Here fishy, fishy, fishy

Thanks Lisa for reminding me about the work we have been doing, what would I do without you? You see when I posted last week about the back splash I mentioned that we hadn't really done a lot around the place, but I totally forgot about Jeff's last minute fish pond renovation, which Lisa kindly reminded me about. 

You see when we purchased this grand abode the first thing I thought of when I saw the GIANT fish pond was 'Oh my, the babies are going to drown in there!', so we kind of, well I kind of decided that it had to go. 

Drowning hazard

This pond is huge, at it's deepest point it is easily 7 feet deep! Wowza, and it's pretty long. This was what it looked like in May, pretty gross looking right? In its hay day it was probably a real stunner but had been neglected. The bird netting was all crumbled down, lamiastrum was taking over the backside (no longer a problem, I tackled that) and it had about 2 feet thick sludge on the bottom of it, no doubt years of accumulated gold fish poop and needles from the neighbours awesome spruce trees.

My vision was to fill it in and then make a pretty garden over the top if it, then reality set in, how the F%^& were we going to fill in that huge hole when we have no backyard vehicle access to truck in the multiple pickup truck loads of dirt and fill that would have been required? Easiest thing to do... don't fill it in, instead let's renovate it too! This decision was made in late August, after we had given away over a gazillion gold fish, sold some of the pond Lilly's and had thrown away the bird netting! Oh well, live and learn.

So Jeff donned his chest waders and started the draining process. Perhaps this is why my back lawn did not follow the 'go golden' philosophy of summer water conservation! The draining of the pond took about a day, and during this time Jeff caught a heck of a lot of really cool goldfish and put them in buckets of fresher water as they awaited their fate. Buckets and buckets full of muck were removed, and man did it stink. As Jeff emptied the buckets of muck onto the back grass Gavin and I were on fish watch, looking for any fish that might have escaped Jeff's eager eyes.

Jeff in pond, up to waist, with pond half drained.

Jeff plodded about in the pond for about a day and a half cleaning out muck, fixing up the pumps/filters, and re-filling the pond. The water is now uber clear and you can see all the way to the bottom. 

The new pond decoy,
and blue pump/filter thingy.

We were all pretty pleased with the cleaned up pond, now with the clear water at least if a kid falls in we will be able to see them...and at least now the predatory birds can also see the gold fish. A few days after the job was complete a Great Blue Heron paid us a visit (not the bird in the above image). He had a great time catching the goldfish, lucky we have so many. I busted him a few times taking some really big fish out, and as such Jeff started to get a bit annoyed so he dropped $60 bucks on his pond decoy, apparently herons are territorial and if they see another feasting at a water hole, then they wont join in. HA HA. I walked out into the backyard one afternoon and they were sitting there beside each other! so much for that theory. So for a couple of days we had a visit from a heron, which was pretty cool. 

We have some work to do around the pond, some landscaping to do, I am thinking native plants, vine maples up back, perhaps some salmon berry bushes, Indian plum, snow berries, smoke bush, echinacea and some other things that will attract lots of birds and bees. Next spring should be a fun time to plant, I am really looking forward to it. We have some nice big hunks of rock we found in the bush to put around the edges and perhaps even a water feature is in the future, oh and a big fence the kiddies can't fall in!

One last thing, anyone want a cement swan? if you do, it's yours...

What?! September was the last blog...

Time flies! September was the last post I wrote, wow, so I would expect you'd think that Jeff and I have completed the renovations right? Well not quite. Things have been plugging away slowly, work and life seem to have gotten in the way of things, but we keep at it. Choosing a tile back splash for the kitchen seemed to take forever, in the end it was the great deal we got at the home depot that sealed the deal. 

Hopes are high that I can finally finish up in the kitchen by the end of November, hopes needed as we are hosting Christmas at our house and I would like that space complete. 

Here is the to-do list, it might be different than Jeff's:

• call chimney sweep
• finish painting kitchen cabinets
• install new hinges in kitchen
• install the new door bell 
• patching walls in the family room
• touch up crown molding in family room
• dab and touch up base boards throughout house
• install new door knob backdoor
• paint door casing on backdoor and powder room door in family room
• furniture for living room- couch or sofa bed
• hang up bulletin board in kitchen to hide electrical panel

Lots to get done, perhaps the next post will be sooner and I will have crossed lots of the list. It's really hard to do stuff in the few hours after the kids go to bed and before we go to bed, often the motivation has waned. 

The weather outside is delightful...

