~Kitchen Reveal!~

So this is the almost final look of the kitchen…we have few things left to do; namely grouting the backsplash.  The grout we chose is a very neutral color that will blend and not alter the look so it will look almost the same when it’s done.  We also have to finish the hall pantry and install the new door and trim it.  But all that is about 4-6 hours work so we’ll tackle it after our summer fun is done!

In order for you to get the real feel of the transformation you need to remember what we had…so here is the old first:

Old Kitchen VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Pink countertops, brass hardware, narrow 70’s white flat panel cabinets…Yuck!

So here is the NEW kitchen…I’m in LOVE!

New Kitchen VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Some of my favourite things in this kitchen are:

My Lazy Susan in the corner cabinets.  This one stores all my Epicure Spices on the top level and pots and pans on the bottom with baking trays underneath.  It uses the room that this cabinet offers to the max!  On the other corner I’m installing one as well and it will house appliances and baking goods.  Without the lazy susan this cabinets have a lot of wasted space.

 

Love my pot and pan drawers and coffee/drink centre.  This is all new in the kitchen.  In the old kitchen there had been no upper cabinets on this wall and a tiny desk had been on the bottom.  It was wasted space!  Now all my drink mixes, coffees, cups, glasses, jugs etc. are kept in the upper cabinet, my Cuisinart Keurig and coffee pods are on the counter and the pot and pan drawers are full of my Tupperware.  The Tupperware is still a mess (whose Tupperware drawer isn’t?) but it holds it all in and they don’t attack me when I open it.

  Love our new sink!  We splurged and bought a Blanco Silgranit sink in a beige color.  We had bought this faucet and used it in the old kitchen but it loos so much better in this kitchen!!!

 

 

 

 

I love that Randy built our countertops himself…from scratch!  They look awesome and in no way can you tell they weren’t done by a pro. 

 

 

There is a huge WOW factor when you walk in and see the kitchen, especially if you’ve been here before and seen the old one.  I’m so proud of how it turned out and the fact that we did it ourselves. 

We are almost done the house renovations.  We have to finish the bathrooms, install new carpet, the two new windows, install new siding and re-do the walks at the front and back of the house.  Then of course touch up painting, trim and finishing touches.  The goal is to have everything done by the end of September.  Randy is going to take a week off to work on the house and finish up some projects, that should speed things along.  So I’ll try to keep the blog updated with the progress!

~Kitchen Renovation–Last stages–Tiling the Backsplash~

It’s been done for over a month now but I’m finally having a chance to post some pictures of the last of the work we did to the kitchen.  We still have to grout the backsplash and run some trim on the cabinets but it is looking amazing!!!

Here are pictures of the day that Randy and I tiled the backsplash:

The Backsplash tile we picked out is a gorgeous mix of slate and glass tile with neutral colors with a splash of blue in it.  It gives the kitchen a contemporary feel and lightens the room overall. 

I still can’t get over how easy it is to tile on your own!  It adds such a transformation to any area and can be relatively inexpensive!  We found this amazing tile shop in Edmonton just off 170th Street that has a great selection and unbeatable prices.  I think the name is The Tile Shoppe.  Anyhow, we were able to get this backsplash tile for $5.99 a square foot!  When we were shopping around initially we had seen this exact tile elsewhere for $21.99 a square foot.  We have since bought all the tile for our house there, the service is great and prices are phenomenal! 

Anyhow I digress…coming up next is pictures of the whole kitchen in the almost finished stage.  We have about 4 hours of work left to finish it for good but we’ve been enjoying the summer!

~ I am a Handy Woman!~

I did a California patch all by myself on Friday!  We had a hole from the back doorknob and I was mudding and taping and wanted it fixed at the same time.  So I took what I learned on a Nate Berkus show and fixed it up myself!  I did a ‘California Patch’  I had never heard of it before his show and it is super easy to do!
I forgot to take a picture of the hole before but it was round…you cut it into a square and measure it.

Then you measure it out on a piece of drywall slightly bigger than you need.  I left 2 inches all around mine…

Then you cut around the square, break off the excess but peel it off leaving the paper all around your square.  Then you dry fit your square to make sure it fits in the hole.

