Warm & Toasty

While we've been keeping pretty busy with our bathroom, we've jumped around a little bit and finished some other projects too - that would be easy to skim over because they aren't so thrilling.

As you might remember, when we gutted our bathroom and took down the ceiling, the insulation fell down on us. This is when it was revealed that we had 3 layers of insulation: saw dust, batts, and blown fibre glass. Too many layers. It was time to clean that all out and start fresh.  

If you're handier than we are, I know that you can rent the machine from Home Depot or other places, but we just aren't that skilled. I would rather pay to have someone else vacuum it all out and blow it back in than pay for repair on a Philip sized hole in our ceiling. Just not worth the risk, and it's a gross job. 

We got a few quotes, and ended up going with a company recommended by my cousin, Airborne Insulation. 

The journey of having our cellulose insulation blown in was a little trickier than we, and the insulation company, had anticipated. They had a crazy summer and we had a lot of delays waiting for them, but eventually it got done. The first day they came in and realized that the scope of the project was a lot larger than they thought. They had planned on spending the morning vacuuming and the afternoon blowing in, this turned into 2 and a half days vacuuming and half a day blowing back in. We were pleased to see that they didn't change the price on us though, the guy that quoted saw the attic and we didn't hide anything so it was their mistake and they took the hit on the extra labour. 

It was a gross job, the attic is messy and dusty, I felt so bad for the guy who had to be up there all day vacuum in hand. I told him he has a terrible job (was that rude? I'm not normally that blunt :S). He has done it for 25 years and he's good at it! I'm glad he can still be happy while stuck in a dingy attic.

Anyway, now hopefully our home is more energy efficient. Since we've moved in we've replaced the windows, replaced the exterior doors, the furnace, air conditioning, hot water tank, and attic insulation. I think we're well on our way to low heating bills! 

Progress...Determination...Swimmers!

I don't know how much Philip's childhood swimming lessons inspirational motto will help us, but we've made a lot of progress, had a lot of determination, and done a lot less swimming this summer than we would have liked due to being busy with the house.

It's hard to believe it's been 2 months since we've updated this blog, we definitely didn't mean to give up on it, but life just got away from us! It's interesting reading the last bathroom update, and about our front doors, because that feels like it was a while ago. This might be a long one, but I'm going to try and bring everyone up to date!

- We can officially go to the bathroom upstairs, which is handy, but we don't have a door...so unless you feel like being really public with your bathroom needs you might still want to use the basement. Let's just say that having no bathroom door isn't my favourite part of our so far. 
- We installed the floor all by ourselves which was exciting! For the most part, Philip & I work as a pretty great renovation squad, we don't normally lash out at each other or disagree too much while trying to get things done...but the floor was definitely trying to challenge that. It was tricky because you have to put the glue on, and then try to position the tile perfectly, and it was just stressful as we got close and tiles were having to be put in so exactly and I was getting emotionally distressed. It looks beautiful though and in the grand scheme of things I'm glad we could DIY that portion of the bathroom. 
- Our lighting and electrical were all completed, our light is so bright and beautiful! It kind of makes the bathroom. I can't decide what my favourite part is yet, but the light definitely helps me see it all!
- We installed our Ikea vanity, medicine cabinet, and tower...as well as bringing in a drawer unit from Kitchens 2 Go to replace the old linen closet. All of the installations went well, and we're so happy with how much storage we were able to cram into such a small bathroom. My favourite part are the Ikea drawers, they're maple and can fit so much! Plus I bought lucite organizers for them which make me really happy. Organizing those drawers was the highlight of my weekend #renolife. 

We're drawing near to the finish line, our plumber will be coming back this week to finish up in the shower, and other than that the major things are having our linen cabinet top sprayed at my work, installing our mirror, and buying and installing a door. After that it's just the pretty touches!

After finding a method soap that coordinates beautifully with our bathroom scheme, we've affectionately themed our bathroom "Silver Birch". 

So that's where we're at bathroom wise! As soon as it's complete I'm planning to do a quick video tour since it's kind of small for picture taking!

