Knock at the Door

Even if I've recently mentioned how much I'm beginning to hate renos it bears repeating. I've painted, trimmed, siliconed, spray foamed, taped, sanded, drilled, and painted again to within an inch of my life and I'm so over it. I've been sort of over killing the renos recently because I wanted them done and out of the way.

The back door was in dire need of attention when I moved in so I finally tackled it not really knowing what I was doing. Here it is when I was looking at buying the house, it looks pretty shabby huh? Look like crap actually.

The frame was bent for some reason (probably been kicked at some point and while we're on the subject WHY do people try to kick in doors? If you're not a fireman or a policeman DON'T DO IT - framing up doors sucks a lot and no one likes to do it) so I had to hammer it in so it was straight, insulate the holes and replace the casing. Sounds easy right? In my dreams. The only thing left is to replace that total piece of crap door handle.

That cat there is naughty Ceilidh who got out of the house(my fault - actually Weasley and Mallaig also got out but didn't manage to impale themselves on anything) yesterday and cut both her hind feet trying to get back into the yard after finding her way out. I chased her through the house for about an hour last night to put a bandage on it and to stop her leaving a blood trail which covered not only my easily cleaned floor(and table and counter) but also my bed, the livingroom carpet, all but one of the throw rugs, both cat beds and a blanket. Thankfully I managed to contain the bleeding using copious amounts of paper towel and purple hockey tape plus a baggy over top to stop stray blood from being tracked anywhere. She looks like she'll be fine and is of course asking to go out again. To that I say "Forget it!"

Bathing Beauty

I have been hard at work getting a few of those fiddly things completed that sit in the back of your brain and poke away until you say FINE!

Let us begin ...

The bathroom had a medicine cabinet that I hated since it looked like crap and was off centre. This isn't a very good photo but it will do.

And this is what I replaced it with. May not look like a lot of work but after the removal of the medicine cabinet I realized that I didn't have the right tool to get the silicone out of the tube I'd bought to put up the mirror. I had to go two days without a mirror until I bought a silicone gun. That border is hand cut by me with the flower corner detailing - I bought those at the tall ships - they are from Bali. Basically the mirror replacement was a much more complicated process than I had imagined ... standard operating procedure for house renovations.

I didn't realize I hadn't gotten a good photo of the bathroom window which was missing insulation and casing around it. Pretty much it was a rough cut out hole in the drywall as though the window had just been installed. I bought some expanding foam and sealed it and then put up the casing. The corners are hand cut so not perfect and there was a minor issue about things lining up but in all I think it looks pretty darn good for a girl who has never installed casing before. Now the bathroom only needs a new vanity and some baseboard. I'm waiting on the baseboard until vanity is in because it will be installed after the vanity. I can't do the vanity on my own and will just wait until my Dad has time to come and help install it. That is the bathroom so far. I have a few other things to show but it's too much for one post - I have a lot to catch up on!

There Must be Cucumbers in Heaven

The garden is beginning to bear fruit ... er ... vegetables. Today I popped out to check on my cucumbers and lo and behold there sat three cukes ripe for the picking. There were a couple I'd had my eye on but it seems I missed the picking boat and they are now 'expired'. There are more beginning to grow so hopefully I'll see a bountiful harvest before the season ends. I was a bit late on the planting so I'm hoping they don't all get killed by the cooler temperatures.

So I was all excited to try my very first ever cucumbers. I gave it some thought and settled on crackers with cucumber topping. Thus my creative juices were flowing and this little morsel is what came of it. For the record; cucumbers straight from your own garden are spectacular.

There were more that I ate but since this was the most esthetically pleasing cracker I'd made I decided to let it live long enough to take a photo. See how I speared the olives with the cucumber slices? Clever no? And the feta cheese was a great little addition. I will hold back on the olives next time since they slightly over powered the flavours of the rest of the snack - I think one olive per cuke slice will be just fine. Want a closer look? Magnifique.

Curtain Call

I had a stroke of brilliance. Sometimes a solution is right in front of you and you don't even know it. I had been planning to put up a laundry room and close it off so it would essentially become a dog room. There were a couple problems with this since the only light to the kitchen besides track lighting was the southern windows. The laundry room would effectively cut off all natural light to the kitchen. Also, it would make the kitchen very small. Added to which, Raimi has a problem with being enclosed. I just know a room like that would bear the evidence of his anxiety in no time.

