Ok so it's been awhile, again.... Time to get back on track!  Summer 2016 has already come and gone and we are into renovating once again so it's time to get my blog caught up before I am 2 year s behind lol!

To speed this process i have taken time to organize my photos and will lay them out in Photoshop first....fingers crossed, lets see how this goes :)

I realised this would be the best time to let my kids have some freedom in the kitchen.  They could make the biggest mess and drop stuff all over the counters and floor and it wouldn't bother me because there is nothing that could get wrecked!!

Sooo....I was going to keep adding to this post, however the next step in our renovations involves CHALK PAINT!!  Which I love and want to share all about it, therefore I will have to finish this post now so that I can put my thoughts together my Chalk Paint post!!

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!
The mess can get to you!!  I know at times it was so overwhelming, but I am thankful to have an amazing family, fantastic friends and a God who is bigger then all of this!!  In August 2015 we were able to forget about the mess for a short while and have over about 20 people for a BBQ.  We had a such a great time together and it was a sweet break and time to be refreshed with friends.  Plus we were all outside enjoying the beautiful Muskoka weather :)

a new direction

July 11th, 2015

So we have finally decided how to layout the kitchen.  After many agonizing hours my husband suggested we totally move it over to the garage wall and rip out the fireplace.  Hmmm, rip out a fireplace, is that really what we want to do?

After redesigning it on my app I could see that yes!! That is the best way to go for this space.  So we commenced fireplace removal immediately!

Here is the area about to be transformed with a sledge hammer!! :)

Of course by the time I had a minute to take a photo he had already removed the mantel and had the first brick off..



We Started at about 8am and by noon we had a lovely hole! Below is a before and after picture.  So thankful my man cleans up after himself and the kids did a fantastic job hauling all the bricks out to the back of the truck.

Up next, we put in the new door to the garage.


ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!
Use what or who you have on hand to make messy jobs easier.  For example, by breaking the fireplace up, the kids could easily help us transport all the pieces out to the truck to be hauled away :)

a few spare moments.....

OK I know it's been quite awhile since I have posted on my blog.  :( So sorry about that.  Life and mess kind of carried me away.  However here I am, trying to get caught up before we start the next round of renovations.

Let's pick up where we left off:

June 14th, 2015

 we have a few spare moments to slip that Beam into place.

 Of course it probably takes longer to prep and clean up then the actual work that is being done.  Oh well, it is progress and this means that soon all those posts holding things up will come down and be out of my way.

So after we put the beam in, we had a few crazy weeks and not much got done.  Other than measuring and remeasuring all the kitchen cabinets that we bought and trying to come up with a plan for them as we could not move forward until we knew where we were going.

Stay tuned.....

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Make plan!!! Even if you can't stick to it you will at least feel that you have a direction to head for!!

baking pies and tearing down cabinets :)

June 10th and 11th 2015.

Knowing that cabinet destruction was eminent i quickly got one last pie in before the kitchen disappeared.  As soon as my pie came out of the oven, i whisked it away to cool in our bedroom so that my husband could begin the destruction.


Here is a shot of what the kitchen looked like before we ripped out all the cabinets but after carefully taking down the wall between the kitchen and living room.  Already it is much more open.




Once the Uppers are down he will magically manoeuvre a beam up into the ceiling without scratching my stove.





Stabilized and ready for the next time we have a minute to work on the house.  This is also the beginning of drywall dust and insulation mingling with our food as I prepare meals.  So thankful that it is June and we can start to eat outside and lessen the intake of ingesting construction dust.

Below are a few more shots of my kitchen, living room and dining room.  It's only going to get messier from here.....



I know there are a lot of pictures here, but I am hoping they will help you to get the full picture of all that we did, mess house included :)


ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Baking during a renovation is never fun, so be prepared to put some things on hold as you go through this process or relax your standards and be ok with a little dust in your food...it's not forever, just keep telling yourself that! lol.

the Kitchen...

Yikes! Time has slipped away but let's pick up in last spring in our Reno story....

Spring 2015:

OK time to start seriously thinking about what we can renovate on the half of the house that is not sinking.  So, I sat down with my floor plans app and spent many hours moving walls, kitchen cupboards and furniture.  Here are a few of my floor plan ideas:

I didn't love how they were turning out, so sometimes to get a better sense I would take chalk and draw on the walls and floor.  But still without knowing what the cupboards would look like it was still a challenge.  So we tried a different route.

