Happy Halloween!

Meowzer hanging out with my attempt at fall decorating. To be honest, she enjoys biting chunks of stick off and then spitting them out on the floor. We have pumpkins outside, but didn't get around to carving them this year. It's not like we get any trick or treaters anyway living out in the boonies! Hope everyone has a fun and safe night!

Versatile Blogger

I was totally taken by surprise on Friday, when Debbie from My Little Mess commented on my post saying that she was awarding me with the Versatile Blogger Award. Wow! I was thrilled. It's amazing to me how friendly, helpful, and encouraging the blogosphere is. And the design of this award shows that perfectly.

In order to accept, you have to share the love! And also a few other things.

There are three rules to accepting:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave the award to you. Check!

2. Share seven things about yourself. I'll get to that in a minute.

3. Send the award to three additional new/newer/newish blogs - someone who hasn't received the award before.

7 Things About Us - because that's more fun than 7 Things About Me

1. I  grew up on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. I moved to Ontario when I was 18 to go to university, and I never moved back home. Vancouver Island will always be home, but Ontario is home now, too. Mike grew up on a farm right here in Minesing.

2. I'm really short! Just 5'0". It makes some things difficult, so I'm glad to be dating a tall (6'1") guy.

3. I have a tattoo of a starfish on my foot. Mike doesn't like tattoos.

4. I'm a total animal nerd. I have a Bachelor of Science in Zoology. Mike has a degree in Systems and Computing Engineering, and a diploma in Electrical Engineering Technology. We like science around here.

5. We made our own maple syrup last year, and will do it again this year, too. And when I say we, I really mean Mike. He bought the supplies, tapped the trees, did the hours of boiling and bottling. Our seven maple trees produced way more than he could keep up with - a lot of sap went bad before he had a chance to boil it!

6. We still haven't turned our heat on. It was 12 degrees celcius in the house the other morning!

7. I used to foster dogs for an all-breed rescue. Tahsis (who is named after a small Vancouver Island town) was originally just a foster, but we both fell in love with her and she never left!

Spreading the Love

I follow A LOT of blogs (thanks to Google Reader for keeping it organized!) so it was hard to pick just three, but here goes!

1. The Kiefer Cottage
2. Baking the Day Away
3. Nes' Farm

Please take a minute to check these guys out (as well as My Little Mess), I think you'll enjoy them!

Happy Sunday!

Gallery Wall Creation, Part 3: Putting It All Together

In our little corner of Blog World, things don't happen all that quickly. We both work full time at jobs that keep us out of the house, and even small projects often have to be spread out over a couple of days in order to be finished. But to quote Sherry from Young House Love, "One of the challenges with sharing stuff on a blog is that unlike a makeover show, it takes months and even years to get to the after!" And while this photo gallery wall isn't taking months or years, it's taking more time than it probably should based on the level of difficulty.

I finally got around to putting the ads in their frames, and moving them all around on the table top until I found a layout that I liked.

But after much switching and swapping, I just couldn't get it right. The space was too big, and I didn't have enough stuff.

So I revised my plan. Remember these maps?

I decided to keep them in the kitchen, and involve them in the gallery wall.

They might not stay, because Mike doesn't think they "go" with the rest of the kitchen theme. He's right. But shhhh. 

It makes me really, really happy! Let's take a look piece by piece at the things you haven't seen.

I'm a newbie Pyrex collector (and a contributor over at the Pyrex Collective II), although I typically use all of the pieces I own. This little lid is so faded on the back, so much so that I would never use it. But for 99 cents at Goodwill, I couldn't leave it there! The pattern is known as Daisy.

Quaker Oats and Kraft Cheese, both delicious! The Quaker ad is from 1964, while the Kraft ad is from the 1930s.

This little HP Sauce ad is from 1964.

The plate on the left was given to me by Mike's mom, and it dates to the 1880s, the same era our house was built. The maple leaf was given to me by my mom, and is made of cast iron. It's heavy!

Grilled cheese (made with Kraft?!) and tomato soup, anyone? From 1938.

I'm glad that's done in time for the weekend. Because it's the weekend before Halloween, we have a couple things on our social agenda, and I also have a couple little crafty projects I'd like to work on, which I'll hopefully be sharing with you next week!

Enjoy your weekend!

I linked up to...

Gallery Wall Creation, Part 2: Supplies

After the preliminary planning of our gallery wall project, we knew we needed supplies. I make lists probably twice as often as I draw sketches, so of course I needed a supplies list!

