Rooms taking shape

More riveting drywall-in-progress photos! Woo! It's been a few days since these photos were taken, and we're heading back up there tomorrow. I hope to find lots more work done.

The other day we dropped off the rest of the bathroom-building supplies (tile, grout, light fixture, etc.), and the plumber had finished getting all the pipes ready to start finishing the room. The new bigger stack was also in place, now properly vented up through the roof. Thrilling stuff, I tell ya.

The drywall was almost complete (installed, but not taped and mudded yet) upstairs, and they'd just started the first few sheets downstairs.

The front of the house shows the (ugly!) new hydro meter for the upgraded power supply. When we paint the exterior, hopefully we can paint the meter and pipe to blend in better.

Above is the gaping hole in the bathroom floor (hi there, down in the kitchen!) where the bathtub drain used to be, and will be again. They'll have to build the floor up significantly when they finish the bathroom.


One of the bedrooms, fully drywalled. We'll be sanding down those old plank floors. Tempted to paint them white, but we'll see.

Andrew and Cameron's future bedroom (in my head, anyway). I imagine a twin bed on either side of the window.

Very anxious to see what we'll find tomorrow morning!

Getting to the fun part

So now that we're officially at The Drywall Stage, I'm finding it hard to contain my excitement. I keep getting ahead of myself and planning things that, realistically, are still a long way off. But still, it's fun.

Here's where we're at. The whole house is completely insulated, with plastic vapour barrier also in place. The entire thing is also rewired, just waiting for the drywall to be complete before being all connected. When we arrived this week, we went over for a visit and found two workers hanging drywall. One bedroom was finished, and the other three bedrooms were partially done. Here are a few photos of what we found on our first visit this week:

This bedroom (above, the one that used to have the rainbow wallpaper) is all drywalled, ready to be taped and mudded.

This picture (above) makes me laugh. I think I told Chris to pick up a tool and make it look like he was actually doing some of the work. This is in another one of the bedrooms.

Here's the living room (above), all insulated and awaiting drywall. Note the giant pile of salvaged trim, which we hope to reuse. If we can use it, it'll be quite the jigsaw puzzle trying to get it all back in place.

The boys in "their" shared bedroom, checking out the view.

And then there's the bathroom. It's still only insulated, but the plumber had been over to move some pipes around, and was due to return any day to get more done. Apparently the vent stack wasn't actually vented up through the roof, and was also only about three inches thick. To be up to code, it's supposed to be at least four inches and he was going to replace the whole thing (not cheap, I'm sure).

Since the bathroom is the first room we're officially finishing, I did get to go shopping for fixtures, tiles, toilet, sink, tub and faucets. At Kent in Summerside, I picked up a very basic white toilet and tub, and decided to go with a small vanity, rather than a pedestal sink, to try and squeeze a bit of storage into the room. It's extremely simple (read: cheap), plain white with an all-in-one white counter/sink combination. I'll probably swap out the basic chrome knobs for some colourful glass ones. I bought a basic faucet with white cross-style taps for a tiny hit of vintage. Here's what it looks like:

The floor will be white hexagonal tile, which we brought from a tile shop in Ottawa. The tub surround will be white subway tile, picked up just this morning from Home Depot in Charlottetown. All classic, simple, white. Nothing fancy. Since it risks being extremely boring, I have my eye on some really colourful shower curtains, like this one from Urban Outfitters for around $40:



When I showed this shower curtain to my mother-in-law, she thought it was pretty, but said "but...you have three boys." I gave her a puzzled look. I thought she was worried about the white background getting dirty? No, she was concerned about it being very flowery and feminine. I laughed out loud. I think, as a mother to three boys, I've certainly earned the right to a few flowers in my life. I said as much, and she agreed.

Thrift-store score

Thrift stores are so hit-and-miss, but I snagged these very collectible vintage paint-by-numbers paintings at the new local Value Village last week. At $10 apiece, they were pretty pricey by VV standards, but I snapped them up the second I saw them. Score! Not sure yet if they'll end up in the PEI house or in William's room, but I love them.

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Exciting news! Just yesterday I called our PEI contractor and told him to go ahead and start the plumbing (mostly just upgrading it, as well as moving the pipes that ran through the one wall we removed in the kitchen/back room). Once the plumbing is done, he also has the go-ahead to start insulating and drywalling. Our hope is that by the time we arrive on August 1st, we'll be able to hit Home Depot (or Kent?) and buy bathroom fixtures for them to install. With walls and a functional bathroom, I think the place would be damn near livable. Very exciting indeed!

