the boys room - before photos

The paint swatches are out and rooms are being prepped for the painters who are arriving tomorrow.

With the baby arriving in six weeks, we needed to get our bedrooms ready. Our home has three bedrooms - two upstairs and one downstairs. Currently, all three boys are sharing the bedroom upstairs and using the downstairs bedroom (this one in the photos) as their playroom. Surprisingly, this has worked out perfectly for the past few years. Though I have to admit, they are all good sleepers, which helps. However, trying to add a newborn (eventually) into the same room is just too cramped.

So we've decided that the two older boys will move downstairs, and the two littles will stay upstairs. I feel like the two oldest boys are big enough for this move now, which I wasn't comfortable with when we first moved in. The bedrooms upstairs are in the original house, and the playroom is in the furthest addition, as far away from the other bedrooms as you can get. 

So here is the room, exactly as it was when we moved in. We haven't done anything with it in the 3 years we've been here. It's their playroom and it does take a beating.

We also don't plan to do anything major in this room except freshen it up with some paint, add window treatments, new light fixtures, maybe some built ins and make it a functional bedroom and playroom for the older boys.

I've branched out from my usual Simply White by Benjamin Moore, and decided on a pretty neutral Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore. It's part of their Historical Collection of colours, so I feel like it still fits the age and character of the house.

The floors are already painted, so I need to figure out what I'm going to do with them. I'm thinking I will give them a fresh coat of paint to freshen them up.

Once I draw up a design layout for this room I will share it, as well as my inspirations for the decor. For now, I'm just happy to not have to be painting.

Upstairs Bath - Before

I thought I would share some more before photos.

This is our upstairs bath. The second floor of our home is only above the original house. It consists of two bedrooms (for now the boys share a room), and a bathroom.

The bathroom is quite a bit more spacious than we were previously used to. It has beautiful, bright morning sunlight. It also has a large built in storage closest, which is more storage than I could possibly need. It's also quite charming with the little radiator, built in shelves and deep window above the bath.

There are however a few things that we would like to change.

Eventually, this old cast iron tub, which is deceptively deep, will be taken out and replaced with a claw foot tub. The shelving built in to the left of the tub will be removed, and a floor mounted faucet will be installed, as well as a free-standing shower. Currently there is only a hand-held shower, so this tub is used only for soaking. We use the shower on the main level. The toilet seat has also been replaced.

The fixture will be replaced, as well as a new, slightly larger vanity. Originally we talked about moving the toilet to the wall with the door, and putting a double vanity in, but it either meant cutting through the joices, or dropping the living room floor. Neither of those were something we wanted to do. So a larger vanity it is. We will also replace the mirror.

You can see the built in shelves here. They will be removed.

We will also add a few extra shelves to maximize the storage space in this closet. There is also a large storage space above this, and a drawer below.

You can tell by the peonies that these photos are actually from when we first moved. It's just taken me a while to get to them.

The door is just on the wall in the left. 

At this point, we are very thankful we didn't start ripping out the bathroom as originally planned, when we worked on the living room below. At that time it made sense to do it all at once. However, in hindsight, it would have been another huge project, and for now, we're perfectly comfortable living in it the way it is. Soon it will all be freshened up with a coat of paint.

Before Photos - The Kitchen

As promised, here are a few photos of the kitchen as it is now. We haven't done any work on the room itself, we've simply installed some appliances and made it feel like ours.

One of my most favourite features of the kitchen, a room in which a large part of my day is spent, is the exposed stone wall. The kitchen was the first addition to the house, and was added to the south side of the original home not too long after if was built. This stone wall was at one point the outside of the house. And while you would think that a wall of stone would be quite cold aesthetically, it adds so much warmth to the space. 

It's also the perfect backdrop for open cabinets - which I have a few of. It compliments my dishware and ironstone perfectly.

The kitchen is three separate work areas - the one above, which holds all of my baking things, the cooking area by the stove (to the left of the space above) which is also where our everyday dishes are kept, and the sink area (opposite side).

To the left of this workspace is a doorway leading up into to the dining room, and to the right is a doorway leading up into the living room. I love that the doorways are two steps deep as the stone walls are so thick.

This is the East side of the kitchen. It contains my cleaning closet (left), my pantry (tucked behind in the middle), and a closet for coats and shoes (for the family room entrance which is through the doorway to the right). This part of this kitchen was formerly an office space, which we decided to turn into a main floor laundry area. I love having my laundry on the main floor.

You can see it tucked in behind here, along with our freestanding air conditioning unit. The home has radiant heat and that means no central air. While the main floor has been quite comfortable for most of the summer, the temperatures climbed up into the high thirties with the humidity last week and so we caved and put the air on.

There is a large window overlooking the side yard and the canal in the distance. We plan to create some sort of small built-in workspace to the right of the units, but that will come in time.

This is the West wall of the kitchen which leads out to the back patio.

One of our purchases for this space was a new gas range, which I love. I'm enjoying it so much.

I'm also very much enjoying having a dishwasher.

While originally we planned on replacing a lot of the kitchen, we've grown quite comfortable in it. But there are still a few things we plan to do:

Give the room as fresh coat of paint,

Replace the counter tops and backspash, 

Tile the floor (one day),

Replace the french door,

Finish the shoe closet,

Update the fixtures and hardware.

