domicile

It's all done (mostly)

painted house
Originally uploaded by emira

The paint job is done, and (because Martin is a spontaneous kind of a guy) also included a mid-paint job door reno to replace our old leaded glass door with a more modern looking circle paned door. The paint job was not without its frustrations and I for one am SO VERY GLAD that we weren't doing it. It took the painters nearly a week longer than they had planned, though that was in part due to needing to wait until close to the end of the day each day to let the very hot (but oh so lovely) sun go down from glaring on the house so that they could actually get paint on the house without it drying on the brushes. The other blip was caused by the house not fully drying out from its powerwashing when the first coat went on, leading to some bubbling of the first coat of paint, which then needed to be scraped off and reapplied. Let me tell you, as I talked to the painter dude on a Monday morning, after we had spent the weekend worrying about the bubbling, and he sighed, shrugged and said, "oh well, I guess I'll need to scrape it off and start again," I thought to myself "my lordisa am I thankful this is not me having to repaint this house."

Anyway. We're pretty thrilled with the colours, especially the doors. Martin got an old used door from Jack's, a building supply place that mostly has stuff from demolitions, filled a bunch of holes in the door, reworked it a bit and then added his trademark circle glass (much like our bathroom). The door design was heavily influenced by a door we saw on an afternoon of cycling in Amsterdam (photo here, and while it certainly doesn't look that Dutch to the common passerby, it is our version of a "Dutch Door" and has been christened as such.

The pieces left to do include some touch-up painting on the door, washing all the windows post painting, and painting the steps. We didn't include that bit in the contract so it's now left to us, or more correctly, probably me, as Martin has a whole host of other reno projects lined up, including taking out part of one of the newly painted exterior walls and putting in a set of French Doors (to go with the Dutch Doors don't ya know), a project we're hoping to complete in time to enjoy a more open access from our patio to our kitchen before summer ends.

Daredevil & Mink

One of the things that has held us back from painting the house all these years has been a general lack of direction on house colours. To be perfectly honest, I've always seen the house as a buttery yellow with a nice crisp red door. Miss P agreed with me on this, but Martin has had some reservations about that scheme, not the least of which being a rather uncharacteristic distaste for the red door (Martin is generally entirely partial to the colour red). His rather un-Martin like red avoidance in this instance has to do with the fact that a lot of houses in our neighbourhood have red doors. They all look great, but Martin likes to do everything just a little bit differently. At one point I suggested painting the  house a mocha-y brown with a hot pink door and front stairs, but that idea never got much traction. We kept coming back to the yellow scheme, which really I think would have looked rather cute on our little dwelling, and then just a few days after we decided we were really going to take the plunge and hire someone, our neihbours just down the street painted their house that exact same colour scheme. Given Martin's penchant for originality, that was the end of the yellow house.

Our friend Inga has suggested that since the house is such a distinctive colour of green, and being as how it's on a corner and is almost surely used as a bit of a local landmark, along the lines of "You know, that green house? The one on the corner? Well turn left there...". We can tell that the house has always been green, so Inga had suggested that we just update the green house, otherwise people will just always refer to it as "the house on the corner... you know, the one that used to be green", which is almost certainly true. Unfortunately, we've experienced more tears and frustration over the selection and application of green paint in our house than I care to relive and so we're a bit gunshy when it comes to green paint. That and the lovely folks at the other end of the block just painted their house the colour of green we would likely have gone for (damn keeping up with the neighbours I tell ya). And so it is that we've decided to go with a rather uncharacteristic and admittedly somewhat neutral colour scheme, using a brownish grey (Sherwin William's "Mink") as the primary siding colour and an offwhite trim. The exciting part? The door will be orange (Sherwin Williams Daredevil), and possibly the stairs too. The idea being that every few years or so, we can change the look of the house by changing the door. This may mean that I get my hot pink door someday, or possibly lime green... We'll see. So far, we're still in the phase where there's more paint removed from our house each day when we get home, so we're still a few days away from seeing the first coat.

The house on the corner that used to be green

House photos, before painting
Originally uploaded by emira

Every year, since we bought our beloved but ramshackle domcile we have talked about painting it. Not only is the retro 50s industrial minty green colour neither of our first choice, the siding is peeling horribly all over and in great need of a fresh coat. Each Spring we start talking about colours, how long we'd need to take off work, and at one point we even inquired into borrowing painting polls and gear from some friends. But then: we delay and stall, or it simply rains all summer (last year) and it never gets done. This year we decided to bite the bullet and get some quotes to have someone else paint the house and I'm thrilled to say we're taking that route. This will be the first major reno (and really the first job around the house aside from major plumbing or the rewiring job) that we have had any outside help on. It feels like winning the lottery. For real. While there is a sick part of me that really does love renovating, and in particular doing it with Martin, the idea of painting the house (or more correctly prepping the house for painting) never appealed to me. At all. And not having to do it, even if it means going to work instead, feels so very luxurious. I've taken some shots of the house after it was power-washed yesterday, and the schedule is such that by the end of this week the house should be pretty much done (save the front door which we're replacing so won't be painting right away). I'll post photos daily this week with the progress just so that I can have something to look at on my lunch break to remind me of all the scraping and sanding I'm not doing. Ah bliss!

