Bathroom Renovation: Demolition
I absolutely hate demo work. It’s hard on the body and extremely dirty – especially in an old house. My original plan was to outsource the demo work and then…
Bathroom Renovation: Design
The last room in our house to be renovated is our very burgundy 1980s bathroom. I’ve hated this bathroom for a long time, but it used to be the only…
Basement Renovation: Final Reveal
Our basement renovation has been the longest renovation project in our house. We started by underpinning back in 2017 and it’s been a constant effort of renovating each part of…
Office Upgrade
As we were starting our basement renovation, COVID hit and we had to create make-shift home office spaces so we could work from home. In March 2020, we were in…
New Windows
When we renovated our first and second floors, we talked about replacing our windows but decided we didn’t want to spend the money. Windows are expensive and not as exciting…
Backyard Renovation Final Reveal
We moved into our house 10 years ago, and our backyard and garage have mostly been unusable. The previous owner had large dogs and put gravel down in the backyard,…
Christmas 2023
For several years now, we have taken scrambled to complete major renovation projects in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Christmas seems to be a hard and fast deadline that…
Backyard Renovation: Walkway and Pavers (Phase 5)
Our backyard was not going according to plan and all of my original timelines were thrown out the window thanks to delays from our contractor. We expected the garage to…
Backyard Renovations: Final Touches
Our backyard renovation was so painful, right from the start. Thanks to a terrible contractor, everything was really delayed and I ended up doing a lot of it in pieces,…
Backyard Renovation: Garage Canopy + Deck (Phase 4)
Since our garage is at the back of our property and faces the house, we wanted the garage to mimic the back of the house with a door, window and…
Backyard Renovation: New Garage (Phase 2)
Our existing garage has been in bad shape for many years now. Wood rot and a collapsing roof has made the garage completely unusable. And with some property line issues…
Backyard Swing
When I was looking for backyard inspiration, I really loved the look of cedar post archways, especially contrasting against a black fence. I then saw a few examples where these…
Backyard Renovation: Floating Deck (Phase 6)
Phase 6 was supposed to be the final step in our backyard renovation plan. Our garage was supposed to be done in early May and I’d have all summer to…
Planter Box Revisited
Two years ago, I built a planter box for our backyard out of pressure treated 2x10s and some leftover cedar from our deck. Over the years, a combination of sun…
Backyard Renovation: South Fence (Phase 3)
With all of our garage drama, I pushed the neighbour to have the south fence posts installed earlier than we originally planned. The original plan was to install the fence…
Backyard Renovation: North Fence and Gate (Phase 1)
Once we had our backyard design locked down, I started to plan how the work would be done over the summer. Knowing that I would be doing much of the…
Backyard Renovation: Design
Our backyard fence was probably installed 25 to 30 years ago. The wood is weathered, the posts are loose and it doesn’t follow the property line. Our backyard has basically…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Final Touches
Once the tile work was completely done, it was time to do all the finicky finishing touches. Painting Every wall in our house is Chantilly Lace white and I’ve rarely…
Mexico
After my trip to Europe, I felt pretty guilty that I had gone on a trip without Alex, so I decided to surprise everyone for Christmas and book a trip…
Christmas 2022
This is the first Christmas since we bought our house in 2014 where we didn’t have some sort of major construction project underway. It was nice to be able to…
How to Take Apart a Piano
One of the only family heirlooms I have from my mother’s side is a large 100-year-old piano. I tried to have it tuned a couple of years ago, but due…
Bookshelf Revisited
A couple of years ago, I build a new staircase and wall to the basement which included a built-in bookshelf in the wall. At the time, I chose to stain…
New Basement Stairs: Part 5 – Handrail
It’s been more than 3 years since we built our new basement stairs and we’ve been living dangerously without a handrail – on either side! – for the entire time.…
Europe
Because of the pandemic and the twins, we hadn’t really travelled in 3 or 4 years. Our last major trip was our parental leave trip to South East Asia when…
Deck Refresh
During our kitchen renovation in 2019, we also built a new deck off the back of the house. Our contractor built the structure, but I then spent many weekends with…
Basement Family Room: TV Wall
With the drywall up and the walls painted, we knew that we had to do something interesting for our TV wall because it was just one giant white wall. I…