• Frames - black, various sizes
• Fabric swatches or scrapbook paper - various colours
• Picture hanging strips*

We've decided to nix the shadow boxes mentioned in the last post. The objects we'd like to display don't need 'em.

Image sourced from here.

*3M Command Picture Hanging Strips are MAGIC! Our walls are made of ancient horsehair plaster and lath, covered by several layers of wall paper. Sometimes they just don't enjoy being penetrated by nails or screws and essentially vomit plaster dust instead of holding it together. These velcro-y little guys are the perfect solution! (We were not sponsered or gifted anything to say these things. All opinions are entirely our own and based on personal experience).

On my way home from work, I hit up HomeSense to see what they had going on.

Unfortunately, the frame department was a big ol' bust. But...I did find my new favourite friend!

 

Oink.

After wandering around the store, carrying my new friend in the crook of my arm, occasionally giving him a pat on the bum, I paid for him and then headed over to Wal-mart.

Here I bought the things on my supply list, including a few extras like fabric glue pens (cool!), a sharpie, and some bright  yellow acrylic paint for an addition to the gallery wall. Details on that soon.

That's as far as I got for the day. Because, in other very exciting news, we have the washing machine hooked up!!

You wouldn't believe the backlog that we have, but it will all be history soon.

Until next time...have you ever had to have something you saw in a store, even though it was obscure?

Gallery Wall Creation, Part 1: Planning

We have a wall in our kitchen that we feel is just perfect for a gallery wall.

The maps currently hanging there will be relocated. More on those in a future post.

What we really want to see in here are kitchen-y vintage advertisements and other related things.

Remember this guy? Err...girl? She won't be lonely for long.

Pin It


I mentioned in a previous post that we had a couple more vintage ads waiting to be put into frames.

Well, we were recently given a whole whack of old magazines dating as far back as the 20's and as recent as the 60's. Whoohoo!

In addition to the old ads, we'd like to incorporate a few neat objects displayed in shadow boxes. We haven't decided yet what will make the cut.

There's a lot of prep work that goes into creating a gallery wall. Some people have enough vision to be able to just throw up pictures and things and have it look amazing.

I'm not one of those people!

Enter Pinterest.

via Ann Beck Photography

I need to sketch things out by hand in order to best visualize, so here's a (really) rough sketch of our gallery wall in the making.

As we bring together the pieces that we want to display, this will likely be tweaked as needed.

Do you have a gallery wall in your home? Does it include pictures as well as objects? Did you have to sketch it out first in order to visualize it?

Promised Pictures

My post yesterday was severely lacking in the visual stimulation department, so I'm back today with pictures as promised. Without further ado, here they are!

Exterior Light

To see the before, go here.

We snagged this guy (and it's twin) as a raffle prize at a Buck and Doe we went to last summer. Hooray for free home improvement stuff!

The Mini Barn

To see a previous in progress shot, check out the end of our Housiversary post, here.

Of course, there's still a ton of work to do. The mini barn will be finished before winter. It will be trimmed out in white, and I can't wait to see (and show you!) the finished product.The work that needs done to the back of the house? That'll have to wait until at least spring, because there's some pretty significant brick work that needs to be done there.

Until the next post...enjoy some pictures of fall!

P.S. You may notice some changes around here over the next little while. I'm tweaking what I can to improve the layout and design of the blog for readers!

Monday Musings

Another weekend has come and gone, and we've slashed a few more things off of our never ending to-do list.

We're trying our best to get a lot of exterior work done before it gets too cold to do so. The weather hasn't been cooperating lately, gifting us with bucket loads of rain. However, this past weekend provided some relief and we had gorgeous weather! This brief period of awesomeness gave us the opportunity to...

• finish shingling the mini barn's (a.k.a. the shed) roof
• apply one coat of paint on the mini barn
• get the satellite hooked up
• install an exterior light at the back of the house

To be quite honest, Mike did all of this himself except the painting, which I did. I mostly did traditionally gender appropriate things like grocery shopping and cleaning, and tending to the furry beings that live in our house.

I'll be back tomorrow with pictures, because I totally dropped the ball yesterday and didn't take any.

I do have a picture of these neat little things that I've recently acquired, which I'm assuming to be jelly molds.

The dozen metal ones came from the same auction as my $5 chairs. They were bought with a bunch of other junky houseware things, for $5.

The pastel coloured ones were given to me by Mike's mom. They are colourful and happy and make me think of Easter.

How was your weekend? Did you get anything done on your to-do list?

Measure Before You Post - Lessons in Humility?

So, a whole whack of the statements in my last post were wrong.

Oops.

Let's look again at the current layout.

