The Emery Restoration

The Outside

2010-09-06T15:59:00.003-06:00

Remember this?

Now it looks like this. Amazing what a lick of paint, some tiles, and hours of backbreaking work will do. Who woulda thunk.

The Kitchen - Done Diddly Done

2010-08-18T19:27:00.010-06:00

Hey! What's up? How you doing? I know, I know, it's been ages. No, I still love you. No, don't cry. You're so ugly when you cry. Just hear me out. It's, well, you know, I needed some time. But I'm back. I just wanted to show you something I knew you'd like.

Remember this?

Well, it now looks like this.

You likey?

No? Still grumpy? Was it the "ugly when you cry"? Maybe this will cheer you up. Remember this?

No? I didn't tell you about that? An error on my part, and I apologise. Well anyway, now it looks like this.

Her names Olivia. Cute, no? She's alright I suppose.

Are we okay now? Not yet? Okay. I'll try a little harder in the next few weeks. And that's a promise you can take to the bank.

You're looking good by the way. Been working out?

Garden Aid

2008-05-08T17:35:00.012-06:00

Spring. It's crap. Everywhere you look there's greenery sprouting happily from the earth. Everywhere, that is, except for the Emery house. Two years of first time home ownership have taught me this: Mandy and I should be banned from gardens worldwide. If we were ever brought up for charges in a court of law it would be for herbicide, and we'd get life, because pretty much every plant we've ever laid our hands on has died, and quickly at that.

Some things come naturally to individuals. I'm good with people, Mandy is extremely talented when it comes to horses' rear ends and placing her slender arms up them*, Bob is a baseboard eater without equal, and Chinabean can lie in one position with her stuffed goose in her mouth for hours on end. It is these little gifts we are given in life, and our talents come naturally to us. Plants and their care, however, rank up there with our grasp of Urdu or ability to throat sing. Not good.

For educational purposes, I shall show you some of the things we've killed recently, or are in the process of killing.

This is our variegated house plant. I believe it is supposed to look like this:

Picture borrowed without permission from GardenWeb, courtesy of tjsangel. No bandwidth was stolen.

Our next exhibit is a once very pretty Eugenia topiary. You wouldn't believe the glowing vitality of the plant when I bought it. It was dead in three days.

I don't think we've really come to terms with it's passing. We've been watering it devotedly for three weeks. Mandy still asks me if I think it'll come back to life. I lie and tell her yes because the truth is too painful to face.

I could go on and on with photos of dead or dying plants we have in the house and the multitude we have in what we loosely term our "flowerbeds" outside the house, including but not limited to the two Alberta Spruces we planted last year that are now compost in one of the parks in town. The point is we've made it quite obvious to everyone involved that we've no bloody idea what we're doing when it comes to plant life, and today I finally faced the facts and called in some help.

So I was stopped at a red light the other day when I noticed the little blue car in front of me with a sweet-looking older woman behind the wheel. The little blue car had "Garden Consultant" and a telephone number written simply on it, and I thought to myself, now that's what we need - someone that can consult our garden and tell it how shitty a job it is doing. I called the number I'd jotted down from the back of the car today and an older woman with a lilting English accent answered. I told her how crap our garden was and she said she could help. After 5 minutes of my weeping gratitude, I straightened myself out and arranged for her to come round and consult our garden this coming Saturday. She charges $44 an hour, which, neatly, is the length of her average consultation apparently. After I hung up I imagined a little old English lady creating the perfect English country garden we've always dreamed of for half an hour.

I can't wait to see what Garden Consulting actually is. Plant psychology? Hippie crystals and mystic chanting? Or will she be like the management consultants in Office Space and, if so, can we fire the rose bush?

On a side note, work on the inside of the house is still moving along steadily, and we're not very far off from a photo essay of before and afters. Soon, I swear it.

* Any new readers out there, Mandy is a trained veterinarian, not a young woman with a horse/bottom fetish.

Houston, We Have A Problem

2008-04-17T19:17:00.005-06:00

As many sometime readers might know, there was a long stretch of inactivity on the Emery house over the past few months, but that all changed a month ago. Since that glorious day, loads has been done on the li'l ol' house in Lethbridge, and pretty much all of it fantastic work. It's all gone so swimmingly, in fact, that we've become a little smug around these parts. "Oh, we should get the floorers in," we said to each other. Cue two weeks later: "Oh, look the floorers have finished! And doesn't it all look marvelous!" we then said (and don't worry, we'll be showing off the pics soon). Today however, we came crashing back to earth again as we realised that renovations are never meant to be smooth and plain sailing. Case in point:

Those pipes. To the untrained eye they look like your normal piping in a bathroom - easily covered up and eminently manageable. To me, however, they look like the exposed large intestine of Satan, as viewed during autopsy. Why? Because those little tubes of plastic are likely going to cost me large amounts of dollars, and that does not make me happy.

