Reveal – Chez Nous Toronto

Basement Renovation: Final Reveal

admin — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 13:00:02 +0000

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 the basement over the years.

Making the change from a forced-air furnace to a boiler meant that we could free up space in what would become our family room and move the boiler and on-demand water heater to a small closet.

We built a new family room, a second bathroom in the house and a spare room and office. Not to mention lots of other projects like new stairs and built-in storage cabinets.

The family room has been a great addition to the house. It’s a place where the kids can play, watch tv and hang out together.

We also built in a bunch of storage, both in the family room and under the stairs.

With 5 people now in the house, it was also important that we add a second bathroom to the house.

And finally, given that we are using all of our bedrooms upstairs, we added a spare room and office to the basement for our guests.

Backyard Renovation Final Reveal

admin — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 01:48:00 +0000

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, as one tends to do with dogs. The garage was a glorified shed and was so decrepit that eventually was only standing because it was leaning against the neighbour’s garage. For 10 years, as we renovated our first floor, second floor, basement and kitchen, the backyard became an outdoor workspace, with all the troubles an outdoor workspace has to offer.

With most of the inside complete, 3 kids to our name, and the purchase of our first vehicle in 2020, we wanted to redo the garage and backyard so we could use it for its intended purpose.

Seven months and a contractor scam later, we had our new backyard!

And the view from the laneway has also greatly improved!

And it’s fantastic to have a nice, smooth walkway leading to the backyard. We can ride our bikes without getting caught on broken concrete, and shoveling snow is significantly easier now.

Kitchen Final Reveal

admin — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 21:16:49 +0000

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; we underpinned our basement, finished our second floor and prepared the rest of our first floor for the kitchen reno by removing some walls and changing our basement stairs.

With the walls removed on our first floor, we were anxious to get rid of our hideous kitchen.

The renovation took a grueling 5 months with a very real deadline

of the birth of our twins, but the result is amazing. We absolutely love our kitchen now and get compliments from all of our guests.

Second Floor Final Reveal

admin — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 03:22:43 +0000

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 replaced our hardwood floor, updated our stairs, replaced the baseboards, painted the walls, exposed brick in our bedroom, built a PAX wardrobe, added an attic access, cleaned up our bathroom, installed a new boiler and rad system and built a new linen closet.

We did almost all of it ourselves and we’re extremely proud of the work we’ve done. We now only have the bathroom and the kitchen to redo and we will have a fully renovated house!

Here are some before and after photos of how we’ve transformed the upstairs!

The hallway looks much more modern now that the railing has been updated and the walls are white.

The master bedroom feels much bigger now that the sponged on orange paint is gone!

The middle bedroom is now a cut little nursery, sans nasty built-in closet.

The back bedroom also received a face-lift and looks much better than it did before.

We’re pretty happy with the work we’ve done and happy to finally be in a clean, mostly renovated house!

First Floor Reveal

admin — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 22:00:08 +0000

It’s been a year since we bought our house and a lot has changed. We’ve replaced our electrical wiring, fixed our fireplace, replaced our hardwood floor, painted the walls, installed tile in our front entryway and installed new baseboards. For the most part, we did everything ourselves and spent a relatively small amount as a result. We’re extremely proud of what we’ve learned and endured and love our house!

All of my posts have captured this work and show the final results, but I’ve never shared before and after photos that really illustrate the progress that we’ve made.

Let’s see how May 2014 (when we first took possession) compares to August 2015.