identifying plants

This is what the back garden looks like right now. What you can't see is the large pile of construction debris that is still waiting to be taken to the transfer station; I decided that no one really needs to see that.

We have a bit of lawn. I don't think that will change. Croquet requires a wee bit of lawn, and I like croquet.

Supposedly the back of the shed at the top of the garden is utterly hidden by a wall of green in the summer. Ivy? Morning glories? Something else? Who knows?

On the right are what I am fairly sure are rose bushes. I don't know what kind, but I was told there's a small bit of rose garden in this yard and that's the only likely shrubbery. On the left, clinging to the shed, is other shrubbery; definitely not roses but otherwise I have no clue.


Right next to the shed is what I am almost certain is rhubarb. The leaves are the right shape and the red tinge is unmistakable. The overall size is a bit small, but that makes sense if they're growing from roots after the winter.

Then there is this:


I have no idea. It's definitely not grass (at least, not the same grass as on the lawn). I initially thought chives, because they tend to come in much earlier in the spring than other plants and these have been around for something like two weeks now. But I don't think that's it.

It's kind of everywhere, though. Nooks and crannies.


I think the lighter shoots may be daylilies or something similar, and I'm almost certain that there are a few tulips in there (there's a clump, in the picture, that looks suspiciously like it), but ... oh, who knows.

Meanwhile, when I got home from work last night, I did a quick inspection of the leaves in the front yard and decided that the little tiny tree was a very young oak.

This morning, in the clearer light of day, I decided that that was utterly idiotic and that the leaves most likely came from the big giant oak tree that lives right across the street.

Which is to say, I have no idea. I know; all I have to do is wait until the buds bloom and then I'll know. But — well, since when was I ever good at waiting?

does it count as early adoption if it's a sofa, not a computer?

No photographs today because it was so wet and dreary yesterday; everything came out grey. But everything is moving apace! We still don't have a full bathroom yet but we have almost all of the ingredients — the holdup is the grout, which needs 48 hours to cure before we can seal it and caulk up the rest. (I am pretending I know what all of these words mean.)

We do, however, have a sofa! Specifically, this sofa. I love it, and not just because we are the only people in all of Toronto own this sofa (so far). It's part of West Elm's new collection, which they just put in stores before this weekend. They had one in stock, and then we took it away. The salesgirl and cashier were both delighted and tickled that it was bought so soon.

It's fabulous, though. I really didn't think we were going to be able to find anything small enough for our space, and this is just perfect. The cats love it, too. I know this because I lost them for an entire afternoon yesterday, and found them both curled up on the sofa. On opposite corners, of course.

Garden Update:

The African violet is still alive! That's a whole week, then. I have to say that I obsess over it a little. It's sort of become my talisman — if I can keep this thing alive, then I can garden. Maybe. The garden is starting to bud, actually, all these tender shoots of bright green. I have no idea what they are. They may, for all I know, be weeds. The previous owner assured me that the garden is mostly wild flowers and requires no maintenance whatsoever, but everything I've read so far indicates that non-maintenance leads to ... well. A garden full of things that end in -weed: milkweed, pokeweed, smartweed. I am reasonably sure that I don't yet have bindweed, but it may only be a matter of time.

I am really getting into this whole "owning a house" thing

Look! New books (and a plant)!


Someone gave me an African violet last weekend, and now I think I should garden. Outside. So of course I had to have books that will tell me how to do it. Have I mentioned that I've never had a backyard before, never mind gardened? And that I kill African violets — the easiest houseplant ever — repeatedly, inadvertently, and often with very little remorse?

(This one is still alive. It's been four days, and I'm very proud. I did managed to keep a calla lily alive for a whole two months, once. Then I accidentally left it behind in my beautifully sunny apartment, with no water or air conditioning, for three weeks and in the middle of a hot June, and that was the end of that.)

a perfect(ly exhausting) weekend

The weekend previous to last, I started unpacking my books.


We were sort of at an impasse in terms of packing: most of the kitchen was done, but some things had to wait until we unpacked the living/dining room, because there was no room in the kitchen. But we couldn't unpack the living/dining room because of all the boxes, and the boxes had nowhere to go because inside the boxes were books, and the books were to go on bookshelves that had not been put in place because the walls were blocked by boxes. Of books.

