Mouldings

The artists at work

It looks like the mouldings have always been there. Good sign.

Crown is on. Door frames and baseboards need to be done...

...window frames too.

Manu and I have a thing for mouldings. We first discovered their power to transform a space when we lived in The Condo. Aching for a DIY project, but finding very little to do, Manu decided one day to install crown moulding in the two back rooms. The results were extraordinary, in one weekend the rooms had changed from bland and box like, to interesting and elegant. Since then, we have been obsessed, offering it as transformation advice to any and all friends who will listen.

Now if I had my way, or rather, if our bank account wasn't bleeding, we would have opted for plaster mouldings (it is supposed to be a "restoration" after all). But unfortunately those will have to wait. In the meantime we have opted for the run of the mill white painted MDF variety, but honestly you wouldn't know it.

So while the kids, my mum and I lounged by my office pool, dear Manu and his brother Fabio, who is expecting his first child any day now, celebrated father's day by installing crown moulding on the ground floor. At noon, my mother-in-law brought food, pasta (of course), salad and the great Italian Sunday lunch staple, vino. We ate on the stairs and admired their work. And despite the wine, or maybe because of it, they really got a lot done.

Manu still needs to build a frame around the top of the kitchen cabinets before the rest of the crown can be applied, then there are all the base boards and the door and window frames. All told about three or four days work.

But even if we are only a third of the way there, its really starting to feel like home.

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All over the place

The, ahem, view from the kitchen door.

We planted some Virginia Creeper along the fence to the right

in the hopes that by next year, when we are ready to attack the yard,

the fence will be covered in lush greenery.

Midway through: the doors look better,

the stairs and the siding look worse.

I spray painted some old terracotta pots black.

Added a few geraniums... and voila! Instant love.

The doors and siding are painted.

In autumn we will do the stairs and the railing.

The old girl has been upgraded from haunted -

to just rickety.

We are a bit scattered these days. We have been working a bit out front, a bit out back and a bit in the middle. Seems like every time we turn around, there is another mountain of work waiting for us.

Now, we do know better than to start a new project before having finished the first one, but somehow the theory hasn't made it to practice. I started stripping the closet doors but the onset of planting season urged me to add some love to the front of the house in the form of geraniums. This in turn lead to adding some crushed stones to the front yard to perk it up just a little, which brought on the need to paint the front doors, which highlighted the ugliness of the yellow siding (so it ended up getting painted too) which then brought us to work on the front steps…

But then it started to rain.

…so we decided to plant some climbing vines by the new fence in the backyard, which made us realize in what bad shape the soil was. Which lead us to start carting some of the rocks away, which in turn lead to some weeding…

…when what we should be doing is finishing the first floor. The stair risers and the wainscoting need to be painted, the crown mouldings and baseboards need to be installed, the coat closet doors have to be stripped, sanded, painted and hung. The windows need to be washed and god knows that the first floor and the basement are begging for a good, deep down clean. Not to mention some major reorganization of the whole house as well as moving some rather large pieces of furniture.

So what we need to do is focus!

We will finish the front steps and try straightening the banisters. But seeing as this is just a quick fix to keep the place from falling down until we can afford the real deal, we will stop there for this year. Then we will leave the backyard pretty much as is, allowing the newly planted Virginia Creeper a year's head start as it hopefully lays claim to the easternmost fence.

And now no more distractions, lets finish that goddam first floor.

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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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