Stroke. Of. Brilliance. I have extra curtains since I got an awesome sale on a few super great quality ones(as in $4 price tag on $90 curtains) and was not sure what to do with the cheap(er) left over Ikea ones. I also hauled three curtains rods from Calgary and had extra brackets. See where I'm going? So I hung the curtains in front of the washer/dryer/garbage/water heater. Voila. I also had some netting curtain material as well so I put that across so you can't really see the washer at all.So there is the expen where the two naughty younger dogs go when I'm out and Halo and Raimi are left loose but blocked off from the livingroom. There's even space to put a small kitchen table. I wonder if I can get one of those small round pub tables so I'm not dealing with the inevitable dog-chin-on-table-while-I-eat.

I also managed to get my hands on a nice little desk for my laptop, pens, envelopes etc and then, in a stroke of luck, I got an awesome deal on an Eastlake chair for $25. I love that chair. I think the desk and chair look great together particularly when decorated with a Mallaig.

Hurricane Shmurricane

We survived our very first hurricane yesterday. Hurricane Bill was heading up the coast as a Category 2 but by the time it got to Nova Scotia it was down graded to a Category 1. In the end it passed 75km south of Halifax and never really made landfall. Warnings were issued for Pictou County for heavy rainfall, high winds and a tropical storm. To see the path on the news would have you think it was much worse than we actually experienced.

Sunday morning started out eerily quiet and still. There was almost no movement in the air and the sky was a weird sort of green/grey color with no depth at all. You couldn't tell how high the clouds were and although it wasn't raining the humidity was the worst it's ever been.

By about 11am the winds had picked up and were heavily gusting but not dangerously so. It steadily increased in gusts which seemed to come from all directions. The gusts stayed high, mostly up at the tops of the trees and sometimes the top of a tree would be bent in the wind but its lower branches weren't moving at all. A bit eerie I must say.

The rain started about noon and gradually got heavier and heavier until it was just a steady heavy downpour. It doesn't look too impressive but a rain storm normally lasts about 20 minutes to a half hour and tapers off. This kind of rain kept up for hours.

The wind and rain continued and was probably at it's worst at about 3pm when over the next hour it began to taper off. By the early evening the rain had died almost completely stopped but the wind continued gusting and blustering from various directions with some force.

The clouds started to break up and we had a little sunshine for about a half hour - just to give you a good clear look at the tree litter on your lawn I guess! The sun went down and the wind remained pretty steady out of the northwest blowing away a lot of the humidity.

Today the skies are overcast and it's steadily raining. Hurricane Bill brought a low pressure system so we'll have rain for a few days to come. It's sort of welcome after the blistering heat we've been through these past couple weeks but the dogs don't get out as much! It was our first hurricane and we got off light ... I'm sure there will be more on the way - 'tis the season!

Mellow Yellow

I have still been slaving away at the house but now am on to the boring fiddly things that do not offer great blog content or much in the way of really good photos. So far for the past few days I've been painting trim and baseboard heaters, dapping some gaps in miders and casing joints and finally digging in the last of the stepping stones.

I did repaint the hall area with yellow and it looks much better - it's more appropriate with the house color scheme and now it feels very warm and cozy when you move from room to room. More organic ... look at me all designer minded!

Bake Me A Cake

I have been bragging for the last week about my kitchen transformation and since I finally finished it (for the most part) I took some photos. It took me 2 and a half days of constant work to get this completed and by now I'm more sick of painting than I ever was but I think the effort was worth it. And imagine if you will that this transformation cost me a mere $60.

Here is a photo reminder of what the kitchen looked like before I moved in. Not terrible, not great, just a kitchen that needs a little attention. Right after I moved in I painted the walls green and it made a huge improvement but I knew I wanted to work on the cabinets because the wood on the sink wall was stripped of lacquer and didn't match the other cabinets. In fact none of the cabinet stain matched each other. Still - it was livable although I wasn't in love with the green.I'd been giving some thought to what I wanted to do - restain the cabinets with a lacquer or just paint them. Because of the headaches of sanding to get all the wood to the same shade so the stain would be consistent I decided to paint them and this was the result. Notice the backsplash. Really notice it. What a pain in the ass. I didn't realize that wanting the tiling at an angle would be such a headache. I asked my Dad how to do it and he told me but what he was thinking was that putting tile on an angle is really hard to get right. Thank gawd it was vinyl tile and I could easily cut it ... plus it was super cheap.

For whatever reason I forgot to include the backsplash of the stove in my tile calculations so I had to go back and buy some more but now everything is pretty much complete. The only things left to do are to refinish the floor which is hardwood under a few layers of old flooring, change out the light which is pretty basic and ugly right now and finish siliconing the seams of the tiles to stop water getting behind them. I think it's pretty cute and I actually like being in there now ... I even baked some muffins yesterday but as it turns out when the recipe says to add baking soda it really means it.