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.)

still alive!

And still no pictures, because I have yet to upload them from the iBook. The last few days have been a little bit hairier than expected. The original plan had been this:

Wednesday: paint everything we can.
Thursday: finish packing everything.
Friday: 8:30 am: (before rush hour) Pierre drops me and the cats off at the new house.
10 am to noon: piano movers transport the piano.
1 pm to 4 or 5 pm: Regular movers transport everything else.
Around 3 pm: Rogers cable/Internet guy shows up to prevent internet withdrawal.

And by 6 o'clock we would be done, in time for a decent dinner, maybe open the champagne (the first thing I put in our refrigerator, three weeks ago!) and revel in our admittedly messy, packed-up house.

That didn't happen. This is what actually happened:

Wednesday:
painted everything we could (as according to plan).

Thursday:
packed, but did not finish. We were so exhausted that we decided that we could move the kitchen ourselves on the weekend. Which turned out to be a half-decent idea, as we were running out of boxes anyhow. This is approximately when the plan started derailing.

Friday:
1) This was the day of the "snow storm," which normally would have made me happy but Friday was Not The Time. Have I ever mentioned that we're moving to a house that sits on a steep hill? We're in the Upper Beaches, and that whole area slopes down to the lake. If you have a Mini, it makes opening the back extra fun.
2) We woke up early and started packing, lost track of time and ... drove to the house in the middle of rush hour, instead of before it. It actually did take a full hour.
3) ... which turned out fine because Pierre didn't have to be back at the apartment for 10 am after all, as the snow made everybody late and the piano movers couldn't make it until noon.
4) ... which was also fine because then the regular movers were late and could not make it to the apartment until closer to 2 pm.
5) On the other hand, the Rogers guy was bright-spanking early and showed up at 11:30 am. Which was really surprising, not because he was early, but because the fact that he was going to show up at all had fallen completely out of my brain. He was also really nice. He did forget to check something utterly crucial to the functioning of the Internet inside our house, but at least he did it affably.

So at this point, it's about 2 pm, the movers have just gotten to the apartment and everything is running slightly later than anticipated, but it was still okay.

And then the movers took about 3 hours to load up the truck, which ended not because we ran out of things, but because they ran out of room in the truck. There were only 2 of them, they weren't terribly experienced, and they had a 16-ft truck, which — dudes. It may have been just a 800-square foot apartment, but it was an 800-square foot apartment with six bookshelves full of books. Do the math.

In the end it took them 8 hours to move us. That's without most of the kitchen. Pierre and I opened the champagne around 9:30 ... and then realized that maybe we should eat dinner. We ordered pizza. They delivered the wrong one, but we ate it anyway. (To the guy who ordered the mystery-meat (Italian sausage?) and sweet onion pizza: that combination was surprisingly good and I am now open to putting sweet onion on more pizzas. I hope you enjoyed our plethora of pepperoni.)

And then this entire weekend was spent packing up the kitchen (and then unpacking it), and cleaning up the old apartment — which was really anticlimatic, and a lot of it was done by Pierre's mother while we went off to watch the gold medal hockey game, for which I will be forever grateful.

(Actually, the packing and then cleaning was really, really exhausting and both Pierre and I are walking zombies. But there's nothing to elaborate on. We packed. Then we cleaned. There was an utterly hilarious moment when Pierre's mother opened her trunk and Pierre's soccer ball fell out of her car and went rolling straight down the steep hill, but she didn't seem as amused.)

So tonight we are hopefully unpacking and/or priming the den, and if I can find a place to plug in the iBook power cable that I found last night, and then locate the USB cable for the camera, I will be able to upload pictures. And a 34-second video of my manly men lifting up a washer through a hole in the floor. Seriously.