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…
basement
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 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.…
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…
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: 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 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…
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…
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:…
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 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 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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…