More Progress: Laundry Room

And we're back to the laundry room!  After finishing the final coats of paint on the walls and ceiling, and installing the light fixtures, it was time to move onto the flooring.  The end is almost in sight!

We went with our secret weapon once again:

Armstrong Alterna vinyl tiles are the best thing since unsliced bread.  All you need to work with them is a utility knife.  The look of ceramic without the wet saw?  For us, it was a no-brainer.

After an hour of cutting tiles and laying them out, this is what the room is starting to look like:

(It doesn't actually take that long to do, but Craig was cutting the tiles while watching the hockey game and The Office.)

We love how realistic this stuff looks. Did I mention it can be grouted?  We really like the dark colour, so we'll be using the coordinating grout (Shale).  Yes, the colour should look familiar since it's the same as what we used in both of the renovated bathrooms (Mesa Stone - Charcoal).  Love love love.

We're installing this tile directly on the concrete, so it's a bit cooler on the feetsies than we'd like.  But it's a lot warmer than slate or ceramic tiles would be.  Plus, the jute runners should hopefully help to keep any bare feet warm.

Each tile is 16 x 16, but the "runway" area is a bit wider than two tiles.  We decided to keep the whole pieces on the side you can see (i.e. the left-hand side) and tuck the narrow pieces under the cabinetry where it is easier to camouflage:

 

 

Any leftover tiles will be used in the front foyer (yep, we can't get enough of this stuff), but I don't think we'll have too many remnants.  Anything that can't be used elsewhere will be brought to the Eco Centre.

I promise to have a picture of the finished flooring (hopefully with baseboards!) by Monday.  But now it's time for bed!

{ We weren't paid to use this product.  In fact, we paid quite a bit for this stuff.  But we think it was worth every penny. }

Living Outside of My Comfort Zone

We picked the paint for the craft/office/flex room!  It's a little lot darker than I ever thought I'd go, but you only live once, right?

We went with the Martha Stewart Living line of paint (again) for this room.  I'll let you know Craig's review of the product when this room is all finished.  For now, here's what we're going with:

We'll add a lot of white accents to keep the room bright-ish.  But as usual, we probably won't start this project until the flooring in the laundry room is done.  We should probably have a clear game plan, but this is the way we like to do stuff.  Keeps the renovation process interesting!  (In case you couldn't tell, I've got a really short attention span.)

A Few New Things

My camera battery died.  I guess it was bound to happen (I accidentally left it on while we were away...oops).  Anyway, I thought I'd share a couple of things that I got after my last trip to Superstore while my battery charges away:

This little chick was marked down from $12 to $5.94, so it had to come home with me.  Gotta love Superstore and its weird sale pricing.  Now to find a spot for it!  It might go into the office/craft/flex room downstairs.  We'll see.

I had been looking all over (okay, at Homesense, Walmart and Ikea) for a yellow tray to put on the console table in the living room.  I don't know why I didn't go to Superstore from the beginning.  This one was only $12:

So shiny, so pretty.  And a chevron pattern to boot.  What a happy accident.  I knew Superstore wouldn't let me down!

I also couldn't leave without a couple of napkins.  I know, I know.  Not exactly very green of me.  But I can't help it!  I'm a sucker for pretty patterns on paper:

I wonder what's down in the clothing section these days...  I will have to stop by soon to see.  But not until I finish my closet purge project.  More to come on that later.

Schoolhouse Rock

After seeing this laundry room on the Canadian House & Home website, I just had to have a schoolhouse light in this house.  Now I have two!

Most schoolhouse lights that I had found online were in the $80 to $100 range.  Eeps.  A bit too rich for my Craig's blood.  After thinking these were a pipe dream that would never come to be, we happened to spot one in our local Home Depot.  And when I saw the $50 price tag, I nearly fainted right then and there.  I kid you not.  Two for the price of one?!  Sold!  So two of these babies came home with us that day.  (I think Craig even had a gift card for HD, which helped the lightning-speed decision-making process!)  That was last fall and after months in boxes just waiting to be installed, they finally have a home:

Yes, it's still messy in this room.  Let's focus on the lights, shall we?  Oooh:

Ahhh:

 Here's the corner of the room that you don't see from the door (and that I rarely take pictures of):

This (hopefully) gives you a better idea of the paint colour as well.  It's called Sharkey Grey, but as far as I can tell, it should be called Sharkey Taupe.  It actually looks a little bit purple in this light, but it's really growing on me.  Craig's working on the second coat as I type.

Tomorrow we'll be planning out the flooring tile layout (which were also purchased a few months ago and are just waiting to be installed).  Here's hoping we can finish the flooring by the end of the weekend!

Happy Easter!

I'm taking a break from the blogging for the next few days.  We hope you have a wonderful Easter!

