Tubs and tub chairs

Last week was pretty much all about interior framing.  This is when the interior spaces start to take shape so I've been at the house a couple of times a day to make sure walls are being built exactly where I want them.   For the most part, we are building to the plans, but I've had to make a couple of minor changes.  I had every intention of blogging the interior framing a bit more, but it is next to impossible to get a decent picture of it!  Without drywall, the wood framing seems to be a complete hodge podge in the photos.  

This is a view of what will be our walk in closet (more on that later!) and the ensuite bathroom. 

The time is approaching when we'll be ready to put the house we're living in on the market.  For the most part, it is in good shape, but we want to get a good price for it so I'm trying to fix up the little stuff that makes a big difference in a sale.  

They say that kitchens and baths sell a house...

And although I think our kitchen looks pretty good, our main bathroom is a little blah.

Mostly it was the grout and the caulking around the tub that looked a little yucky to me so I decided to fix it up.

I even got our youngest to help me scrape off the old caulk.  She thought it felt neat.

After some new caulk and grout repair, the tub now looks like this.  Way better, I think.  At least it looks clean.

And here's another little project I've been working on.  While we were out for a jog, a friend and I stumbled upon 2 of these retro beauties waiting for the garbage truck!  Being the friend she is, she said, "I'll guard them while you go get your van!"    

So this week-end I started refinishing the wood bases.

First I scraped off all the floor protectors -- like gum on the bottom of a school desk!

Then I stripped the old finish.

Sanded them.

And gave them a coat of polyurethane -- a few more coats still to be put on.  I picked up some heavy, dark grey fabric in the cheap section of Designer Fabrics and will send them off to a local upholsterer in The Junction who will re-upholster the chairs themselves.  I have high hopes for these chairs.  I hope they don't disappoint!

A week in Florida

Just got home from a week in Florida!  It was a wonderful rest, even though I did manage to get heat exhaustion while at Universal Studios.  That was not a good day, but the peeps at Universal were fabulous and let us come back to finish our visit 2 days later at no extra charge.  So nice!  The Harry Potter section was by far the family favourite!  Our kids are like Trekkies, but for Harry Potter.  And I have to admit to being a bit of a fan myself.  

It looked a bit dodgy at first, but that butterbeer is delicious!

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

We ate lunch at the Three Broomsticks

Loved Olivander's!  Pretty much a re-enactment of the wand scene from the first Harry Potter.

Our 5 year old, although pretty well versed in everything Harry Potter due to having 2 older sisters, loved Dr. Seuss land.  

Love this picture.  But I also just love The Lorax!

While we were gone, the new roof went up!  Kind of hard to get a good picture of it because it is so high up, but it is now a nice charcoal grey (instead of hunter green).  We also put in two skylights and two sun tunnels (both by Velux).  I didn't love not being around for all this, and the skylights that were put in were a bit smaller than I wanted, but what can you do!  It will all look great in the end.  I'd say that my dad did a pretty fantastic job of co-ordinating things without me around.  And so great for me to see so much progress after a week of relaxation!  

But that's the end of the rest!  So much to work on now.  We've got windows coming in a week, stucco to arrange, the gable ends to finish, the basement floor to pour, insulation to order, the interior framing to finalize, quoting for heating and air conditioning....

The framing is done!

Well the exterior stuff is anyway.  Seeing it all take shape like this is just so exciting for me.  From coming up with the ideas back in September, to drawing it out on paper, to getting our engineer to design it in CAD, to THIS!

 I agree it looks pretty rough still but the shape is there-- it's finally looking like a house again.  Now we've got to get the roof on, the windows in, the back stucco done, and the stone facing done.  We are also going to build a small roof overhang outside the kitchen doors held up on one corner by a chain (on the left), a big cedar deck outside the kitchen, and add wood siding to the addition and loft.  I tried to colour in the above picture on Photobucket to get an idea of how the colours will work and came up with this.

Very messy, but it is extremely hard to draw a straight line with a mouse!  If you look at it from a distance, you can get a better picture of how it will all work out.  Except for the deck, of course.  I wasn't going to attempt to draw that with a mouse!

Tomorrow we order our windows, and our roofer comes next week. Charcoal grey windows and a charcoal grey roof.  

Our front closet dilemma

We've had a small issue from the beginning of our designing phase about where to put a front hall closet.  When we bought the house, it had a small corner closet just to the right of the front door as you enter but it was very flimsy and awkward and certainly didn't appear to be original to the house.  We ended up submitting this design for permits.

I planned to put in a freestanding wardrobe like this one behind the door or where the old closet was and to have the kids use the side door and basement for their coats and backpacks.  We put in another closet off the living room that could be used for off season coats and shoes but I never really liked the idea of having to go through the living room to access these things. 

modern entry design by toronto interior designer Lisa Ferguson

One of my regular blog reads is Life of an Architect written by Architect Bob Borson.  He has a casual and witty writing style and shares so many of his fabulous ideas in his blog.  In one post, he writes about his pet peeve of  powder rooms located right at the front door.  It's a hilarious read about something I would not have given any thought to before.  In that post he suggested a very unique layout of having a walk through closet leading to a powder room.

I thought this was a brilliant idea and wondered if we could incorporate this into our design.  The powder room as it was drawn was a little too narrow for this set-up at The Bennett House, but if we moved the wall out just a foot, we could do it.  The guys started some of the interior framing this week so now was the time to tackle this issue.  This is what we ended up doing.

I think it will work out beautifully!  The kids were expecting to have the clothes rail across the closet so that you would have to part the coats to get to the "secret bathroom".  They were pretty disappointed to hear that the coats would fit neatly to the side.  Still a bit of a secret bathroom though.  Thanks, Bob Borson, and sorry about the sink located next to the toilet (another of his pet peeves) ...  it's still a pretty small room!