Thinking about digging?

While you're at it, why not add a couple of levels under your house as a catacombs?

Our ventures into the basement of our house reminded me of a home renovation article we stumbled upon a few months back. We will not be trying to build a catacombs, but this article's easy to follow instructions of how to build your own catacombs is fairly amusing and got us thinking about fun things you could do with a catacombs.

In our case, our neighbors are all pretty friendly, so adding an underground tunnel would cut down on those walks to visit people when it's cold out (like it is now!). It could also increase living space instead of adding levels above ground. A quick Google search for "catacombs inspiration pictures" turns up many macabre options for catacombs decor (human remains etc), but really with the right decorating aesthetic (and probably copious amounts of benjamin moore cloud white) a catacombs could become a great modern living space.

Tips from the how-to article include the following, #3 is our fav.

• Be wary of underground utility wires and pipelines. Be smart and check with the city or county before you dig.
• Rain delays projects like these and a sump pump needs to be available just in case it rains to prevent flooding.
• Set a date for an opening of your catacomb party for close friends and family members. It's time to celebrate for all your hard work and dedication.
• Building a catacomb underneath your basement takes a lot of brawn, yet you must remember how sacred a project like this is.

Basement Plan

As we mentioned in our previous post, the basement is our #1 priority as we try to wrap up the "greening" of our home so we can get the type of green we really care about... rebates.
This is our plan for the coming weeks.

• run new 3/4 water line from the supply to where we branch off for hot water
  
• run new drains: 1 to the back door for later restructuring, 1 for the furnace, 1 for the washer in it's new location.
  
• do required concrete repairs to patch the drain holes and level the floor for a subfloor at some point in the future.
  
• run new pex water lines for the washer and a sink rough in
  
• wire the basement for future finishing
  
• frame the basement
  
• insulate the basement to >R23 for a massive rebate
  

This is pretty much the plan for now. We're taking the basement to the point where we can get our next energy audit. We can't totally finish it until we restructure the back stairs which will probably happen in spring.

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)

Putting the kitchen to good use

Ginger man/lady. Note the lady gets the sawzall while the man has to use the hand saw.. hehehe

Here's the recipes we used:
Gingerbread
Icing

Update

There hasn't been much to blog about lately. Since finishing the kitchen we've been mainly tidying up the house, cooking/baking, and keeping busy with school/work. We also took a weekend trip to Quebec as a break from the house.

One project that did get us to pick up a power tool (ok the one of us who was determined to be the only house on our street with Christmas lights) was hanging Christmas lights on our porch. When we got our house rewired the electrician offered us external GFCI outlets on the front/back but we only got one on the back since we couldn't think of why we would need one on the front. Then came Christmas time and we realized why having a GFCI on the front of the house is a good idea (lights!). Luckily by now we're confident enough with our electrical skillz that we were able to add the new outlet ourselves. And here is the result:

Much more festive than last year :o)

Kitchen Is Done!

Yes, the kitchen reno is done. We've spent the weekend moving back into the kitchen and unpacking quite a bit of kitchen stuff that has been sitting in our basement for the past year.

Here are some before/after pictures of it. Overall we're really happy with how it came out. We found a lot of good inspiration online that made putting the whole thing together a lot easier. In particular we found the kitchen at Rambling Renovators to be a good resource. We also spent a good amount of time watching Sarah's House 2 on HGTV by Sarah Richardson.

This is a collage we made when submitting our kitchen to CityTV's 48 hour renovation contest. It does a pretty good job of capturing the hideous "old lady peach" that the room used to be.




... and here is the kitchen now:


The fridge is a 33" counter depth by Samsung that we got a great deal on.


Given the lack of counter space we have we decided to dedicate a drawer to being a spice rack. We cook alot and digging through 24 jars to find cumin gets old fast. This drawer is right next to the stove, super convenient.



We went with a Fridgidaire dishwasher because it was the cheapest dishwasher that was all stainless (on the outside anyways...).


Here is the tiny eating nook we made where I am typing this right now :o).




This is our coffee station, super close to the eating nook. We pretty much optimized this side of our kitchen for getting breakfast/coffee in a hurry.


We started demolishing our kitchen on Sept. 19 and are now working in a finished kitchen on Nov. 8. Note that we are the exception and not the rule, but we think it's important to mention that, yes, if you have the skill/motivation a 100% DIY kitchen renovation can be had in a timely manner. One advantage of DIY is that you can work as fast or as slow as you want on your kitchen. In our case, we worked quite hard on the kitchen (this means getting up early even on weekends and pulling a solid 10+ hr day to make up for the fact that you are not a contractor that can do 8 hr days each week day). I'll admit it wasn't always easy or fun, but doing it ourselves also meant that the work was up to our standard. We (ok one of us in particular) is quite anal. Doing it ourselves mean knowing that the drains/wiring were all up to code. Also on the aesthetic side we got to include little details such as putting returns on the end of runs of baseboard. We also were able to give our Ikea kitchen a more custom look using backfeeds and hardwired undercabinet lighting. We also had the advantage of not having to wait on other people's schedules to get the work done.

Design/cost wise, we followed some advice we saw HGTV from Sarah Richardson. Her advice is to save on the cupboards and floors and then splash out on counter/backsplash/appliances. We went with this approach and especially as a result of the Ikea cupboards we ended up with a much nicer kitchen than if we had gone with similarly priced home depot cupboards.

Finishing up...

... is as always dragging on. The little bits that finish a room always seem to take so long relative to the major stuff. Hanging drywall, plastering, flooring, all take about the same time as the finishing but seem to give so much more pay off in terms of "progress" it seems.

Here's what we've been up to this week in pictures. We've been busy with trim, backsplash and enjoying our new toy (a dishwasher!).

Still a lot of caulking, under cabinet valence, painting trim, and much needed handles (!) to go..