In theory this could be solved by moving the majority of the books upstairs, to where they belonged, but the sunroom-cum-library was full of tools and the den (through which one had to go before reaching the sunroom) was still in the process of being painted.

So we did more Towers of Hanoi maneuvres and managed to get the two bookshelves flanking the fireplace up, and I unpacked that, but it was difficult because it turns out I have a lot of books (no, really?), and it's hard to corral sets of things when you don't know where said sets are. And while it seemed like I had done a reasonable job — at the beginning, anyway — of labelling my boxes, I had somehow thought that labelling a box full of English and World Literature anthologies and Agatha Christie novels "Books. EngLit (mostly)" would be helpful, and ... it's really not. (Don't even get me started on the ones that say, simply, "Books." Books? Really?)

Anyway, much as I love unpacking books (and I really, really do), the bathroom last week was much more exciting.


But this weekend, Pierre finished painting the den, above, and he helped me organize the tools and clean up in the sunroom, and so we hauled the very heavy boxes of Ikea upstairs and I built The Library:

View from the right of the door
View from the left of the door
There are seven bookshelves in there, plus the desk, all gloriously empty. Well, were. Some of them have books in them now, and it kind of looks like a lending library had the stomach flu and barfed all over the room. In a good way.

Meanwhile, I had a little bit of time and managed to get some adorable bowls from Anthropologie:

Yes, of course they're blue.
And Pierre had a little bit of time and got me a prezzie:


Which will explain why I will suddenly and inexplicably fall behind on unpacking this week. And possibly next. (Yes, it is beautiful. Also: squee.)

this washing hands business is complicated.

I want to show you something.


Okay, fine, the picture is kind of blurry and that is not the colour of the faucet, but the point remains. Do you see them? Water drops! In the sink! We have running water!

It took two trips to Home Depot, some judicious use of the saw and Dremel kit, a small panic and a certain creativity with plumbing elbows, but this morning I brushed my teeth in the bathroom, and that's just a great feeling.


The vanity we had initially ordered was smaller, and was nearly completely open on the bottom, like a table — it only had a shelf way at the very bottom. So we didn't really measure the openings fo the drain and water pipes when we redid that wall, because the vanity was so flexible. And then, of course, came the backorder thing and the substitution thing, and when the new, bigger vanity with the (surprise!) drawers arrived, we found that the P-trap ... didn't fit.

And P-traps are really important.


Yeah.

I assume it works because the drain is draining and the pipes are not leaking. That's good enough for me.
...
So I've decided that the light in the bathroom makes the automatic white balance on the DSLR give up and die. There's a CFL above the bathtub and halogens in the sconces on either side of the medicine cabinet, and somehow that means that I have three different wall colours in three different pictures. It is probably somewhere between the colour in the first picture (but less green) and the third (not baby blue). It is almost baby blue in the morning, which I find distressing, and then absolutely, adorably dusky at night, which I love.

And the faucet is not bronze at all; it's a sort of brushed pewter. (It should have been brushed nickel, but there was a small mix-up and ... whatever. Running water!)

So now there's a functional powder room! The shower is not yet functional, but that is only a matter of time (I think). It almost feels like a real house now!

most of a bathroom!

... because an entire bathroom would apparently be pushing it.


Anyway: we have a vanity and sink! And medicine cabinet! And light sconces!

All of these things were put in last night. Granted, the plumbing is not yet hooked up (more on that later) and so the faucet (not pictured) is not actually functional, and I have yet to unpack the bathroom box so the medicine cabinet is empty, but ... the lights work. That's something.

Anyway, I took this picture last night to share the excitement of having an actual bathroom sink with you, but when I looked at it just now I realized that ... the wall is not actually that colour. It's actually the colour of this hallway, so you might want to mentally colour-correct:


Much nicer, don't you think? You may remember that I mentioned that the bathroom was going to be painted "Cool Sky." After two weeks of staring at medium-blue drywall (bathroom drywall is a special moisture-resistant kind that comes in either blue or green), I decided that the bathroom could take a darker blue and went with the same paint as the hallway. Literally the same paint: there was a lot left over so I used the same can.