Now for a couple of questions for you!

1. We've been debating on interior door options. Philip would love to do frosted glass interior doors, I've seen them at Home Depot and they're beautiful! Plus they don't show much through so privacy isn't too much of a concern. Cons: They are more expensive, breakable with kiddos, and might make people feel less private? Pros: They're interesting and unique, spread light through the house, and look super stunning. What do you think we should do? Also, have you installed an interior slab door (as in, not pre-hung) before? We don't really know what we're doing.

2. We're planning a bathroom launch party when our bathroom is done. Anything that takes this long deserves celebration. Any bathroom themed foods you can suggest?

Painting the Town Light Grey...and Mint

Last week we finally got some paint up on our brand new drywalled walls. I am so beyond thrilled with how the bathroom is turning out! After much dispute about bathroom paint colours, we went with a bland and beautiful light grey and it looks amazing. 

We’ve typically bought our paint at Benjamin Moore, but we were on a time crunch and needed to buy a bunch of things at Home Depot so we just decided to make it a one stop shopping trip. We’d heard that Behr paint doesn’t cover well and requires a lot of coats and did find it to be a bit true, but it wasn’t bad enough to regret it. We spent all day Saturday priming and painting ceiling paint, white upon white upon white, but finally Sunday my mom came over and helped us to get started painting with a real colour. We painted the bathroom on Sunday, and then later in the week we got to the guest room which we painted a light mint colour. Finally getting some green into our grey/blue house. 

For reference, as much mine as yours, the bathroom colour is Sterling by Behr and the guest room is Quiet Nest. 

It was hard to find a photo that showed the colour Sterling. It's a light silvery grey, 

the link comes from this blog.

Apparently finding pictures of paint colours is not easy. Quiet Nest was impossible, but when it's lighter out I can take a picture of it. 

So happy to have paint on the walls.

We're working on smoothing out our bathroom floor as we speak, and then the vinyl tile can go down! 

Getting closer and closer!

Curb Appeal Improvements

While waiting on various bathroom items to come to completion, it was hard to keep from making some outdoor improvements in the beautiful Winnipeg summer weather! 

New Front Doors

Our old doors were drafty, and left some security to be desired. They had bathroom door knobs, the kind you push in and turn to lock. Not only was this less than the security offered by a dead bolt, it left us locking ourselves out of the house more than we'd like to admit. No keys were needed to lock up, so we'd end up outside with no way back. 

We had planned to get doors from our local Home Depot, and even asked for a quote on installation, after hearing from multiple sources that installing doors yourself isn't as easy as you'd think. The installer ended up calling us back, and promptly informed us that we should order doors from somewhere else that has better quality. Great sales pitch from someone who's contracted to by Home Depot, they should probably check on their installers more often. Anyway, this lead us to get back in touch with our window supplier, who had quoted us a lot more than we were planning, but half the price of the Home Depot install company. 

The new back door in all its beautiful windowed glory. 

The front door doesn't have a window,
but will hopefully be sporting a colorful and welcoming wreath soon enough.

The doors took a few months, but they're in and they're beautiful! Plus they protect us from exterior threats like elements and intruders, which is about as much as you can ask from a door. Success!

We hope to paint them at some point, but just waiting to get a feel for what we'd like best.

New Door Hardware

In preparation for the new doors, we went to select some hardware. Our door supplier suggested Schlage or Weiser, so we stuck to those brands, which can sometimes be nice when there are so many options out there.

We ended up with a sleek and modern set for the front door, and some basic levers on the back. Exactly like you see below. We're super happy with them! 

We also did quite a bit of gardening but we'll have to talk about that another time! Do you think next we should update our banner to reflect the weather outside? Christmas in August anyone?

