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…
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: 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 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 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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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 is really because the original…
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 which…
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,…
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 really has…
Load-Bearing Wall: Part 3 – Replacing Ducts
We currently have a duct running up our load-bearing wall that goes to the centre bedroom. After thinking about this for a while, we decided to keep the duct in…