See, what happened is that Mandy and I found a really nice looking vanity to install in the Impossibly Small Bathroom (or, our powder room, as the Canadians in my life inform me), and that vanity is a stand alone kinda structure. This means that those pipes are a) going to be visible when we install the very nice vanity, and b) the angles are all waaayy off for vanity installation. This means that we're going to have to get a plumber in to rearrange all the pipes, cut in to the wall and realign, and then pay to have said plumber complete the installation. And that's not even mentioning the cost of getting the electrician in to sort out those wayward wires to the top right of the screen (they extend high up and all over the place - if I work up the energy I'll show you it all in full detail later). It never ever ends, even when you think you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is why we work like dogs. So that we can fund the achingly slow improvement of our 100 year old house. Mandy and I are going to South America (Peru, Brazil and hopefully a few other places) for the month of November and, I swear, we will not talk about the house ONCE while we are away. I'm ready for this all to end.

Pop Quiz

2008-04-13T18:53:00.004-06:00

The first thing that comes to mind when looking at the above photo is:

a: Dustin Hoffman in "Outbreak"
b: Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate"
c: Sharon Stone in "Sliver"
d: My, you look scrumptious. Have you been working out?
e: There be noxious fumes in that there household. Mandy's been making bean burritos again.
f: Safety first, kids!
g: I'm a smallish pot-like receptacle for brewed tea, both diminutive and rotund
h: Sharon Stone in "Sliver"

There are no incorrect answers. And...begin.

Well, Not Quite What We Thought We Ordered...

2008-04-10T19:58:00.006-06:00

...but we'll take it anyway.

Long time readers of this, at times silly, houseblog might remember a post of January 2007, entitled "I See A Bad Mood Rising". There the viewer could witness the misery that was our front entryway/conservatory/mudroom/insert other term for welcoming area in the front of a house here. This is what the reader would have seen.

After almost two years of living with crappy looking OSB greeting us when we came home, today I came home to this:

Now I could have sworn that we picked out a different tiling type linoleum at the floor store, but beggars can't be choosers, and for the past year and a half we have definitely been beggars. Mandy really likes it, I think it's fine, and all in all it's about twenty truckloads of chicken manure better than the sight we had before.

A Taster

2008-04-08T07:23:00.002-06:00

Flooring: Questions Answered

2008-04-06T17:00:00.012-06:00

From the very first day we moved in to this old house of ours we've been aching to know what lay beneath the crappy 60¢ a square foot laminate. Aching I tell you. "Why didn't you just look?" I hear you think to yourself. Well, my silly, silly friend, I'll explain this slowly: if we tore up the laminate to have a look at what lay beneath we would then have to deal with whatever it was that was beneath the laminate, you follow? Much like an armadillo (now I've never met an armadillo so I've no idea of the accuracy of this next statement, being more comfortable talking about pangolin defensive responses, yet I will, bravely, I might add, use the armadillo as an example for the benefit of the many North American readers this blog has. Yes, you're welcome), much like an armadillo rolling itself into ball and pretending whoever is sniffing it simply isn't there, I have ignored the possible hardwood beneath the laminate because I knew in my heart of hearts that looking beneath said laminate would end up in me having to do a whole lot of work. Lazy, perhaps, but brilliant? Of course. I'm very much from the armadillo school of thought, me.

However that all changed today. We have the flooring people we contracted for the next bit of work coming tomorrow, which meant we had to knuckle down and finally reveal What Lay Beneath. In the space of one short afternoon we had the answer to all our flooring questions. Have a look.

Now I'm the last person that could ever be called an expert on these matters, in fact some might argue that I'm the complete opposite, but that looks like oak to me. If you have any other opinions please feel free to weigh in on the comments section, but that sure does look like oak. And I frigging hate oak. I loathe it, always have. Some oak does look fantastic, and a quick google of "old oak floors" turns up some beautiful examples of wide plank, barn-reclaimed oak that I'd kill to have in the house, but the above pic shows everything I dislike about the wood. Yes, I'm aware that this is tantamount to blasphemy on the houseblogging and old house renovation circuit, but you can't pick what you like. Apart from my dislike of oak, the planks are about an inch thick each, another thing we don't like. So we're covering it all up, starting tomorrow, but more about that later. And before anyone starts having heart palpitations, I plan on using kate h.'s excellent suggestion from my last post, namely having a bunch of photos of the floor available so future owners know what they're dealing with. Besides, the floor we're installing tomorrow will be a floating floor, leaving the oak pristine beneath.

My favourite thing about today was seeing the cheap laminate fly out of the bedroom window, followed closely by the discovery of how quick and easy it is to get rid of laminate when you finally get around to doing it. The whole removal process took about 30 minutes for three biggish rooms.

The day's activities revealed one other point of interest. We watch a lot of CSI (except for the Miami crap. That David Caruso is hands down the most irritating man on television), and I believe this is what forensic investigators term "a void". The young and faint of heart may need to turn away for the next picture - you may find it disturbing.

Yep. That's where it happened. That's where a crazy lady painted the copper grates I spent so long cleaning off with a paint sprayer. I'm sorry you had to see that.

One last note. By Wednesday, the abyss in our bedroom should be no more. Everyone, please say goodbye to the hole.

Goodbye hole.

The Great Fireplace Makeover

2008-04-03T19:49:00.005-06:00

Hi. Remember me? Thought not. I'm Chris, and this is my houseblog. Welcome, tread lightly, leave only footprints, pick up a paintbrush and help me finish this bastard off and all that nonsense.