Many Steps Closer to Bathroom Launch Success

Since we haven't blogged in so long, this post has been ongoing for a month or two, it has made it hard to post because every time I have time to work on it there's more to add! We don't have a lot of pictures, blogging hasn't been top of mind and so when we were doing boring things like putting up insulation, the camera wasn't always at hand. Today I'm posting this thing, even though it isn't perfect. Our main computer is having issues, so I'm also doing this post on my super old laptop which has a faulty space bar and no photo editing software. These pictures are grainy at best. Let's call them "artsy." It's time to get you caught up on how our bathroom went from this...

To how it looks today...

We left off having our roof inspected and we've been given the go-ahead that our roof should be water-free in the future. That left us to continue making progress in the bathroom, and hopefully one day it will be usable.

Bathrooms have been a major part of life lately, with our renovation in the evenings and at work I was designing 7 bathrooms for one home. Definitely having lots of bathroomspiration, and the occasional bathroom related nightmare. I can't even imagine having a finished bathroom, but we're getting close!

Philip reinsulated our exterior wall, and it proved to be one of our best DIY projects to date, in my opinion. Everything went smoothly, it wasn't too difficult to figure out, and it made a big difference! We started out by removing the old insulation, they had actually spray foamed from the outside from what we could tell, but we didn't really know that going in so it was still good to get it freshened up. Also because the spray foam didn't extend all the way to the edges and had a lot of places for cold air to leak in. Next up we measured the width between studs and cut the insulation to size. After that it's just a matter of sliding the insulation easily into place. 

Philip also put up the vapor barrier, we weren't really sure how to do any of this but we spent the morning watching You Tube videos of people putting up insulation and vapor barriers, and then we just worked away! You Tube and Google are definitely great resources when you want to try and tackle something yourself, there are a lot of great tutorials out there that can help you get an idea of what you're doing.

Next up, the plumber came in and worked at installing our bathtub, as well as reconfiguring plumbing and improving some of the plumbing that was there before since it's all exposed anyway and we may as well do it right. We have a new stack, and a brand new bathtub. 

Our electrician came one evening and roughed in all of the wiring for 3 brand new GFCI's - in the old bathroom there was one plug, which only worked for 60s razors. He also hung our vent fan, which we ducted ourselves. We still have to drill the hole to vent it outside, but the ducting is all ready to go.

We purchased a light fixture last week online, crossing our fingers that it doesn't get back-ordered like crazy and that it looks okay in real life. It's a sleek fixture, that we hope will look great in the end. It's hard to choose these things when the room just looks like a gutted box! 

Finding flooring that met our criteria was a challenge. We didn't want tile because it's cold on the feet, hard to install yourself without some know-how, and would make a big ridge from our wood floor = stubbed toe central. We ended up with a vinyl tile from A&R Carpet Barn, they're big and rectangular and the installation sounded very user friendly. Basically each tile can be glued in place, and cut to fit with a utility knife. The tiles are a grey/white with a linear pattern. 

We've had to reframe the linen closet wall 2 times now, but hopefully we did it for the last time now. The main reason was to make the vent fan fit inside the wall, and we're actually kind of loving the wider 2 x 8 wall next to the shower giving it a more built in look. 

Once everything was framed, and electrical and plumbing were completed, we were ready for drywall. We called our friends to book it, right under the wire too as a couple days later one of them had a baby! Philip took the day off that they were coming so we could finish up with sound insulating and ducting, but a twist came when we realized the night before that the tub surround needed to go up before the drywall! 

After calling a number of friends/family who seemed handy to us, my aunt & uncle came over in the morning to give us a hand. It was terrifying drilling the holes through acrylic side walls, but it all went okay! Basically it was just a matter of putting silicone in a groove, putting each wall into the silicone, and drilling screws all along the top for extra support. 

As we were finishing up sound insulation our friends showed up and drywalled everything in an hour and a half. It looks awesome to have a bathroom with walls again!! First time since January!

Mudders & Tapers are almost done, one more coat to go, we delayed them a bit by going on vacation (we just got back from Minneapolis on Wednesday night). 

Next Steps:
- Choose paint color
- Prime
- Paint
- Install Flooring
- Casings & Trim
- Think of a Linen Closet Solution
- ....start our kitchen?