saw the same tile at home depot on sale for  $23/bundle... 91 days after having bought the floor... you guessed it Home Depot has a 90 day price guarantee, anyone that knows me knows that I didn't just take that answer. It took a bit of talking but I got my money back.

A few days later the tile gets installed:

 Looks great right? Until we look a little closer...

Yup marks on our beautiful... installed... tile floor, over 50% of the tiles have these marks. Great! Call Home Depot, they give us some options for cleaning it, nothing touched it at all. Finally the tile company, Anatolia Tile, stepped up to have the tile professionally 'cleaned' which actually meant they had the stains (apparently from coloured straps on the tile bundles)  ground off the tiles. So now most of the marks are mostly gone, but the surface of many of  the tiles is no longer the same. We are hoping that once the tiles are sealed that the difference in the tiles will be less obvious. I'm working on sealing the tiles in the master bath tonight so I will hold off on my call to the tile company until that project is complete... wish me luck!

On the bright side - we now have cabinets! All the boxes are here and the doors will be here tomorrow, the custom colour and finish looks great. They got all the upper cabinets installed today and will be working on the lowers tomorrow - woohoo! I'll try and get pictures tomorrow.

First night time pictures.

Yup, that's right these update pictures were taken in the night... because we now have power and lighting installed in the addition. Today the hardwood floor was finished in the bedroom and closet, all the electrical was installed and the ditra tile underlay was installed on the first floor. Was a busy and productive day.

Over the weekend we choose and bought most of the lights, we chose to go with xenon lights in most locations, they are an alternative to halogen, they don't get quite as hot and they last longer than halogen bulbs. The kitchen and dining room chandeliers and the closet light are the only non xenon lights we installed.

On to the pictures:

Entry from garage, wood door is to the powder room.

Kitchen - Ditra installed

There are matching chandeliers in the kitchen (above) and dining room (below). I had actually seen these at Home Depot well over a year ago and loved them, but when we were getting close to needing them I couldn't find them any more. When my mom and dad were here last we stopped into the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Oshawa and what did we see but these lights - and they were on sale! SO for $75 we got both the larger and smaller one - score!

Dining room chandelier

Ignore the mess please, the dining room is our catchall during this reno and houses our very basic kitchen set up.


The second floor:

Master bedroom, hardwood finished - temporary fan/light

Master bath - Tiled shower

Above is the tiled section of the shower, the fibreglass base is under the plywood - this will have a custom glass enclosure. Custom was required due to the slanted knee wall.

That's all for today - I'll try and keep the blog up with the fast pace of the next few days, this week has them getting ready for the kitchen cabinets (being delivered next week) and getting our heating installed - the boiler has been installed since June but we still need to install new rads to get rid of the horribly ugly old baseboard rads. That should be done just in time for the temps to climb back into the 20's  - Murphy's Law.

I can see the end from here I think! Whoohoo!

Drywall!

Well after two drywall contractors not bothering to show up the drywall is finally done.... and primed and painted (pics of that tomorrow). The trim was completed by our main contractor and is turning out to be an amazing match to the original trim work in the house.

Drywall and priming complete in Kitchen

Solid door installed on the powder room

Close up of trim around window before door trim was installed.

Lots of projects have actually been completed this week (since these pictures were taken). I will get pictures and post the progress tomorrow.

Waiting... and updates

I didn't get around to posting these pics from August 26th... so here they are. The windows and doors are in and the house wrap is complete. The insulation and vapour barrier was complete - regular stuff in the walls and spray foam on the slant (knee) walls as well as a 1inch layer of spray foam in the ceiling in the old part of the house to act as a vapour barrier under the new blown in insulation. All the old blown in and bat crap was all removed of the old attic section.

Kitchen looking east

Master bedroom looking west

The rest of the pictures can be found here.

The waiting came in with our first setback. Fortunately nothing too serious, just waiting for drywallers. The first crew just stopped answering or returning calls from our contractor. We lost a week of work (contractor was working on window casing and doors at the shop). The next guy was supposed to come on Sunday to have a look and do the work Monday and Tuesday... yup another no show. So the main contractor started drywalling the bedroom, it is now done and they have another crew coming in Friday to drywall the kitchen and do the taping. He's already been here once, so lets hope he shows up on Friday.

Moving right along

I haven't posted an update in a while, but the project is moving right along. The outer shell is complete, the roofing is complete and the old kitchen addition as been torn out.

Roofing complete, and dumpster almost full during tear out.

West side of the house August 1, 2011

Inside the new kitchen - old kitchen removed.

The rest of the progress pictures can be seen here.

The second floor structure was completed on Friday as well, but you'll have to wait for pictures of that - I forgot to get some when we were in there this morning and I don't feel like removing the plywood door to the hall :-) We'll just keep that as a surprise for later.

We made a few more decisions - the appliances have been bought, Samsung fridge (with the water dispenser on the inside - saves fridge space and keep toddler fingers off :-) and Kenmore laundry pair... in purple, much to DHs shock ;-).

