The kitchen

The kitchen cabinets, island and counter top are in. We are so close to the finish line that we can almost taste it. I am loath to name an end date for this whole first floor reno extravaganza as every time that I do, we seem to overshoot it by a country mile. My birthday! Gone. Christmas! Nope. Valentine's day! Unfortunately not. Easter! Close but no cigar. Mothers day! Closer, but still no. Father's day! I doubt it… But enough is enough, so the now realistic, no-holds-barred-must-be-done-or-else-date is August 5Th, when my dear brother and his loved-as much-as-they-are missed little family come to visit us.

They will be our inaugural dinner guests.

For there is one thing that I have learned in this whole process. And that is that all this headache and financial strain is for one purpose and one purpose only: and that is to create the perfect backdrop for our Little Superhero's and The Princess' childhood memories.

So on that upcoming August night, while the grown-up brother and sister gently tease each other with the "remember whens" from their childhood houses . The little cousins will be making memories all their own as they chase each other around the sure to be (well, almost) completed first floor of the Tall House.

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Spring cleaning in progress

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The floors are finished

Well the floors are finished and they are nothing short of spectacular. We are pinching ourselves, as yet again we have nothing but good things to say about the fellows who did it. And this time round we were really taking a bit of a gamble as neither of us knew anything about them. I'd noticed their van parked in the Hood and taken down their number. Manu had read about them in the paper... Then, when we met them for a quote, we were charmed by their earth friendly products. That and the fact that we wouldn't have to move out of the house for a week. We were sold.

So they came, they saw, they sanded, they stained, and finally they varnished. No fuss, no muss and almost no dust. The process was so easy that I can barely believe that it is over. And the results are stupendous.

That's it then, the worst is over. No more mopping the floors when we get home from work, no more washing the pots before we use them, and no more little people with blackened feet. We just have one MASSIVE spring cleaning job to do first.

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Kitchen Dreams

Before: the kitchen that taste forgot

For the past two and a half years, we have been living with a kitchen that is so laughably ugly that really anything, even a hole in the ground, would be a step up. Okay, in all fairness, we did apply a lick of paint and installed some el cheap-o vinyl black and white tiles on the floors, just to make it palatable. But the fact remains, that by even the most benevolent person's standards, it is an eyesore.

Thankfully, Manu's cooking talent is so great that our meals have never been a reflection of their surroundings. But the washing up has been painful. Zero counter space, a peeling counter, not to mention a view on the most ungodliest back splash have made doing the dishes, never our favourite chore, an unspeakable penance.

So now that we are only but a few weeks away from kitchen salvation, our aprons are all aflutter: the plans have been drawn up, the cabinets ordered, the counter top chosen, the appliances purchased… We are, as they say in the restaurant biz "cooking with gas". Or at least we will be.

The inspiration, via Style at Home

The cabinets, range and fridge will be along the far right wall

opposite will be a 9 foot by 30 inch island

The marble slab

The faucet

Counter depth fridge

The oh so nifty dual gas range

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The floors

The buried treasure, our now crisp, clean floor boards

The stair risers will be painted white

The stain swatches, we prefer the one to the left

Oh happy day! The floors are being sanded.

I am constantly amazed at how with old houses, the beauty is in the subtraction. Under the dusty grey wall to wall carpet, under the thin post-war hardwood, under several decades of paint and grime: beautiful, rich, wooden treasure!

When you think of it, 10 months to erase almost 125 years of design missteps is small penance for the everlasting joy that these charm infused floors will bring us.

Miraculously, the whole process should be almost painless, or at least odor less. In our previous life, when we lived in the condo, new neighbours would invariably mean a week of headache and nausea inducing odors caused by atrociously toxic floor stain. But thankfully, the eco tsunami that has hit our collective consciousness has even managed to green an old landfill bastion like floor lacquer. So not only will we be able to sleep soundly, our conscience clear, in our own beds, we will also manage, at least this time any way, not to piss off the neighbours.