Christmas 2021
Here we are, 2 years into a pandemic, with many of the same frustrations felt a year ago. This year was somehow even harder than the last. Last year everyone…
Basement Family Room: Media Unit
After scouring the internet for a few weeks, I decided that nothing online met my criteria for our basement family room media cabinet. I wanted white oak to match the…
Basement Renovation: New Windows
We have 4 basement windows and 3 of them were completely boarded up. Now that we’re renovating the basement, we wanted to have some natural light and get new windows.…
Basement Family Room Renovation: Framing, Drywalling and Painting – Part 2
Last winter we finished the first half of the basement family room because I was returning to work after my maternity leave and I needed a relatively clean space to…
Building a Planter Box
Little by little, we’ve been trying to make our backyard a bit nicer. While perusing the internet at all hours of the night, I came across a really nice planter…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Tiling
Months into my basement bathroom reno, I was finally ready to tile. The walls were up, plumbing and electrical were in, and waterproofing was done. Materials and Tools My original…
Basement Family Room Renovation: Built-In Sektion Cabinets
We absolutely love the built-in storage under our basement stairs. But we filled it quickly and knew we needed more! As part of our family room design, we decided to…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Waterproofing
I’ve done a lot of renovating over the last 6 years, and there are two things that scare me: structural work and anything that can cause water damage. So I…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Backerboard and Drywall
After months and months of delay, I was finally at a place where I was ready to install walls in the bathroom. I cannot even explain how excited I was…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Framing
With 5 people in the house now, our one 5’x7′ bathroom just isn’t going to cut it. We always planned on adding a bathroom in the basement, so when we…
Christmas 2020
This year has been really tough. 2020 will go down in Millennial history books as one of the hardest in our lives. To help with all the stress from living…
Basement Family Room Renovation: Framing, Drywalling and Painting
Because our basement bathroom renovation project was so delayed, we decided to shift gears and make progress on the family room – basically a second living room in the basement…
Basement Renovation: Built-In Storage
Like most basements, we’ve used ours for storing things we don’t use everyday. It’s also become the “I don’t have the energy to deal with this, so throw it in…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Shower Base Installation
When we underpinned our basement, we knew that we would build a bathroom and we had all the rough-in plumbing done then. But when we started figuring out our bathroom…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Design
The layout of our bathroom was determined when we underpinned our basement and all the rough-in plumbing was done. But the specifics of the design still needed to be figured…
Basement Bedroom Renovation: Framing, Drywall and Painting
Once the back of the basement was clear of our crap, it was time to start framing the back half of the basement. The hardest part of the basic framing…
Nursery Makeover
When we found out we were having twins, we were in the middle of a major kitchen renovation and I didn’t have hours on end to look at nursery ideas.…
Kitchen Final Reveal
Our kitchen renovation was a long time coming. We first began talking about redoing the kitchen in 2016. We didn’t just hit on our hands for the last 3 years;…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 11 – Finishing Touches
Given how massive this project was, many of the tasks that are usually major milestones in a project seemed small in comparison. Painting One of the first finishing touches was…
Basement Renovation: Tidying and Organizing
The birth of our twins made our house feel very small. All of a sudden, almost twice the number of people were living in our house. Plus, with all of…
New Basement Stairs: Part 4 – Bookshelf
When we rebuilt the basement stairs, we wanted them to be against a new wall that hid the fact that we did not have a straight or flush wall going…
Christmas 2019
Well, this Christmas looks a lot different for a few reasons. First, we finished our kitchen renovation!! After months and months of never ending delays and working like crazy (while…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 10 – New Cabinets, Countertops and Appliances
One of the biggest ticket items for our kitchen was our new cabinets and countertops. When we first began the design phase, we asked our architect what we should do:…