You may notice that the vanity is a bit on the large side, considering the size of the bathroom. It's 40 inches across. We had originally ordered the 32" one, but they're backordered until the end of May because the Chinese government diverted the electricity from the factory that makes them. Seriously. So the manufacturer offered to ship the 40" instead (as we had already paid) and, given the choice between having a sink or brushing my teeth in the kitchen for another two months ... I decided that my bathroom could handle a 40" vanity perfectly.

The long wait explains the following conversation Pierre and I had last night, immediately after installing the vanity:

Me: Hey,didn't we specifically order the one without the drawers on the bottom?
Pierre: (looking up for the briefest of moments) I don't care.

So now we have a vanity with drawers. And we need to go back to the Home Depot to get a smaller P-trap or ... something. It's a non-standard sink (much wider, and shallower), so the standard fittings that came with the faucet don't actually fit. It would have been helpful to have known this earlier. Then again, earlier we didn't know we have a vanity with drawers, either. The one with the shelf sits lower.

Meanwhile, I have some Deadline Knitting to do, which luckily I've become obsessed with (luckily because obsession may be the only thing that will drive me to get done in time):


Noro Chirimen in shades of blue and grey (and some brown). I told you I had a thing for blue.

unpacking progress (or lack thereof)

I wasn't going to blog today, but then I dawdled for a few minutes this morning taking and uploading pictures instead of rushing off for the streetcar, so why waste the effort?


This is what the kitchen currently looks like right now. It's a bit of a mess, but isn't the light amazing? We pretty much don't need artificial light in any of the rooms in the morning (or for most of the day, really), which is pretty astounding for someone who's lived in a basement apartment for five and a half years.

We didn't get around to painting the trim (all of the trim in the house was this odd purplish-looking grey; one of my friends called it lavendar and it's kind of like that, but grey); we decided not to focus on things that we could paint even with cats in the house. Which is why the green painter's tape is still up.

The boxes in front of the buffet are the cookbooks, which I thought were going to live in the kitchen but won't fit. The pot rack is up. The KitchenAid, blender and beloved mixing bowls are hiding in the mini-island behind the pine table — we were going to set it up as a temporary island in the middle of the kitchen, but we couldn't find the nuts for the legs.

The white bench way off to the right is new. It's only 11" deep and the only thing I could find that would fit into the space. (We tore out a nicotine-stained, cheap-looking bookcase, only to realise that they had torn out the baseboard to install it. So we needed something there to hide the gigantic hole.) It is currently full of cookies.

The desk chair is living downstairs for now until we are finished painting the den and vacuuming the sun room. It's kind of entertaining because every time I sit in it, I roll backwards and topple something over. (Pierre says I'm not allowed to sit in it any more.)

The cabinets, cupboards and buffet innards are entirely done:


Of course, by "entirely" I actually mean "I've put everything that will fit into it away," rather than merely everything. There's a difference. Still, all of the necessary dishes, glasses, pantry foods and cookware are well and put away, and that makes me feel better.

We still haven't cooked yet, mind you; we've just heated things up. This is because the countertops currently look like this:


Which is not very helpful. (But those are clean dishes in the rack! I am not faking that!) The problem is that there are lots of things that we want to keep track of but don't technically belong in the kitchen; however, we don't have a proper entry setup right now (it's a Stefan chair and a bar stool; seriously), and so anything that we need to find again, we put it in the kitchen. I guess that's a kind of organization.

We added that new-looking light on the wall. The old one was a wall-mounted desk lamp. I think the previous seller must have bought them in bulk — there are several in the basement and I think the sun room light was the same, too.

The microwave is ... funky. That is all I will say about it. I do find it vastly amusing, though.

Off to the left and out of the picture there is a long mirror leaning against the window in front of the sink. (I thought I had included it in the picture, but I guess not.) It looks very silly and will be removed once we get the sink and vanity into the bathroom; until then, Pierre needs it to shave and I need it to brush my hair in the mornings. It's the only mirror in the house right now.

Ooh, wait, I actually do have a picture of that, from the paint-a-thon.


So yes, it's a bit odd, especially since there's a direct line of sight from the front door and it's sort of the first thing you might see. The paint rollers are still there, too, but the counter is slightly cleaner.

