Home Renovation: Progress Update

Justin and I have been knee-deep in our home renovation for three weeks and we're making a ton of progress! This is my first home renovation, and it's ended up being so much more work that I expected. Justin tried to warn me (since home builds and renovations are part of his job), but I just didn't listen. Hee hee.

So since we're three weeks into the renovation, I figured it's about darn time to share a progress update! As a refresher, here's our overall plan, the master bedroom mood board and the master bathroom mood board.

Here's what we've accomplished:

I moved my closet into the living room. Covered our furniture. And overall made our house as messy as possible.

We've carefully taken up our carpet so we can re-use it after the remodel - it's only 1 year old! Oh, and we tore down some walls.

We took out the old (crappy) insulation and kicked down the ceiling.

Justin framed out our new walls.

We took down the dining room wall so the plumbers could get to their pipes.

We took up the floors so the HVAC guy could get to his stuff.

We hired a plumber and electrician to do their thing. And built the surround for our soaking tub.

And now we finally have our very own Dexter room. Renovation complete. Perfect for Halloween, right?

Ha. So that's about it! This week and weekend we'll be installing the new insulation and starting to put up walls. So good because it's sooo cold in the house without that insulation! Brrr...

P.S. Don't forget to enter my giveaway for a chance to win two trendy tea towels from The Shapes & Colors Textiles! Enter through this post.  

Linking up to: Give Me The Goods Monday, Make it Pretty Monday, Motivate Me Monday, Craft-o-Matic, Monday Funday, That DIY Party, Mod Mix Monday, Tuesdays at Our Home, Tell Me Tuesday, Remodelaholic, Time to Sparkle, Take a Look Tuesday, Work It Wednesday, Simply Create Thursdays, 36th Avenue, Inspiration Gallery, The Weekly Creative, Five Days Five Ways, Inspire Me Please What's Shaking Link Party, Craft Frenzy Friday, DIY Weekend, The Humble Brag, Friday Flash Blog, Lovely Ladies Linky, Best of the Weekend, Tutorials and Tips, Wow Us Wednesday, Link Party Palooza, Making Monday, 

Reveal! Our super tiny washroom renovation

So it's time to reveal our washroom renovation. :) I am so, so, so happy with how it turned out. Every night I have a bubble bath and unwind and I look around and feel like I'm in a fancy hotel. Although I designed the room (picking the finishes, faucets etc) Aubrey did all the work making it come together. So here is a full reveal of the room, now that everything has been installed.

The main design decision that impacted the space was deciding to bump out the washroom wall into the hallway to make extra room for the vanity. This allowed us to have a nook where the vanity would fit and give us more floor space in the washroom. It was absolutely the best decision.

In the shot above you can also see how all of our choices came together. The 2" hexagon marble floor compliments the porcelain marble "look a like" tile that we carried onto the face of the bathtub. The trim is bright white and the walls - Classic Gray by Benjamin Moore. Grays and whites - all working together.

Vanity Lighting: One thing that was a bit concerning was that we had zero space for any vanity lighting. We ended up doing a single pot light right in the middle of the alcove. I'm happy to say that it gives off enough beautiful light. I wouldn't have it any other way.

We purposefully dropped the ceiling in the alcove to be the same height as the door, so it worked together, but also so that the potlight was close enough to where we stood to give off enough light. If we had made it much higher, we likely would not have as nice a light source. (See animated gif below)

The mirror - oh, the mirror. I had quotes of getting one custom made (close to $300, framed) searched high and low in retail stores. Nothing was right - or if it was, it was too expensive. I stopped into a Hotel Liquidators and low and behold they had the mirror above for sale for $15. Sold. Aubrey glued it to the wall and it looks like it was custom cut for our room.

Our vanity is gorgeous and it was pretty reasonable coming in around $500 (that includes the vanity and sink, not the faucet). In terms of function - this vanity hits all of the right notes. I love that the sink portion is flat - which means that you really have a full counter in front of you if you're doing makeup. You don't have to rest things on the side of the sink - as the interior basin is flat. I love that we went with zero handles, as it saves the floor space and I can get up closer to the sink. The only downfall is, that since we have no overhang of the sink - if water drips off the sink it drips onto the front of the drawers which is occasionally annoying.

