Plaster is F&%$ing heavy.

Sooo. Last night was not fun. Our plaster repair friend, Ryan, told us that pretty much our entire hallway has reached its lifespan, and we will have to get rid of it.

Here is the hallway before..

       

Here's after Kyle got the fun part of ripping out the plaster....

See how much it crumbled? I guess he was right!!! 

                                     

          Then i got to take out all my aggression on the lath. Which was kinda fun. The cleanup? Not fun.
Butttt here's where we are at at this point. Just gotta cut the lath that leads to the next room, and then we are ready for drywall!

  

Kitchen Update : Cabinets are up!

After quite a few hours, and sadly... 3 people.. our cabinets are up and running! The hardware looks amazing. The cabinets look brand new. I have to take some new pictures, as these were taken from Kyle's phone, but it'll do for now.
Heres the kitchen before...

Hardware = ugly. (or missing)

Cabinets = ugly. (or missing)

 Here is the kitchen after the painted cabinets and new hardware went up... its really coming along. I  love how much the space has brightened up. We still have to put up the subway tile backsplash, as well as a countertop we can hopefully both agree on :) But here it is so far!

Now it all feels real...

Our brother in law lent us this beauty of a trailer to pack up our house. I think we can fit 3 of our houses in it!

Its getting to be crunch time now. This week will be full of packing, and decreasing stress. 

Hopefully I can get some pictures up of our house that we're in now before we start packing it away. 

Sidenote : My fiancee with our dogs... 

See the need for a big yard? 

Hot Clawfoot-on-Green Paint Action.

My Loveliest Fiancee picked up this clawfoot yesterday. I'm in love.

 Well Maybe I'll be more in love after I get rid of that fugly green paint. 

But, Its BEAUTIFUL, and exactly what I wanted. And we got a REALLY good deal. 

He also plumbed in our only useable toilet for now. In an uninsulated room... should be a chili few months. BUT my YMCA membership finally will come in handy if I need a warm shower...

I know. Its blurry. Its a toilet... what do you want from me?

Chop, Chop, Chop.

The upstairs in this house, is a very strange layout. I can see why they made it so choppy, because there was a small army of children that lived here. Its awkward, and full of unusable space. Just doesn't feel very clean.
Here is the floor plan before.

There are 5 bedrooms, and what looks like some kind of nursery maybe. Just an unusably teeny room. The bathroom is ridiculously small, you can barely open the door without hitting the bathtub. Its just a very cramped layout. So here is what we are planning to do with the upper level.

Wayyy cleaner. And we have useable, nicely sized rooms. I also have a master closet with a "his side" and "her side". (Sadly, I think his side needs to be bigger than mine, purely for his ridiculous sock collection that could probably fill an entire dresser.) My ensuite bath is bigger than the upstairs main bath, but whatevs. I make the plans here. Deal with it, Kids.

Cabinet Repair Extraordinaire.

Sooo.. things have been moving slowly lately, we are just kinda fixing holes in the wall so the plaster repair can be done, and removing the baseboards, etc. Just time consuming, really nothing interesting.
My cabinets had a nice little test run, and I noticed this UGLY line in the middle... BLAHHH.

 Soooooo my caulking gun came to the rescue aaaaandddddd 

OH YA. THATS RIGHT. 

Thats really all I have to show you. 

Riveting stuff, eh? 

Holy S%#$. This is gonna suck.

                            So..... the baseboards are off of the wall in the Dining room/Nook.

And in certain lights, the baseboards look like they are in good shape....

But once we got them off of the walls, they are not the best. So hopefully we can restore them.

Fingers crossed...

Playing with what to do with this bannister.... The baseboards will be white.

So I'm thinking... White spindles, Dark Rail and Top Post, and Not sure about the bottom of the treads. 

Whatevs. Thats wayyyyyyyy down the road anyways. Just dreamin. 

Now that my assistant duties were not needed today, I could finish off the cupboards. They are lookin rad. 

 Aaaaand here is the nook. Gigantic, eh? I love it. The baseboards are off, most of the wall trim and wallpaper is off, this room is pretty much ready for flooring and paint. 

The battle of the 10" baseboards.

My Father in law came by and took all of the 3, 487 nails out of the floor. (okay, maybe not that many. But I'm sure it was damn close.) And I gotta say, I'm going to be pretty sad to part with these floors. So distressed and rustic looking. but we'll be together again soon. After dogs, and babies, and more dogs...

So I absolutely refused to use quarter round over the baseboards when we put in new flooring. So it was either we cut the baseboards, try to make a 2 tier design, or we try to take them off........sooo fingers crossed, I had Kyle try to get them off without destroying the plaster... and voila! Success! 