Building a New Deck
When we started out kitchen renovation project, we knew that we’d have to replace our deck at some point but planned to push it off until next summer. Unfortunately the…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 8 – Framing and Drywall
Once the window and doors were installed, it was time to frame the interior and install the subfloor. This was probably one of the most exciting steps in the process…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 7 – Plumbing and Electrical
When we were looking for a contractor, we wanted someone who would let us do some of the work ourselves. Not only does it save on costs, but there are…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 6 – Structural Work
The biggest and most transformative part of the kitchen renovation was removing the chimney and installing a new window and door. The back of our house hasn’t received much love…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 5 – Demolishing the Kitchen
Once our contractor was finally ready to start (only 3 weeks later than planned…), we had to get the kitchen packed up so it could be demolished. Packing a kitchen…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 4 – Setting up a Temporary Kitchen
Despite what our contractor thinks, we know that this kitchen renovation is going to take longer than just a few weeks. And after living through our messy dining room wall…
New Basement Stairs: Part 3 – The Railing
Once the stairs themselves were finished, I still had to sort out how to build the handrail. I knew that I wanted it to match the style of what I…
New Basement Stairs: Part 2 – Building the Stairs
Once the stair opening was ready, it was time to install the stringers and build the stairs. Substairs Our contractor was originally supposed to only install the stair stringers, but…
New Basement Stairs: Part 1 – Opening the Stairs
When we opened the dining room, we wanted to also widen our basement stairs. But at that point we thought that we would have to reroute our radiator pipes, so…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 3 – Materials
Once we had our contractor on board, it was time to advance our kitchen project and start making some big decisions. With our general design nailed down, we could now…
Christmas 2018
Another Christmas, and another dash to a construction project finish line! With our dining room walls gone, we had a few last minute projects to complete before Christmas. Mainly finishing…
Load-Bearing Wall: Part 6 – Patching Hardwood
After we removed the dining room wall, we were left with a small trench in the hardwood flooring where our wall used to be. We were planning on waiting to…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 2 – Hiring a Contractor
So… hiring a contractor in Toronto is a joke. The demand for trades is so high that you can’t get anyone decent in less than 12-18 month and that’s if…
Load-Bearing Wall: Part 5 – Removing the Wall!
I’ve had a hate-hate relationship with the wall in our dining room since we moved in. Even though we managed to make it slightly less ugly, my issue was with…
Front Door Face-Lift
I’m going to sound like a broken record here, but we’ve spent so much time on the inside of our house that we’ve really failed to care much about the…
Learning Tower
Now that Adam is older and starting to be interested in, well, EVERYTHING, I wanted to build him a little stool so he could stand at the counter on his…
Backyard Upgrade
Our backyard has never been great. When we first moved in, it was a clean but unattractive gravel pit. The previous owner had 2 large dogs, so having grass never…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 1 – Design
We are FINALLY ready to embark on our kitchen renovation. We had scoped out a few architects when we were doing our basement underpinning, and already knew who we wanted…
Christmas 2017
For the first time since we bought our house, this Christmas seasons wasn’t filled with frantically finishing major construction! We got back from our epic parental leave trip just a…
Southeast Asia
At the end of my maternity leave and the start of Alex’s paternity leave, we decided to take an epic trip to Southeast Asia. Our 5-week adventure is captured in…
Wooden Baby Gym
Now that we have a baby, we’re doing less construction. But my natural inkling to build stuff is still strong so when I was looking for a non-ugly baby gym,…
Baby Bookshelf
When shopping for nursery furniture, I fell in love with Oeuf’s mini library. The only problem is that I really couldn’t justify the $895 price tag. Especially for something that…
Basement Renovation: Part 5 – Cost
How much a project is going to cost is always the biggest question mark in any house renovation (or any project, really). It is so difficult to get a definitive…
Second Floor Final Reveal
