Modern Art

Did you all have a good weekend? Hope yours was filled with celebration, smiling faces, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

Its about time I updated you on the living room, right? No surprise, its not quite done yet. We're still waiting on fireplace tile. And when we reassembled the hutch, one of the glass panes broke. Bummer - but we've got some creative ideas on how to fix it. How about I just show you one thing that is finished?

Here's the dresser all pretty and painted. Its Schoolhouse Slate paint by Martha Stewart and I'm so happy with the colour. It looks a little light in these photos, but its actually a great mid-tone bluey-greeny-grey. I decided to keep the original hardware (for now), though Michael had a great suggestion on Facebook to go with a more "modern country" look. Hmmm.

We needed a piece of art to put over the dresser, at least temporarily, before Chloe's party. I really wanted something modern to provide some tension against the vintage dresser. So taking this blog as inspiration...

{photo from Amber Interiors}

...and this favourite vacation photo...

...we did this. HandyMan printed the photo at work (shh, Rebecca!) and put it in an Ikea Ribba frame. It was a great temporary fix but really we should put the print on some mat board to prevent the wrinkles you see. I've put some milk glass pieces and a little vase of flowers on the dresser, but I'm no stylist and have no idea what to put there. I've run out of pretty books and with the wee one around, I tend to keep accessories at a minimum. Suggestions?

 More living room to come...

Living Room: Progress, Plaster & Paper

And things keep chugging along in the living room. Last we left it, we had a dirty dropcloth stapled to our ceiling and few layout options in mind. HandyMan worked his handy magic and before I knew it, he had built this:

One fireplace frame coming right up (though Chloe liked to think it was actually a miniature stage built for her :)  We haven't quite decided how we're going to finish the fireplace... full height tile? A mix of tile and painted drywall? Mantle? One thought we had was to recess the base of the fireplace where it lines up with the baseboard, to make it look less heavy. You can create a subtle recess by using different thicknesses of drywall beneath your tile. So, we added those horizontal braces beneath the platform in case we do decide to do that... its always good to keep your options open!

In another blink of an eye, the fireplace turned into this:

Yay, we have fire! Almost four years after we tore out the original fireplace, we finally have a new one in place. You can bet I enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate with that fireplace blazing last night :) The fireplace wasn't as massive in the space as we worried it might be. The black frame will be covered in tile so only the glass will be visible.

Enjoying the fire was short-lived though... because now the living room looks like this:

Over the next week, we'll be getting the ceiling plastered, the faux fireplace filled, patches sanded, and walls painted. And we'll be eating every meal standing up in the kitchen. Fun times, everyone, fun times.

Laying Out The Living Room

When we're designing a room, HandyMan and I like to get a visual on things before we start building. So before we started building the frame for the fireplace, we did this:

Yes, that's a dirty dropcloth stapled up to mimic what our fireplace is going to look like. I photoshopped in the fireplace location for full effect ;) Seeing things visually really helps us decide if we want to make any changes before we lift a hammer. In this case, the mockup confirmed to us that yes, indeed, fireplaces are big (ha!). Its not a typical location for a fireplace, but we were constrained by the location of the existing chimney (its above that piece of wood stuck to the ceiling). We decided on a flush to the wall fireplace as opposed to an angled fireplace in order to save on floor space.

Once we confirmed that we wanted the fireplace in this location, HandyMan started building the frame. I, in the meantime, started thinking about the rest of the furnishings. Using SketchUp, I came up with a few layout options.

Option A: 

And Option B:

HandyMan created the plan in SketchUp and I added in the decor. Once you get the hang of the program, its not too difficult - figuring out how to rotate things in 3D is a pain though! Its really great for giving you different perspectives, like this view from the dining room:

Which do you like better? Have you tried SketchUp? Now that I know generally my layout options, I can start buying some of the furniture pieces we still need.