I LOVE having drawers - they can store a ton of (my) things. Aubrey has one side, I have the other and the bottom drawer (not shown open) houses extra toilet paper, bubble bath, toys for Oscar.

And there you have it - Our bathroom reno! :)

SHOPPING GUIDE:
Porcelain Shower Tile: Manufacturer: Cerim, Style Name: Precious Pearl 
2" Hexagon Marble Floor: The Tile Store
Bathtub: Jaccuzi Soaker 60" x 32" drop in - purchased at Lowes
Toilet: Kohler Memoirs (I LOVE this toilet) purchased at Lowes
Vanity: Veneto Bath 690C in Walnut  Purchased at Bath City, Beaches Location
Three Way Shower System and faucet: TAPS 
Robe Hooks and toilet paper holder: Kraus Aura Line, Home Depot Online (online only)
Shower Curtain and Liner: HomeSense
Shower Rod and Rings: Target
Towels: HomeSense
Mirror: Advance Hotel Liquidator 
Paint: Classic Gray for the Walls, Chantilly Lace for the trim (Both Benjamin Moore)
Drywall: Joe (He's done our basement, our kitchen and now our bathroom)

Other posts of interest: Deciding to Bump Out the bathroom wall, Washroom Before, Picking Tile,  Shower Systems, Choosing a Bathtub,

on etsy....

Just a quickie today to mention that Etsy invited me to create a branded page with my finds. Whooooo! I am obsessed with categorizing my finds. I'll go into some of the sections later on but I thought I'd just mention my new obsession. xo Linds

Look for Less Design Challenge

Welcome to the first ever Look for Less Design Challenge! Today, myself and six other amazing DIY'ers are sharing some great projects that we DIY'ed as part of our Look for Less Design Challenge.

The Challenge idea is to find something you'd love to buy but is out of your price range, and then DIY it for less!

If you've been around for long, you know that this is right up my alley.

My Look for Less project was DIY'ing this West Elm inspired herringbone floor mirror.

With the help of Justin (of course),  we were able to DIY this over-sized floor mirror for only $36 as compared to West Elm's $549 version!! I'd like to say that it was a fun and simple DIY project, but it wasn't even close. This project took the pair of us thirteen hours to complete.  You can only imagine the love annoyance joy that Justin felt when I took him away from our home remodel for a "quick and easy" DIY project. Ha. Oops!

But even though it was hard work, I'd much rather spend 13 hours and $36 on this herringbone floor mirror than fork over $549!

In case you're as crazy as I am, here's how we did it:

We started with the oversized floor mirror which we found at Lowes for $25. Justin then took 2x4's and cut them to size to surround the mirror, cutting at 45 degree angles with a miter saw.

He then used his brand new table saw to cut grooves into the 2x4's at 1/8" x 1/2" to slide the edges of the mirror into.

Then after securing each of the four corners with wood glue and screws, he sanded down all the sides so I could start on the finish work. This was the time that we had to move the project inside because it was sooo incredibly cold out!

Now it's my turn and where the hard part comes in.

First, I painted the face of the frame white with paint I had laying around the house.

Then, I measured and cut out millions of little pieces of blue painters tape and placed them on the face of the frame. Looking back, I probably should have just created a stencil to paint the herringbone design, but what fun is that?

I then painted the face of the frame navy blue, and because I wanted the navy to be a bit more muted similar to the West Elm example, I whitewashed the entire face of the frame, using this whitewashing tutorial I found on Pinterest.

After letting that dry, I then stained the outside and inside edges of the frame with natural wood stain so it was a nice, light color. The one coat of varnish - and we're done!

Whew. That was a lot. But what do you think? Was it worth the 13 grueling hours of hard work?

Make sure to check out the other challenge bloggers and their amazing projects too!