It’s been two years since we bought our house and it’s amazing how much has changed. In addition to our downstairs renovation, we have now completed our upstairs renovation. We…
Replacing Baseboards on the Second Floor
One of the final steps in finishing our second floor renovation was installing the baseboards. Our floors were installed and finished, our walls were painted and we were ready to…
Bathroom Face-Lift
Now that we’ve pretty much renovated our entire house, the parts that are unrenovated (our kitchen and bathroom) look pretty sad in comparison. Our plan is to renovate the kitchen…
Basement Renovation: Part 4 – Construction
Our basement construction involved two major construction pieces: the underpinning and the hydronics work. Since it only required us coordinating with two trades, we decided to coordinate the work ourselves…
Stair Upgrade: Part 2
Once the floors were finished, we were ready to finish our stair upgrade. Handrail During our design, we determined that both the handrail and baserail would be exactly 2½” wide.…
Christmas 2016
Two years go, we were living like this: Last year, we were living like this: Just a few weeks ago, we were living like this: Over the past year, we’ve…
Master Bedroom Closet Renovation
The major change (or one of the major changes) in our upstairs renovation was the installation of a new closet in the master bedroom. The reason we started this project…
Basement Renovation: Part 3 – Furnace v. Boiler
The only major scope creek that we had during our basement renovation was our decision to change from forced air (a furnace) to radiant heat (via a boiler). We made…
Stair Upgrade: Part 1
We originally planned to hire someone to come and rebuild our stairs – both in the basement and the handrail on the second floor. But as our basement work progressed,…
Reinstalling the Subfloor on the Second Floor
We decided to make our lives a bit more complicated by deciding to change our heating system from forced air to a boiler with rads. Since the pipes need to…
Basement Renovation: Part 2 – Design
We are renovating our basement in two phases. Phase 1 is simply underpinning the basement, replacing all the drains, and building new stairs. The second phase will be finishing the…
Basement Renovation: Part 1 – Hiring Professionals
After investigating a kitchen renovation, we decided to renovate our basement first. The most compelling case for the switch in scope was made by our real estate agent who reassured…
Hallway Closet Renovation
We have a tiny little closet on the second floor and we wanted to turn it into a linen closet. It’s a very narrow but deep space, measuring only 20½”…
Grey Thumb
We’ve so busy trying to get the inside of our house done that the outside of our house looks pretty sad. We’ve also been using this excuse for a good…
Painting the Second Floor
When we painted our living room and dining room, we did a lot of research on the brand of paint to buy and the type of finish. We wrestled with…
India
I generally don’t deviate from renovation-related posts, but Alex and I just spent 2 and a half weeks in India and the trip was too interesting not to share. India…
Drywall Nightmares: Part 3 – Back Bedroom Demolition
We’re now all set up in the master bedroom, so it’s time to deal with the back bedroom. When we went to get the back bedroom walls ready for paint,…
Professional Renovations
Alex and I have been renovation super stars for the last 2 years. We’ve completely transformed the first floor and are working on the second floor of our home and…
Building Access to the Attic: Part 2
Installing the Attic Hatch A couple of months ago we installed our new attic ladder. We then had to install an attic hatch. This was probably the most complicated part…
Replacing Hardwood Upstairs: Part 3 – Subfloor Installation
Once the original subfloor was clean of all its dog hair and dirt debris, we were ready to start installing the subfloor. Shimming Just like last time, we checked to…
Replacing Hardwood Upstairs: Part 2 – Demolition of Back Bedroom and Hallway
Once the master and middle bedrooms had subfloors installed and were painted, we moved into those rooms and started demolishing the hardwood floor in the back bedroom and hallway. Removing…
Exposing Brick
One of the walls in our bedroom is uneven because the chimney juts out. It’s also in an awkward spot because we want to put our bed against that wall,…
Christmas 2015
Last Christmas we had just finished our first floor renovation and were finally able to relax in our home. Upstairs was a different story, however. We had a decent set-up…
Drywall Nightmares: Part 2 – The “Professionals”
Once we finished our demo work, it was time to find a drywaller. We learned a very valuable lesson: Drywallers are not the most reliable tradespeople. We had three separate…
Building Access to the Attic: Part 1
We are fortunate enough to have a pretty kick-ass attic space. It’s totally not usable right now; it’s dirty and there’s no insulation (not that the rest of our house…