It's Feeling Hot Hot Hot

It's getting hot in here folks - and not just because we've only got six weeks to get the living room done! The electrical will be finished up this Wednesday so for now my ceiling is a mix of pot lights, holes, and hanging wires. It always looks worse before it gets better, right?

HandyMan and I are moving along and purchased the fireplace. So here's the thing about the fireplace... although we loved the old wood burning fireplace, it wasn't going to work for our family. Rocks were literally falling off the front and the hearth was cracked so we would have to replace it. The fireplace, placed on an angle, also took up a huge amount of floorspace so we'd need a smaller unit. Plus, with plans for expanding our family, we knew we didn't want to have a fireplace that was so accessible to wandering little hands.

Where did that leave us? Well, we decided to get one of these:

That's the Skyline fireplace by Marquis. We've decided to place the fireplace flat against the wall (back towards the dining room) to minimize its size. That meant we only had a 48" wall to work with and this particular model fit the size and had a nice tall flame as compared to other similar styles. The idea is to build out a floor-to-ceiling rectangular frame to house the fireplace. We'll add in some details, like tiling right up to the glass edge, and recessing the base and the top to make it appear like it floats and less like a massive thing the room.

I've done a bit of shopping for tile to face the fireplace - and let me tell you, this is no easy task! We want something that blends in a bit and fits with our decor. So no slate, no rustic stone, nothing too dark and heavy. We keep getting drawn to a variation of our kitchen backsplash... some sort of marble mosaic.

Not all of these are fireplace options (I was also shopping for something for the eventual basement bathroom).  I am still unsure though. I haven't been able to find many white marble fireplaces so I'm guessing its not typically used there. And now, I read Carol's take on modern fireplaces and I'm worried we've picked both an ugly fireplace and the wrong tile!!!  Agh. I don't know how to mix a modern fireplace in a traditional home!

Just joking. Sorta. I'm so indicisive about the fireplace... and we don't have much time to figure it out.

The Living Room: Patch, Paint & Geraldo Rivera

So here's what the living room is looking like. Using a steamer we rented from Home Depot, we managed to strip all the wallpaper off in about six hours. We accidentally found a helpful tip... we found that the top vinyl layer of the wallpaper could be removed by hand first, leaving the glue backing on the wall. Then steaming this glue backing off went a lot quicker and easier than attempting to strip both the vinyl and glue at the same time.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you'll know that upon removing the wallpaper, we discovered an area of the bumpout wall that was hollow. I don't know how we never noticed it before. It looked to be a rectangle covered with plywood... could it be an original fireplace? This would make sense because our attached neighbour did have a fireplace on the other side of the wall. The bumpout wasn't deep, only about 6 inches. This meant that either the fireplace (if there was one) was purely decorative, or the fireplace cavity was recessed and it was a working one (which might cause us to totally rethink the room layout). So we made like Geraldo Rivera and did a little digging behind the wall...

Hmpfh. So I guess we'll leave the fireplace where it is, in the corner. We sanded and patched the walls and electrical should be done by the weekend and then we can start building the frame for the fireplace. In the meantime, we have to settle on the paint colour. Here's samples of the front runner, Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore. Its a light taupey gray, and works with both the yellow and brown tones of the dining room and the darker gray paint in the hallway.

More to come...

Living Room: Out With The Ugly

It was a holiday here today, Family Day, and what better way to spend it than patching and sanding the living room walls with HandyMan and my Dad :) The living room reno has begun (7.5 weeks to get it all done in time for Chloe's 2nd birthday party!) and we made a good start this weekend. But first, let me share the Before photos of the space I've kept hidden from you all till now. Now brace yourselves. Here is the view of the room walking in from the front hallway...

Yes, people, THIS IS THE FIRST ROOM YOU SEE IN MY HOUSE.  Have I sufficiently shocked you all?? I know, you're thinking "But the rest of your house looks so nice... how can you live with THIS?" Same question I've asked myself for the last four years. We did the dining room and kitchen reno first, and then we got pregnant so the nursery and bathroom reno kinda took priority, and then, well, we kinda just got used to the space. You know how it goes, right? Right??