Since I will be away for 2 weeks we also needed to choose the location of the plumbing - the kitchen and main floor powder room was already done, but the master bathroom needed to be decided on. The master bathroom will have a large shower, toilet (obviously), vanity and the stacked full size washer and dryer. With our contractors help the layout was decided. We haven't chosen a vanity yet, but the shower will be this one:

I'll try and get the 3D images from the kitchen guy and do at least 1 update while DD and I are enjoying ourselves in Cape Breton.

The difference a few days make

The framing is moving along well, even in this horrible heat. The workers are starting earlier this week and working half days in the worst of it to escape the worst of the heat – 32deg + humidity on a dark asphalt roof is none too pleasant I’m sure.

July 16,  East side dormer started

July 16 - North and west sides - Dormer started.

July 19, North and East sides

July 19 West side - we have a dormer!

July 20 - Overhang added and roof cladding started

We will be losing our kitchen this weekend – we found a couple that need the cabinets – so that’s all looked after (I hate wasting – so it’s nice to see them get put to use). I’ve started packing and purging the kitchen contents, not sure how so much stuff was fit in this kitchen! We will be moving the fridge into the dining room and keep a few small appliances, rice cooker/steamer, microwave, blender, kettle, etc and using the BBQ a lot over the next little while.

Other changes since the last post: the siding is now going to be done by our main contractor, once the final total came in from the local siding guy our contractor figured he could beat the price… so sounds good to me! He can get the same materials and colors but he has a few more options, so we may go with a more blue siding - still dark though - pictures to come. 


We also got a few more things checked off the list, windows and doors have been ordered, we are going with triple glazed North Star windows - all double hung, steel doors and we ordered hardwood flooring for the existing 1^st floor (living room and dining room) and the new master bedroom has been ordered. We ordered a ¾” thick 2¼” wide solid hickory in a natural color. I can’t wait to see this down, I think it will be very nice, can you can’t beat the price – $3.07 /sqft!  I ordered it through Lumber Liquidators, and we will have to pick it up in Toronto, but you are hard pressed to find laminate that cheap – so it will be worth the drive!

We also had our meeting with the ‘kitchen guy’ Bill. He was very quick coming back with a drawing and had some great ideas. He is going to do some test swatches to see what he can create for the finish on the cabinets – the ones in the photo that we are working from are likely custom painted on site – and that will cost big bucks, and I don’t have the time or want to do it myself, so I’m hoping they can do something similar with a spray on and wipe off effect which will be much cheaper. The initial cost on the cabinets is higher than I want (it’s a ton of cabinetry, with lots of custom units, almost all lower units are drawers and double height upper cabinets that will look built into the ceiling) – so we found some changes to reduce the costs without changing the layout or overall look. Just need to put the deposit down now - eek! 

He did suggest going to Ikea for the sink and faucet, he said that the quality on them is great and you can’t beat the price. I’d have to agree, this same sink at Home Depot is twice the price. I think we will use this faucet, from Ikea.

Siding choices

First up, a progress report. Framing is going well, we are seeing window and door openings forming, and plywood is starting to be installed. Exciting to see things taking shape.

Framing July 8

Framing July 8

Framing July 13

Framing July 13

The next choice up is siding. I’ve been wanting to do this since we bought this place – I hate the standard 70s wide plank white aluminum siding we have now. It does not do the house any favours – and was even worse with the all black trim when we bought it.

Front of the house July 8 - before new siding.

The main contactor doing the addition will do the siding, but he asked me to get quotes, and if I can get it done cheaper than he can do it – he’s fine with that (did I mention I love this contractor!). It works out well for the job as a whole too as we can have the siding done while they are working on other things. Our contractor is a small local company without a ton of crews – the owner has been working on our place every day. So we called to get a few quotes from local places. One of the places we called was the company that did our replacement windows in the old section of the house 3 years ago (and we were happy with – obviously if we called them back) and one is a larger local siding business that’s been around since 1969. Well we now know how to tell if a contactor does not want your business… and the guy that did our windows obviously doesn’t… his price came in well over twice the cost of the other guy. Um over $40k for regular vinyl siding for a 1.5 story house not quite 2000 sqft is NOT reasonable! I seriously don’t know how he kept a straight face when he delivered the quote. So we are obviously not going with him LOL.

