Welcome Home 2

Last year we did a post summarizing our progress from moving in to Christmas with the folks. Here is what we've been up to this past year:

Living/Dining Room:

The main change in these rooms since last year is the new table/chairs and hole to the kitchen. The living room doesn't look too different from last year... the blinds still really need to be hemmed and we're really not sure what to do with the awkward spot currently filled by the Christmas tree.

Kitchen:

The kitchen has been the most recent and biggest change since last year.

Bathroom:
The upstairs bathroom was another major transformation since last year. It's easy to forget how sketchy some of these spaces used to be...

Guest Bedroom:

The guest bedroom got new floor, trim, another skim coat of plaster and another coat of paint (matte instead of egg shell, the matte really does help hide plaster flaws alot!). The new floor and trim went a long way towards making this space more comfortable. The room now has a desk and is an occasionally used home office/guest room.

Master Bedroom:

This room also got new floors/baseboard (we saved the window/door casings since this was the one room with trim worth saving). We also took down a wall to insulate and drywalled the rest of the space.

Basement:


This past year the basement got a new bathroom, furnace and hot water heater. It has since descended back into chaos as the rest of the house has become more livable.


Our task for the new year is to run some new pex piping, add a drain for the furnace + some new drains for the washing machine and back door (for future restructuring of the back walk up). The main driving force behind this project is the need to insulate the basement to take advantage of some nice incentives offered through the eco energy audit program. The eventual goal is to finish the space, but for now we're focusing on just getting it insulated to get the rebate.

We've had a nice break from the house for a while but are eager to get going on our next project.

Hope everyone out there had a good holiday :o)

Going Green

Yes dear readers, we've finally gotten a home energy audit done. Given that we need a new hot water tank and furnace we figured it was time to bite the bullet and find out how inefficient our house is.

We haven't gotten our final report back yet, but the rebates available are impressive. We knew about the furnace and hot water tank rebates, but we also learned that we can get $80 for the window and door we put in our kitchen. We can also get $1,250 for framing and insulating our basement. Given that this is a task we could do ourselves, we suspect the cost will be less than the rebate to get this task done (*yippee*). It may also provide the much needed motivation to actually finish the basement.

We also learned that there is money up for grabs if you decrease air leaks. Air leakage is measured by doing a blower test where they seal the house and run a fan in the front door that measures how much air it sucks (or something to that effect). They feed this data to a computer program that will tell effectively how big of a hole in our house all the tiny leaks add up to. There is money up for grabs for decreasing the size of this hole by a certain percentage. Given that the remaining electrician holes in the kitchen are a huge source of leakage re-doing the kitchen should help us make a huge dent in our air leakage. Things like caulking around trim and sealing electrical boxes also helps.

We're really excited to see the official report that will tell us our actual efficiency number and we look forward to increasing it over the next few months!

In the mean time we're lining up furnace quotes *woo*.

Welcome home

In less than 12 hours a brave set of parents will be coming to visit us. Here are some pictures of what will be greeting them.


Living Room/Dining Room:

These rooms have consumed most of our time these past few months and are our most finished space.




















Kitchen
This room is still on our to-do list. The main progress in this room came when our dining table returned to its place in the dining room (it took up a good amount of the kitchen!).







Bathroom

This room is next on our to-do list (after some last electrical/insurance inspections *ugh*). It may not look too bad in this picture, but creative cropping is hiding a hole in the floor covered with plywood and some holes in the plaster and lathe from our electrician.







Guest Bedroom












This is where my parents will be resting their heads. We patched the holes in the plaster left by our electrician. The trunk in the second picture is an antique we picked up in Vernon (BC) one summer. It's a nice place to put extra blankets for guests.


"Master" Bedroom
Yes, this is where we sleep right now. The channel you see was cut so that we could have a plug in next to our closet that we will probably never use (not to sound bitter or anything...). We'll be fixing it the same way as we fixed up the guest bedroom.

That's all folks!
Here's hoping next year brings more renovation progress.

Below is a picture of our most recent project.. a maze in the snow for Trinity.