The windows are the windows to your soul...

Next project shortly after the roof was new windows and doors....  Still not DIY because we let the experts do the heavy lifting, cause they are awesome sauce.  And some of them are pretty damn cute too ... *ahem*  Maybe I shouldn't blog while drinking wine heheheh

I digress...

December 9th, the hot boys from Verdun Windows  http://verdunwindows.com/ came over around 7:30 am to replace almost every window except for two really small ones in the basement as well as the front door, side door and the patio door out of the kitchen.

These two guys do phenomenal work.  One guy works inside, cuts out the old window, the other guy up on a ladder pull out the whole window, hooks it over one shoulder and climbs down.  *BLINK*  That stuff is heavy!  Then the guy outside comes back with a new window slung over his shoulder, climbs up.  They stick it in, shim it up, level it up, nail it in, put up the outside vinyl trim.  Then the guy inside sprays some insulating foam and they move on to the next window.

The first day they did almost all the upstairs windows and a few of the downstairs as well.  Tuesday we left the door unlocked and they showed up shortly after we left for work and finished all the windows and started finishing up the inside trims.  Wednesday they put in the doors and finished off whatever needing doing as well as clean up.

So hot to see a guy wearing a tool belt, on his hands and knees vacuuming your floor... *swoon*

Um, yeah... here's some pics LOL

New kitchen window before the trim pieces are put on.  This is the only "Awning" type of window in the house  I wanted an unobstructed view of the squirrels.  All others are double hung, tilt in windows... easy to clean!

Nice long skinny window in the powder room that replaces the old pink stained glass with gold leaded lines.

New window up in the loft.

Old front door with the pink stained glass and gold lead lines.

This is what I came home to on Wednesday night... ACK!  No front door!  brrrr  but not to worry because there was soon a beautiful new front door in place.

LOVE LOVE LOVE the new front door with the different textured glass, no colour, just frosted and silver leaded lines.

Now all the big projects done by professionals are done for 2013.  Not sure what 2014 will bring for the larger projects, but I do know that I will have tons of painting to do all over the place and tons of carpets still yet to pull out.

New roof shingles!

The next project was not DIY, it was something we knew needed to be done ASAP from when our buddy Al www.thefixer.ca did our house inspection for us.  We also got confirmation of that from Steve of Magnum Roofing http://www.magnumroof.ca/ .  Steve said that it was down to the paper in some spots.

We got them scheduled for Monday November 25th... they got delayed because of a previous job so they rescheduled for Wednesday November 27th... BAM first big snow storm of the season hit the area and we got about a foot of snow.  I worked from home and lot's of people got stuck in hours of traffic... I couldn't fault the roofers for not wanting to come out during that mess.

Steve and his great crew ended up coming out on Friday and did the main roof and then they came back on Monday and did the garage roof and the roof over the entrance.

The shingle on the left is the new stuff we picked and the smaller shingle on the right is the pinky shingles we had removed

This is the summer shot of the house, you can see the shingles, but it gives you perspective for the snowier version below.

Looks really different with all that snow eh?

I had to walk across the street to take this shot, you can still see a package of shingles on the roof, and a tiny portion of one of the roofer dudes near the vent on the left side.

I really like the grey colour of the shingles, it's a nice contrast to the pinky bricks.

I had to cross to the other side of the street to get this shot of the garage roof with the old shingles still, but several packages of the new stuff ready and waiting.

Quite a relief to have the new shingles up before anymore snow storms or weird winter thaws that might have had us scrambling for buckets!

I highly recommend Steve and his crew, they were fast, great clean up afterwards and they did an awesome job.  Plus as a bonus they shoveled our driveway... not necessarily to get rid of the snow, it was more to get rid of the roof nails off the driveway... apparently clients don't like flat tires LOL

It was a sweep of new appliances...

As I mentioned in my last post, we got our house keys on October 11th and booked our movers for October 23rd.  We also decided to book the delivery of 2 couches, a fridge, stove, dishwasher and a microwave range hood on the same day.  *gulp*

We knew from having visited the house before the official SOLD sign went up that the kitchen appliances were toast.  The harvest gold colour was our first clue as to the age, and then we discovered the fridge leaked if you turned on the water and ice dispenser.  Oh and it didn't make ice anymore.  Oh and the stove made this horrible ripping metal sound when you'd open the bottom drawer, and a slightly less tortured sound when you opened the oven door itself.  Much later our contractor told us the dishwasher would have never worked either because the electrical connection to it wasn't working or wasn't hooked up right.

So we knew ahead of time that new appliances were in order.  We shopped, we bought... we booked a delivery time.  Easy peasy right?  Uh yeah I guess....  At some point, and I'm not sure if it's once we got the keys or before, we discovered the washer didn't work anymore, so we'd need a new washer and dryer as well.  GAH!  So this time we went online and ordered a set from Sears plus the fancy pedestal thingies.  Mainly because John is tall and he's not a fan of bending down almost to the floor to grab his clothes out of the appliances.  We booked these two items to also be delivered on the fateful October 23rd.  Boy that day was going to be a doozy!

Before:  ACK!  Harvest gold!

New fancy schmancy dishwasher

New convection oven stove with big window to peek in at yer cookies.

A few days after delivery had our contractor friend Al install the microwave range hood vented outside and bumped up the cupboards above to make room.