Once you have a snug fit you add mud around the outside of the hole…

Then put your patch in, pressing it in firmly to make sure it’s even with the wall.  Press your paper all around to ensure it sticks well to hold the patch.

Apparently at this point you are supposed to let it dry…I did not.  I covered the entire patch with a layer of mud and smoothed out all the bumps and ripples.

And VOILA!  A easy and secure patch without any tape or fussing around!
So proud of myself for doing it all myself!  I got all the mudding done at the same time and now I need to start sanding and re-mudding again so I can paint hopefully next weekend.  It’s coming together though!  So excited for it to be done!

~Kitchen Renovation–Part 1~

Well first things first when you renovate a kitchen…the old one has to come out first.  Then you need to fix anything you knew needed fixing.  Then you deal with the surprise things that you weren’t expecting…they are always there.  Then you make a change to a plan that causes more work….it goes the same for us every time!  So here is the beginning of our latest renovation project:  The Kitchen.

Kitchen Before VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The gut out…

Kitchen Reno Prep VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

		The Beginnings of a New Kitchen VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

We worked out tails off this weekend…we started Friday night, clearing out the cabinets and building the new ones.  We worked till midnight that night after working all day.  Saturday we started early and worked straight through until 3am…yikes!  Ethan left on Saturday and went out to The Smiths’ farm to hang out with them while we worked.  He had fun and was out of our way.  Sunday was another day of work, we went from 10am till 4pm before heading out to The Smith’s to grab Ethan.

We had a couple of surprises while tearing down…nothing that was a deal stopper though.  The funniest was this:

~Kitchen Renovation–Part 1~ VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

This is the way the previous owners tried to fix the whole in the picture.  About 5 pounds of drywall compound in the wall.  The hole is where the door knob from the back door connects to the wall…as you can see it connects quite solidly.  Right after we moved in the hole was there and we thought Ethan had kicked the door hard and created the hole…I guess we didn’t do it, we just discovered a bad fix.

We had very little problems, except that one of our cabinets came in white instead of maple.  We had to reorder it and so now we are waiting for it to come in so we can finish the upper run and install the Over the range microwave.  It’s a couple of weeks till it comes in…thankfully the bottom cabinets were all there and we were able to install them.  Next we moved on to constructing the countertops…Randy made them from scratch for our kitchen.  Coming up in Part 2…

~A Long Few Weeks~

Long time no blog again for me…it’s been a long month.  Since we lost the baby our world has tilted and gone insane.  I think keeping busy is a coping mechanism.  Our kitchen arrived and in a marathon weekend renovation we ripped out and installed all new cabinets (a whole post on the renovation coming up soon).  We worked on it starting Friday night until 12am, 10am – 3am on the Saturday and 10am-4pm on Sunday.  We were bagged.

The next weekend we built and installed the new countertops on the Friday night and on Saturday finished it.  We drove to Moberly Lake that afternoon with friends to pick out our lake lot for the summer.  We liked the campground, it’s not fancy at all but it will do the job!  I’m not sure if our friends are going with us though.  Sunday was Mother’s Day and we went to a brunch at a local hotel with our friends the Smith’s.  After that instead of sitting with my feet up like I thought I would for Mother’s Day I started cleaning and cleaned the house for 5 hours…2 weeks of renovations wreaked havoc on the joint!

Every day of the week we ran doing things after work….now it’s the long weekend.  I had to work Saturday and I spent a couple of hours helping customers but then headed to the back and BBQ’d for like 6 hours for the staff.  They appreciated it so much…they could pop back and grab a burger or a polish sausage, have a bottle of water or munch on some veggies and fruit.  I even bought ice cream treats and cookies.  It was a great morale boost and I was so happy to do it for my staff. 

