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.