Nursery

The baby’s room is finally at a point that I can call it done (for now!). It still needs some more small touches but all of the big things are done. And now it’s a fun, simple room, perfect for baby Nash. But first, lets travel back in time a year and check out what it used to be.
I’m not sure exactly what this room was used for but it was an elderly lady that lived here so I’m guessing this room was used for some type of physiotherapy or stretching? Your guess is as good as mine. Either way, it wasn’t very inviting with linoleum floors and those giant metal bars.

But even though it looks quite different now, this is probably the room that got close to the least amount of changes. First, we tore up the linoleum and extra subfloor, which was a total beast! I actually have my grandparents to thank for that because they got most of that job done. We also, of course, ripped off all of the wallpaper, trim and the closet doors. Next it got a coat of paint and a new window! Those big bay windows were kinda cool in their own way but totally not the look we were going for.


After some new trim and flooring, here it is today:
Poor Nash, the third child that he is. We really didn’t do much for his nursery other than set up all the furniture that was in Landon’s nursery. But I do love that we were able to give the room a whole different look without much effort or money spent.

I knew I didn’t want to go all out with the crib bedding so I chose instead to order some fabric and make him a fun crib sheet. I really love the pop of color in the crib! I would like to have a crib skirt but I’ve done without one for this long, I don’t think I’ll make the effort now. The crib and mobile were both bought before Tyler was born. It is kinda fun to have things that we’ve used with all three boys. I made the dinosaur art and then had it printed at Costco and popped them into dollar store frames.

The “Nash” sign was made by adapting an idea I found on Pinterest. It was kind of a fun project and Jeff actually helped me a lot by pounding most of the nails and even doing some of the string. I actually snapped this picture the morning before Nash was born. The boys were watching a show, Jeff was finishing up the sign and I was sitting in the chair having contractions.
I think it’s a fun, unexpected element to a little boy’s room!

The chair and night stand, I recovered/refinished before Landon was born but I recently whipped up that fun pillow to add a bit of color to that side of the room.

I’m really happy with where we are at with his room right now. It definitely needs some more finishing touches but I’m happy enough with it right now that I can move on to some other projects in our house that are in more desperate need of my attention!

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A Bed Upgrade

You see, we had this bed. We bought it about a year after we were married and I think it was our first big furniture purchase. We felt all grown up buying this big, dark four poster bed. And it’s been well loved for the past 6 years. And it was still in pretty decent shape, despite several moves and years of wear and tear. But we were just itching for something different.
It all started with the idea of hacking off the posts. I think a four poster bed can be great, but we just don’t have a big enough room to pull it off. It really made the space feel closed in. The hubby was on board with that so we disassembled the bed to haul the posts out to our miter saw and give them a little trim. And while we had the bed taken apart, I decided that there was no time like the present to give it a little facelift. You see, in addition to those posts really closing off the space, the dark color was really heavy and I just wasn’t feeling the leather anymore. So we took all the pieces down to our basement where they sat for the last 5 months. I wish I was joking. In the meantime, our room looked like this. Nothing like sleeping on the floor to keep you feeling young! And then finally with summer winding down and me getting the bug to get the house in order, I finally got around to finishing it up these last few weeks. It was a fairly simple process, although it did take a bit of time (stretched out over quite a few days) to prime and paint all of the pieces. The old leather pieces were just screwed into place from the back so updating that part was fairly simple. I cut a piece of plywood to size and then upholstered it in batting and fabric and screwed it back in. I’m loving our new bed. It feels so fresh! I can hardly believe it is the same piece of furniture.


As you can see, there is still quite a bit of work to do in our room. And when I say quite a bit, I pretty much mean that I haven’t done anything else. Except the lamps. Next up on the agenda: pillows, things on the wall, a new dresser and some closet organization. And when I say next on the agenda, I pretty much mean hopefully sometime in the next year!

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A roof over our heads

One of the very first projects on the agenda for our new house was our roof. It had a few issues.


The first issue was that the shingles were old and wearing and needed to be replaced. Simple enough. The second issue was that the roof sagged a bit over the garage. (The garage was an addition and was built with homemade rafters that obviously were not as sturdy as manufactured ones). The third issue was that it was boring! But luckily we were able to find a fix for all of those things!