As for the bathroom, I plan to keep it very simple, and white, white, white (with colourful accessories, eventually). It's a rather small space, and we're leaving everything in the same footprint as before. So a basic white five-foot tub, basic toilet and either a pedestal sink or a small vanity is all we need (plus lighting, faucets and flooring, of course). My mother-in-law has half a box of 2" white hexagonal tile left over from her bathroom reno, so I would like to get a bit more of that and use it for the floor in there. While my plan is to keep it simple and inexpensive, I refuse to consider vinyl flooring or those hideous plastic shower surrounds. Tile is the only way to go.

Although we won't be going for the clawfoot tub (we had one in our first house in Toronto, before we reno'd it, and it sucks to shower in one), here are a couple of bathrooms I love for their unfussy simplicity and their classic vintage vibe:

Crisp green and white (source unknown)


Ravishing red via House Beautiful

Michael Penney's apartment bathroom via House & Home (love the polka-dot shower curtain and black-painted vintage wall shelf)

This is definitely the beginning of The Fun Part. I can't wait.

Mark your calendar

My friend Emily of Blackbird, a super cute shop in the super cute town of Almonte (in fact, if you click over to her website, you'll see her standing in her shop doorway, and even she is super cute), is putting on this craft show for November 6th.

There promises to be tons of, um, super cute - and cool - stuff at this show. Each artisan was put through a juried process of applying to the show, so you know there'll be no granny-ish crafts and doodads. Well, some granny-ish stuff is cool again, but you know what I mean. I've seen a preview of a few of the items, and I can't wait to go.

Here are the details:

Handmade Harvest Craft Show

Saturday, November 6th

9 am to 5 pm

Almonte Old Town Hall

See you there!

Off the Wall

Rumour has it that there is now all new wiring in the house, as of this week! My inlaws kindly went over to pay the electrician for his work thus far and they report that there is miles of new white wiring running all through the house. This is great news. Now we just need walls.

Or do we? Here's a recap of what the upstairs looks like right now (plus new wiring now, of course):

Since the next step is new insulation, vapour barrier, hundreds of sheets of drywall, tape, mud, etc., plus the labour involved, it will be rather expensive. Not sure how soon it will realistically happen. So what do you think of this (via Martha Stewart)?

Pretty, I think. Honestly, Chris and I talked about this possibility. We could make it livable so that we could stay there in the meantime. We're all family, after all - who needs walls?? I'm tempted. But we would need a bathroom first.

The Destruction Continues

We arrived on the island with zero intentions of doing much work at the house during our vacation. We figured we'd meet our contractor there and see what he quoted us to do the gutting of the main floor, since Chris found the task daunting after doing the upstairs in the spring. When the quote came in within our budget for the year, we jumped at it. It was a messy and huge job that we were glad to hire out.

As a bonus, one of the workmen took the ancient, broken parlour organ off our hands (it weighed about a million lbs.) as well as the old, broken sewing machine. My trash? Another man's treasure, apparently. On the last day of cleanup, they actually managed to also remove the two (yes, TWO: one oil, one wood-burning) dead furnaces from the basement.

We popped in to visit a few times, but didn't stay long because of the mess, dust, and danger factor (turns out small children and large renovations don't mix). I only got one nail through my flipflop, though thankfully it missed my foot.

In no particular order, here are some snapshots of the gutting process:

The boys inspecting the debris:

The back room/dining room, well on its way to being gutted:

Looking through the doorway into the kitchen. The wall between the small, closed-off galley kitchen and the back room/dining room is being taken out completely:

The back entry/mudroom/future laundry area:

A mountain of lath:

The living room, much the same still. The last we'd see of that damn organ:

More of the living room. The workers were under instruction to save and set aside any original architectural features, like these doors:

The staircase wall as viewed from in the living room:

Standing in the front entry, looking back through to the back room/dining area:

Andrew upstairs surveying the damage in the bathroom:

Cameron checking out the view from one of the back bedrooms upstairs:

Here's his view. It's not ocean, but I think it's pretty anyway:

Looking straight down:

The next day, the living room was gutted too. Here's the view from the living room through the wall into the kitchen area:

Here's the back room/dining area, mostly cleaned up:

Standing in the dining area, looking at where the wall came out to open up the kitchen. The pipes coming down the middle will have to move to an end wall:

The living room corner where the organ used to sit, all cleaned out:

The former owners actually left this next to the back door. Thanks!

The front door. I think it could use a little more curb appeal, no?

That's it for now. Next step, wiring. All new, including an upgraded electrical panel. Then drywall and hopefully a bathroom. All in good time, of course.