Today is Sunday and today we tile the kitchen floors and I’m hoping to put in my gardens.  Plus I have to get all the laundry done otherwise we will have to go outside and around the house to get it because we’re tiling the area to get to the basement and won’t be able to walk on it for 24 hours.  Monday is grouting day and then we are going to relax…

Randy is doing his molding job again at the Home Depot.  They are paying him the same rate as he makes for his day job so he couldn’t turn it down.  So that adds a level of craziness to his life.  Plus he is trying to study for the last part of his 3rd year challenge for his apprenticeship.  He heads to Edmonton June 9th to write the tests and do the practicals.  I have gotten behind with my course as well and need to get spending some extra time working on it to catch up.  I still want to get it down by July so I’ve got some serious make up time to do.  I’m still on the first Assignment so I have 2 more to complete before I write my final.  There will be a little busy working going on to get that caught up!

We really want to get all this hard work done by July so we can just enjoy the summer without having to work our tail off…keep posted, pictures of progress are surely to be posted soon!

~Family Day Weekend~

We had a fun weekend together this family day weekend.  We didn’t go out on the actual ‘family day’…I always find it too busy for me.  We went out on Sunday with our friends The Smiths’ to the Multiplex and played all afternoon and then followed it up with a yummy roast beef dinner complete with Yorkshire pudding, gravy and roasted veggies at our house.  The kids all had a blast playing together and the adults had fun too.  Again I have to say how grateful I am for the Multiplex facility!

Saturday we worked on the house and did some small renovation projects that I have been getting pushed off.  Randy put up some molding upstairs and in the bathroom in the basement.  He also built a countertop in the bathroom/laundry room.  We sat down this weekend and planned for our upcoming renovations this spring as well.  I’m so excited to get a new kitchen!  We’re also doing carpet in the basement, siding the house and replacing the last two windows upstairs.  Hopefully no unexpected expenses will come up and take away from our plan!  The goal is that by June we will have around 90% of the planned renovations complete, leaving the outside stuff for last.  I’ll be so glad to have all the work done and to be able to enjoy living in our house without a construction zone in areas!  Not to mention the added functionality that we will get once the plans are complete.  The kitchen is one huge thing but we’re also doing built-in cabinets in the basement and back entryway.  A home for toys downstairs and all the coats, shoes, etc that accumulate at the back entry.  That will be so awesome!

Anyhow the rest of our weekend we hung out at home and vegged.  We didn’t even get dressed on Monday…just played all day.  Ethan challenged us to a game of Go Fish…and won! The little bugger!  We played some Buckaroo, Thomas the train and he did lots and lots of puzzles.  Randy played his game and I read a couple books…it was a nice day!

I’m looking forward to planning a week off in April.  I think I’ll head down south to visit for part of it as I’m not coming down this summer for our vacation. This year if you want to see us in June or July you will need to come to the lake cause that’s where I plan on being!  Not that I’ve found a lake lot yet…the place we want to stay at isn’t getting back to us.  So I’m looking around the hopefully find a place I can book next month for the two months.  Our friends The Smiths’ are coming along too so I need to find two spots…crossing my fingers I can find a good one!

Anyhow, same old, same old for us around here.  Just plugging along, getting by!  Hope everyone enjoyed their Family Day!

~New Windows~

A few weeks ago Randy and I were sitting talking and got on the subject of windows.  I was telling him some of the prices we had going on at work, he didn’t believe me so we went online to check them out.  Well as these things go an hour later he was in The Home Depot buying windows for our house.  We replaced all the windows on the back of the house;  the kitchen, our master bath and master bedroom.  We called up our friends’ the Smiths and Greg and Leanne came to town on the Sunday and spent the afternoon helping us install the 3 windows and our new patio door.  $700 and a couple of pizzas and beers later we had them all in!  You can’t beat that price!  The inside of the house looks a little shabby right now because we had to make the holes smaller and then drywall it in but we have new windows!!!  That leaves only 3 windows that we need to do.  One is Ethan’s room, the other the spare room upstairs and the other the only one in the basement.  We probably won’t change it out because it’s under the deck and would be a colossal PITA.  The other two we’ll do next fall when we re-do the siding on the house.

I’m looking forward to the walls being mudded, painted and molding installed but I’m happy to have new windows, I hated the old ones in the winter!!!  Anyhow just thought I’d share the latest renovation update!