P.S. Don't forget to enter my giveaway for a chance to win two trendy tea towels from The Shapes & Colors Textiles! Enter through this post.  

Linking up to: Give Me The Goods Monday, Make it Pretty Monday, Motivate Me Monday, Craft-o-Matic, Monday Funday, That DIY Party, Mod Mix Monday, Tuesdays at Our Home, Tell Me Tuesday, Remodelaholic, Time to Sparkle, Take a Look Tuesday, Work It Wednesday, Simply Create Thursdays, 36th Avenue, Inspiration Gallery, The Weekly Creative, Five Days Five Ways, Inspire Me Please What's Shaking Link Party, Craft Frenzy Friday, DIY Weekend, The Humble Brag, Friday Flash Blog, Lovely Ladies Linky, Best of the Weekend, Tutorials and Tips, Wow Us Wednesday, Link Party Palooza, Making Monday, 

A Tea Towel set Giveaway!

Giveaway closed. Congrats to Emily Butler Maldonado for winning the two tea towels from Shapes & Colors Textiles! Welcome friends! I'm happy to announce that it's Giveaway Day! This week, Shapes and Colors Textiles is giving away a set of two, eco-friendly tea towels! I was immediately drawn to the modern and fun designs that these towels come in, especially since she has some hot pink designs - which you all know how much I'm obsessed with.

The contest runs from Today to next Tuesday, November 5th at Midnight CST. The giveaway is for two tea towels of your choice from Shapes & Colors Textiles, valued at $24.  Towels are made out from organic cotton flour sacks.  Please follow the Rafflecopter instructions below. The winner will be notified via email and will have 48 hours to respond, otherwise a new winner will be selected. The giveaway is open to US only.

And don't forget to check out the other products from Shapes & Colors Textiles . I'm absolutely in love with this city bag and these pillows!

Good luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

your questions answered / faq's about our ikea kitchen

For those of you new to my blog, In the Summer of 2012, Aubrey and I took on an kitchen renovation that combined the big box store cabinets (Ikea) with some high end items, budget items and of course - a few DIY's. The result of the hard work in months of planning and research paid off, and I am in LOVE with our kitchen. The kitchen has got an awesome shout outs from Nicole, was featured in The National Post and Sam featured it in one of her articles as well. And weekly I see people re-pinning pictures of the kitchen and my favourite candid photo - Aubrey laughing as demonstrating his trash pullout. ;) It's great fun seeing something we put a lot of sweat (Aubrey), tears (me out of frustration) and effort (both of us) into, circulate and be an inspiration to others. 

I've tried to organize past posts on the kitchen as best as possible but I still get a lot of e-mails every week asking about little elements that we picked, or if we're still liking the kitchen a year later. So to help new readers I decided to post the most frequently asked questions about our kitchen here. This post will go in our "Popular Post" roundup - where you can also find a lot of posts that will help you. I really, really recommend you read through those posts as if you are thinking of doing an Ikea kitchen, a lot of information is in that section. Especially our post on Tips & Tricks for buying an Ikea Kitchen. 

Now, all of this being said - as much as I try to help people out with questions, I can't stress enough that the best answers are going to come from you walking into your local Ikea, or home hardware with your own measurements and asking for advice. Measurements are key - so having your own measurements on hand when you go to a store. All that being said -  after the jump I've compiled all of our frequently asked questions directly related to our kitchen. Remember, a lot of the great posts are in this section so do pop over there if you're thinking of an Ikea kitchen.

GENERAL QUESTIONS

Q: When does Ikea have their Kitchen Sale?
Q: I think it happens twice a year, we took advantage of the sale around May. I would ask around and see when they may host their sale. See Part #3 in our Tips & Tricks for Buying an Ikea Kitchen for more on buying during their sale.  *Update - The sale is happening September 30th to November 4th, 2013 so it's possibly safe to assume there is a Fall sale and a Spring sale. I stress that you should go into Ikea before the sale in order to design the kitchen. Once the sale starts - it becomes crazy busy in the store and you'll be hard pressed to find an associate in the kitchen area to help you.