 Then I tried it. hahahhaa. It took me like 5 times longer. but by golly, I got it! 

Kind of a blessing that we could get them off of the plaster, as it will make it a BILLION times easier for me to refinish, and it will be so much cleaner looking with the dark flooring under it.

To Spend... or to Save...

Soooo... We took a nice trip to Brigden to look for Flooring.... And we've narrowed it down to 2. Excuse my lighting, as my camera was on its last life.. 

We are down to the final 2...

Loving how crappy my blackberry camera is. 

aaaand the winner is....

Hacienda Hickory! 

Its pretty dark, but still distressed like Kyle wanted. He likes the rustic feel, not so modern. I wanted a touch of modern (hence the dark colour.) Will really make the baseboards/kitchen pop. Its gonna look pretty sharp! Sooooo excited.
I found a picture of it installed..

oh ya. thats a sexy floor. 

My New Babies...

Okay. So when we bought the house, I knew there were pocket doors between the living room, and dining room, they just couldn't come out. But i'm kind of a gambler. I knew I'd win big on these. And I fell in love the minute Kyle could get the doors out maybe a few inches..
So that, right there, was what sold the house for me. Those pocket doors.

So I nagged... and I nagged... and I nagged,
and Finally my lovely fiancee caved, and put some jacks in the basement, and lifted up the floor where the doors are.. and voila... it worked! (a little bit)

Aren't they just gorgeous?????????

So, this lovely little tool I bought him for xmas came in Handy. 

Its a dremel multi max. We had to shave off a bit on the bottom, as it was hitting the floor....

I was like a kid at christmas when these doors closed. They are just amazing, and I'm soooo happy we got them working. They're a bit fidgety, but thats to be expected with 100 year old doors, I guess :)

Eff you, Wallpaper.

The first thing I wanted to do as soon as we got the keys to the house was take all the friggin wallpaper off the walls, and see what kind of shape the plaster was in.
Turns out, its in pretty good shape! Few repairs to do, but nothing compared to what I thought we were looking at.
My father in law, also put in a TON of work taking out the subfloor and tile! The floors are in really good shape, but we are going to put in laminate hardwood just so the dogs don't destroy the flooring. We can refinish them when we have a kidless, dogless, house...ha!
Here is the finished product.. after a longggg few days!

                                   funny enough.. this wall has the most repair... and its drywall!!! hahaha

Our dreary kitchen..

Here is our kitchen before... 

: 

I can't say I was in love. With the size, definately. 

Just needed a touch of paint, some wood filler, and some new hardware, as that hardware is either missing, or ghastly. 

Shortly after, We took off all of the cabinets... what a mess we make. 

A coat of primer went on the cupboards, and the window trim. 

I even cleaned up for you!

I used an oil based paint, as well as an additive called "penetrol" to paint the sanded, wood filled, cabinets.

3 coats later.. 

They turned out AMAZING. I'm really excited about how much they will brighten up. We purchased some cup pulls for the drawers, and just simple satin knobs. We also spraypainted the hinges with a "nickel spraypaint"... which turned out AWESOME.
Unfortunatley the countertop will still be there for a few weeks, so the final reveal won't happen for awhile.. but Its going to be exciting for us to see the transformation. Its going to really brighten up the kitchen.

We've discovered....a bathroom!

We were going to turn this room into our temporary bedroom, while we work on the house.

 We were going to turn this room into our temporary bedroom, while we work on the house. The second floor needs to be completely gutted, so we can't stay up there. So we were  in the room, kinda trying to figure out where to put everything, then... DUH DUH DUHHHHHH..... we found mold. So we totally gutted the room ... and found that the original bathroom used to be in this room! So my lovely fiancee put up a wall dividing the addition from original house, so that I can have a main floor Laundry room. Awwwww.... aint he sweet?

Welcome to our home...

This beauty of a structure built in 1916, is in desperate need of some love.

Heres a tour of our initial walk through...

                                                           Formal Dining Room

                                                               Formal Living Room  

                                                                  Upstairs Bath
                                                                  

Top of the stairs

                                                       Upstairs Hallway

                                                        Bedroom # 1

                                                                   Bedroom #2

                                                                   Bedroom #3

                                                                   Bedroom #4

                                                                   Bedroom #5

                                                                   Bedroom #6

                                                                   Dining Room Facing Bedroom #6

Hallway & Front Door

I can't forget to post this beauty -- 

I've always wanted a tub that doesn't let you open 

the door to the bathroom completely.

                                                                   Kitchen

                                                                   "Linolem Chic"

                                                                   Downstairs Bathroom

Stairs Upstairs

                                                      Hallway with the love of my life -- Bannister

                                                        Dining Nook in Kitchen Area