On to the other guy. Sometimes you just get a good feeling about someone, and this guy is one of them. We set up a time for the quote for 2:00pm, at 1:30pm he called me to say he was running behind and would be 15 minutes late, he pulled in the driveway at 2:14pm… if you’ve ever dealt with home repairs and contractors – that is impressive. He seems knowledgeable, is obviously organized, quoted on the spot, price is good, but not too good to be true. The company’s been around since 1969 and he comes with references. He steered us away from a product, which he can and will sell, because of past experience with bad fading and the manufacturer not standing behind the warrantee (which is also the product quoted by the other guy – he didn’t know that though). So far this guy seems great – lets hope it stays that way, just following up references now, getting a solid quote for the back of the house (Friday) and choosing colors. On that note – here are the colors. We are going with a deep dark blue on the main body of the siding and an oversized 5.5” corner and trim in a medium grey color – pictures of the swatches below:

Siding swatches against the house in the sun

Swatches in the shade

The blue will be the main siding color and the grey will be the trim and oversized corners. This will totally change the look of the house, but I think it will look amazing. So excited to see this take shape!


Next up kitchen layout  - the 'kitchen guy' come tomorrow.

Progress??? And plans

First up – Pictures. I’m uploading progress pictures on Flickr. I will add interesting ones to the blog – but, well foundations are boring, but if you are interested you can find them here J Foundation Pictures

The backfilling is mostly complete, they were just getting to the finishing/smoothing when the machine broke… Great – oh well. It will get fixed today and the backfill with be completed. The contractor dropped off the scaffolding yesterday and they will start on Wednesday with the framing.

We had to choose window sizes last night so they can be ordered and they can frame everything around those measurements. After some thinking we decided to go with all double hung windows. We have new double hungs in the old part of the house, which we had put in 3 years ago, and I really like the ability to lower the top – especially on the second floor. I feel it’s much safer for small children, as we can still have the window half open and not worry about DD around the windows. I also think it looks much better on a century home than casements – I find they just look too modern… looks fine on a newer home and yes they are more efficient, but well windows are just not efficient anyway, so may as well stick with what you like. On that note though, we did choose to go with triple glazed windows to increase the R value of the windows.

Having to choose the windows really hits home the fact that we need to get off our butts and get choosing everything else too!  So we stared with the kitchen, with this image for inspiration:

Image found here 

Now our kitchen will not have this layout, or be this grand, but I love the color and feel of this design, I want the house to feel new, nice and modern… to a point, but I really don’t want the new addition to feel like an after thought, I think it’s important to keep with the century feel and to not stray too far for the original design of the house. I like that the travertine floors look very old, while still being a modern and rather timeless design feature. I also like how the light, yet dirt colored, floor and counters allow the cabinets to be darker without making the room too dark.

While I like the look of granite for counters (like in the above picture) I just can’t get past the price. So we will be going with a standard laminate with no built in backsplash and a tiled blacksplash instead. So last week on a tip from a co-worker, I checked out a place in Ajax -  Countertop King, they have a great selection and I found a travertine print/color laminate that I think will look great, their prices are great too, they fab the counters on site and delivery is 2 weeks. I also checked out a tile place in Ajax to check prices and left there thinking we would go with porcelain tile that looks like travertine to save money. So when we went into Home Depot and I spied a Tuscan Travertine package in a cobblestone pattern for $3.99/sq foot we bought it! Score! The color is exactly the same as the inspiration kitchen and I think the pattern will make it suit the house that much more, and the counter top I liked matches the flooring perfectly. Now we just need to talk to ‘the kitchen guy’ about what finishes we can do on the counters that will look similar to the above picture.

Next up is choosing hardwood for the dining and living room and the master bedroom, and layout of the master bath, and fixtures… and …and, ok so there is still lots of choosing to do yet… but at least we have a start on it all.

And it begins...

Wow - This all began in October! Since then there has been much talking and planning... and many contractors not even bothering to call back! AUHHHH, seriously, what is up with that? If you are too busy, just tell me so. For all that though we ended up with a contactor we really like who was recommended though friends and everything is working out.

The early part of the year and through the spring and plans were drawn, engineers called in... plans changed (to cheaper options - imagine that!). We learned a lot about permits, and the fact that we needed one from the health department as we are on septic (at least that one is done now)... still waiting on the main building permit to hang in the window (we submitted - just waiting for the township)... but the inspector has been out and work is progressing so no worries :D

So as of today we have footings complete, extension of the foundation wall poured, water proofing and drainage complete and we are ready for back filling. Balloon framing starts next week.

Now the real fun begins. We should have our kitchen for at least another few weeks... then many BBQ dinners for us! The final plan has the previously mentioned foundation extension poured around the existing one - allowing for the new walls to be built outside the existing kitchen. Once the roof is on and the new walls are mostly closed in the existing kitchen will be torn out then interior building will begin. We will have a new kitchen, an actual entrance area from the garage with the powder room moved to that location. We will be widening the opening into the dining room so it will become more open to the kitchen and installing new flooring throughout the main level. The new space upstairs will become a master suite with full bath and walk in closet.

We are just now starting the choosing of... well everything. Siding is pretty much chosen (we are redoing the whole house), but we still need to finalize flooring, colours and kitchen layouts and cabinet finishes. I will do posts on those of the next little while to get feedback. Our focus will be on good quality, long lasting design and materials without going crazy with the budget.