East Village Gem!

So I have been in New York for a few months and I am still very much enjoying the vibrancy of life in this fast paced city. We have mostly finished with decorating the apartment and overall it has come out quite nicely. We went for a modern look with some vintage touches, we still need some more art for the walls but overall we are pretty much complete.

Our apartment is a 2 bedroom 2 bath(yes a 2 bedroom apartment in NYC!) in the East Village which is a very hip and interesting part of NYC with many bars/restaurants to try out. There is even a nearby park that boast the city's very first dog run where our little Trinity meets many friends in the park specifically for small dogs. Also an amazing feature for a Manhattan apartment is en-suite laundry which is incredibly rare as this is a feature that only 10% of Manhattanites have.

I will be doing a few more blog posts on some of my favorite elements in the rooms but for now some pictures!

 Living Room(my favorite room):

Kitchen:

 Dining Room:

Bedroom:

Guest Bedroom:

New Location & New Life

So it has been nearly two years since our last post and a lot has happened both with the house and our lives. Things ended up not quite going to plan with the house, my ex-wife and I separated and went our separate ways and therefore the house needed to be sold. We managed to fully finish all the critical elements of the house before we sold and all of our work paid off when it sold. The house ended up inspiring a frenzy of interest and eventually went to the highest bidder with 14 bids and substantially above the asking price.

I have now moved on and taken my tools to a brand new city where my new girlfriend and I are mainly furnishing and fixing up our new apartment and helping out some friends with their small projects in our spare time.

Here are a couple pictures from the roof deck of our apartment, its an amazing location in the east village:

Yard update

Between rain and holidays our yard took us a while to get done. It's now pretty much done with the exception of the shed that we still need to install.



The deck with the super cheap patio set we got from Home Depot and lounge set from Canadian Tire. We really enjoy having dinner/cocktails out here when it's not 40 degrees C. :D

View of the yard from the deck. To the left is grass for our dog. To the right is our "car-shaped patio". It'll be useful for parking on and will be good entertaining space for parties etc. One thing we figured out after removing our shed that our lot is 20' wide and we have a pretty ridiculously huge yard (for inner city Toronto anyways ... ;)

We made paths to go around the front of the deck and walkup....

...which lead us to build a funky modern shaped planter bed.

So that's the yard for now. Up next.. waterproofing (we're hiring that one out.. we've had enough digging for one life time) then the basement.

shed --;

With summer on the horizon we're working to finish up our yard. Last year we built a deck. This year we're tearing down the "garage", redoing some fencing and making a parking pad. You can see a rough plan here.

Today we tore down the shack er.. garage. We managed to get most of it into our dumpster but a sizable chunk of it is still sitting in our yard waiting for the next dumpster to come tomorrow. *woo*.

Time to let a good friend go.

You may remember Big Red, our drywall lift, from earlier days of our reno. This drywall lift saw us through 2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, livingroom, diningroom and kitchen of drywalling. It is very handy for drywalling ceilings and is pretty useful for the higher up part of walls too. Since we are now basically done drywall (except for our basement where the ceiling height means Big Red is overkill) we've decided it is time to say goodbye to our old friend. If you think you might be in the market for a drywall lift for $100 OBO please send us an email: 416fixerupper@gmail.com .

Post #201 : Building a new bed

Today we pass the 200 post milestone. *woo* We also finished our latest project, building a new bed. After sprucing up the master bedroom closet (similar to the guest bedroom closet), the rest of our master bedroom started to look kind of drab. Since we're probably moving in the next couple of years we want to avoid spending alot of money on new furniture. So this bed is the first of a couple of new furniture creations to spruce up this room on the cheap.


We built the frame and headboard out of 3/4" plywood. We built out a border 2.5" around the entire headboard since we're still debating adding nailhead trim to the headboard. It also made the headboard more sturdy/thicker.

We scored some sweet bed hardware from Lee Valley Hardware. There were 4 sets like this for the corners and 2 sets of hardware for a cross brace. In the above photo you can also see the 2x2 we attached to the side rail to support the box spring.


We used spray adhesive to put a 2" piece of foam in the area between the 2.5" border and then put a layer of batting to make it extra plush.




We then finished up by upholstering it in a cream fabric we found at Designer Fabrics. This store is seriously awesome. It totally deserves its reputation as the go-to place for fabric.


We got the idea from this headboard shape from the Loft Bedroom episode of Sarah 101 on HGTV. We knew it would be a bit challenging to upholster but it was easier to wrap our heads around making this design symmetrical.