Before Photos - The Family Room

I thought next I would share another room we are currently working on - the Family Room.

I mentioned in a previous post, that in hindsight, it was a mistake to work on both living spaces at the same time, while attempting to actually live in the home (no matter how "quick and easy of a job" the contractor might claim it is). 

Hence our half-put-together family room.

This room's walls and ceilings were originally coated in a plaster-type texture, similar to spacalding you would roll onto a ceiling. The reasoning behind it, I believe, was that it was a cheap way to cover up imperfections in the original plaster walls that had been wallpapered over a few times.

Re-drywalling this room was not in our immediate budget. So, when our drywallers came to quote our Living Room, and they mentioned that they could "skim" over the texture, and that it wasn't going to be expensive, you can imagine we jumped all over it.

Now, please be gracious and remember that while this isn't our first home, this is the first time we've renovated a home on this scale. I mean Ryan's done some big renovations himself before, but not quite like this. So we're slowly learning that no project is ever as easy at it seems, and how budgets seem to get pushed with each project, and that if a contractor quoting a job says that it will only take a couple of days, it usually, in our experience, takes a couple of weeks.

So, when the "smoothing out" didn't working on the walls, we needed to come up with another cost-effective solution. It was here that I had the brilliant idea to do planked walls. It provided the covered that we needed, without the huge cost. It's also quite cozy, and has a cottage feel to it, which is nice for a Family Room.

The planking is over halfway complete, however we've come to a stand still for the next week or so. Ryan's work schedule has been busier than usual, and other projects have needed more immediate attention. But again, due to the lack of space to relax in, we just set up the room as best as we could just make things comfortable - particularly for the kids. It's hard enough for them to settle into a new home, the renovations and unsettled house make it even harder.

Here you can see some of the lovely old wallpaper.

This is the room where we have our main entrance. The front door is rarely used, unless by visitors, as it's on the other side of the house (we're on a corner). Because of it's situation to the driveway, this is our entrance.

Here are the earliest photos that I have. Here we are in the middle of removing the spacalding.

You can also see that the ceilings have been smoothed. For some reason, they set perfectly, which is nice, as it will help make the room feel finished off.

This room is also the access for the crawlspace for the latest addition. It's quite tight down there! Our plumbers had to remove some galvanized plumbing, and bring it all up to date.

Ryan's working hard putting up the planking.

Once the rest is finished, the boards will be sealed and then primed before being painted. I haven't selected any colours yet, but it will most likely be white, especially as this room gets limited sunlight. Aside from that, I would also like to replace our aluminum door with a wooden door.

Hopefully soon I will have some after photos for you!

The Dining Room - Before

While a few of the rooms in our home will require quite a bit of attention, it's nice to have a few that won't need as much work, at least not for a very long while.

Our dining room is one of them.

The largest task will be to paint, particularly the staircase. We will install a different chandelier, and also a different stair runner.

The dining room is the right half of the main floor of the original house. It's open to the stairway going upstairs, and has a walk-through into the kitchen behind it, which runs across the length of the back of the original house. The door under the staircase is the door to the basement.

While this is the original chimney, this fireplace is obviously not in working order, and due to the size of the room, we have no plans of opening it back up.

It's threw me off for quite some time, when it came to the placement of my dining room table. The mantel isn't centered and there is a shelf cut out on the left side. They also centered the chandelier with the window, in the middle of the room, which results in it being centered with the top bulk-head part of the fireplace, but not the mantel or the table.

I decided that I think it looks best to center the table with the mantel, and then when we hang our chandelier (this one won't be staying), that will be centered over the table. This may require wiring it into place, and swagging it slightly over to center, as I think the beam in the ceiling will interfere - of course. I also haven't decided if I will keep the mirror where it is, or hang it over the buffet, and replace it with a smaller painting, centered above the mantel.

Because we really didn't have a dining area before, at least not one that fit even a standard dining table, I had to purchase a new table.

I found this Queen Anne style table, with it's beautiful curved legs and casters, which was newly refinished, and came with three leaves in perfect condition, on Kijiji for $120 - and they delivered it!

I have yet to decide what I will do chair wise, though I'm fairly certain I will be at least purchasing another covered Ikea chair for the other end. The arm chair in the corner is only temporary. The boys were growing quite tired of the lack of space in their playroom with all of the family room furniture crowding things. 

For now, to fill some space, we put up a mirror, as well as my portraits, but again, I'm still thinking through what pieces I want to furnish this space with.

All I know for certain is that the blinds will come down, and everything will be freshly painted.

Here I'm standing at the bottom of staircase, looking into the room, and directly behind me is a door to the small foyer of the front entrance.

I just love the white and wood and stone. There's so much warmth to this room, and the lighting it receives suits it well. It's full of bright and cheerful sunlight in the morning, which is ideal for breakfast, but as the sun sets on the other side of the house, the lighting grows dim and warm in the evening, creating a cozy atmosphere for evening dinners.

Another wonderful feature of this room is that when we sit at the table with the front door open, we can see the boats pass through the canal. 

I can't wait to host a dinner party in this room!