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László, part 2

Like most parents we gage the passage of time by our kids' ages. And seeing as The Little Princess, quite conveniently, was born just two weeks and one day after we moved into the Tall House, she serves as a cute, curly haired, living marker of our time spent there. So I can easily say that we have been living in our beloved ruin for 2 years, 4 months and 5 days. Which, rather embarrassingly, means that we have gone for 2 years, 4 months and 5 days without finalizing the top floor.

Apparently, this is an all too common occurrence with renovations. Be it either from boredom, a short attention span, or just out of sheer frustration, folks tend to start the next project before completing the one at hand. And although there was just but a few days work left to do to finalize that top floor, it required patience that we no longer had. So our bedroom windows remained the original sickly time stained puce, the doors remained unfinished, and the bathroom walls were bare.

Enter Laszlo, our Hungarian, slightly off-white knight. We were so thrilled with the plaster work he'd done on the main floor that we happily asked him back to do the paint. He worked well and was so cheap that it almost wasn't worth the hassle to do it ourselves. And honestly, we found him amusing. But Laszlo the plasterer is very different from Laszlo the painter.

One thing that remained the same was that he preferred to work without an audience. So despite his working on a Saturday, we cleared out of the house. Around 4:30 we dragged ourselves home after having spent every last ounce of energy and then some in the neighbouring parks.

Exhausted, the four of us plunked ourselves down in front of the TV ready to enjoy yet another rip roaring episode of Mickey Mouse Club House (The Princess is obsessed) when from the top floor came a "FUCKINGGG NIGHTMARE!" then, I'm guessing for Manu's sake "VAFFANCULO" followed by unintelligible Hungarian expletives.

Nonchalantly turning up the volume on Mickey Mouse, I went upstairs to see what all the fuss was about.

-Laszlo why are you swearing so much?

-This door, this glass, this hardware its a FUCKINGGGG NIGHTMARE, its taking too long! What time is it? I'm going home!!!

And off he went.

A while after, as The Little Superhero and I were doing our daily bedtime review, those big brown eyes got a little bigger and asked in a barely audible whisper "Mummyyyyyyy, what's a fucking nightmare??"

-I don't know, it must be Hungarian for door frame, my love.

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László

Manu was so inspired by Laszlo's handywork that he applied the primer that very weekend

László, the plasterer, is such a character that it almost seemed predestined that he work at the Tall House. With an accent as thick as goulash and a vocabulary that hints at an eastern bloc upbringing, "in what commune is this Small Street?", László's humour is dryer than the plaster dust he creates.

Upon discovering my mother-in-law at our house one afternoon, he only briefly acknowledged her presence with a curt "I don't know you" before resuming his business. Now this would be a rather off putting attitude for even the strongest hearted of individuals, but my dear mother-in-law is made of stronger stuff. So although shaken, the poor woman was loath that she would forget her manners, and managed to offer him a cup of coffee. To her utter astonishment, he accepted! As it turns out he is a coffee fiend.

But my dear mother-in-law was unable to locate our coffee stash in the freezer so László was left hanging.  

The next morning Manu, trying to make up for the caffeinus interruptus of the previous afternoon, set out all the coffee supplies: a cup, spoon and sugar, along with a note saying that there was milk in the fridge. The stove top coffee maker was primed and ready to go, all Sandor had to do was turn it on. But when Manu returned from work, all was exactly as he had left it.

Manu: László, how come you didn't make yourself some coffee?

László: I don't touch your stuff.

Manu: But I heard you love coffee, I set it all out for you.

László: That's your problem.

While we didn't see much of him during the 8 days he spent painstakingly applying paper thin coats of plaster to our walls, he was a constant subject of conversation at the dinner table as we found his particular slow burn brand of humour tickled our funny bones immensely.

So thanks to László our post blitzkrieg-chic walls are a thing of the past and we have more than a few stories to tell.

We have even invited him back to paint the upstairs bathroom. We like having him around, but hey, that's our problem.

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