And here we have it. The bed came out way better than we imagined. For the frame we just wrapped 1" foam around the outside of the plywood so it's also nice and squishy :). There are also bevelled/stained pieces of 2x4 acting as legs.

Antiquing in Hamilton

Today we took a trip in the rain out to Hamilton to do some antiquing. We hit up Antique Avenue thanks to a tip from Rambling Renovators.

We saw some neat things and ended up bringing home this little red bird figurine.



Many other interesting things to see in the store:

Kidney pills anyone?

Guest bedroom closet

Now that all the living areas are done, we're taking time to do some much needed renovating of the bedroom closets. First up was the guest bedroom closet. This closet had crumbling plaster and lathe with holes from the re-wire (yes.. right after we moved in..). The plaster and lathe holes combined with the non-sealing attic access meant this closet was too dusty (and prone to random sprinklings of yucky cellulose insulation) to store anything other than packed boxes. We never took any pictures of this heinous closet so you'll just have to trust us that it was really gross.

We remedied the grossness by drywalling the closet and properly sealing the attic access.

Like most old things in our house the floor in the closet was gross, so we put down a new cork floor since we're out of the hardwood we used in the rest of the house (finally). I was pretty amazed at how nice cork is these days. We may have to look at it more seriously when we do our basement.
With the walls built, floor in and trim done we built an L shaped set of shelves and installed two levels of hanging on one side of the closet. Here it is in action. We unpacked three more boxes today (yes, 2.5 years later we are almost unpacked). We also moved most of the stuff from our main bedroom closet since that space is next on our hitlist. So this is a bit more than the closet will normally need to hold but it does it pretty well.

We're still here!

It's been a long few months with little in the way of blogging. Tight deadlines at work for the more blogg-ey member of our duo meant some stagnation on the blog front. Luckily progress on the house has not stalled out. Since we last talked house we've done the following project:

• tiled the entry way
• did some long overdue redecorating of the living room
• finished the guest bedroom closet

As the dust gradually settles we'll try to do a post on each of these items.

Up next we're planning to tackle the master bedroom closet and maybe some more tinkering on the basement. This is all just until the snow melts and we can get back to the backyard which needs a new fence and parking pad.

New favorite restaurant

Last night we treated our parents to a night out Toronto-style at Lucien. This has to be by far the best food we've had in Toronto so far. After an amazing dinner at Alinea in Chicago last year I thought I'd never find a restaurant that could even come close to measuring up, but Lucien is probably the closest we've come (we tried Colborne Lane last year but made the mistake of going on Valentine's day so maybe it deserves another shot...).

At Lucien 2 of us had 4 courses and 2 of us had 3 courses (a la carte) and a bottle of wine and the total with tip was still comfortably below the $500 mark and the food was extremely tasty.

Stand out dishes were:

• French onion soup with duck confit - the flavors in this were so good.
• Beef bourguignon - this was absolutely amazing. It wasn't the stew but all the ingredients of beef bourguignon with 3 cuts of beef (including the best tenderloin I've ever eaten!) and some vegetables and sauces.
• Venison gnocchi - this was a kind of simple dish (venison sausage with gnocchi) but the flavours were still really good (I think the member of our party who ordered this ended up wishing he had the beef);
• Ontario red deer - I only got a taste of the deer on this one but it was tender/good. It was served with some cranberry which seemed really nice.
• lemon meringue and chocolate beetroot brownie were probably the 2 best desserts (of what the table ordered). I had a hard time finding the beetroot in the brownie dish but it was tasty none-the-less.

The Money Pit

We've been pretty quiet the past few months. More about that later. While we've been quiet we've officially finished everything above-grade in the house. We are now also at a point where we can watch this movie without having a meltdown:


Our house was way to close to this state when we bought it...

Happy Sunday!

I was reading the Toronto Star online edition this morning and this story caught my attention. This fellow east Toronto couple found a snake in their house for the second time. They found a snake a month ago while renovating a bathroom but it slithered away. After a month they recovered the initial visitor and within 2 weeks they found another one (apparently a quite resilient one that survived the wash cycle of their washing machine). The Star article does a good job of highlighting all the freaky facts of how far/long snakes can live if they escape from their owners. Given the close proximity of housing in Toronto it's a little disturbing ;o).