Knowing that I wanted to have freedom with whatever kitchen we went with, meant that I didn't want to go with brand new.  So we started looking on Kijiji and were blown away with how many complete brand new and used kitchens were available.

We started spending every waking minute in pursuit of the kitchen that would work for us.  There were some amazing ones, but they sold quickly.  So we picked up our pace and decided that if we found one we liked, we would just go for it.  Next thing you know we saw one that could work, it was just pictures of the cabinets already taken out of the kitchen they were renovating, but they had some great potential.  Plus if we bought them and didn't like them we could always put them on Kijiji and sell them.  

We zipped down to Toronto to pick them up, what a crazy trip!  Traffic, nowhere to park and the cabinets were everywhere.  They had some in the house, some on the back porch and some on the front porch.  It was a gong show!!  However we quickly went to work and got everything loaded in the back of the truck and trailer and then proceeded to go sit in traffic for the trip home :)

By the time we got home it was late and a few of our uncovered cabinets were covered in bug guts, yuck, wish we had thought about that. Oh well.   We unloaded and stacked all the cabinets but didn't start to measure them as it was too late and we were beat.

the Cabinets all stacked in the Garage ready to be measured.

In my next post I will share more with you about our kitchen reno.

Until next time :)

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

When travelling in the spring with kitchen cabinets in the back of your truck, cover them!! If you don't they may arrive covered in bug guts, yuck!

the dock!! the best place to start

SO we decided that the best place to really focus our time would be to build a dock.  Because that is where we plan to spend the next couple of months, down at the water enjoying the view.  Plus with our backs to the house we can ignore the fact that we have a huge renovation project on our hands lol!

April 13, 2014 the boys work on carrying all the lumber from the front yard down to the water wearing snow boots, flip flops and shorts!! Gotta love April weather :)

 Once all the lumber and parts were down at the water my husband went to work!!

Some of his helpers decided to take a fishing break!! lol 

Although it doesn't show it in the pictures above, the kids really did pitch in and help wherever they could.

Now to get the dock into the water, this could be tricky.  For a while the water from the river looked like it was going to come right up to where he had built the dock and we joked that we would be able to just float it out.  However as quickly as the water came up it went down.  The good news is, it never reached the house and the basement stayed dry.

Next we "need" a flagstone patio.  So my husband and a friend got to work and put this together in one day.

you might notice in a few of the pictures my zero gravity chair is out.  I just couldn't wait until they were finished to enjoy the nice weather :)

Below a quick shot of nothing to dock and kids swimming :)

I know there is a toboggan in the pic of the kids swimming but they were playing with it in the water.  Funny boys, you neve know what they will do next!

This was an exciting process because it immediately made such a huge difference to our waterfront.  Also it was something that we could call done!!

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Sometimes its nice to find a "small" project that you can complete.  There is nothing like checking something off the list and then sitting down to enjoy it!  This makes the whole process a little less overwhelming :)

now that we are in, some beauty in the mess

Now that we are in we are learning some things about the house.  For instance here are some pictures of our window.  This is how we gauge how cold it is outside...the more beautiful frost pattern on the inside of the window, the colder it is outside :)

On the left there is only a little bit of frost so it's not very cold out.  On the Right there is a beautiful pattern!! It must be VERY cold!!!!

I am sure you have all seen a house where someone has just moved in but just for giggles and kicks, here are a few photos of our unpacking mess!

And Below is our first supper here at the new house!! My wonderful friend brought me the tulips as a house warming gift! Super thoughtful and made our mess look so much prettier :)

Our first meal was spaghetti, super easy and yummy!!  However our next couple of meals were more just whatever you can find until I get this kitchen organized! lol

One of the first things we did after moving in was to get a newish faucet.  The one that we had was brutal, I couldn't get a pot under it because it was so low to the sink and there was something else but now I can't remember what :)

Anyways we found a faucet on Kijiji!! Love that place.  We didn't want to spend a lot of money on a new faucet because I had plans down the road to get another one like I had at the highway house.  So my husband met the person and came home and installed the faucet, perfect.....except the next day I saw this:

Yep, it was dripping :(  So some more fiddling ensued.....Eventually we just came to an agreement, the faucet and us, that it just was not a good quality tap but it will do in the mean time!

Well there is not much more we can do at this point.  We are in, boxes are half unpacked everywhere, it's February 2015 and our house on the highway will be closing at the end of the month so I will have to go and do a final clean of that house.  But other then that we are on hold.  We know that the house is sinking on one side but until we know if it is still sinking or has sunk and is not moving anymore then it is no use to start doing any Reno's on the one side of the house.