The inside of the house has stayed pretty much the same over the past few weeks. The quartz arrived and looks fab. The Annie Sloan Chalk Paint was purchased and is sitting on the kitchen table. Jeff installed crown in the family room, but it needs to be painted. A few hooks have been hung up, but that is about it inside. Outside is another story. The weather has been so nice, a lovely long summer and I want to take advantage of it before the rains come.

So I have been busy tidying up the yard doing all sorts of fun things. I have loved it all. I have been weeding, weeding, oh and weeding. I have also been removing invasive species like English Holly and Lamiastrum, which I suppose is another form of weeding. I loath English Holly and Lamiastrum and forbid you from ever purchasing these two invasive plants from any nursery or garden center and ask that if you have them in your yard, get rid of them! Please. Click here for reasons why. Remember, forbid you! 

Oh, tangent. 

Before: Big green, tall bush by fence- Ivy

After: See that dead tree leaning over, culprit Ivy

 Here is a nice Echinacea for you instead of that Ivy.

Love me some Echinacea

I am also super proud of my ability to now sit in the garden with multiple spiders hanging out around me. Which is OK because these are Canadian spiders that wont kill me, much unlike their Australian cousins whom would view me in the garden as a nice afternoon tea snack. But we did have a 2 foot long Garter Snake and even though it is totally harmless I squealed like a little girl and ran the other way. Some fears will always stick.

I managed to plant some things too, scored some great Hostas and a Rhubarb plant from my work, thanks Demonstration Garden, and things are starting to look pretty. Plans are in the works for some apple and pear trees too. 

After Hosta

I also did some planting out front by the wishing well. I planted some pansies for the fall, and removed some Yucca's and put in some Lavender for the bees.

So the inside list is still pretty long. But that is OK, it will start to rain soon, then I can paint the kitchen cabinets.

The quartz has arrived!

They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, and ours is well on it's way to becoming such. It is the one room that we have spent the most money in, and it will probably be the most impressive reveal once all is said and done. Slowly but surely things are coming along. Last night was an exciting evening in our home, our new quartz countertops were installed and geez they sure are pretty! But more on those later.

Here is what we started out with in our 70s dream home, and no it wasn't the dream kitchen that sold us on our lovely place.

Needless to say, that was quickly ripped out, and we went searching for a new kitchen, finding one on Graigslist for $400. Sweet deal. But I recall most of this has been blogged about already.

Update to today. These are our new cabinets, awaiting some paint as the oak look is oh so 1990s!

Now if you have been following my Face Book page you will know that I have been contemplating colours. The thought of prepping, sanding, priming, painting, sanding, painting, sanding, painting etc just didn't really appeal to me, so I was so happy to discover something called chalk paint! This stuff is amazing and not the same stuff that you paint chalk boards with. I discovered Annie Sloan Chalk Paints, which are the biggest and greatest thing in the furniture restoration business... or so they say. Word is that all you do to your  item wanting paint is a good old scrub down with TSP and then fill any holes, nicks etc and apply two coats of paint, then this special wax that seals it all up. The wax also brings out the grain in the wood, so that should appeal to those of us whom balk at the idea of painting wood!

I think we might go with the Graphite paint, which is a gorgeous black, stunning, classic and should hide all those finger prints young children are apt at leaving on everything! Remember Harold the fridge, he looks stunning with finger prints all over...

So here we go with our paint options:

Graphite on the left, Cocoa on the right. Thoughts are to do Graphite on lowers, Cocoa on the top cabinets. This is what it looks like on our sample cabinet doors:

Graphite on left, Cocoa on right. Think they look pretty nice, what do you prefer? Notice on both images how there is a darker area? Those are the spots with the wax applied. Now we are at a standstill when it comes to the actual painting as this paint is only available at selected stores in our area and they are all out of our chosen colours, apparently Hurricane Isacc has shut down the plant in the US and until it reopens and they can get shipments out, we are just going to have to live with our oak. But that's OK as I don't for-see painting in my immediate future, perhaps that is a job for October.

Atop these beauties is our gorgeous quartz! So fab to look at, I just love them. Here is a sample.

As I write this post, the wonderful Jeff is busy installing our Kraus Under-mount Stainless Steel Sink- gorgeous, you could bath 2 kids in there at once, plumbing in the dishwasher (which I might add has been full of dishes for the past 24 hours and awaiting its first run), and I am hoping will install our Kraus Single Lever Faucet!

Renovating a house is like Christmas everyday! I can't wait to reveal the completed project. 