Anyway, as I mentioned one post ago, we have in fact been working on our house, even if all evidence suggests the contrary. We've been stealing hours from our hectic workaday lives to paint and plan and organise people to work on our little old bungalow, and we're inching our way to finishdom. I've lamented many a time on this blog on how I never seem to have the energy anymore to tackle the big projects and have handed the majority of these over to licensed professionals, but one project we're tackling at the mo will be done entirely by yours truly. And may God have mercy on it, etc. etc. But let me skip the whining and get right to the skinny:

One of the things we fell in love with in this old house upon our first viewing was the fireplace. It greets you as soon as you walk in the door, and the actual fireplace of it is beautiful. Ancient and original, untouched by the pre-owners godforsaken love affair with green paint, it is the epitome of everything we love in an old house, even to the point where we can live with the fact that it doesn't work (and will never work, according to the experts we've had in). One thing we've never liked is the surround however. I'd bet Bob's life that the brickwork is not original. But then I'd bet Bob's life just for a Wendy's Baconator after what he did to our baseboards last year, so I'm not the best person to trust, right? You have a look and judge for yourself, you doubter you.

So here's my thought: What if I sand the mantle down, getting rid of the multitude of burn marks and paint splodges in the process, then stain it a deep mahogany, so deep brown that it almost borders on black, and then paint the brickwork a high gloss white? The dark brown of the wood would tie in nicely with the dark tones of the fireplace proper, and the white would keep the focus right where it should be - on our bronze/copper/whatever the hell, I'm past caring, fireplace insert. Nice, right? I'm thinking the white is a gamble, but I dislike the brickwork enough to try, and woe fall upon the man or dog who tries to stand in my way. Chinabean just read that and stepped backwards in sheer terror of her powerful master. She better recognise.

I think the interesting grain of the mantle might look pretty cool once stained.

So far I've got about an hours worth of sanding on the mantle under my belt (the picture above is pre-sanding), and more is needed. The brickwork painting should be pretty straightforward, if a little labour intensive from what I've read, and then one big polish of the fireplace itself and we'll be on like a scone.

I've just no idea when I'm going to get round to finishing it. We're moving rooms around all weekend in preparation for the flooring people who start on Monday. I'm sorry, I have to say that again. In preparation for the flooring people who start on Monday. I don't think there are more exciting words in the English language than that little phrase. Except perhaps the word "moist", which is both fun to say and exceedingly filthy at the same time. But I digress. As I was saying, I'm not sure when I'll have the time to finish it, but I think it'll be worth the effort.

A Letter To My Blog

2008-03-25T17:31:00.004-06:00

Dear Emery Restoration

Oh poor neglected houseblog. I've been meaning to write, I really have. It's just been a crazy month and every time I seat my aching arse down at the computer after yet another hard days work, I find myself saying, "I'll do a post any minute now, I swear it. Let me ease into it by, I don't know, looking at some humourous cat photos first. Now Mandy wants to see what that pathetic excuse for a human being Perez Hilton has to say. And what's that you say? Shockwave has a new time wasting game up? It'll only take a moment I promise...". Rinse and repeat. Basically I'm tired. Tired after working like a dog, and tired of living in an unfinished house, and I struggle to get up the energy to type a few half-arsed witty lines on you, oh blog of mine.

But wait! Before you look away, blog, we have been getting stuff done around here! We really have. The bedroom, hold your breath now, is 90% finished. And it looks awesome. All that's left is the flooring and then we can move out of the cramped little room in the totally ridiculous second floor back into a bedroom without a hole in the middle of it. I know, I know, you want to see what it looks like, blog, but you'll have to wait. We've done so much work that I think I'll do a before and after for greater effect.

It's not just the bedroom we've worked on either. We've had Eli of the Masterful Mudding in and he's finished off the dining room and living room. The joins are crisp and succulent. The archway is beautifully finished and sultry. The ceiling is flat and gagging for a coat of primer. Original light fixtures have been repaired, cleaned up and await installation. In short, we're so close I can taste it to the point where we can call our friends and organise our first dinner party with martinis and roast chicken and...you get the picture. Work is being worked, and the Emery pocket book is getting lighter by the mud and floor load.

I'll post some pictures on your forsaken carcass, blog, and soon. Bear with us a little longer and all will be revealed.

By the way, I want you to know it's not you, it's me. You've done nothing wrong here. I've just got to get my head and living space right, and we'll be reunited like the codependent types we know each other to be.

Lots of love

Chris

My Breath Is Just Fine After All

2008-02-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

False alarm, people, you can come a little closer. Apparently my BO situation is just fine, thanks for asking.