Q: Are you still happy with your Ikea cabinets?
A: Yes. :)

Q: Are the Adele Doors off white?
A: Yes. But given the right lighting (pot lights) and matching it with the right accent choices (like countertop and backplash) the white doesn't look off white at all. See more on the doors below. 

Q: Did you use ikea's organization items for the inside of the drawers? utensils etc? 
A: Yes. By the design of the drawers, you're "forced" into buying their organizational drawer units because the drawers have slanted insides (for the top drawers at least) which means traditional fork/spoon divider trays won’t fit. So we ended up buying their drawer organizers. But it's not a negative as their drawer units are actually quite nice. (See the photo above)

Q: What are the measurements of your cabinets?
We get this question a lot and we have varying cabinet sizes. This post on how to make a cookbook shelf using Ikea cabinetry shows you some of the cabinet sizes.  Ps., I'm not totally sure how our measurements will help others so I haven't gone into great detail answering this one. Really what it comes down to is what fits in your kitchen - so again, bring your measurements to Ikea and they are there to help!

Q: Your door handles, are they from Ikea as well? I wondered whether you had ideas of where I could source handles.

A:  Our door handles are from Hickory Hardware and were supplied to us from the manufacturer but you can find them on special order at Lowes or if you are in Toronto, at Upper Canada Hardware. See this post on our hardware.  I recommend popping over to our Kitchen Shopping Guide to see our full list of where everything came from. The finish is polished nickel. 

Q: What is the thickness of your countertop?
A: We ordered a countertop that was 1.5" with a miter joint. We bought Caesarstone and the colour is Misty Carrara. In Canada Caesarstone is not sold via Ikea. You have to find a fabricator that deals in Caesarstone to order it for you and cut it to size and obviously install. You can see who we hired in our Kitchen Shopping Guide. 

Q: What brand of subway tile did you buy?
A: We bought our white subway tiles from Home Depot. At the time our Home Depot only sold one subway tile style so I didn't pay much attention to the manufacturer. I went through photographs and found the one above that shows Aubrey tiling and all I can see on the box is the company Daltile . 

Q: Did you paint any of the cupboards? The off white color of ours is not my favorite but I am not sure it is worth the money to have them professionally spray painted. Would be interested in your thoughts on this!
A: I was worried about the Adele doors too but I can assure you, you needn't worry - We love them! In the end with the bright pot lights and matching things like the counter and backsplash -  the doors appeared whiter vs. creamy. See our shopping guide here. 

Q: How noticeable is it that you backsplash, cabinets and counters all different shades of white? Would you do the white subway tile over agin if you had the chance?A: Because of the amount of pre-planning in accent choices, the off white doors are not noticeable at all.Once everything is installed and you're looking at everything straight on it is fantastic. We're really happy with all of our choices in the kitchen. 

Q: The Ikea Adele doors are shaker style, do you find dust collects on the groves a lot?
A: Yes, but not a lot.  I often take a cloth and do a quick wipe down weekly or every other week when I'm cleaning the counter anyways. It's not major and it doesn't bother me at all. I'd rather have the look of shaker doors and wipe them down monthly (which doesn't take any time at all) vs. a flat door. 

Q: "How did you attach the door to the drawer on your trash pullout? Did you need additional support up the door? Is it still secure after months of use? What drawer is it (fully extending/deep fully extending)?"
A: Instead of using a drawer front we used a full size cabinet door. And we used the drawer kit that is meant to be a bottom drawer, in order to have the most stability possible. It is a fully extending drawer. 
Q: "Can you tell us the measurements of the wood used in the valances on your top cabinets. Also how you attached them together (nail or glue) and how you attached them to the cabinets. I love how yours turned out!"
The valances are 1.5" tall. It's a standard 1x2 piece of lumber found at any major lumberyard. These are what hide the under cabinet lighting from plain sight. We primed and painted them in advance. They are miter cut and attached with small L brackets on the inside to remain out of sight.