Mowing the grass

Jeff is pretty happy with his new toy, no it's not the remote controlled helicopter he has been bugging me about for the last 5 years (one day...), but his new Fiskars Stay Sharp Reel Mower. No noisy, gas powered lawn mower for him. I was quite surprised when he announced a few months ago that he wanted a reel mower, commonly referred to as the push mower. After looking around at several mowers he chose the Fiskars, finding one at Home Depot, but it didn't come with a grass catcher, and I didn't want the kids traipsing grass clippings into the house. That's when I declared 'Amazon will have one!', so we went online and ordered the mower and for an extra $30 a grass catcher.

Well today was the day it was delivered to our mailbox below the 49th parallel. So like all great wives I left work an hour early and headed down to the US to pick it up. I had the foresight to print off a couple of documents that I had been procrastinating on editing for the past few days (you'd be surprised how organized my area of the office is becoming) and away I went. Fortunately there wasn't too long a wait to cross, I was able to edit one of the documents on the way down, and after picking up the mower, overfilling my car with cheap gas (whoops) and heading back north, I was able to edit the second one waiting to get back into Canada. I had to laugh while sitting at the Peace Arch crossing, a couple flocks of Canada Geese flew over the border lanes, they must have had Nexus as they just kept flying and didn't stop to present their passports ;)

It wasn't long and I was pulling into the driveway, just after Jeff had shown up with the kids. First thing he said to me "did you get my lawn mower?" Sure did honey! So for the next hour Jeff put the mower together and proceeded in successfully mowing our almost 1/4 acre yard. It was so nice to hear the peace and quiet of our new neighbourhood. No noisy, stinky, gas powered beast to interrupt the tranquility of the tree frogs.

It should be white.

I like white molding, door casing and doors. Brown trim and doors not so much. 

Brown Door

Brown Bi -fold Door

Eew yuck!

And because I like painting so much hmm... the brown had to go. So I painted them and it was actually a pretty simple thing to do, took a couple of afternoons, it could have taken more but I DID NOT WANT TO SAND THEM. So I didn't. I was a little weary of painting without sanding at first but after reading a few other blogs I found on the world wide web I decided that I could do it without sanding. So I did.

Here is what I did:

I cleaned the doors and door casing with a damp cloth to get rid of all the dust from construction. I then applied 2 coats of this oil based primer:

This stinky stuff was the key ingredient here, it allowed me to prime without sanding. I did it inside, on the floor of the master bedroom, the one room currently without new floor on it, with the windows open. I would suggest you do it outside. My head wasn't very happy with me. I applied the 2 coats with a small foam roller, approx 6 inches wide. Foam worked best as it didn't splatter the paint nor leave any paint brush streaks. I left 1-2 hours between each coat of the primer. 

24 hours later I came back to paint it all the lovely Mountain Peak White by Benjamin Moore, although the paint was actually Behr Premium Plus Ultra Semi Gloss Enamel. This time I used a regular roller, same as what you would paint your walls with. For the door casings I used a regular old paint brush.

Now when you paint over brown and go lighter it gets uglier before it gets pretty, so don't freak out if your first coat looks like this:

See the streaks and the brown showing through? Not a big deal. After 24 hours I went back and did a second coat of the enamel. 

See, no ugly brown streaks! Here is the same ugly brown door from above, but now it's Mountain Peak White. Looks much better.

I got the paints from Home Depot, as well as these nifty passage door handles to be installed over the next few days:

Grandpa and I are also painting the molding the same shade of white. Can't wait for that to go in.

Kitchen changes.

Initially when we purchased the new abode we thought we might be able to just re-finish the kitchen cabinets and get some new appliances. Then we had a closer look, the cabinets were not only horribly dated but were not in that great a condition as we initially thought. Plus add the sticky nicotine and grease and other muck after 30 odd years of someone else we decided to rip them out. Here is a reminder of what they looked like:

Fancy, me think not.

Jeff and I are not loaded with big fat wads of cash however (hmm that would be nice though) and purchasing a brand new custom kitchen was not on the cards, that would be our entire renovation budget right there. So we took to Craig's List, how I love thee... We scored an oak kitchen with WAY more cabinets than we could fit into our kitchen for only $400. Sweet deal. Thanks Jason for the help getting them from south Surrey to Langley. You are a champion. 

Now these 'new' cabinets are currently sitting in our garage and some have made it into the kitchen awaiting to be put together like a big jig saw puzzle, once they are in place we shall begin the epic task of re-finishing them, which I am sure will include sanding and MORE PAINTING, akk. They do need a bit of TLC. Stay tuned for a post on that. But I stray, the task for this week is installing the cabinets. 