Pretty good, huh? I like the kitchen. I like the rest of the house, too, but it currently looks like this:


I call it the "unusable" phase.

Reno update

Blogging has been a bit difficult lately. I haven't been taking many pictures of the house, which is fine because honestly there's not that much visual progress. We've concentrated getting the kitchen and the master bedroom set up, so that's nice, but both rooms are still a mess as we've had to revamp storage solutions. The kitchen in the house has much less cabinet space than our old apartment — we had a galley kitchen, which was lined with uppers; this kitchen, while larger, only has two upper cabinets (on the other hand, it has an immense window, which I love and am willing to give up upper cabinets for) — and the bedroom likewise has less closet space (plus we lost the hall closet). So there are boxes of things lying around while we try to figure out where they go, and/or wait until the space where they go is set up.

So that is what I have been doing. I have not been knitting, nor have I been crafting. I think I know what to knit — something really, really dead simple, like a Log Cabin blanket in Cascade EcoWool neutrals — except that I stuffed random bits of my stash (including three giant skeins of brown EcoWool) into random boxes of books as filler, and ... I can't find them. I found my Malabrigo stash, because that box had a label describing the books and the yarn, but apparently I found my EcoWool stash not important enough to identify. And I have a lot of boxes of books.

Anyway — it occurs to me that I haven't actually posted a lot of the pictures I uploaded to Flickr, so I should work through those. Here are some from the veritable paint-a-thon we had about two weeks ago:





A lot of people showed up, and it was really fun. It was also around the same time that we got the new toilet:


It's one of those efficient dual-flush low-flow things, and I'm very fond of it. I missed it very much when they took it out to do the floor.


I'm not sure why it's showing up pink. It's a very light grey/white marble. They had to fit everything before the adhesive stage, which is why the tiles are numbered in painter's tape. It's like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse.

Pierre's father actually finished tiling most of the bathroom the morning of the move. (In addition to the floor, we wanted a subway tile backsplash for the tub.) Unlike the floor, he cut the pieces of subway tile as he went, so the wet tile saw was going on and off for about three hours while the cats were in the next room. The cats were not impressed.


This is Tuesday literally squishing her head as far into the cage as it would go. (Freja, on the other hand, decided that she felt safer inside the litter box. It was clean, new litter, but still.)

I think the insane noise of the saw (and of me using the shop vac in the other room) made them get used to the furnace right quick, though. They don't seem to mind it at all.

And this is what the bathroom currently looks like, give or take:


We've installed the tub and shower fixtures, but otherwise it hasn't really changed since the move. The subway tile still needs to be grouted, and the walls primed and then painted. We are replacing the broken blind and I plan on eventually not having the toilet paper holder hang from the window crank like that. The glass partition for the half-wall probably won't be ready until later this week or early next week, our sink/vanity has been backordered, and there is a giant hole where the medicine cabinet is supposed to be. Good times.

a thing for blue

I really don't want to dwell on the unpacked pile of boxes today, so why don't I show you what we've managed to paint, instead?

Initially, we weren't going to paint much of the house — of course we would have to paint anything that got new drywall, and we both liked the idea of a dark, dramatic accent wall on the first floor, but aside from that we were willing to keep everything reasonably as-is.

Then we walked in on a day with bright sunlight, after all of the previous owner's pictures, etc., had been removed, and realized that a) she had been a smoker, and therefore b) everything would have to be redone. Everything.

The kitchen.

The master bedroom, with a new ceiling (previously used as a sitting room).
I know it's immensely boring, but guys, listen: if nicotine can do this do my walls, imagine what it's doing to your lungs.

Anyway, back to the story. I am generally a neutrals kind of girl (for at least five years, I wore nothing but black), but what I like (generally) is white furniture set off against coloured walls. And I do mean colour: while, again, I prefer neutral, soft colours, I harbour a deep hatred of taupe. My mother's entire apartment and house is in taupe, and I hate, hate, hate it with a deep abiding passion. So these are the colours I chose:


A deep, dramatic blue-grey ("Dark Pewter") for the accent wall. In bright, cool daylight it's a beautiful pure grey, and in dark, warm light it is a deep bluish grey. I love it. (Also, doesn't the white fireplace set it off nicely?) I kept the other walls a crisp white ("Powdered Snow") for contrast.