So this morning I called my flooring guy to find out what the heck is up with the no quote situation, and he came over all confused. "But I sent it to you on the 24th of January", he said. Bloody spam filters, I thought. That GMail nonsense is far too efficient. I've missed loads of emails, and not only spam. Emails that could potentially be life-changing have missed my inbox and gone straight to the spam folder. Why, just the other day I glanced at my so-called spam and found out that General Odewaje of Lagos, Nigeria, had sadly passed away in a roadside ambush, and his family had wanted to use me (me! Little ol' me!) as a contact and holder of a large amount of his foreign currency! And best of all, I get to keep 20% of the $1. 9 billion dollars! Ha! I guess we don't need to worry about holes in bedroom floors any more, Chinabean, we're on our way up in the world. And, according to one of the other emails I found, I can make that move on up with a much larger unit with which to please my "sad woman" (I wish Mandy would keep the details of our personal life to herself), and an authentic Rolex of my very own! Wizard.

Anyway, so buddy sent through a duplicate of the quote, and I'm not ashamed to say I spat my tea all over the computer screen when I saw the rather large number at the end of the page. I know I said that we'd probably accept the proposal no matter the figure, but there's only so many large digits this poor immigrant can take. The company is very well considered in town and their work is supposed to be timely and professional, but I'm prepared to take a little less timeliness and a bit of sloppy work (hey, I've been doing all the work up until now, right?) if it means our unborn child might be able to go to school one day, and do so wearing clothes. So I've decided to get a few more quotes in, which is after all the way you're supposed to do things.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to top up my Cialis supplies.

You Can Be Honest, Does My Breath Smell?

2008-02-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

Do I have noxious body odour? I had spinach the other day. Do I still have some in my teeth? No? Well. That's me stumped then.

Why the sudden interest in my personal hygiene? Scroll down a little if you will. See the blog entry before last? Revelations and Head Hangings? If you scan through that you'll note that we were having the floor guy over the next day to have a look at our ~~chasm~~ floors and structure a quote based thereon. Please note the date of that entry: Jan 15. Now please note todays date: Feb 4. Through the use of my super-advanced mathematics skill I have deduced that that makes it 20 days since buddy stopped by to give us a quote. When I had set up that appointment Billy O'NoQuote had told me, "I'd love to come by! This is our quiet time of year. Yes, I'm sure we could get started right away." And still nothing.

Mandy and I have talked this one through taking every angle in to account, and the only thing I can think of is that Matey NoQuote McGee is not interested in doing the floors in our house.

And the strangest thing of all is this: I'm kind of hurt.

Tough Flooring Choices

2008-01-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

Cork. What a wondrous thing. I use it regularly, mainly by removing it from a nice bottle of Chablis. Yes, you could say I'm well versed in the awesomeness of cork, and over the years I'm not ashamed to say I've become a bit of an expert on the subject, at least in it's cylindrical use. Imagine my surprise then, when the John the Flooring Guy (not his proper title) came by the other day and said to us, "hey! You should put cork down on this kitchen floor! It wears up well and is so warm in winter". Cue me: "Don't be an idiot, John. I don't care how warm cork is, we'd be falling on our arses every ten minutes when they roll out from underfoot. Besides, we've got a perfectly fine kitchen floor what with this splintery mess of fir".

It turns out: Not so much. According to John, our splintery, water damaged floor is beyond the repair of trained professionals, and no matter how hard we try we'll never be satisfied with the result after the expense. Apparently the massive gaps between boards, multiple boards damaged beyond repair, and splinteriness meant that the diagnosis was terminal. Float some cork boards over the top of them however and we may be in business. Or he may be in business (to the tune of a large digit number). Either way, I'm too tired of the splinters to care. So cork it is.

After stopping by his showroom later on in the day and perusing the mounds of cork options, the above were the three maybes with which we came home. Meet Eric the Albino Cork, left, California Surfer Cork, middle, and I Immigrated From the Congo Cork, right. They had much fancier names, but I couldn't be bothered to make note of them, the slack blogger that I am. In the showroom we kind of fancied Eric, the light one to the left. We thought the whiteness might make the room feel bigger. Shows you how much we know, because as soon as we got home it was obvious that Eric sucked big time. Surfer cork matched the cabinetry almost exactly in colour, making it all look too same-y. Congo cork? To our surprise, perfect. It has great texture, with hints of brown in the darkness and tied in perfectly with the room. Dutifully we laid Congo Cork in different areas of the room at different times of the day for 4 days and it was perfect in every way.

So, failing a stupidly expensive quote from the flooring people, we've opted to put cork down in the kitchen over our fir. With the dogs hurtling in and out of the back door and the occasional spill from a glass of Chablis, it'll stand up well and won't need refinishing in the near future, or so we're told. And it'll look great with our new cabinetry, as the below image shows quite well I think.

The best part is that cork is a renewable resource, meaning that my beautiful, somewhat hippyish wife, is on board like the somewhat hippy she is. And that means everyones happy, right?

And now you know.

Revelations and Head Hangings

2008-01-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

I've been dreading this moment, I really have.

