The Bathrooms

The bathrooms in the house were just crazy! The master bathroom was an AWFUL hospital green and the ensuite was a CRAZY maple leafs shrine! OUT with all of it! Back to white! We are going to leave these for a couple of years until we change everything over.

Master Bathroom Before

After

Ensuite Before...The shrine

After

The Bedrooms

A lot had to be done in the bedrooms. The first things we got rid of were the carpets and the valances over the windows. From there we let the kids pick their wall colours. Emily wanted pink and purple and David wanted "racing" green. We just decided to carry on the colours from the living room for our bedroom. We took out the maple leafs light fixtures and put in more conventional ones, tore out the blue blinds and put up white ones, changed the switches and plug in's out, and painted all the ceilings. Thankfully Bill came and helped us paint all of the trim as it would have taken me a full day what took him 3 hours. We put in the laminate in the bedrooms as well.

David's room before

Emily's room before

Master Bedroom Before

The Living Room

As the living room was the most dramatic change I'll talk about it first. The first things to get tossed out were the curtains and the curtain rod. They hadn't been cleaned in years and were disgustingly full of dust and dirt. We ripped out the baseboards and tore up all the carpeting. My favourite thing to get rid of in this room was the 70's paneling that he had painted "Maple Leafs" blue. The paneling was glued over the drywall so it made quite the mess of the drywall. We tried peeling off all the glued parts but found it was more effective to sand down the glue so we could paint over it. We also had a glass window replaced from old yellow glass to clear glass. That made a huge difference in how bright the living room was. We also got rid of the drywall valances over the windows which has helped to open up the room. We installed new baseboards, painted the trim, and installed new light fixtures and plugs and switches....Gorgeous!

BEFORE

AFTER

A month and a half later

Wow, it's hard to believe that life is getting back to normal after the "renovation workout". The month of June was NUTS! I'm going to have to do a room-by-room replay to actually mention everything that we have done to the house to date.

The house has gone from being a Maple Leafs shrine to a wonderful place to live.The maple leafs memorabilia is GONE. It is all packed up and ready to send off to a few friends who want it. The walls have gone from tacky blue to tasteful green, the carpets are gone and we have installed laminate flooring. The light fixtures have been changed and the house is CLEAN. No more of his dog hair or yuckky bugs lying around. The house now smells nice and not like a wet dog. The animals and kids have adjusted well to the move. The dog and the kids LOVE their back yard and our back deck is a little piece of heaven. We can't wait to get the family room downstairs completed so the kids have a place to play and watch television without being underfoot.


Most of our things are unpacked now except for the stuff that will be going into the family room. Once that is done I vow to get rid of all the boxes and refuse to have any more items in boxes except for the usual seasonal items. We still have a ton of work to do but the house is shaping up beautifully. I'm proud to call it "our home".

2 weeks and counting!

It still seems surreal. It's hard to believe that in 2 weeks we will have the keys to the house. There are still a few loose ends that we have to take care of and lots of packing to do. If you had told me even 2 years ago that we would own a house here on Vancouver Island I would have told you that you were NUTS! Peter has always wanted to own, I on the other hand had reservations about it but with all the trouble that we have had renting places I'm glad that we'll have a place that I can finally call HOME. I'm tired of moving. I hate it with a passion. We'll NEVER have to do it again!

I'm also excited because we have picked out our flooring and our paint colours. The house is going to look fabulous when it is done. Once the walls and the floors are done I'm going to be repainting the faces of the cabinets in the kitchen which will do for a few years until we are ready to change out the kitchen cabinets. I have to strip off all the old paint on the back deck so we can fix some spots than paint on decking as well as bash off the old railings and put new glass panel ones up. Rona is our friend and we are going to be spending a LOT of time there.

So much to do and such little time left! On to packing!


Bonz is making himself at home on his new climbing gym. I was wondering where he disappeared to!

Papers all signed now onto the next step

So it's great that the papers are signed but we still have a lot of little loose ends that we have to deal with for the CMHC. I asked Debbie (our mortgage broker) how she does this day in and day out without going completely crazy and she said that she does go crazy. She said and I agree that it's all just a game. The ball is now in the CMHC's court and they'll bounce it back to us next I'm sure. I just want to know for sure that we are good to go!

On the upside, the bikes are now insured and Peter and I are back on the road. I took a ride out to Sooke yesterday to register the kids for school in September. The school doesn't look like much on the outside, but inside it's nice and clean and seems to be well cared for. The secretary is a gem and made me feel very welcome. It's a small school like the one the kids are in now. There are about 175 students and the nice thing is that the kids will get to grow up with them and make some solid friendships. Peter and I growing up never had the stability that we are going to be able to offer to our kids and I have to say that it's a really nice feeling. I'm ready to grow roots. I've truly had enough of moving.

We've looked into house insurance and talked to the lawyer so that is all taken care of.

Three more weeks! EEEEE

Signed the mortgage papers today! May 4, 2010

Well what a whirlwind of a day! Got up at 5am with Peter and booted him out the door at 6, woke the kids up at 6:45, fed them, made lunches, and got them generally ready for school.
Out the door at 8:15am so they can play in the park then back home to do 2 loads of laundry, use my tae quon do training to break some sticks for the fireplace, then off to the bank at 10:45 for an 11:30 appointment.

I had to laugh because when I got to the bank the fax machine was NOT working... I think that I have equipment just want to break down when dealing with our mortgage! So, the papers will be faxed off to Peter's dad for him to sign then back our way then to the CMHC.

So, I signed the papers, ran to Tim Hortons for an iced cap then off to Pete's work to have him sign the papers. I HAD to bring a dozen doughnuts for everyone at his work because I try to make sure that they know I appreciate how they treat Peter.

He signs the paperwork and says, "what? Only 3 signatures? I was expecting more".
I actually was too but for now that's enough!

I run back to the bank to drop the papers off with Debbie who is still dealing with a non-working fax machine. We make an appointment with my "other" banker (that's cool, I have more than one person now!)

So now I'm BACK to the bank tomorrow morning to get MORE paperwork taken care of.
I swear, I've probably killed about 10 trees trying to get this mortgage!

Until next post...

SOLD!

May 4, 2010 The day we sign the papers

Here we go on the renovation express! We take possession on May 31st and will be spending a couple of weeks tearing out carpet, laying laminate, and painting in colours that WE like! I can't wait!

We have to sign the mortgage papers today and go from there.

There are a lot of things that we would like to do to the house and I think that we will be spending a LOT of time in RONA!

Here's the short list:

UPSTAIRS

carpet torn out and laminate put in
paint in OUR colours
put in a new outside door
change out kitchen and put in connectors/conduit for propane appliances(eventually)
change out sliding patio doors for a couple sets of french doors
make a french door walkout to the back deck

DOWNSTAIRS

Move the laundry room
tear out old bathroom and put in new one
frame out a guest bedroom
change the carpet in the rec room
eventually make a deck with french doors going out the front of the house
paint
put a set of french doors going to the back yard

OUTSIDE
strip the back deck down to the plywood
whack off all the old hand rails and put new in
fix any of the plywood that needs fixing
put in new posts and cut the deck back 1 foot to get rid of rot
put duradeck once deck is finished
eventually build a play place for the kiddos
put a zip line off the back deck to the kiddo's playplace
take care of the trees outside
remove bushes that are too close to the house
build a garden for Emily
put up the laundry line

That's just a few things that need to be done...

I think I'll be busy for a while!