~Renovations Part 10,437…~

Well maybe that’s an exaggeration but it sure feels like it’s taking forever!  Anyhow we are on the final stretch now and it’s starting to look like we had planned!  I know I had said I would post this last week but life got in the way!!!

We’ve completely changed the color we are doing the basement in.  I had got some paint from The Home Depot that had been discounted for only $45 for 5 Gallons, enough to do the whole basement.  When I got a couple of rooms painted and got a chance to see it dry and on the wall I didn’t like it.  It felt too institutional.  I was going to try to tint it but at the end of the day I wouldn’t be able to guarantee a consistent color so we didn’t do it.  So I went to the Home Depot again (shocker) and picked out a whole new color scheme.  So the new colors are:

Burnished Clay for the Walls, Elephant Skin for the 2 Accent Walls, Darkest Grape for the inside the bookcases, and Ultra Pure White for the trim and doors.  The pictures here are a little fuzzy but in real life it is looking great!

The flooring is going to now be an Espresso laminate from Costco for the living room area.

:

In the bedroom, hallway and stairs it will be carpet from the Home Depot in a light grey kind of color.  We wanted to do carpet throughout the basement but it was just way out of our budget so laminate it is.  A savings of around $2000…We haven’t ordered the carpet just yet but we are headed to Costco to get the Laminate today.  Randy will install it over the next week, I just need to finish the painting…  It’s coming together though, can’t wait to share the final pics!

~Basement Renos - Part ???~

So it continues…the epic renovation of our basement…we are onto the flooring in the bathroom. Randy tiled it with a slate tile because the floor is uneven in the bathroom and it hides alot…It was California Gold slate from where else? The Home Depot!





Here are pictures of the bathroom once the floor is done, I wasn’t sure when it was going down but it looks so much better with the grout. It really warmed it up and looks great. We’ve also got the washer and dryer framed in and primed. The shelves are in the corner, just waiting on the countertop to go along the side. The vanity isn’t installed yet but the vanity light is in and we need a mirror yet. The bones of the bathroom are there though so you can get the idea. The only thing we need to get still is the faucet for the sink, the countertop, a rug for the floor, a mirror, baskets for above and below the washer and dryer, the shower pan and tile. We’re trying to find a better deal on the shower pan because they are $400 just for the pan at The Home Depot…a little too pricey for me. We are also tiling the shower and carrying the tile behind the toilet and the vanity from one tile above the vanity to the floor.




More of the basement coming tomorrow!

~Summer Shelf Decor~

Summer is here and it is time for new decorations for our shelf!  I went with soft and sophisticated for now…the flowers shown here I have drooled over at Micheals many a times but I’m just too cheap to spend $11.99 a stem!  So the other day at Goodwill on one of my Deal shopping trips I found a pot stuffed with a flower arrangement.  It was full of the EXACT flowers I had drooled over at Micheals…even the same colors!  It’s price?  $2.99.  I got 8 of the big stems and lots of little flowers and greenery as well, not to mention the actual pot and the foam inside.  It was a smoking deal!  So I tore it apart the other day and made my own arrangement in my own little vases and it looks great!!!  I’m so happy with how it turned out!

~Summer Shelf Decor~ VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I also got the Canvas print I had made of Ethan put up on the wall.  It is perfect and looks great!  I wish they weren’t so much or I would get more made!  It is a picture that we will love for many years…

I know I’ve said it before but I sure love having a house and being able to make it our own!  I’m super excited to get started on decorating the basement, I’ve got my ideas planned out and things ready to go, I just need to get the last coat of mud and the painting done so I can order my carpet!  So it’s going to be a couple months yet…argghhh!  I’m hoping that it doesn’t take all summer to get done but at the same time I don’t want to be in the house working all summer either…so it will get done around our fun time outside playing!  Which reminds me, I should take some pictures of the progress to share!  It is looking great down there, Randy is doing a great job!  But that’s it for now, hope everyone is loving the sunshine!