So here we sit on hold, dreaming of ideas......who knows what we will come up with.

Kim


ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Maybe more for moving then renovating but having someone to watch your kids so that you can unpack for a few hours in peace and quiet is priceless!!!

quick recap, getting ready to move and saying goodbye to appliances...

So let's do a quick recap. ( I will use actual dates for those that have asked :) )

Dec19th 2014
- we officially owed 2 houses, the one on the hwy that we totally renovated and then put on the market and this "new" one in town on the river.

Dec 20th 2014 
- renovations begin!  We ripped out all the carpet in about an hour!

Dec26th 2014 
- removal of part of the all between the kitchen and the living room

Now what?

It's around New Year's and there is not much more we can do to the house before we move in. Sooooo guess that means we can start packing and moving stuff over.  Also we thought we had better look at appliances as the offer on our hwy house includes our appliances. :( Sad for me, I really love my washer and dryer... and truly i was struggling with having to give them up

here is a pic of said washer and dryer:

here they are!! we have been through so much together, it's hard to imagine not having you :(

Trying my best to look on the bright side, truly new appliances should be exciting!  And remember this was last year around new years so there were plenty of good deals!

Armed with a couple of hours, off I went to all the stores in our town that sell appliances.  I know we could have gone to the city but due to time we decided to just try our best to find something locally.

The first place I went to seemed expensive and did not give me the warm fuzzies, so I left.  Then I hit up Leon's thinking they should be good, wrong!! That was one of the most frustrating stores!! They didn't have prices on anything!!! and I had to wait FOREVER  for a sales person to look them up.  Finally she said we are really busy and she will have to try to get back to me in the next 24hours with prices.  Sorry lady that is way too long.  So off to Home Depot and.....they were OK.  They were available and could help me.  I had to do most of the research as quickly as I could but they certainly were very accommodating.  I still don't love that store but I had to give it to them, they did take the time with me that I needed.

Here was my other issue, see the pic below, on the left is a custom built desk my husband made me.  it spanned that whole wall and i really loved it!  So I would have to tell myself, it's really just a desk, I can't take it to Heaven, so enjoy it now and let it go! :)

this is from our house on the hwy, to the left is my desk that my husband built, it's hard to really see the detail in the picture but it was truly awesome!! :)

So when we weren't buy appliances, visiting family, cleaning up Christmas, starting Basketball, celebrating birthdays, etc, we where packing and getting ready to move!! Boxes everywhere! The nice part was that as soon as we had a trailer full we could take it over to the new house :)  However, somehow every time I took a load over it seemed to be one of the coldest days of the year :( BRRRRRR !!!!!

In the end, I ended up wearing a long pink jacket that my husband thought was ugly.  But at this point I could care less, it was warm and long:

It was a very busy and cold time, and I was so thankful when we moved that last box over. :)

Kim

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Buying Appliances.....Now that I have some hindsight here is what I would recommend.  Buy the extended warranty, any and all warranties available, you will need them!  Unfortunately appliances are not as well built as they used to be :(  At this point (Dec 2015) I have had my appliances for 11 months and I have had to call to have each one serviced...not a fun experience.  So if you are looking for appliances you are welcome to come look at mine and I will give you the nitty gritty on each one. :)

that wall has to go!!!

Carpet out. Next step that wall between the kitchen and living room has to go!!!

So of course on Boxing Day we decide to take that wall down.  Most people shop, not us, we renovate!! :)  Nothing like waking up on a holiday and thinking "hmmm what can we do at the new house today?"

Here is the before shot:

this is the view from the corner of the kitchen.  I am standing next to the wall that needs to be removed

Standing in the dining room by the window

I know, not amazing before shots.  But when I took them I had not anticipated how quickly this area would change.  My Husband is super fast.  He said part of that wall is coming down and by the time I got there to take pictures he was already at this point!!!

Before the dust even settled I took this photo... so sorry it's not very clear!

This was a quick project.  We knew we wanted to open up the house some more but before we ripped out all of the walls we needed more of a plan.  So this was our temporary solution.  What a difference taking down this section made!! :)

Messy? Very! But also very exciting! I see endless possibilities with this wall down :) 
So up next.... well, you will just have to come back to my blog to find out!