Shades of Grey

I remember a few years ago when green was my favorite colour.  When we first moved into the condo, the first thing we did was paint the living room green.  We chose what we thought would be a soothing colour and went with Mother Nature by Behr:

It was a little too, ahem, loud for our little space.  After living with it for a year, we opted for a lighter shade of green with a hint of grey in the form of Hazel Woods by Ralph Lauren:

Now we were starting to get somewhere.  But after living with the sage-y green colour, we needed something a little more neutral than this.  Lise suggested Silver Drop by Behr since they had just used it to paint Matty's room.  And so began my love affair with grey:

Not only did we use this in the living, dining and hallway areas of our condo, but we have also used it in our master bedroom and entire basement living area in the new house!  To say we love this colour would be an understatement.

But for the laundry room, we wanted to keep with the grey tones, but thought that since the room had a window, we could afford to go with a darker colour.  I also wanted to use a different shade of grey from the rest of the basement.  After bringing home several sample chips, we finally settled on a colour by Mrs. Stewart:

It looks a whole lot like the swatch of Silver Drop, but it is a lot warmer (almost taupe-y).  We're primarily Behr users, so we were a bit nervous to step outside of our comfort zone, but the cute can helped push us to Martha's side:

While I'm typing away, Craig's busy putting the paint up on the walls.  Here's what it looks like so far (excuse all the junk on the countertop):

I think it's going to look great.  I love it already!

Revealed: The Guest Bathroom

Since most of our projects are still in progress, I thought we'd share what we've done with the guest bathroom so far (because it too is a work in progress).  When we first walked through the house, the bathroom was in pretty decent shape.  It just needed a bit of TLC:

Thanks to Craig (aka "The Demolition Man"), he was able to get the room looking like this in less than a day:

Putting it all back together took a little longer than that.  Okay, a lot longer.  We had stripped the room down the first weekend in October 2009.  We had expected it to take about a week, maybe two at the most, to finish it all off.  But things never go as they're planned, do they?  We ended up finishing the room in about mid-January 2010, right before we had overnight visitors who would require their own bathroom.   I'll save the play-by-play and source list for another time, but after four months of rookie mistakes, trials-and-errors and "we-should-do-this-for-a-living" moments (not too many of those), here's what we ended up with:

We pretty much replaced everything in the room except the vanity.  All of the fixtures (tub, toilet, shower doors, sink, lighting, faucets, shower head, etc.) were donated to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and replaced with more water- and energy-efficient ones.  The existing vanity was beefed up a bit and stained a darker brown to help keep costs down.  Stay tuned for a more detailed post about what we did (not entirely chronicled because we had no idea at the time we'd need the pics for our very own blog).

Now I want to ask for your opinion on something that's been bugging me about this room for a while.  Like I said before, the room is finished, but to me it's still not "finished" finished.  We're happy with all the choices we made in the room, except for the lack of personality.  Seriously, I've seen hotel bathrooms with more personality than in this room!  Any ideas on how I can inject a little more life into the space?  I think the place to add a little something-something would be right over the toilet:

 

We actually bought a towel rack for that spot, but would that make it more impersonal?  Should I just put up some artwork, and if so, just one big picture or several small ones?  A mini gallery wall?  Shelf with a plant?  I need help!

Done?

(I'll apologize now for the extremely poor lighting in the photos you are about to see.  I can't seem to get the hang of the white balance settings.)

I know, I know.  We should quit while we're ahead, right?  But ironing these little bits of wax paper, punching the circles, stringing them all together and layering them on the wire rings (a la this tutorial) has become a bit of an obsession for the two of us now.  So are we done with it yet?  You be the judge:

From the door, it actually looks like capiz.  Mom was fooled when she first saw it.  I knew we had done a good job from the way she talked about it.  Craig and I gave each other a mental high five when we saw the look on her face.  Here it is with the light on:

We're really happy with the way it turned out!  We figure we have about 1,500 wax paper circles in total.  (We had initially thought we'd only need 300...talk about a major underestimation!)  After hanging up the last strand, Craig uttered the words that made me fall in love with him all over again:

"I think we need more."

Does this guy know me or what?!  The look was exactly what we wanted, but we were thinking the same thing.  More would definitely be better in this case.  In case you're wondering why we think we need more circles, here's a closer view:

 

You can see a couple of gaps between the strands in these pictures.  And depending on where you are sitting/standing, you can see the light bulbs and/or the old gold fixture peeking through.

So the answer to the title of this post is (fortunately or unfortunately) no.  Maybe we're nuts, but we're prepared to spend another few hours finishing this thing up.  In any case, we both love the look of our new light and Craig loves the price tag even more!  Here's what we ended up spending on our chandelier makeover:

• wax paper: $3 a roll (we used two rolls)
• parchment paper: free (it was a sample from a tradeshow)
• circle cutter: $16 (this didn't work as well as we hoped, so we ended up getting the next item)
• circle punch: $16 (sale price)
• wire wreath form: $5
• extra thread: $5
• CFL bulbs: $9 each (we bought three new bulbs)

Grand Total = $54

It seems like a lot, but if you think about it, the most expensive parts were the cutter (which we'll probably end up selling in our garage sale this summer because the punch was a lot easier to use) and the CFL bulbs (which we felt were necessary because of their close proximity to the paper circles).  A modest investment for a light fixture we can finally both agree on!  (Trust me, we've looked at a lot.)