~Eco Audit/Renos Update~

So our Eco Audit came back already!!!  I can hardly believe that the government did something that quickly!  Anyhow I am happy to say that we took our house from an initial energy rating of 59% to an overall rating of 72%.  If we had done all the improvements that they had told us to we could have moved it to 79%.  We did everything except replace windows, doors, insulate the outside of the house and change the hot water tank.  Those things will be done in the next year.  Anyhow our house ranks in the top 10% of homes for efficiency for a house of it’s age!  I can’t believe that!

We have gotten back our furnace rebate cheque from the province and one rebate cheque from the federal government.  So far we’ve gotten back around $2500.  There is still a provincial rebate cheque to be issued and it should be around $1500.  So most of our money we spent doing the improvements is being returned, can’t go wrong with that!!!

Our gas bill has dropped significantly with all the improvements and the house was warm all winter long, no cold spots anywhere!  It became very apparent however that we need to do our windows.  They all were completely frozen over with condensate because they lose so much air.  So the plan is to do the insulation, siding and windows this fall.  We’re saving all the money from the rebates to do it.  I just need to make some decisions about colors for the siding, trim and doors.  I’m leaning towards painting my garage doors, entrance doors and trim black and using a creamy brown colour siding.  But there is a house on our way to daycare that is  cream colour with a burned red color for the doors and trim and I just LOVE it.  So I’ll have to do some mock ups and see what I like for our house style.  Of course no matter what I do we have to re-paint our fence and deck as well!  They are painted a greyish blue right now to match the house.  It’s going to be a lot of work but what a difference it will make!

We also decided that we would bite the bullet and do our own mudding and taping in the basement rather then hiring someone.  It is an awful lot of work but saves us around $1500.  So it is worth it.  We aren’t great at this but not horrible either and practice makes perfect!  So Randy is onto his second coat today in the hall, bathroom, laundry room and bedroom.  We’re breaking it into sections so that we can just move the furniture from room to room without having to haul it upstairs…thank goodness!  Once he is done this section I’ll paint it and then we’ll switch and do the main living area.  Once this is all done we’ll just have the flooring, trim and doors to finish the basement.  We are in no rush to do them because I can’t decide what I want for flooring. Well we will finish the bathroom down here at the same time so I’ll be picking out the tile for the floor and shower stall and Randy will install that while I paint.  I just can’t decide if we will lay carpet or laminate in the basement.  Carpet is so expensive!!! We’ll see, it is a next year plan!

We’re hoping that before all our company comes at the end of April that the painting etc. will all be done.  Pictures will come along as we go!  I can’t wait to show off all the hard work!

~Daddy’s Helper~

Randy and I had our Eco Audit completed last Monday.  We are so glad to have the final inspection done and to have the rebates on the way back to us!

Of course I got the call to book the inspection for Monday on Thursday…which meant that we had to run our buns off to finish up a couple of things.  We decided to do up the laundry/bath room in the basement so that we could insulate and drywall the walls.  The more walls that are insulated the more $$ we get back!

So Randy set to work on Thursday and we plugged through the weekend getting it done.  He built a platform for the washer and dryer to sit up on as well as dry walling the walls.  I have a vision for this room when it’s done and it will be awesome!  For now we are piecing it together as we go.  Having the washer and dryer up on the platform makes laundry so much easier because you don’t have to bend over and almost crawl into them to get the laundry out!

Ethan was right in there helping out through the whole process!  Lost the tape measurer?  Ethan!?!  Here you go Daddy!  It was too cute!  Here are the pictures of little man being helpful!

Daddy’s Helper VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Here is the end result from the weekend and where we stopped!  When it is done it will of course be mudded, taped, painted, trimmed and the floor will be tiled.  We are running a counter top along the wall where the garbage can is for a place to fold.  There will be cabinets up top and shelves built in the corner.  We were going to put cabinets on the bottom but I decided to leave it open and I’m going to find some rolling laundry baskets that can slide under there for sorting clothes in.  We also built a wall between the bathroom/laundry to the electrical room.  In there will now be the deep freezer, the furnace and hot water tank and we will be building storage under the stairs.  There will be a door in the opening in the bottom picture.  I can’t believe how much warmer it is in these two rooms just from doing this little amount of work!  I’m so glad that we can do this work ourselves!!! I will share the Eco Audit in another post…

~Daddy’s Helper~ VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I can’t wait to show the end result!  It might be awhile but hopefully by the end of the summer!  I’m keeping my eyes out for great deals at work and we’ll save a lot of money that way!  Got to love the perks!