Shiny new fridge that has a carnivore drawer and ice and water in the door and not on the floor! :D

Here's a better view of the bumped up cupboards above the appliances.

Turned out that move in day wasn't that bad.  I was at the new house at 8am to accept delivery of all the new stuff and John stayed at the old place to let the movers in to pick up our boxes and furniture.

All my delivery guys came in, picked up the old crap, brought the new stuff in, assembled, took packaging away and everything by 9:30am.

John's mover crew was done pack up the truck so they came over to the new place, after having lunch and unloaded everything by 3pm ish.  It really was easy peasy lemon squeezy!

We did have an issue with the new washer a few weeks later on:  it stopped working.  We had to get a Sears guy in to take a look, turned out the brand new washer was all corroded inside.  He ordered us a new washer that was delivered November 23rd.  

New washer and dryer up on their pedestals: 

their beautiful whiteness making the vinyl floor look like crap LOL

The next mini reno DIY stuff we did was to take the knobs off the middle of the kitchen doors and put in regular silver knobs in anticipation of eventually painting all the cupboards white

First Reno: Family Room flooring

We got the keys to our new place on Friday October 11th.  It just so happened that Mom and my sister Vicki were visiting and they were more than happy to come check out the new place.

Our official move-in date with movers was October 23rd, so we decided to do our first reno job while the place was empty.  There is very old and dusty feeling carpets throughout the house.... so dusty feeling that I've taken to wearing crocs around the house.  That in itself is momentus because i'm morally opposed to crocs, especially out in public.  So just imagine if you will the ick factor that my feet were feeling ... yes... even through socks.  I digress...

We choose to do only one room of flooring work considering time, budget and not wanting to be so tired we would be mistaken for zombies...  The room we choose was the family room right next to the kitchen.  We figured other than the kitchen it was the room that would be most frequently used and would benefit from the carpet removal the most.  The kitchen has ugly vinyl, but that I can wash :)

Before:  With the icky, wrinkly, pinkish carpets

After:  New flooring with some of our furniture tossed in.

Another shot of the new floor with a new couch we bought.

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The flooring we used is a brand called Allure and it's not laminate, it's vinyl, but not the vinyl with the peel and stick edging, this kind is newer.  It's a thicker click together kind of vinyl, but it can still be scored with an exacto knife, straight edge and then bend it back and the extra piece snaps off.  It's a bit tricky to do at first, but we got the hang of it and finished the floor in two days and maybe spend 3 or 4 hours in each session.  John said it was hard on the fingers and hands, but he wasn't working with gloves.

I enjoy walking bare feet on this stuff, it feels good.  I really like that it doesn't have the same sound as laminate.

Thanks to Vicki and Mom for helping us pick the colour!

Welcome to my house renovation blog

We'd sort of happily lived in a townhome for the last 6 years but decided in May 2013 that the single car garage was cramping our happiness.  After several months of purging stuff, cleaning out the dust bunnies and painting anything that wasn't moving we put our townhome up for sale on September 1st, 2013.  Happily our house sold pretty quickly on September 24th and around the same time we found a single detached two car garage home in an older neighborhood.  The bonus part is that the new house is close to a mall, lot's of restaurants and just past the mall is highway access... SCORE!

The downside part is that the house was built in 1984.  So it's a 30 year old house full of chandeliers and dust bunnies.... dust bunnies with teeth!

Here are a few pictures I "acquired" from the real estate website... hence the SOLD!  LOL  They didn't have every room pictured, but it's a good start to give you an idea of what we first saw.

Two car holes!  We really liked the large stone walkway up to the front door.

Front entrance with marble tiles in black bordered with beige, above is the first crystal chandelier.  That weird wall hanging was gone when we first saw the house.  The little door is a powder room and if you walk past it you end up in a small entrance from the garage that holds our washer dryer with a coat closet on one wall and on the side wall it's a door to the outside sort of behind the garage and on the side of the house.

In the description of the house this staircase was called the "Gone with the Wind" grand staircase LOL  It is definitely impressive, and to add to that the wall at the top of the steps is all mirrored, so in this picture you can sort of see a tiny sliver of the loft that is located above the entrance with the marble tiles.

This is the formal living room with another big sparkly chandelier and they also left us the nice swaggy but really dusty draperies.

On the other side of the staircase across from the formal living room is the formal dinning room.  The ribbons were removed from the chandelier before we visited the first time and when we moved in they left us those fancy drapes too complete with tasseled edges!

This is one of the pictures that enticed me to see the house, the kitchen is huge + an island... sign me up!

Then I saw this big bright and sunny eating area and I was in love!

This is the family room right next to the kitchen and not sure if you can see but it's sunken a few inches.  Not that I needed that, but it's kinda cool.  Notice yet another chandelier...

This is the loft above the entrance with a view of the two doors that go into one of the spare rooms and a shot of the linen closet.... Notice another chandelier... but that one was sold before we bought the house, so we moved the dinning room chandelier into the stairwell. 

This is the master... yet another chandelier and they left us the delightfully flowered curtains (you can't hear the sarcasm in my typing, but it's there, trust me.)  Those drapes are now gone like the wind  LOL

Here is the basement with the party room on one side and on the other side it's the man cave area.  The pool table was sold before we moved in and the fireplace is unusable... there is a long story behind that for a future post :)

More posts and pictures to follow with a few of the things we changed before we even moved in :)