Bathroom Renovation: Tiling
By mid-May, approximately a month after I started our bathroom renovation project, I was finally ready to tile. My first tiling endeavor was to tile the floor. I started by…
Second Floor
Bathroom Renovation: Custom Woodwork
I spent a lot of time thinking through the design of our bathroom, particularly how I would maximize storage without making it look cluttered. Finding a medicine cabinet that worked…
Bathroom Renovation: Closing the Walls
Now for the exciting part! With everything in place behind the walls, it was time to install the drywall, finish installing the subfloor and putting up Kerdi Board where the…
Bathroom Renovation: Framing, Plumbing and Electrical
Once all the demolition was done, it was time to move on to rebuilding the bathroom. Despite being excited that the worst was behind me, the thought of all the…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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”…
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…
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,…
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,…
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…
Replacing Hardwood Upstairs: Part 1 – Master and Middle Bedroom Demolition
The upstairs floors were generally in better shape than they were downstairs. There were, however, a few problem areas that looked like they fell victim to water damage. Given how…
Drywall Nightmares: Part 1 – Master and Middle Bedroom Demolition
Before we could start painting, we had some drywalling to do. We wanted a new wall flush with the exposed brick, we wanted a closet opening that would fit an…
Renovating the Second Floor: Let the Fun Begin!
It’s been almost a year since we completed our living room/dining room renovation. We finally have a social life again, we can relax in the evenings and on weekends and…
How to build a wall: Part 2
We’re getting there. It’s not pretty, but we’re getting there… We’ve been working for about a week straight, and we’re getting cranky about it. We let dad take Friday night…
How to build a wall: Part 1
Once the washer and dryer were put back together, I started a new project: building a wall. Our bedroom is quite large, but has a slightly awkward layout: the doors,…