Bath Bomb

The bathroom, is 99% complete. I have a new shower curtain planned but that won't be for a little while yet. The main thing that's been bugging me is the vanity. It was clearly a cheap option and while cute was not intended for a main bathroom, probably a half bath under some stairs or something. As a reminder here is the bathroom when I first saw it.

And here is the bathroom now. Repainted, new baseboards, over the toilet cabinet, window insulated, casing installed, new mirror and a new vanity. In all I the bathroom reno cost about $300 which I think is pretty good. Big thanks to my Dad and his endless patience with the vanity! I am so proud of the way it looks now ... the previous useless owners wouldn't recognise it. Probably because it displays a modicum of taste.

Get a Handle On It

What's worse than having a door handle that you can't open from the inside? A door handle you can't open from the outside. It's truly distressing when you are outside in your backyard preparing to mow the lawn and you realize that not only are you and four dogs locked in your backyard, but that the front door is also locked and you have no way to get into your house.

It's about this time that you curse the people who made the POS door handle you've been struggling with since you moved in. It's also about the time you remember that you removed the screen from the dining window and that the window itself is not locked. So you climb through the window, struggle with the back door handle and then realize it now won't open from the inside.

So you get a screw driver, thinking you're clever as shit, and take off the interior handle, pop the exterior handle off and now what? Now you have a peice of metal that runs through your door and into a hole in the frame that you can't do sweet eff all with. The dogs are on the outside thinking 'We're thirsty' and you're on the inside thinking 'Very. Bad. Words.' So you decide today is the day you will go and get the matching handle to the front door which has never given you a stitch of trouble in the 3 weeks you've owned it.

So, have a shower(because you're all sweaty from the lawn mowing), get dressed, load dogs in truck, buy handle, take dogs for walk in the rain, get home and stare angrily at the still sealed door. Think more bad words, suppress the rage and pry that sucker out of there doing as little damage to the door and frame as possible. Voila, one open door.

So now the handle is installed and guess what? It works ... beautifully. There is something to be said for a door handle that will let you in your own house.

Dining Out

I am a naughty renovator. Well, blog updating renovator anyway. I have completed so many tasks now I don't know where to begin. How about the dining room which has taken on the most dramatic change in recent weeks.

The dining room was rough, ugly carpet (gak) over lino on plywood. All four (yes ... 4) plugs in the room had been painted over multilple times so you couldn't really plug anything into the holes anymore, and the walls were a vibrant shade of lime green. Gag me. It was used as a bedroom in any case although I'm not sure how anyone could possibly have slept in there with that color. Must have been a teenager.

I removed the door, the carpet, the lino and the light and got to work. Since I wanted to compliment the several pieces of black and white artwork I possess I decided to paint the room a shade of grey with a soft lilac/purple hue so the room wouldn't be so cold. I then installed strips of vinyl flooring called barnboard which picks up the shade of the walls. All that is left, as with the rest of the house, is the ceiling.

So ... come on by if you're in the area and I can burn you some dinner.

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.