"Forsooth", you say, "you jest yet again yon jester". And verily I say to you, I shit you not. I really have. Like a wallflower pushing himself off of the high school dance hall wall to approach the pretty girl in the middle of the dance floor in the yellow polka dot dress, I am afraid. Strange, I know. Why would I dread stepping up to a mere piddly squat of a blog just to write some more of my inanities and tales of DIY mediocrity? Pish. Easy. And it is, but there is a problem you see. I'm losing my enthusiasm for all of this. It's been a year and half now that I've slowly been hammering away at this house, and I'm tired. I'm tired of the whole unfinishedness of it all. For one thing, I've learned that a person can get used to living in any state. Wandering past a homeless person living in a garbage bag with a three legged ferret you think to yourself, "how can someone live like that? How can anyone be happy living like that?". But I know how they do it, I really do, because for the past month we've been sleeping in a bedroom of unfinished walls and a hole in the floor that could swallow two Chinabeans without even so much as a polite burp, and it seems perfectly normal to us now. We go to bed, chasm yawning just to the left of our laundry basket, and we don't even blink an eye. It's normal. If we had a child in the house and Social Services came to visit, we'd probably be without child pretty sharpish, and yet we'd look at each other and say, "Well. What the hell's the problem with them I wonder?". But, you see, Social Services would be spot on with their assessment, because it isn't normal. It is not considered normal to be living in a house that has very large parts of wall and ceiling and floor missing for months of a time. Normal people don't come home of an evening after a hard day's work and say to one another, "How was your day, love? Good? Mind the hole, you missed it by an inch just then, and that reminds me, have you seen the dog recently and just what is that yapping noise sound coming from the massive black pit in the bedroom?". I don't mean to make light of the plight of homeless people and yes it's all very sad and that, but my point is you can get used to anything. It's not that long a walk from living with a gigantic abyss in ones floor to the point where you keep all your treasures in a Safeway shopping trolley down on the corner of 9th Street and the soup kitchen on 8th Ave and you're 100% certain that you are in fact Alexander the Great and the Scientologists are out to do nasty things to your bottom. It really isn't.

So I'm fed up. I've had enough. In a way I suppose I've been building up to this moment for some time now if I look at the record I've left for myself in the form of this blog. I'm calling it all off. I'm bringing in the big guns. And I'm starting tomorrow. We've an appointment with the owner of the best flooring company in town tomorrow morning who is coming by to give us a quote (which we will almost certainly accept) to redo all of the floors on the main level, and redo them properly. And yes, thank you very much, I do feel guilty. I feel guilty because I should just suck it up and plod on my DIYing path like all of the good people over at Houseblogs.net who are doing magical work on their houses. There'll be the wondrous feeling of achievement at the end in 2014 and all that. Bugger it though. We don't plan on living in this house forever, and we could be in a completely different city on the other side of the world in five years time, and all I want to do is enjoy the lovely little old house we own and be able to invite people round for a dinner party without stocking up on tetanus medication first and not lose the occasional dog to the gaping maw of a hole in the bedroom.

So I'm throwing in the DIY towel for now at least. I will restrict myself to a few easy jobs however (I've got a mind to buy a few doors from the local building supply store for artful aging and staining, for example), but the big jobs I want done, and done yesterday. The next few months are going to be a whirlwind of activity in the Emery house, and I don't plan on lifting a finger.

I will however keep you updated on all the work I'm not doing. I owe you that much at least.

The Acid Test

2007-11-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

Right, so we've got stains on our kitchen floor. Big black watery stains. This is to be expected when you stop and think about it. After all, in all likelihood these floors are 70 to 100 years old. And that's not even taking into account the Floating Fridge Fiasco of Oh-Six. Understandable yes? That doesn't make 'em pretty though. Now for the past month Mandy and I have been wavering between the "Look at the rustic charm" viewpoint and the "Man those are ugly ass big black stains we've got on our floor". As mentioned in my last blog post, my (actual paying) work has been crazy and all thoughts of house work left our plans for a good while. Yesterday, however, I tasted the sweet bliss of a morning off and performed a little test on one big black stain, and the result may just alter the way we deal with the whole floor because, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, something I tackled in this house worked out pretty well at the first attempt. It's a strange sensation.

Here's what I did.

Look how rustic and charming that big ugly ass stain is on the floor!

Having bought a super sized bottle of vinegar over the weekend expressly for this purpose, I set to work by pouring a little on a paper towel and rubbing it in to the stain. Nothing happened. The stain didn't magically disappear as I'd hoped. If anything, wetting the stain had made it easier to spot. "Oh look," I said to myself, "Now I can see the stain from the other side of the kitchen. Brilliant!".

A little bummed and with thoughts of bleach and oxalic acid swirling around in my head representing steps two and three respectively, I wandered off. A came back a couple minutes later to see this. As the vinegar dried, the areas where I'd scrubbed the hardest seemed to be lightening.

After ten minutes I was convinced that there'd been a lightening in the stain. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm thinking if I pick up a plastic bristled scrubbing brush some time today and scrub some vinegar into the crevices I might be on to a winner.

Here's a before and after close up of a spot I'd concentrated on.

Before

After 30 seconds of rubbing. Not bad eh?

And the best thing of all? No toxic dog-eating chemicals or itchy latex glove wearing. An all natural cleaner that's dirt cheap and in ample supply.

"Cheap". What a beautiful word that is. Almost as nice as "free".