One interesting thing the news story links to is the husband's YouTube page where they've done a really nice job of documenting the hunt for snake #1. I hope they got some footage of this new visitor and continue to document their snake saga. It's kind of fascinating.

Deck-ed out

Despite the silence progress has not completely stalled on our place. We got the bulk of the deck done very fast but one of us wanted to spend time getting the lattice work and finish details just right before the big reveal. The deck design was mostly inspired by the deck at 247 Reno . We're pretty happy with how it came out. The deck is 10'x~16' which seemed really big when we were planning it, but upon seeing it done I don't think we would have been happy having it much smaller. It does take up quite a bit of space in our yard but once the garage/shack is torn down next summer it should be an appropriate size relative to the yard.

Without further adieu glorious "after" pictures:

This is Trinity next to the outer corner of what was going to be our BBQ "shrine". It seemed weird to be standing peering into our neighbors' yard while BBQing though so we opted to move the BBQ closer to the house.

Trinity with the stairs to the yard.

Outside of the "BBQ Shrine". Next summer we will probably replant the tree in the barrel into the ground. My step-dad horticulturalist says it's an elm (quite common in Central Alberta our homeland)

A lot of attention went into the lattice work and cladding the pressure treated 4x4s because they didn't look as nice as the rest of the pressure treated wood. I'm really happy with how it came out even though I argued that doing this was madness when it was suggested.

What the BBQ Shrine is used for now. It's so nice to look out on this from the kitchen. It makes it feel like our backyard is some tropical place. Unfortunately we didn't finish the deck in time for tropical weather :P.

Stairs down to the garden. Yeah no rail. We live dangerously. Or rather we value prettyness over safety. Get over it, its 2'.

Backyard update

So after giving up on hiring out the siding we ended up doing it ourselves over labor day long weekend. Since then we've been super busy with building the deck and craziness at work. Here are some pictures of the progress. We'll write more later when things are a bit less hectic.





The beginning of the BBQ alcove:

All Wrapped up

So, we got a quote for siding. It wasn't outrageous but it didn't seem like they would do the job to the level we wanted it done. Their proposed solution around the window was J-mold and with no mention of building wrap.

When we installed the kitchen window, we caulked around it but it was basically sitting there with caulk around it and a piece of plywood below it. Given that water can pass onto the underside of the siding we wanted to ensure that the edge around the window was really weather tight. By this point we realized that if we wanted this job done how we wanted it it was probably just easier to do it ourselves. So this weekend we prepped the kitchen for siding, we flashed around the window (using a home made bending solution):

Filled in the gaps around the door and added brick mold

and of course wrapped everything in building wrap. Hopefully we will get to side it this week/weekend and then we can move on to the deck!

In other news we used the money we saved on hiring out siding to hire our contractor neighbor to arrange and install a custom size door from the Habitat for Humanity Re-store in the basement walkup. Things are moving along again!

Yard Plan

There hasn't been much in the way of progress made on the outside of our house since the last post. We're mainly being held up since we're hiring out the siding and we tend to procrastinate more when working with pros than when doing things ourselves :P. With the help of Homestars, we got our butts in gear today and contacted a bunch of local companies with the hopes that we can get it set up soon. We would do it ourselves, but we want to make sure the flashing around the new window and door from the kitchen are done right which requires people with equipment + know-how for working with aluminum.

In the mean time we've been thinking about the final design for the deck/yard. Bear in mind this project is still in the realm of "pipe dream" and won't get finished until next summer, but this is the plan:


We're contemplating taking a free table from our neighbour (hence the over-sized table on the deck) but looking at it in the diagram it may not be meant to be... unless we convert our whole yard into a deck... This is also based on estimated measurements of our yard. Depending on the actual length we may need to lose a boxwood or 2 (or shorten the deck).

Our goal for this summer is to get the deck done. Next summer we will tear down the garage/shack, build a new fence and parking pad. And to think when we moved in we thought we'd be parking in the back within 4 months... we were so naive :P.

Almost out of the hole..

So its been a busy few weeks but we have almost finished up the bulk of the walkup. Since last time we have finished the walls, poured the floor and installed a nice new trench drain with a 3 inch drain attached, so hopefully this should prevent any more flooding.

The concrete needed some minor re-contouring after it was poured to fill some low points but now its all gently sloped towards the drain. We still need to call around to find someone to custom make us a door for opening that is smaller than any standard exterior door. The door that was there seems like was a converted screen door that let wind blow right through it in the winter:

Then its on to re- siding the kitchen add on and then a back deck!