The new kitchen is going to be great, especially with our new energy efficient appliances awaiting their turn to take place in the kitchen. I can not wait to cook on my new Samsung 5 burner gas range. 

Jeff ran the gas line in today, another one of the skills that man has tucked away in his tool belt. PLEASE do not attempt this if you have had no experience in gas fitting! Jeff had a stint as a pool boy a few years back and is a certified gas fitter. He got some pipe, some fittings, drilled some holes, shut off the gas and just hooked it up, which was not as simple as I make it out to be, having to run a gas line in from under the house and tie it into the furnace/water heater line. But he did it and didn't blow up the house or anything! So now we have gas. And Harold, no Harold is not the gas range, he is the fridge, not sure why he got named Harold, but it stuck, he's pretty cool though, get it? cool.

Harold.

So stay tuned in the upcoming week or two as I report in on the kitchen install, the search for a single bowl under-mount sink and quartz counter tops.

Get the painting done...

What an epic week of painting and it is going so well! A full seven days of painting walls and then it will be on to trim and doors. Got to get rid of those ugly brown doors! After the ceiling fiasco of last week this week has been smooth sailing. The colours are awesome if I do say so myself. I chose Behr 'paint and primer in one' paints, with stain blocker built right in, you can't even notice the nicotine or smoke smell anymore. I love that paint, two coats is all that is needed, it goes on very smooth and doesn't have a super stinky odour like some paints do, although I would still recommend opening a window when painting.


I haven't been solo on this busy week either, I have a huge thank-you to go out for Grandpa and Jenn. Oh and an even bigger thanks to Grandma whom has been looking after Gavin and Emily. And then there is Skippy, he's just special ;)

My Skippy the Wonder Dog

The house is starting to look more like a home again, after the past few weeks of drywall dust, wall paper stripping, filling holes etc, it is nice to get that paint on. But man, I am a little over painting.

Here are some of the colours we chose:

 Emily's room: Fox Glove by Behr

 Gavin's room: Green Leaf by Sico

Kitchen/Family Room/Living Room, most of the house: Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore

Laundry Room/Main Bath: Wedgewood Gray by Benjamin Moore

Living Room Accent: Mexican Tiles by Rona Collection

Oh and Jeff started laying floor last night, yeah!

I also had a nice surprise when I showed up to the house on Wednesday evening. We have a nice little iron fence that goes around the front garden beds, and then up onto the front porch and it was looking a little worse for wear, really needing a touch of paint, it was on the to do list, but waaaaay far down on the bottom. Well I noticed that someone had painted it for us, I instantly thought perhaps it was Jeff, but then thought 'hells no!', Jeff has way more stuff to do inside, like laying floor and finishing up his TV shelf/nook thing in the family room.

Our TV shelf/nook, not quite done yet.

Who could it have been then? Grandpa of course, master of completing those mystery jobs and showing up with needed things that are on the list like building gates to keep children and wonder dogs in yards, washing walls, running stuff to the dump, and reminding his son, Jeff, that when laying floor you need to remember to cut out a hole for the heat register!

Look at that shiny new painted railing!

So slowly but surely we are making progress, tomorrow is appliance delivery day, cant wait, going to have lots of great images to share. Possibly the last day of painting walls too, really can't wait for that one either.

Epic FAIL! painting day 1

So today feels like a total and epic FAIL. Day 1 of painting and it was such a waste. I was so positive, and things were going so great, until, bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

Along with the wallpaper we have popcorn ceilings, a fantastic gift from years past. Initially we thought lets scrape this S^&* off, then in my infinite wisdom and desire to speed up the renovating process I decided to paint over it, freshen it up a little. 

Here is why it needed to be freshened up:

White is new paint, 

yellow is nicotine stains! GROSS

Doesn't that fresh white paint look sweet?

Well, was I wrong, wrong, wrong. You see freshening up popcorn ceilings can't really be done, well it can it just has to be done correctly. By correctly I mean, don't paint your popcorn ceiling with a water based paint, never, ever, ever! It is preferable to do it with a shellac, or oil based paint. Especially when nicotine staining is involved. 

I started in Gavin's room, that went well, paint went on nicely, then moved out into the hallway, again going well, headed out into the living room, did one coat here, then went down to Emily's room, hmm, that was a bit tricky, not going so well here, let's stop for lunch then, after lunch we shall go back to painting.