The top wall is actually 8' 8 & 3/4". The window (including casing) is 41".

The left wall is 11' 4 & 11/16". The window there, including casing, is 31".

The sink is in fact 32" wide. Our new toilet actually projects nearly 30".

The electrical panel is not actually where I thought it was.

If I have any readers left after this display of incompetancy, thank you for sticking around!

Because of the huge goof that was yesterday, I decided to make a scale drawing, including moveable to-scale fixture pieces.

By doing this, I discovered that Layout Option # 2 will not work. There would not be enough clearance between the toilet and the sink. So, thank goodness for the news about the electrical panel, because Layout Option #1 is really our only choice. Let's look at it again.

Although we won't have space for a tall linen cabinet, we have ample space for wall mounted storage cabinets. Above the toilet, above the washer/dryer, above the turtle tank, and a medicine cabinet above the sink. We'll be fine.

So, now that that's out of the way, here's what I actually wanted to share with you today.

Our tile wall vision.

Subway tiles are certainly trendy right now, but they're also a classic choice for older homes. Plus, because we don't want to box in the toilet and are using a knee wall, your average box store alcove tub surround wasn't going to be possible. Tile was the winner based on preference and necessity.

We don't want a huge expanse of white (white tub, white toilet, white shower curtain), so we are going to break it up with some rows of black subway tile. The picture above is just a general idea - the width and positioning of the black rows is still up for discussion.

Oh, just in case anyone is wondering, we're going to be using a rectangular shower curtain rod, and two shower curtains to keep water contained when showering.

So, I wanna hear from readers - do you have subway tile in your bathroom (or kitchen)? Do you love it? Or are you so over it?

Happy Friday!

Bubble Baths in My Future?

We've lived in our house for over a year now, and we still do not have a decent bathroom or laundry area. It's getting done soon. No definite date yet, but soon.

To see what our bathroom currently looks like, and some earlier musings, check out this post. The window did get an update, however, with DIY no sew roman shades.

I've been flexing my Microsoft Paint muscles lately, and hopefully the next few images will help you picture what we're working with and what we hope to create. They are no where near to scale!

This is the general layout of our current bathroom:

Yes, the dryer plug does come up from the middle of the floor between the tub and the dryer.

The top and right walls are exterior walls. The red lines indicate windows. The left wall is shared with the living room. The bottom wall shares with the stairway into the basement, and the doorway leading into the kitchen. Sometime since the house was built, an owner built the closet that the hot water tank is housed in, with storage space above. The red lines in these areas indicate doors/doorways.

As you can see, it doesn't make for a very happy space. There's a lot of room for improvement, especially since we're really lucky that it's a HUGE room (relative to other bathrooms). We're working with almost 90 square feet of space. Yet somehow, we have about 10 inches of space in front of our toilet, while most codes recommend at least 24 inches. While ideally we'd be able to have laundry in a seperate room, we don't have that option. So, here's what we've come up with:

Layout Option #1

But...this may not be possible. Our electrical panel is located directly below the laundry pair in this layout. I'm not sure if code allows water lines to pass above an electrical panel, but my research so far indicates that it's a big no-no.

"E3305.3 Dedicated panelboard space. The space equal to the
width and depth of the panelboard and extending from the floor
to a height of 6 feet (1829 mm) above the panelboard, or to the
structural ceiling, whichever is lower, shall be dedicated to the
electrical installation. Piping, ducts, leak protection apparatus
and other equipment foreign to the electrical installation shall
not be installed in such dedicated space. The area above the dedicated
space shall be permitted to contain foreign systems, provided
that protection is installed to avoid damage to the electrical
equipment from condensation, leaks and breaks in such foreign
systems (see Figure E3305.1).
Exception: Suspended ceilings with removable panels shall
be permitted within the 6-foot (1.8 m) dedicated space."

Bummer.

Later, I had an AHA! moment, and thought of this:

Layout Option #2

However, this option would be a lot more involved when it comes to venting the dryer, since it wouldn't be placed against an exterior wall.  But I do like the idea of the laundry having it's own "closet" of sorts. Kind of like this laundry nook, from Young House Love.

Click the picture to go to their laundry room specific post.

In either case, the hot water tank (which is also being replaced) is being relocated to the basement. Also, no matter what we decide, we are keeping the toilet where it is now. It's nice to walk by a room and not get a head on view of the toilet.

Although it's hard to tell in my not-at-all-accurate drawings, there should be ample space for moving around if we were to go with Layout Option #2. Assumming the top wall is 9 ft (it's longer), and that the toilet projects 28" (it doesn't), allowing 24" of space in front on the toilet before the sink, and that the sink is 32" (it's smaller), it still allows for a 24" wide linen cabinet. The wall at the end of the tub, closest to the toilet, will actually be a knee wall, making the space even more open.