~Sitting in my Basement~

We decided that it wasn’t realistic to get the mudding and taping done on our basement before Christmas.  We are hiring someone to do that and I just don’t want to spend our extra money right before Christmastime on it. On the other hand I was ready to have our family room set up in the basement so we could all be together in one area.  So we set up our free couch and chair set, hauled down the TV, Wii and Receiver and our cuddle blankets and we are now in the basement hanging out.  It isn’t done and is just bare drywall but I don’t care. 

It is messy, fun and our place to hang out.  The upstairs is clean and ready for company but down here, we play!  These are some shots I took from the couch…lazy beast that I am!  As you can see it is completely dry walled and ready to go.  Randy moved his desk out to the living room as well so we literally all are in the same room.

Basement VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

While I can’t wait till it is all done, I’m happy to be here for now.  At least this way I can get an idea of what we are using the space like before I set it up and get furniture for it.  While the free furniture I got isn’t bad, it is not very comfortable…I’ve got a sore  back from sitting on the couch over the last couple of days.  It’s a Lazy Boy reclining set so you would think it is comfortable but both Randy and I find that it sits too forward for us.  So we’ll use it for now but we’re planning on new furniture for the house next year. 

Anyhow, that’s all I know for now…from my basement!

~Basement Renos Part 3!~

Well we finally got the drywall for the basement.  Thankfully we have connections because we saved around $400 on the drywall.  I also scored some Oops paint the other day…5 Gallons for $45.  It is in a Light grey with a hint of green.  I’m going to see how it looks on one wall and if I don’t like it I will just take it in to work and get it tinted a bit more until I get something I like.  It is in Behr paint so I literally saved around $125 on my paint!  Love my job, I get such great deals…

Anyhow, Randy has been plugging away at the basement getting all the little stuff done until we could afford to get the drywall.  So yesterday he was prepared to just sheet it!

View Full Album

It is hard to see what is what in these pics because it just looks like a wooden box!  The big picture is looking from the far wall of the basement past the stairs from upstairs and down the hall.  The other pictures are of the main room.  Randy has the bulkhead re-built on the roof and created bigger pillars around the support posts, it looks so much better then before!  You can see in the middle smaller picture that the bar is gone!  Yup, I smashed it to bits!  That is where our bookcase is going; we are building in a book case there that will wrap around the corner to create a mini library.

I’m feeling the finish line approaching…we have to sheet the roof, which I’m not looking forward to at all, and then we have to give our friend a call to come mud and sand it for us.  Then I paint!  The carpet will have to wait for probably a year so we won’t be doing the baseboards until then either.  The doors will be done when all the painting is done. 

The goal is to re-do our bathrooms this winter.  We aren’t doing much to them, just a bit of tiling and painting.  We have to decide what we are doing in the basement bathroom…not sure if we are putting in a tub or just a shower yet.

Anyhow, we are getting there!  I will share more pictures when we are done the roof!

~A New Week in the life of….~

Well it’s Monday again, and we start the rat race we call life over again for another week.  There is lots of things that are taking place this week in our house.  I have Tuesday off from work and I will be taking Ethan to daycare and going out with my resume to knock on doors to find a new job.  Now that Ethan is okay and we don’t have to commit to taking him to Edmonton week after week I am going to work on finding a job that is a M-Fri, 8-5 kind of schedule.  I am tired of working shift work and weekends because it feels like there is never a break or time to spend with Randy and Ethan.  It’s just a constant wheel that just keeps turning…

Anyhow, there are some great jobs posted right now in town that would work well for us.  The pay won’t likely be as good as my position with Reitmans but I’m willing to sacrifice a little pay for a better family life.  I’m applying to banks, the City of GP, a couple of oil companies, and a large distribution company.  So send some good thoughts my way that something good comes my way!