So first of all was to fix the structural things. Luckily, our inspector told us that the garage was still structurally sound and that it looked like the garage would not continue to sag. A cosmetic fix was all that would be needed. Great news! Next on the agenda was to hire a contractor who could add some interest to the contour of the roof. My husband came up with the idea of the peak and we hired a friend of ours to put it up and to also fix the spot over the garage. We were really excited how it turned out! It adds so much to the house and just looks great!


So now that the bones were in place, we could start shingling. We chose to do the roof ourselves (like pretty much everything else in the house). My husband’s cousin, who roofs for a living, was able to come help us. We also had lots of help from our family and neighbors.



We somehow chose one of the hottest days of the year so we definitely owe everyone who came to help. It took us a day and a half but now it looks awesome! After pictures to come!

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Demo!!

Well, we are all moved in and mostly settled but before I show you current pictures, I need to bring you up to speed on all that has happened. I didn’t take a ton of pictures during the whole renovation process because, lets face it, I was working! This reno process has seriously been brutal! I don’t know if we would do it again if given the choice. But, man am I happy with how things turned out!

Onto the goods!

All of these pictures were taken one week after we took possession. It’s amazing how quick you can make changes with demo. I almost typed its amazing how quick demo goes but then I remembered that it felt like we were doing demo for-ev-er. If you need some before pictures to reference, check out this post.
So at this point we had ripped out almost all of the carpet and stripped most of the wallpaper.

We also knocked a huge hole in the wall. We took out the door to the basement and opened up the half wall to the stairways. We have a huge basement and I really wanted to utilize it, not for it to be this dark, dingy place. I think it really helps it join the floors together and help it to feel like living space. This was kind of a big project but now that it is completed, I’m so happy we did it!


And, speaking of big projects, we totally gutted our kitchen…


…and our bathrooms.


It was really nice to not have to live here so we could go ahead and just demo everything at once. Although, it was a little inconvenient to not have a toilet while we were there working. Luckily my sister lives about a block and a half away!


The bedrooms eventually got stripped of their flooring and carpet too. I don’t have pictures of the bare bones of the house but to give you the gist of it, here is a run down of all the demo that we did:

• tore out all of the flooring in the main floor (including all of the linoleum and subfloors under it)
• stripped wallpaper in pretty much every room in the house
• completely gutted the kitchen, including removing some of the drywall, since we discovered lots of it needed to be rewired
• tore down the door to the basement and half of the wall beside the stairs
• completely gutted (down to studs in some places) both bathrooms

Demo was a lot of work! And the thing I hated most about it was that the harder you worked, the more mess you made. It just seemed like a never ending cycle. But luckily, once the demo was done, we got to start putting things back together! That part is a little more rewarding!

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We bought a house!!!

It’s a beauty, I tell you! We took possession on September 2. The past two and a half weeks have consisted mainly of one thing – demolition. But before I get into any of that, I’d like to show you around a little! As you can see from the outside, it is a ranch style modular home, complete with awesome bay windows of the ‘80s. Gotta love that! It is also a “wonderful” light peach color. It also comes complete with old curling shingles and a nifty wheelchair ramp. Needless to say, we were a little underwhelmed when we first pulled up to view it.

Here is the view from the front door. Straight ahead is the kitchen (obviously), to the right is the living room and to the left is the hallway.
The view of the living room from the entryway. I bet you are jealous of our wallpaper and curtains. It’s ok to admit it. To the left there is the dining room.

This is the dining room. To the left of it is back into the kitchen and straight ahead is our lovely sunroom. More pics of that in a minute!

Here is the view from the living room, looking back toward the entryway.

Another view of those gorgeous curtains from the dining room.

Our strange little sunroom.

Hopefully one day we figure out something useful to do with this room. In Alberta, we get a lot more cold weather than warm so we’ll have to see how useable it will be in the fall and winter.



So here is our fantastic kitchen. The cabinets were actually in not too bad shape but there were definitely some things that weren’t working for us…

… like this. I love the idea of having a desk in the kitchen but not when it compromises so much useable counter space. Plus that bulkhead is just nasty and fake!




This is the view from the dining room through the kitchen. That little half door is a huge pantry. Off to the right is the laundry nook and the stairs to the basement.