And it was definitely worth the money to not have it look like this ever again:

Thanks to my sweetie pie sister for convincing us to try this DIY project out instead of replacing the whole thing!

Spring Fever?

To say we're ready for spring is an understatement.  No more snow!

Sorry, no updates on any projects tonight.  I'm feeling a bit like the weather (blech), so I'm off to bed for an early night (finally!) while Craig finishes mudding and sanding in the laundry room.

In the meantime, here's a picture of our snowman.  His face makes me smile.  Goodnight!

We're Almost Halfway There

 

Only 500 more circles to go!  We can finally see the "light" at the end of the tunnel (get it??).  Ah, time for bed.

Another Project

And here's another project that we've started working on.  We didn't want the area under the stairs to go to waste, so we decided to dedicate part of it to storage and the rest to a little bar area.  The bar fridge was generously donated to us by Craig's sister-in-law and brother, so all we had to do was create a spot for it.  The bar area is a lot wider than the fridge, so we added a couple of wine racks on either side to make up the difference.  (And again, when I say "we", I mean Craig and dad, but at least they asked for my input!)  Yet another thing that turned out to be pretty and functional.  Here's the result of all their hard work:

We're still going to add a couple of shelves above the countertop to hold a few glasses (once this basement is finished, there will really be no need to go upstairs!).  Now for your input: do you think shallow shelves made of MDF would work, or do you think we should go for glass shelves?  I'm personally not a huge fan of glass shelves, but maybe they'd be necessary in this teeny spot so that the light isn't blocked?  We did think ahead and install the light closer to the front...  Decisions, decisions.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Laundry Room Progress

Because we can't seem to work on only one project at a time, I thought I'd share what Craig's been up to these days (with help from dad).  I've given them my ideas for the laundry room and I think they've done an amazing job so far (with little supervision from moi...just the way they like it!):

Here's the view of the laundry room when you walk in (pardon the mess...he's still working on the mudding and taping):

{ Nice toe kick, Craig! }

We hope to have the whole thing painted by this weekend (finally...something I get to help out with!).  The countertop and sink are both from Home Depot and the cabinetry is from Ikea.  We'll be installing a backsplash on top of the plywood that you see, and those two holes above the sink will be where we'll be attaching the faucet.  I forgot to take a picture of it for this post, so you'll have to use your imagination.

Here's a close up of the shelving unit that Craig and dad built at the end of the counter:

The countertop actually didn't fit across the whole span (it's a whopping 11 feet, people!).  So to save some moolah (somewhere in the $1K range), we bought a stock 10-foot piece from Home Depot and built this shelving unit to make up the 1-foot difference.  I love it when projects are both functional and pretty.  But it's not really the latter right now.  Since it's the first thing your eye is drawn to when you walk into the room, I'd like to dress it up a bit with some baskets and possibly some wallpaper.  We shall see how creative I can get with a zillion other projects on the go!  It might have to stay as-is for the time being.  And that black cord you see coming out of the left side of the shelving unit will be where my TV will be mounted.  You see, this will be more than just a laundry room.  It will be my sanctuary (or where I go to hide and watch all my soaps...get it?  Soaps as in soap operas?  Never mind.  I don't like soaps anyway.)

We've decided to get a small fridge/freezer for the space beside the entrance to the room to the right of the sink.  We won't be getting one anytime soon, but when we do, it will live right here:

And now for some of the fixtures.  We're going to install two schoolhouse lights from Home Depot to give the room some character.  I think they'll tie in nicely with the old school faucet and deep washbasin sink:

I was also able to find two 8-foot long jute runners from Homesense (yay, no more cold feet!) and a couple of pretty knobs for the cabinets (both from Home Depot):

I'm also planning on hacking an Ikea island into an ironing board and building a couple of drying racks.  There are not enough hours in a day for all of the ideas that are bouncing around in my head!

Guess What We Started?

I'll give you a couple of hints:

 

We hope to be able to show you our finished product by the end of the week!

Look What I Found

It's been so long since I've been to my go-to store.  Look what I found on the shelves on my last visit!

How cute are these?  And they're only $12!  I'm leaning towards the chick because of the yellow clock arms, but the hedgehog is so sweet. 

The pillows in the top picture are $15 and the bolster pillows in the bottom are on sale for $7.  I'm a huge fan of Superstore pillows.  And these ones are so bright and cheerful, I'm not sure how I managed to leave the store without taking any home with me!

Ah, bestill my beating heart: fake foliage that looks really fake.  I don't know what it is about the topiaries on the top shelf, but they are too cute.  Maybe they'd look good lined up on a table set for brunch?  I love the little vases that they're glued into :)

Find anything good in your stores lately?