So that is the day part of Tuesday, that night we are going over to one of the houses that we rent out to clean it.  We did an eviction on Saturday and it was left as a total pig pen!  But we are getting a free big screen TV and there are all kinds of other things that we need to go through and donate/keep for ourselves.  Plus of course I will be paid $20 an hour to clean it.  I guess it is a mess though so it will take a couple of nights to finish. 

Wednesday is date night and we are getting a sitter and going to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D.  I can’t wait to see it, it looks like it is going to be so good.  After we will go somewhere for a quick bite to eat and then home.

Thursday and Friday nights will likely be more cleaning at the rental house.  Saturday is the day that we are putting in our new high efficient furnace…YAY!!!  I’m so excited to get it in, it will save us tonnes of money on power and gas and best yet, it will be free with our Energy retrofit grant!!!  I also have a baby shower that I’m debating on going to Saturday afternoon for a girl that works for me.  I may just send a gift and stay close to home in case Randy needs help. 

Sunday is Easter and the bunny will be visiting our house and bringing lots of goodies for little man, pictures to follow.  Plus I will likely cook up some type of big dinner for that day, not sure if it will be a turkey or a roast beef.  Whatever strikes our fancy closer to the day I guess. 

My Mom is in town and has been here since last Sunday and I haven’t seen her yet so I’m hoping that she will spend next weekend with us….hint hint! 

So the week is full for us as usual.  I’m hoping to schedule some interviews in the next week based on dropping off my resume this week.  I think I’m off the following Thursday so hopefully I can fill it up with interview after interview.  Cross your fingers for me!!!

~Home Renos, On the Fly….literally…~

Well we decided to buy a pantry for our kitchen this weekend.  They were $70 off!  Anyhow, we picked one up on Saturday afternoon and made it that evening.  It was too late to install it on Saturday night so we left it in the living room over night.  Big mistake! 

It was wobbly of course and I kept telling Ethan to leave it alone in the morning.  He of course, ignored me and carried on.  It fell on him of course.  I jumped up screaming for Randy and threw it off him.  It was one of the most terrifying things I have ever had happen to me.  I’m not kidding.  I grabbed him up and sat and bawled my head off and shook for almost an hour afterwards.  He was okay, just a few bumps and bruises from it but it still was not something I would ever want to have happen again.  It was a stupid mistake on my part to not have it up against a wall instead of in the middle of the floor.  I learned that lesson…

Anyhow, Randy was up then because of all the banging and screaming so we decided to get the day going.  (He thought that someone had broke in and was attacking us, that’s how loud it all was)  We had breakfast and then Randy started doing demo of the desk in our kitchen. 

This was the before picture of the side of our kitchen:

We took out the desk part in the middle and kept the bank of drawers.  The plan was simply actually.  Remove the desk, move over the cabinet the microwave was on, move the fridge over and insert the pantry at the end of the run.  So Randy cuts out the desk and proceeds to try to move the cabinet over.  Of course all the screws were stripped that held the cabinet into the wall.  That made Randys’ day I tell you!  So he basically had to pull the screws out of the wall instead of undoing them.  As he finally pulls up the cabinet, up with it comes the vinyl.  Of course!  Anyhow that’s when this problem became apparent: 

Oh yes, that is moldy, bug infested floor in my kitchen!!!  Hells no was that going to stay!!!  So out comes the skill saw and up comes a huge chunk of my kitchen floor.  So about 6 hours later of cleaning, bleaching, and then repairing and tiling, we ended up with this:

So you can see we added the panty on the end of the run along that wall.  If works and my recycling bin still fits on the end too!  I’m definitely going to get some magnetic paint and do the end of the pantry because it will work as an awesome message center for us! 

You can kind of see the patch job we had to do on the floor in the last picture but in this one you can see how stupid it is:

We’re not that worried about it though.  It is fixed and that is all that matters.  We want to redo the kitchen in the next few years anyhow so we didn’t want to go and spend a lot of money fixing it. 

So that was the kitchen redo.  As for the flies?  They are D.E.A.D now…