Pax Perfect

Closet before (with Pluto)
Originally uploaded by emira

I know that for most of my readers out there in internet land early July is all about the July 4th Independence Day holiday, but up here in Canada we take our July holiday on the 1st (Canada Day) and this year it kind of strangely fell on a Tuesday. This meant, in my world, taking the weekend off, going back to work on Monday and then having a mini-weekend on Tuesday. Prior to this last weekend Martin started making noise about wanting to begin our big wardrobe renovation on the weekend, which involved tearing out one wall where my bedroom closet formerly was and installing a Pax Wardrobe system (as mentioned here earlier). Given that the weekend looked to be a scorcher -- and one of the first hot & sunny weekends we'd had in forever -- I was having pretty much none of this and managed to delay him until the Canada Day holiday. This may not seem like such a feat, but when Martin gets a project on his mind, he's pretty unceasing with his desire to barrel into it.

And so it was that on Tuesday morning, after a particularly brutal workout session with my new trainer (who I adore, but holy jesus can she push me), I found myself standing witness to Martin drawing a perfect 201cm by 237cm square (to fit a 200cm x 236cm Pax sliding door unit with a little wiggle room to spare) on one of our bedroom walls and then proceeding to remove that square with a borrowed reciprocating saw.

The project went remarkably smoothly. Almost unnervingly so to be totally honest. You see, in renovating an old home the idea of opening up a wall typically means opening yourself up to all kinds of unpredictable renovation adventures, everything from discovering the hard way that your closet wall is a load bearing wall to discovering unaccounted for wiring running through the walls or a lack of floor where you thought there was one. But not this time. Nope, unlike our bathroom and kitchen renos before this project, this went remarkably well. So well in fact that we finished it in a day. That's right: a day. A day that also included lunch on the back patio, homemade dinner and hanging our clothes in the completed closet afterwards. In hindsight I believe it was possibly a Canada Day miracle.

Here's what we actually did (and the flickr photo set that accompanies it), and a few of the small roadbumps along the way:

• Drew the line on the wall to roughly match the dimensions of the wardrobe (201cm by 237cm for a 200cm by 236cm system).


• Cut out the wall with the reciprocating saw (this part was done by Martin) and this was the messiest and nastiest part of the job. I do not like drywall dust one bit I tell you.


• Upon cutting out the wall piece we anticipated having to frame in the remainder to provide a strong support with which we could attach the assembled Pax system... but... by some miracle of the renovating gods the studs in the wall were exactly the right size. Exactly. So very exactly that we spent the entire time we were assembling the wardrobe convinced that our measurements would be wrong and it would not fit. I am so pleased to say that we were wrong.


• Then we assembled the Pax system. The one measurement we did not account for was the need for our ceiling to be at least 8cm higher than the height of the wardrobe so we could assemble it on its back and then tip it up. No such luck. We had about 4cm, max. This meant we couln't assemble it on its side and tip it up, so we had to assemble it standing. That was a bit tricky, but not impossible.


• Once we had assembled both base units, we moved onto the sliding doors. If you go for the Pax sliding doors be prepared to assemble roughly 150 pieces per door. For real. Most are silly little rubber bits that get snugged in to make sure the glass doesn't break/wobble, but still. There were 96 of those. For serious. At this point, we had beer.


• The system in place (and fitting in its hole) and secured to the studs, we attached the doors. At this point there were near tears. Trying to get the sliding doors to hang and then stay on their track resulted in the door falling off the track a few times with a big thud that definitely sounded like it was going to lead to broken glass. I was not happy. Eventually, this problem was overcome with the turn of a seemingly random little bit of Ikea plastic genius that was not really clearly labeled in the instructions.


• With the doors on and the system in we did a bit of a happy dance. Then I think we had dinner. Following that, we got onto putting in drawers, clothing rails etc. This was the fun part. We were on our way to hanging our clothes back up before bedtime, a milestone we hadn't even dreamed to set.

For once, I can safely praise Ikea and say that this was an intensely rewarding reno project. We now lay in bed and gaze admiringly at our gorgeous 2 meters of unfettered closet space. We still need to repaint the bedroom (desperately), but we're currently focused on getting the outside of the house painted, a project which I fear will somehow suck up all the bad reno juju I anticipated with the closet project. Oh how I hope not.