Kim

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

I would not normally suggest to someone that renovating during the holidays is the best thing to do, however this house was empty and all my decorations and such were not affected by the demolition! We also had a plan, short term, but still a plan.  So arm yourself with a plan and time and then when you get a minute go for it!!  Just don't start knocking down walls willy nilly ;)

Let the games begin!!! Demo time...day 1

So, now we own 2 houses :/  This is exactly what we said we would never do.  Lesson learned, never say never! lol

I certainly had moments of oh no, what if this house floods in the spring when the river rises?! But then i thought, well at least we will know the reason for it :) and we will deal with that when it comes.

Now this house has a few issues, the biggest being that half of it is sinking.  So when you walk on that half you tend to feel like you are going to fall over.  However winter is not the time to deal with that, so we will deal with that later.

Where to start with demoing?  well that was easy for us, the carpets!!!!  We went in as a family and ripped those suckers out in about an hour!! the kids were awesome! Everyone ripping up sections, pulling out the underlay and then using pliers, hammers and screwdrivers to pull up the nail strips!!  It was dirty and soooo gross! Especially the carpet in the bathroom! EW!!! My Husband did that one really fast ;)

Here are a few pictures of our family outing:

love how the all worked so quickly!

NEXT is the main floor and anywhere the green carpet was:

AND NOW THE BATHROOM!!!

I realize that was a lot of pictures, but we were so fired up to get started because I knew we were going to be making drastic changes and I just had to try to capture every moment.  It was amazing to discover all the hardwood floors underneath the carpet and it was all in decent condition. :)  Hard to believe that someone wanted to cover up hardwood floors!

Working together as a family helped us to all get excited about this new house (kids haven't been super on board because they will be leaving some good friends that live across the road at our old house) and I am so glad that my kids can learn some life skills along the way.

Day one of demo down, many many many more to go :)

Kim

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Some jobs require a dust mask! This probably could have been one of them.  So I suggest you use a dust mask for removing old gross carpets.

Our reno story

So here I am writing a blog in my spare time between 12am and 6am..just kidding.  

Actually after months of thinking about it, I thought I would take the plunge and share our renovation story.  Thanks to a friend who asked, how do you live through this mess and remain so peaceful???

What a great question!  I have since been thinking about that question and what my response would be, because I am pretty sure at the time I mumbled some unintelligible answer lol.

So my friend, I thought I would take you through the process....here's how it started:

The long and short before we came to this home...setting the scene.

We built a house. ..we finally finished it and sold it to move closer to town. ..then through a series of moves we ended up completely gutting and renovating a house to the point we couldn't do any more because of resale value.  

There were a few issues at that place that made me crazy! ! So we put it on the market and spent just over a year hemming and hawing about what to do. ..then I reached my breaking point on the day we came to see our current house... I had just spent hours cleaning up a crazy mess with the help of my 4 kids.   So the state I was in when I came to see the new house was completely exhausted, absolutely frustrated and ready to move immediately into anything that did not  have the issues I was dealing with.

 It was dark rainy November day and all the snow we had was turning into about a foot of slush.  Utterly Defeated I entered the house and was assaulted with this!!

Dining Room and Kitchen...i just can't find the words to describe these rooms

Yeah, it's pretty ugly!! Yet somewhat comforting...reminds me of my childhood I guess lol.  As we continued the house tour we came across more cosmetic issues....

Notice the pink carpet in the bathroom!! GAG!

this doesn't quite show the depth of the shag

But then we came to this....

A DRY BASEMENT!!

Perhaps this won't mean a lot to you, but to me it was huge!! Just seeing a dry basement on such a horrible day was enough to make me want to move immediately!!

So within a month we took possession of this beauty, but had yet to sell our own.  Big risk buying another house without knowing for sure your current house is sold, but here is where we saw God's hand control the whole situation.  You see our house had a conditional offer on it and those people had a conditional offer on their house and then those people had a conditional offer on it  and so the cycle continued about 5 houses back.  Everyone's sale was depending on the one before going through.  There was nothing we could do but wait and watch how only God could orchestrate all these conditions to work out.

Love how during this time there was this song that kept playing to remind me that we won't be able to move unless it was with God. :)

 click here to see the song by Kristian Stanfill

There you have it, the beginning in a nut shell.  There is obviously much more to the story and more to share, so I hope that you will join me for our messy life journey.

Kim

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Truly though, we spent hours praying and we're reassured that even though this new place would be a huge reno project and would probably extremely overwhelm us, we were not panicked. ... so my first tip would be to choose a house that needs work...but won't send you into panic mode!