Q: "I was looking at the pictures of your kitchen and I see that the back of your upper cabinets are flushed to the wall. When I look at our uninstalled cabinets sitting on the floor, I see two pieces that stick out (top and bottom) and I know once we install them to the wall they will stick out and leave maybe a half inch gap along the back. What did you do to hide this? Use filler?"
A: That's what the cover panels (or gabels) are for. We didn't need them because of the layout of our kitchen - the gaps all hide because of trim or walls that jut out. But all you need is to buy the panel from ikea that matches your cabinet door colour and then cut it to size. Also ---- You can also return those panels if you don’t use them, we got back a few hundred dollars after the fact by returning stuff, so if you don’t use those panels, do return them! 

Q: "What is the height of your cabinets, and in particular what is the height of the cabinet above the microwave? It looks like it fits perfectly in line with the bottom of the adjacent cabinets, which I am hoping to achieve with ours."
A: The cabinet above the microwave is 24" tall in order to have an even line across the top. The other cabinets are 39" tall.  


Q: "Did you use any panels to finish the ends of the runs of cabinets, and if so, how did you do it?"
A: We found it unnecessary to use end panels because we had the brightest white cabinets that Ikea sells. This wouldn't have been possible if we had gone with a cabinet colour other than white. 

Q: Roughly would you be able to say how much you budgeted for your reno? And I recall you saying you had ordered the cabinets just or after the chaos of the Ikea sale- can you remind me again of those details so we can take advantage as well.
A: Here is a rough breakdown of some of the main things that were necessary. Cabinetry was $4,000, Counters $4,000 (which is on the higher end of counters because we splurged on quartz) and hardware was $500+. Depending on what else you need to do in your kitchen (Move plumbing, electrical, new floors, lighting, and whether you're hiring someone to do all the work) the price of a new kitchen can vary greatly. Here are a few areas that we managed to save on: Doing the demo ourselves, assembling the cabinets ourselves, not putting drywall behind where cabinets are going to stay permanently... Lots of little areas where you can save, contribute to the savings in the end. 

There you go! I hope this helps! Again, be sure to visit our POPULAR POSTS that include a lot of posts on Ikea Kitchens. 

Lindsay 

Sponsored post: Neybers - a kitchen with a twist

Je me suis amusée à créer une nouvelle pièce sur Neybers, ce site très addictif qui permet d'imaginer la pièce de vos rêves, de planifier un projet déco, ou tout simplement de s'amuser, tout en partageant vos créations avec la communauté Neybers. Comme d'habitude je passe des heures à choisir le sol, les murs, les fenêtres, les meubles, les accessoires... avant de changer d'avis et recommencer :)

I've been having fun creating a new room on Neybers, this very addictive website where you can create your dream room, plan an interior project, or just play around for fun and then share your creations with the rest of the Neybers community. As usual, I spend hours choosing the flooring, the walls, the windows, the furniture, the accessories... before changing my mind and starting all over again :)

Cette fois, j'ai créé une cuisine dans des tons doux de gris, blanc et bois clair, le tout réveillé par quelques touches un peu décalées en bleu. Cerise sur le gâteau, la suspension Bumling, une classique créée par Anders Pehrsson en 1968. Pour connaitre le nom et la source des autres produits, allez dans ma cuisine ici, puis cliquez sur "Enter the room". Sélectionnez le produit qui vous intéresse et cliquez sur le "i" à gauche.

This time I've created a kitchen in soft hues of grey, white and light wood, then added a little twist with a few blue accessories. Icing on the cake, the Bumling pendant, a classic created by Anders Pehrsson in 1968. If you want to know the name and the source of the other products, go to my kitchen here, then click on "Enter the room". Select the product you're interested in and click on the "i" to the left.

*ceci est un article sponsorisé en collaboration avec Neybers, mais tous les mots et toutes les opinions sont les miennes.

*this is a sponsored post in cooperation with Neybers, but all words and opinions are my own.