Mother Nature... Why??

While I look out at this..



It makes me feel slightly better remembering back to only a few days ago when we went to a greenhouse and got these..





Dont worry these babies are warm and cozy in the garage.. my tomatoes on the other hand? Well.. they are currently under a lawnmower box and burlap (see first picture).. I just hope they survive this mess.

New Kitchen Hardware

I was looking for a quick DIY fix so I decided to get diffrent hardware for my cupboards. The old hardware was white, plastic, and silver boringness. We found all of our new stainless steal chicy hardware at home depot and cost us $116.00 plus a box of $2.99 screws. All of the drawers got pulls instead of knobs so it required a little measuring to drill an extra hole in each panel but in the end, totally worth it! Here are some pictures!


Old Blah Hardware





Hard at work


New and Improved

May Long Weekend Updates

This weekend has been quite productive so far around the house.

We have officially started the guest/reading room and I'm so excited to get it done!

First up, wallpaper removal. I know your jealous but I'll try to keep the bragging to a minimum. Strangely enough Thomas disappeared for this little project.. ODD!

I consider myself lucky with this room in that there is only a teeny tiny strip of wallpaper opposed to a full wall.. which DOES exist in my bathroom. It's a good thing I'm getting some practice.. right? If your thinking about tackling an ugly wallpaper job at your house.. heres how I did mine!

This took about 3hours in total and I used the following tools:

• Sponge
  
• Bowl of steaming hot water
  
• Gloves
  
• Scraper
  

The water was boiling HOT. I soaked the paper once all over and removed the top layer. I was left with the really messy adhesive still stuck to the wall.

 

I then soaked the adhesive paper twice over with the sponge and let it sit for 15minnutes before applying another layer of HOT water. After making sure it was nice and soggy I started scraping.

 

 

If you take anything away from this it is to make sure you absolutely S-O-A-K this stuff. It's really messy but it will save your walls.

 

 

 

So the next step is the strip of chocolate brown paint and we have Neapolitan ice cream walls..

 

Just kidding.. but we did start our painting and I can't wait to show you how it turns out..

 

Oh and by the way I found Thomas…

 

 

Hey summer, we're ready when you are.

 

It was terrible knowing you..

Onto our very first order of business. Have you ever walked into a house and thought "Oh my word, you should rip that out." ? Well maybe not. BUT WE DID. The night we found out this house was ours we knew the first project we were going to tackle. I'm going to show you the before and you can probably guess what we did..




So? You think we ripped out the hideous wooden room divider thingy? Yes?? What you think its ugly??? .. Us too. So its gone. And heres how it all went down..

There was a lot of discussion of whether is was a smart idea taking it out. No there wasn't. That was a lie.. I thought if we took it down the house would collapse because this ugly thing was obviously supporting the entire building. I couldn't even get the last word out before I heard a hammer making contact with wood and bam. I guess I was wrong. Timber..






Since this room is far from done I wont share an official after picture. You will just have to wait and see whats next.


HINT:

Say Hello House

We are compiling this blog to keep family and friends updated with the progress of our house/lives. Here is the condensed soup version so far..

This chapter of our life began with possibly the longest and most challenging home search ever. 9 months from start to finish, two diffrent real estate agents, and so many houses we lost track. I'll spare you details. Truthfully, I would do it all ten times over to be able to be where we are today. Our home is a perfect 1030sqft bungalow with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. We are completly in love with it. Everyday I am floored at how much pride and happiness fills my heart just living here. Completly worth every single dollar and minute of time spent on it.

Our house is not an immediate fixer upper. Not wrecked and ravaged through but instead a nice family lived, played, and took great care of the house. We really didn't want something that needed a bunch of work. We are first time home buyers and didn't want to get over our heads in renos..or did we? It didn't take long to start the process of demoing and I've been snapping a few pictures along the way. Thomas is amazing and very motivated to take on big projects. He's really not afraid of putting a little sweat labour into our house. Me? Well I'm the blogger. Nonononono. I am the design consultant/little helper. He says "Get me a screwdriver for this", then I get him the wrong one with the stary head intead of the squishy flat one.. etcetc.. Anyways. Stay tuned. One minute we have floors and the next.. well thats for another post.

Here are the listing pictures taken mid February 2010 :


The front of our Cozy Casa

Living Room

Kitchen

Kitchen

Down the hall.. Master bedroom

Monster Truck room or Second Bedroom

Upstairs Bathroom

The princess room or Third Bedroom

Going down.. This is the living space downstairs

And another..

Heres the Fourth Bedroom

and finally the Downstairs Bathroom

So there you have it! The house already looks nothing like these pictures but keep checking back for updates! Maybe not so exciting to you but to us.. well.. its been the start of a big journey and we can't wait to see how it all unfolds.. or builds.. I just want to see whats next already! :)