Here you can see the laundry nook and the door to the basement.

Coming full circle, here we are at the front door again.

Just a plain old hallway with some giant mirrors at the end and some handy railings all the way down it.

Here is our main bathroom. Nothing too exciting to see in here. Which is kinda the problem.


Here is the first bedroom. It’s a little on the small side, but in my opinion kids don’t need a huge space so it will work just fine. And luckily it came equipped with some linoleum and exercise bars. Just what every kids’ room needs!

Although Landon looks pretty pleased with it!

Here is our lovely master bedroom. This is the view from the hallway.

The master actually used to be two smaller bedrooms so it is quite large. We are excited to have a nice little sitting area in our room too.

Just another angle of that lovely blue carpet!

And last, but not least, is our ensuite. Isn’t it lovely??
So there you have it. Our house in all it’s 80s glory. An spoiler alert – there is not one room in the house that still looks the same. Awesome eh? Although looking at these pictures, I kind of just miss having flooring and a toilet!

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Packing

I thought I’d share a little bit of what we did to ensure all of our stuff arrives to it’s destination in good condition. Although, now I’m worried I’m jinxing myself since our things have only taken a little ride across town to a storage unit. And that’s basically nothing compared to the 3500 km trek we’ll be taking in a few weeks. I guess I’ll just have to call myself a liar then if anything gets broken!

First things first – I started packing more than a month before we moved. I know that may seem a little excessive to some people but I’ll tell you one big thing I’ve learned since becoming a parent – don’t try to rush things!

Case in point: Before having kids, I would plan grocery shopping for the hour in between when I got off work and when we had dinner. That included getting ready, driving, shopping, driving, unloading and putting away. When my oldest came along, I had to remember to give myself an extra half hour to make sure his diaper was clean, the diaper bag was packed just in case, and to baby talk to him as I walked the aisles. Now that I have two little munchkins, I just plan for the whole morning. This accounts for finding shoes, packing cheerios, water and fruit snacks so they don’t go crazy the second I sit them in the cart, coaxing them to get in the car and dealing with the tears once they realize we aren’t going for a walk to the park, picking up my list after my youngest throws it on the floor a hundred times, telling them we are not buying candy two dozen times, breaking up a few fights in the cart, and then making them lunch before I can put all of the groceries away because they are starving!!

Wow. Sorry for the tangent. And the run on sentences.  Back to business!

Anyways, I figured if I was going to handle all of this extra work on my own in addition to all of the regular things I do, I was going to need a lot of time to keep myself and my children sane. (In case you were wondering, I do have an incredibly supportive and helpful husband who just so happens to have a job that requires a lot of time and travel in May and June. Which didn’t leave him a lot of time at home, period, let alone to pack.)

The first thing I did was cleared out our basement. It was only about half finished down there and we basically used it for watching TV and as my husband’s “office.” So we packed away the big screen and brought our little TV up to the main floor so we wouldn’t need the basement anymore for living space. Then I started going through all the stuff that was down there.  I went through every box that was down there already – baby & maternity clothes, a box of keepsakes, picture frames and décor items, out of rotation toys. Stuff like that. I started boxing things up for good and also created an area in the storage room for things to sell at a garage sale. I also listed almost all of the basement furniture on Kijiji since we didn’t want to take it with us and well, any extra cash helps!

 

Then we just started stacking things! It was really nice to have all of the ‘ready to go’ boxes out of the way so we weren’t living in total chaos.


One thing I wanted to be sure of is that I could find anything I needed. Since we are not immediately moving into a new house, it will be essential to discern what boxes need to be unpacked and which can just go straight to storage for the next few months. Since many of the boxes are used and have lots written on them, I decided the easiest way to label them would be just a plain sheet of paper and some packing tape. Every single box has a big label like this. Hopefully they will last for the whole journey – hubby had some doubts about that. I guess we’ll see.

Well, this post is getting pretty long so check back soon to see our secret weapon for packing all of our furniture!!

 

 

Ok, just kidding. I have one more thing to say. The best thing we ever did was to let my in-laws take the kids for the last few days before we moved. That way we had no distractions when it was actually crunch time, especially while loading the trucks!

Ok. Now I really am done. See ya soon!

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