More Adventures in the Kitchen Chronicles

2007-11-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

To all the Emery faucet haters out there, I got some bad news for you - we went ahead with the install. Mandy wasn't bouncing off the walls when she saw it (not that she's your Martha Stewart, bouncing off the walls for faucets kinda gal anyway), but really liked its lines and functionality. And now that it's in, I'm glad I stuck to my guns. For usefulness with it's extender attachment and it's brushed nickeldness, I give it a ten for our kitchen. All the cutesy, olde worlde (any word with an unnecessary 'e' on the end if it I loathe with all the fibre of my being, by the way) faucets felt cheape and had, I predicted, an inherently shorte life span when viewed from up close. This is solid and looks good. So there.

Here is the view of our installed faucet, with an unnecessary 'e' nowhere to be seen.

Cam, our great cabinet guy, called me yesterday morning to let me know that the maple casings I bought have been stained to match our maple cabinets, so would I mind coming by and picking them up thank you very much? As my work schedule has been insane over the last two weeks (hence my lack of blog postage - yes, we are in fact alive all of those that left concerned comments during our blogging break, and thanks very much for asking), I haven't had a chance to do much more to the kitchen, even though we've some way to go before considering ourselves done.

Cam, for his part, has completed all his work, save the install of the kick plates scheduled for whenever we finally manage to finish off the fir floor restoration. He popped by last week to install the wine rack above the fridge and our pull out spice rack - two little kitchen upgrades with which I'm very happy.

My good blogging friend Julia expressed concern that the heat rising from the fridge would not be good for the wine stored above. So far we haven't seen any problems and besides, as anyone that has ever come over to our house for a dinner party knows, a bottle of wine does not tend to spend too much time unopened once it's made it past the front door of the Emery house. I don't foresee any issues there.

In other news, our bedroom floor is now free of the huge pile of rubble you might have seen if you've been reading the blog over the past month or so. Bill, the great old electrician we found by accident two months ago, is coming by next week to install new outlets and overhead lighting, and also to rewire some very illegal, un-code-worthy existing work that may or may not have been done by yours truly. Then we're throwing up the drywall and hopefully getting our bedroom ready for move in before the family descends upon us from all corners of the globe for Christmas.

I hope to be able to post more in the upcoming week, but the way work has been going I'm not holding my breath unfortunately.

But enough about me, how've things been with you?

An Executive Decision

2007-10-28T17:39:00.000-06:00

I did keep the receipt however, and I'll wait until Mandy's back from partying with friends in Ontario before going ahead with the install.

The new faucet is reassuringly weighty and large though (anything smaller would look out of place with the massive sink I reckon), and the satin nickel finish ties in nicely with the cabinet pulls. Is it perhaps a little too modern? Not country kitcheny enough? Maybe. But looking at it resting in place I'm getting to like it more and more.

Long Live Kitchen Porn

2007-10-25T09:59:00.000-06:00

Cameron of Lethbridge super kitchen cabinetry fame has finished up for the week. There are still a couple things to do with the cabinets that need finishing off but that work is going to be completed back at his workshop, so in the meantime Mandy and I get to sit around at home and gawk at our new kitchen without drooling in front of company. Which is nice.

We dropped in a couple of not-yet-functional pieces, you know, to measure and stuff. Whom I kidding? Mandy and I wanted to imagine what it'll look like when we're completely done. So you'll notice the apron-fronted sink is resting in place and our stove top is enjoying the feeling of its new home in our island, as opposed to its old home in a box on our dining room floor for the last few months. That white cavity at the bottom left of the picture is for our new oven, which should be hooked up by the end of business tomorrow, and the hole to the left of the fridge is for the yet to be bought dishwasher.

This should give you a positional idea of the island, and also let you in on how much work there is still to be done, i.e. the floor. The dark patch on the floorboards towards the Impossibly Small Bathroom is water damage to a varying degree of severity. We've yet to establish if we'll be fixing this up as best we can and polying over, telling friends and family we did it intentionally for character, or whether we're going to go to the hassle and expense of sourcing replacement salvaged boards. I wouldn't even know where to start with that in this city, but wherever the start might be I'm sure the end will be at a big road sign saying "Expensive".

Islandy goodness, with shiny new handles and shiny new stove top.

A better view of our apron-fronted sink. Yes it is an IKEA apron-fronted sink. I am ashamed to say that no longer because, for all the sins of Satan's favourite furniture supplier, this sink rocks. If this was a bad American movie and I was standing in a crowded room saying that, someone in the room would start a slow clap and then stand up slowly off their chair, causing someone else a few feet away to clap and stand and so and so forth. I might be seen to stand there, proud and, yes, defiant, with perchance a small tear at the corner of my eye as I gaze firmly into my IKEA sink-ed future. But I digress.

So as I mentioned, we're nowhere near done. Cameron still has to install the wine rack above the fridge and there was a change of plans mid-install when we decided (after Cameron's suggestion) to add a concealed pull out spice rack in the cabinetry (the home for this can be seen in the last picture above, on the above right of the sink, where a sliver of whiteness can be seen). We also have to sort out the window and door casings. Cameron very kindly has agreed to stain them the same colour as our cabinets, so on Sunday I'm going to try and pick up some large width maple casings that will tie in nicely with the cabinets. And I haven't even mentioned the back splash yet.