The first coat of the water based stuff went on well, but as it dried I could tell the staining was coming through in the living room, this is despite using stain blocking paint. So after it dried a few hours I hit it again with some more stain blocking paint/ceiling paint and sha BAM... bubbles, and not just little bubbles that you might be able to get away with, I mean 2 feet by 4 feet bubbles in the middle of the freaking living room ceiling. I had over saturated the popcorn, unwillingly that is, (sorry no photos, I was too pissed off).

You can imagine my reaction went something like this "mother %&(#$() &%*( *%*TU, %*%*(^)@_ %%())) beep, beep, beep, beep", a paint roller may have been thrown across the room, with 10 foot pole attached, also a paint scraper and a few other things, plus some more expletives as well were tossed around. Oh and yes, Jeff did attempt to drop the "I told you so" but that was quickly shut down, I know I was wrong, but I don't need to be reminded of that right now, especially after a bucket of Killz stain blocking paint, 1 bucket of Behr ceiling paint, an old and slightly faded pair of Lulelemon yoga pants, and my afternoon of effort was thrown down shit creek with the paddles!

Have you ever seen me mad? not a fun lady, nice, lovely Sarah turns into a raging mad bull. But a few deep breaths and a trip to Home Depot to throw another $40 bucks in the garbage later I was all good. I spent$40 bucks on 2 spray cans of Homax textured ceiling in a can, which was a total waste of money. But I needed to see if I could solve my epic FAIL. 1 can ended up covering about 1 square foot of ceiling, and most of it ended up spraying all over the room, onto me and I even managed to get it on the window which I still have to clean up. (Pay no attention to the cutesy you tube video of the nicely dressed man applying this stuff, it is utter bull!

Oh, how did I become all good? I did what we were going to do in the beginning, I located the scraper that had been thrown across the house and scraped my afternoon of effort away. Hmm, that was fun, the freshly painted popcorn ceiling came off rather nicely, in large sheets that went 'plop, plop' on the sub floor.

Now we have a smooth flat ceiling that is ready to be painted, again. That is after I get some professional painter person advice in the guise of a visit from the man down the street that shall remain nameless.

Stay tuned for the next adventure in ceiling painting.

This past weekend I became a stripper...

That's correct, for the past three days I have been stripping... wallpaper! I HATE wallpaper, no that is not a strong enough word, I DESPISE wallpaper about as much as I despise Stephen Harper's Conservative Party. It might be nice hmm, let me think... never! In our abode the wallpaper was curling, yellow from years of past owner smoking, flaking and just revolting. It was dusty and holding onto 30 years of someone else's stinkies. It had to go.


We had 7 different types of wallpaper.

Stripping was fun, very satisfying. It was an easy project, but one that required patience.


I needed a few tools:

1. Rubber Gloves
2. Spray pack (the type you might use to spray weeds in the garden)
3. Scraper and/or wall paper removal knife
4. Vinegar and/or wall paper removal solution
5. Hot water

Step 1. Find a corner and start ripping, you might need your scraper here. I was able to rip all the paper down, but this left the pasty gluey stuff stuck on the walls. In the process of ripping I was amazed that the stains had penetrated through the paper onto the gluey stuff beneath!

Start peeling it off.

Step 2. Take your vinegar and hot water and mix it up in the spray pack, then spray onto the pasty gluey stuff, dont over saturate your wall, if you do you will damage the drywall underneath (learnt the hard way), and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. You might need to score your paper too! Scoring would allow the liquid to penetrate through, I chose to omit this step.

Gavin spraying the vinegar
solution on the glue.

Step 3. Take your scraper and start to scrape off the pasty gluey stuff, it should come off really easily. If you find it doesn't then it's time to step it up a notch and use the wall paper removal solution (no more helping Gavin). Mix it up according to the manufacturers directions. Spray on the wall as per step 2 and let it work its magic, magic takes about 15 minutes.

Me scraping away

The magic bubbles!

Step 4. Take your scraper and peel the pasty gluey stuff off, again be careful not to damage your drywall. This will leave a nice mess on your floor, so if you still have carpets or flooring down you might want to cover it up before you begin with drop clothes, in our case the shag pile carpet had been previously removed, so we could omit this step.

Step 5. Clean up. Rinse the residue from the wall with remover solution. Then rinse the entire wall with clear water, and let everything dry completely.

Already the house looks sooooooo much better, I can't wait to paint, that will be fun now wont it? 

Here are some before and after pictures of the kitchen with and without wallpaper. Don't think too much about the kitchen cabinets, we are sourcing some new-to-us cabinets that will be re-finished.

With floral wallpaper

Without floral wallpaper