Stairs...

... because climbing in and out of the back of your house gets old fast.




This picture makes me think it's time we ordered another dumpster :\. We got 1 for the main demo but weren't sure how long the bulk of the reno would take so we were waiting til we got close to being done to order another. Now this just looks sad... :P

We also snuck out and ordered our granite today. We had our hearts set on torontogranite.com but the shipment of Kashmir white they had just gotten in was very grey and kind of dark. So we drove to City Home Granite Depot and they ended up having Kashmir white with more warmer tones in it. They showed us the piece we would get installed and we booked measurement/install with them. Torontogranite.com did have some more in stock than when we first went though. They had a white, a creme and a chocolate brown marble in stock that were pretty beautiful, if we weren't so set on the white granite they would have been tempting.

All that and a bag of grout

Cabinets arrive today. *woo*!

Long weekend

We had a long weekend of sanding, priming, painting and tiling. Here are some pics.

We got plastered this weekend

Not nearly as fun as the horrible pun would have you believe ;o)

Cabinets *check*

So we headed to Ikea today to order our cabinets. It was not a great experience. First we found out that our design fit *too* good (ie. we had 0 inches to spare which meant we risked it not fitting while installing). So we had to shave 3 inches off of our design. To do this we switched out the 15 inch cabinet next to the stove for a 12 inch one with a pull out that will hold baking sheets etc. We then got to wait around for them to enter in our order. Although the planner claims to give you a whole shopping list they will calculate what you need based on your cabinets and add all the filler pieces etc. So in the end we were given a crazy incomprehensible list of bits and pieces for the kitchen. This all would have been tolerable except that we found out that the home planner you use at home apparently gives a really crappy estimate on price. Even between the plan the Ikea staff member made and the final order there was about a $300 difference. If it wasn't still half the price of Home Depot I'd be more mad. As it is I'm just pretty annoyed.

Here is the design we ended up with.

Upstairs Bathroom Layout

Someone asked us for more detail about the layout of our upstairs bathroom. Here is the layout with dimensions. It took us a really long time to come up with this layout. The stack in the corner precluded more standard layouts and we were determined to not be able to wash our hands while sitting on the toilet!

There is quite a bit of room around the toilet in this layout so it could probably be done with a less wide bathroom and depending on the size of the stack and how small the framing can be done around it you might also be able to get away with the room being shorter too. The measurements are pretty important for making this layout work, if you're doing it yourself measure everything really carefully (just to make sure the vanity will fit etc.).

This layout is nice because it makes the room feel really spacious when you walk in (because you walk into the largest open space in the room). One consideration is to make sure you get a good shower curtain solution otherwise the vanity can get splashed a little, but we haven't found it to be a huge problem.

Our contractor neighbor actually re-created the layout of our bathroom for one of our other neighbors that also had a badly placed stack. It was kind of funny and flattering, although having him come over every morning to measure stuff was a bit odd.

Here's some pictures of what it looks like in real life, there are more throughout the blog too ;o).

Just add drywall

It's been a long hard crazy week. We both now have colds and somehow we managed to hang all the drywall. We're kind of amazed how fast this has all come along. I guess there is something about not having a kitchen that makes it all seem more urgent :oP . A long weekend of plastering ahead...