We also have the tiring task of finishing off the fir hardwood and the decisions associated with that (see: water damage discussion above). The electrician will be coming tomorrow to wire everything up, and then we have to organise the plumber to come for sink install. Why don't we have that done tomorrow, you ask? Because we only went and forgot to buy a faucet didn't we? So there's yet another decision to make, and hopefully quickly as we're fed up with washing dishes in the minuscule bathroom sink. Unfortunately Mandy is away until next week Wednesday, and being a marginally bright individual I know better than to risk choosing the faucet myself. We're in this together after all, and besides, she castrates animals for a living. I mean, would you chance it?

The Cabinets Have Arrizen

2007-10-23T18:48:00.000-06:00

A kitchen without cabinets is like a face without a nose, or perhaps our deck without huge chunks eaten out of it by a small black dog - something just looks wrong.

Our kitchen is still cabinetless. Without cabinets, if you will. But we're darn close to having a kitchen with some cabinets. And, illustrated in glorious computery technicolour, I present the lead up to our current position on the Emery scale of kitchen-with-cabinets. Strap on your bootstraps folks, 'coz we got ourselves a whack of photos to go through.

The first day of cabinet installation, circa 10am after Cameron of Fehr Woodwork (I plug shamelessly for the guy, he does great work) had been at work for just over an hour.

Picture taken at the same time of cabinets sitting and minding their own business on our dining room floor.

Pre kitchen reno, we had a shallow and pointless cupboard (think: America's Next Top Model contestant) that housed a shallow and pointless spice rack and a marvelous view of a sewage pipe. Even though I enjoyed my daily view of piped sewage, we decided to do away with the cupboard and drywall over the whole affair...

...like so.

That self same wall looks like this now.
I will miss that sewage pipe.

A closer view of our display glass faced cabinetry on the old pointless cupboard wall. Where once we looked at human waste pipery, now we shall look at, I don't know, plates and stuff. That's Mandy's department.

Cor, look at the crown moulding on that!

A bad photo of the view of our fridge and fridge associated cabinetry. The empty space above the fridge will be a wine rack, the slats of which Cameron should be installing in the next day or two.

Looking at this photo makes me want to run out right now and buy a new shiny stainless steel fridge to match our other new appliances, but sadly the budget does not allow that this month.

This is a view of our new island, from the back door and drawers side.

...and the dining room view of the island. You can see this wooden edifice all the way from the front door. I was hoping it wouldn't look too dominating, but I think it looks superb.

I like wood.
Particularly cinnamon stained maple.

The island! Featuring: All New Countertop!

A better view of the counter top.

After much gnashing and wailing we decided to go with laminate for the counters. We really would have preferred to shell out for granite, and toyed with the idea for a long time, but what with how much this house is costing us right now and the money needed to pay for this kitchen upgrade, we thought it a better idea to wait a while. We can always get granite next year right? But in the meantime I'm over the moon with the way the laminate has turned out. The colour is just right with the yellow walls and maple cabinets. I'm almost bummed that we're going to have to install a stove top in the above big expanse of island. The unbroken laminate looks great in the middle of the room and it'd be a perfect breakfast table and food prep area. Oh well. We'll have 13 inches of counter on either side of the stove I suppose.

Watch this space! More kitchen developments to come.

Limbo

2007-10-18T10:02:00.000-06:00

I suppose I can't really say I'm surprised. I mean, after a year of this restovation nonsense you'd think I'd be used to things not running quite according to schedule, and I am. Your hiccups and little setbacks are par for the course, and the thinking renovator budgets for these little potholes in the road of old house repair in his or her renovation time line. So I'm not surprised. A little disappointed, yes, but not surprised.

Our new kitchen cabinet installation has been pushed back a week. Our original install date was October 1st. It then got pushed back to "probably the 16th or 17th". This was great news, as it meant we could hurriedly prep the hardwood floors for installation and generally get our drywalling ducks in a row. Now, however, we're looking at October 22nd. And that's fine. It really is. After all, what's the sense in turning the screws on our cabinet maker and ending up with a rush job for a kitchen? No, we're paying good money here for custom cabinetry thank you very bloody much, and we want them to be perfect. So take the extra time, Mr. cabinet maker, if it means our cabinets will be just right. But I can tell you, living without a kitchen sink and doing your dishes in the Impossibly Small Bathroom with its Impossibly Small Sink gets very old very quickly. And I never would have thunk it, but eating out every night gets pretty tiresome too - and much faster than you'd think.

So here I am. In renovation limbo.

Sure, I could and should be working on this mess:

A lifetime ago this was our master bedroom. It shall be again, he says confidently.

Bloody awful right? "On your bike Chris," you think to yourself, "Get cleaning up". The aching bones of 'flu and my apparent nighttime swallowing of some sort of massive phlegm monster (and therefore inability to breathe without sounding like a 90 year old chain smoker) prevent me from launching in with both feet, I'm afraid. 100-year old wall dust does not make a sick man well, I'm thinking.

So instead I'll just be sitting here. In limbo. Until something like a person installing new cabinets in our kitchen happens.