Whew! That post made me tired. I'll be back tomorrow to post some more bathroom musings, likely instead of Frivolous Friday.

Have you ever completely renovated a bathroom? How did it go? Did you draw a million plans like we have?

Hello there, pretty.

My window is finished!

Before.

This is the only before picture I have of it actually in place. It will likely freeze up again this winter, because it doesn't have a storm window. However it's been cleaned up immensely, and the weatherstripping has been replaced.

Almost there...

I hate using tape when I'm painting. For some reason I find it so incredibly tedious, and I would rather scrape away excess.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

And finally, here it is back in it's place!

Last night.

This morning.

Last night with Meowzer.

It's far from perfect. And although the process was tedious, it was much easier than I was expecting. This is definitely something that the average do-it-yourselfer can do. Although hard to tell from the pictures (which is turning everything more yellow), the colour is Country Dairy by Behr. Because we were just doing the one window for now, we purchased one of their sample sized pots rather than a full quart.

The frame and casing still need some work. I'm hoping that the top coat is shellac because that will be the easiest fix.

It also needs a proper latch - it's currently being held in place with a golf tee. The surface mounted slide bolt that was there when we moved in was not the right fit, and I don't want to drill imperfect holes into my newly restored window sash. I think a transom latch with a universal catch will do the trick...but at $15 - $20 each...the golf tee will do for now (or a long time).

Here's a side by side to end the post:

Take it easy, take it easy.

We're in for the long haul.

Over the weekend, we decided that we're going to continue to tackle the house by doing one room a year. We're both in entry level positions, and we want to borrow as little money as possible because paying interest is so not appealing.

The bathroom will be done this year. That's 2011.

2012 - Living room and hall
2013 - Master bedroom
2014 - Office
2015 and on - ??

We're in no hurry to do either of the spare bedrooms (one of which we're sleeping in right now). They may have bumpy walls and unfinished floors, but that's okay because they're not often seen by visitors, or us, for that matter.

The kitchen isn't even on the radar right now. It will definitely be the last room to be dealt with - so maybe we'll get 10 years out of it. This will be a job that we'll have to borrow money for...although maybe not because we likely wouldn't be purchasing new appliances. We'll see.

Now, this timeline doesn't mean we're going to be sitting on our behinds doing nothing. Believe me, there's plenty of little things to do around the house. But the big expensive stuff will be saved for. Our house is livable, and we're lucky. It may be ugly inside right now, and I do find it tough to deal with when I'm browsing Pinterst daily and seeing lovely homes. But, our house will be there one day; having a pretty home right now isn't worth going into debt over.

In the mean time, we'll strip and repaint trim and doors. We'll rehab windows. We'll put in exterior outlets so that we can put up Christmas lights (Mike did this yesterday, actually!). We'll plant a garden and work on landscaping.

And we'll also enjoy our house for what it is right now - our home, not just dream of what it can be.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

This past weekend, I attended an auction that combined a number of estates. I wasn't on the lookout for anything in particular, but I ended up with some stuff that I'm pretty happy about.

Mish-mash of random glassware and other housewares.

It was actually a pretty sad auction. Most people attending were just there with cars, so big items were going for ridiculously low prices. A double pedestal Duncan Phyfe dining table, worth retail around $4,000...sold for a piddly $150.

We also only had a car, otherwise I'd be all over that. Seriously.

My favourite purchase of the day were these chairs.

While they need to be recovered, and there is a small amount of damage, it's nothing that I can't work with.

Wanna know how much I paid?

$5.

Not each.

Total.

That's $1.25 a chair.

So excited! Unfortunately, Mike isn't nearly as excited as I am, so they won't be making an appearance around the kitchen table. They will be split up around the house. One will most definitely be my cloffice chair!

Have you ever found an outrageous deal at an auction?

Update: See a finished chair here!

Frivolous Friday!

Hinges can be beautiful.

Yes, a totally mundane, necessary piece of hardware can be stunning.

And I want some.

Big, intricate, steeple tipped hinges.

via Historic Style

via Robinson's Antiques

But at $20 per hinge and up, it's not really in the cards. Sometimes I wish our simple farmhouse had of been built with a little more flair, and that we had some of these babies kicking around like so many other lucky old house owners.

I'm not giving up hope, however. I will continue to browse antique and salvage stores (online and in real life) looking for the elusive reasonably priced Victorian hinge!