Let me show you around. You can see HandyMan and my old sofas, the sunwashed carpet from Mama HandyMan's place (which replaced a scratchy sisal rug not suitable for newborn knees), the 1980's wallpaper (complete with fade marks), and the modern ottoman from HandyMan's old condo. What a mish-mash. And that in the corner? Kiddie Chaos. Overflowing toy boxes, grocery cart, ride-on toys, books, art supplies, and mini-throne. This is as neat as it gets unfortunately.





Turn to the left and you can see the sideboard with the old school map we bought and the only plant in the house we haven't managed to kill. We had the plantation shutters installed a few months after we moved in. We removed the previous owner's frilly curtains but we didn't remove the curtain tacking strip above the window. That's just how we roll.

To your right is my old dinosaur of a TV. Seriously, it weighs about 200 pounds. I'd love to replace it but I don't want to have to move it (ha!). If you look closely, you'll notice that the wall behind the TV is devoid of wallpaper. That's because the living room used to look like this when we moved in:

And now it looks like this:

The giant wood-burning fireplace took up a good chunk of the room and we knew we wanted to replace it with something smaller and sleeker (and get rid of that weird bulkhead) so out it went... four years ago. Which means for the last four years, I've also been living with that {leaky} chimney hole running up through the ceiling covered with a piece of masonite, the chipped original plaster molding, the yellowed wall, and the partial baseboard. UG-LY.

But that's the thing. The room sure was ugly, but it was also livable and functional. And when you have few reno hours between baby naps, a limited budget, and try and do most of the work yourself, ugly falls to the bottom of the list. Until now that is :)

With a halt on the basement reno, ugly just got a whole lot more unlivable. More progress on the living room to come!

**I will go hide my head in shame now**

A Change Of Plans

Why, hello there shiny new LG steam washer and dryer...

... sitting there in my old basement.

Wait, back up. Isn't there supposed to be a basement renovation going on here? Why yes, yes there is. Last we left it, we had figured out the layout and were discussing things with our contractor. A few things got in the way, like the holidays and an unexpected trip to New York, but the plan was good and we only had to agree on a price.

Let me say that hiring tradespeople sometimes requires a bit of give and take. In our experience, some trades do fantastic work but their price is too high, or they have poor communication skills, or they take too long. It is rare to find one who does great work on schedule and on budget with little grief - and if you do find one of those, hold onto them for dear life! So when we started on this basement reno journey, we knew we wanted to work with our contractor N. He had worked with us before, doing part of our bathroom, doing lots of great work at my sister's house and HandyMan's uncle's house. We knew his quality of work so we were willing to put up with some less desirable qualities.

Unfortunately, one of those undesirable qualities was an inability to provide a fair quote based on the scope of work. Prices changed each time we talked, quotes increased when work was removed, things cost many times more than we knew they should, and getting a response took days. And yet, we were close. We wanted to work with him and were willing give and take here and there. But it wasn't enough, so here we are... plan in hand, new washer and dryer installed, new vanity in storage, and half our garage overtaken with Ikea cabinetry for the new laundry room.

We're hoping to find a new contractor soon, but in the meantime, we've decided to change course. With Chloe's 2nd birthday in two months, we hoped to host the party at home and need a space for guests. So we've decided to renovate the living room over the next eight weeks, and keep the basement as is so partying toddlers won't have to play musical chairs amongst all the construction debris.

A few of you have noticed that I've never shown the living room on my blog. I'll give you a tour soon and you'll see why. Its basically Chloe's indoor playground and a place where mismatched furniture goes to die. Oh, and then there's the leaky hole in the ceiling from where we removed the fireplace FOUR YEARS AGO. Sigh. Yes, I've been holding out on you. Guilty as charged. Hopefully once I show you my brand spanking new living room you'll forgive me though.

Eight weeks, people. Gotta get moving!