A Work In Progress

2007-10-14T18:10:00.000-06:00

Let's recap.

Yesterday morning our kitchen floor looked like this.

After about 7 hours of work spread over the last two days, the floor now looks like this.

By no stretch of the imagination is it perfect. Yet. But it is a hell of a lot better than it used to be.

With the aid of the Beast, pictured below and constructed in about 1823 by my guess, we were able to sand down through the coarser grits (20, and a lot of 20, through 40 to 60) and prep the floors for the installation of our long awaited cabinets. After Cameron installs our new cabinets we'll finish off the floor by sanding them with 80 through to 150 grit, then poly and polish 'em up.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've a date with my bed and television, where I shall curl myself into the foetal position and weep for my aching muscles with the aid of a very, very cold beer.

The Kitchen Chronicles - Episode 21 452:

2007-10-12T18:28:00.000-06:00

In Which We Get Some Colour...

Some more than others.

Bear in mind that colour reproduction on a computer screen when combined with my shocking photo skills and lack of proper lighting is less than, shall we say, accurate. In actuality it is perfect. The yellow is just the right shade - not too lemony, not too in your face and, as Mandy said, just the right side of buttery.

The cabinets will be going in next week (hopefully), so check back in to see whether we make a hash of the hardwood floor reconditioning.

I should say, how much of a hash we make of the hardwood floor reconditioning I suppose. Keep fingers and toes crossed!

Primed! The Proof.

2007-10-10T20:47:00.000-06:00

Dear Reader

Please find attached one picture of a primed kitchen in the gentle glow of a hideous ceiling fan.

Love

Chris

The fan will be a kitchen casualty, but we've yet to find a suitable replacement. Having said that, we did find a really cool pot rack light thingy, but the ceiling light is going to need a post all its own so I'll leave it at that for now.

The above fantastically shot picture (look how fantastic it is! The angles! The uhh, whiteness!) was shot about five minutes ago after we got the first coat of ceiling paint on, adding to the fascinating whiteness of the photo. Yes, I know I had said that the first coat of wall paint would be on by now, but if you really believed that I'm that organised then you're obviously a new visitor to this blog.

As a harsh reminder, this is what the ceiling looked like previously. Ugly, brown and speckly, like a leprous ginger child with a bad sunburn. Side note: I swear when I took this photo that eight foot tall runner bean of a man to the bottom left of the picture was not there. Yes, the Emery house may have a monstrously large ghost. Du-du-du-duuuuh...

Scratch that. I've looked a little closer and recognised the ghost is Eli, our friend who did the drywalling on his own drywall stilts.

Still, spooky.

Prime Kitchen: Check

2007-10-08T17:11:00.000-06:00

Up here in the frozen North (okay, okay, Canada. It's not that frozen. It's actually lovely out today) it is Thanksgiving. For most Canadians I'd imagine this is a special time to spend with one's family, a time for reflection on all that has gone before and a chance to give thanks for all that will come. Most Canadians. Being a stinking bloody immigrant (my words), today meant one thing to me: a day off work, which I was pretty thankful for I don't mind telling you. And what does a day off work mean when you own an old house undergoing a restovation? It means a day of work. Except on the house, instead of behind a desk somewhere or with your hand up a cow's bottom (depending on whether you're asking Mandy or me). Man I miss real days off.

So on our day off we primed the kitchen in prep for painting and cabinet install, and it looks frigging awesome. I took a few photos, but realised that all you'd see was a primed kitchen, and no matter how closely you've been following this renovation I can't see how any of you might get excited about that, so I'll spare you. What I will tell you to keep you on the tenterhooks I so delusionally imagine you hanging on is that we've decided and bought a final kitchen colour. It's yellow, and it's called Ray of Light, a name that I loathe because it makes me think of Madonna and then I throw up a little in my mouth.

I have no pictures of it yet, but I'm hoping it'll make our kitchen look like this:

That's pretty close to the colour we've decided on, and it feels right. The perfect country kitchen-ish look. But that's on paper, and even Communism and the Britney Spears comeback looked good on paper, so we'll just have to wait and see. See what I mean? Tenterhooks I tell you.

The first coat should go on tomorrow and I'll try report back then.

Unless it's horrible, and then we'll quietly return the two gallons of paint we bought and pretend this post never happened.

Or A Freight Train

2007-10-03T11:11:00.000-06:00

The kitchen walls are steaming on forward.

Last week's walls
(those walls are so, like, last week)

Today's walls. The new look is white and drywall.
It's what all the cool kitchens are wearing this season.

You can see that there's still some work to on the bottom left of your pic where the cabinets were originally, but that'll be fixed up by the end of the day.

Mandy demonstrates how to use last week's still functional sink. Clothing: model's own.

The same view today.

See those clean lines for the cabinetry to butt up against? Go on, have a closer look.

I swear, Eli's a friggin' artiste! Yes, I know all he used was corner beading, but I would have been there for a week, trying to get the corners perfect armed only with my atrocious mud work. It takes a drywaller to know the obvious. "Beading!" I said to Eli, "Of course!"

Next, we prime, and then we get to the subject of the hour: those hardwood floors.