Master bedroom, "Cumberland Fog." A silvery light blue that is much bluer in the mornings. Here's another view to contrast with the scary nicotine-stained one above.


The fireplace is kind of unfortunate, but when they painted it they added some weird textured swirl to it, and I really haven't had time to sand it off. It's not great, but we're going to hide it with the bed and hopefully the yellow weirdness won't be so noticeable. We took off the mantle in order to paint the wall; you can see it in the original nicotine picture.


In the second-floor hallway, a rich, medium blue-grey from Behr's "vintage" collection, called Ozone. It was much too dark for either the bedroom or the bathroom, but I think it's my favourite out of all the colours I chose. It's what happens when baby blue grows up and stops being annoyingly infantile.

The second bedroom and the den are (surprise!) a sedate green ("Spring Hill"), which you can see from the hallway picture — not too minty, not too dusky.

And the bathroom is going to a much lighter, icy blue called "Cool Sky." No pictures yet because we haven't primed the bathroom, never mind painted it — we still have to grout and seal the floor and subway tiles.

Anyway, my point is, while I had made sure all of the colours worked together, I didn't realize that I had a thing for blue until someone asked me about the colours and I found myself using the words "grey" and "blue" in every sentence. I am not very bright sometimes. But at least the house now has an (inadvertent) colour scheme.

(The kitchen is white. I was originally thinking yellow, but Pierre raised an eyebrow and we compromised on a creamy white.)

The Great Laundry Maneuvre

I ended up uploading something like 100 MB of pictures last night, so I'm going to divide this into at least two posts so that various connections don't keel over. Today, you get the Great Laundry Maneuvre, otherwise known as the hole in the floor.


This happened exactly a week ago: my father-in-law cut a hole in my kitchen floor, family and friends carefully lowered the new laundry machines into it, and then hauled the old laundry machines out. We initially thought that the old ones could come out the old fashioned way — i.e., up the stairs — but then we realized that, a) we would probably have to remove the banister to the stairs, which would be more work, and b) we already have a hole in the floor.

The original plan was to lift up the linoleum so that there wouldn't be any seams. That ... didn't work out so well, so there's a seam, which is fine except for when the basement light is on and I can see the light shining through the cracks. Then it freaks me out.

I'm not going to bother writing a lot about this, as the pictures are fairly self-explanatory ...












And that was the scene I walked into when I got to the house. I seem to have a habit of walking in just after they've done something intriguingly dire to the house (like ... oh, take down a wall. Or part of a floor).

Then we stood around, waiting for people to show up after work to help us with the machines. From what I understand, there seemed to be a lot of jumping into and out of the hole, and playing with the camera, just for a lark.


And then the real fun started!

They began with the dryer, because — did you know this? — dryers are significantly lighter than washers. I did not know this. Then again, I have never tried to pick either one up.

The plan was to use two lengths of climbing webbing (which is rated for something like 300 lbs), parallel to each other and held at either end by a person, to gently lower the dryer through the hole. There was a little bit of a tipping problem initially, but that was easy to compensate for as the dryer is reasonably light. They put knots in the webbing for better grip.


Testing the webbing.


Liftoff! (You can see Marc and Pierre holding the dryer so that it won't tip.)






It happened remarkably fast, and was surprisingly painless. Then again, as Marcus pointed out, there were really only two ways this could end, and "catastrophically" is probably not the one I wanted.

And now, the washer. This one was heavier, and took longer; therefore I have more pictures.


The heavier load made them pause to reconsider their strategy...


... and triple-check their bearings.














Ta-da!

(I also have a 34-second video of them pulling up the old dryer, but it's on my iPod Nano and that necessitates hunting for an entirely different cable, so that will have to wait a few days.)

We now have a set of high-efficiency laundry machines in that beautiful red colour that no one will ever see, because it is in an unfinished basement that no one will ever go to. However, I will know. And it makes me happy.

Someone did point out that we were never going to get those machines out again, and ... I'm sort of okay with that. I mean, by the time we'll want to get them out, they won't be working any more and it will be okay to disassemble them ... right?

(Yes, when the time comes, we are totally going to sell them with the house.)