Selling our beloved house

We are getting closer to moving in to The Bennett house.  

Probably about 2 months away now.  So the time has come to sell the house we have been living in for the past nine and a half years.

It is a bit nerve wracking, selling a house!

  The agents expect the place to be immaculate and to minimize the appearance of children living in it.

I knew we had to "de-clutter" and "de-personalize", but I didn't expect to have to do so much of it.  

But I am loving the pared down space we now have.

Not that we'll ever be able to keep it this clean!

In fact, we've been living with my sister in Oakville for the past week while the showings and open houses were happening, just so that it could remain this clean.

But I honestly don't want all that stuff back that we put away in storage.

It will be really nice to start fresh in the new house and hopefully do one more purge before we move in.

I have tried to design the space with our lifestyle in mind, so that we will hopefully have a place for everything.  

If we don't, then it will have to go!

I think that is the key to getting rid of clutter-- having a place to easily put everything away.  

The kitchen can especially get over-run with stuff that is never used.

This one has been very efficient for us.  

Although, I did put quite a bit of thought into it when we renovated it, and got rid of a lot when we moved out of the old kitchen.

I hope it works out just as well for someone else.

The kids are a bit sad to leave this house.

Two of them were born here (yes, we're mad homebirthers) which they always remind me of.

As if I've forgotten!

It's very hard for them to imagine the Bennett house in a livable state.  

Kids don't have the same vision.

I'll miss this house, too.  

We did a lot of work on it, and have a lot of memories here.  

My husband and his cousin built this back deck on their own--the first big project he'd ever worked on.

It really is a great house, and someone will be very lucky to live here.

Possibly another young family like we were. 

Hopefully we'll know later this week.

Light boxes

Sorry for the lack of posts in the last while.  I am out of my mind, crazy busy right now!!  The house we have lived in for the past 9 years is going on the market tomorrow, and I have been full force de-cluttering and de-personalizing-- not to mention, repairing things, caulking, painting, patching etc.  

We really hoped to sell this house privately to a nice family without all the fuss and show and stress of putting it out there for a million people to bid on.  Unfortunately, that didn't work out for us through word of mouth, and we ended up having to hire an agent.  I just didn't have the time to try and make a go of it with Property Guys or some similar sell-it-yourself program.  

So, tomorrow is the big day, and we fully expect a couple of hundred people to go through it and likely multiple offers.  

Our street is in a great location and the house is renovated and ready for someone to just start living!

Anyway...  

at The Bennett House, the dry walling is finished for the second and third floors and half done for the first floor.  Things are moving along quickly! 

If you remember, in August we pulled apart our old dock at the cottage and saved the old boards.  

We were always planning on making recessed light boxes on the main level to break up the vast white ceiling a bit, but originally thought we would make them out of plywood.  

After saving the old dock boards, we thought they might make pretty neat light boxes.  

But since I've been so busy with our house sale, I got my ever dependable dad to start making them so that they could be installed before the dry wall.  

He came through beautifully!

They turned out a little shorter than I originally wanted them (since the boards were only 3 feet long) and we had to do the base of them with painted white particle board (since we didn't have enough dock board for all 4 lights), but I still think they look pretty good!

There will be track lights installed inside them that will hang out slightly.

I'm not 100% sure about the white inside them yet, but I could easily paint them a different colour.  I considered black, but could do a bright colour like chartreuse!

The aluminum work is all done on the exterior now.  It looks great and really finishes it off.

I really should get a picture of the front.  The charcoal grey is almost a dead match to the windows. 

Our dry-stacked stone wall and stairs are almost done as well.  I should be able to reveal those later this week!

Starting the drywall

We had a major inspection approval given to us yesterday.  This one allows us to close up all the walls.  He double checked many of the structural elements that he already O.K.'d in previous inspections so it really took a long time.  But, everything was great.  Not one thing to fix.  Hooray!  The next inspection will be for occupancy.  

Kind of feels like we're nearing the end.

So, without any delay, we started dry-walling this morning.

They're starting on the third floor and working their way down.

I can't believe how much different the spaces look with walls up!  This nook is where our oldest daughter's bed will be.

The third floor is kind of finicky with all the angles and knee walls.  The other floors should go a little quicker.

Even so, I imagine it will still take a couple of weeks to get the whole house done completely.

This is the back of the house with the scaffolding down.  I still love the stucco colour!

The aluminum guys start the eaves, soffits and fascia tomorrow morning.  We decided on charcoal grey to match the windows.

This is the basement T.V. room.  I decided to add some Roxul Safe and Sound insulation in the ceiling to hopefully dampen some of the future T.V. noise from carrying upstairs.

The same in the utility room-- mostly for the central vacuum which I've heard can be very loud.

I'm ordering all our kitchen appliances tomorrow or the next day.  

This is the fun stuff!

End of August progress report

Thankfully, the momentum we had before we left for the cottage hasn't slowed one bit.  Things are getting noticeably done every day it seems.

The stucco is now completely done.  

I chose the colour based on only a paint chip, which is never my preferred method for something so permanent!  But we were away, and I couldn't see the samples too well by way of iPhone pictures.  So I just went with my gut and specified Stone Harbour Grey by Benjamin Moore (2111-50).

I practically ran to the house the moment we drove in the driveway coming back from the cottage to see how it looked.  

Phew!!  It looks great!

Really great!!

And that's the bi-fold door installed-- love it!

That motion light won't stay by the way.  We put it there temporarily for security reasons.  We had a small break-in a few weeks back and then, last week, a couple in a van tried to dump a whole load of old carpet on our driveway.  Thankfully our next door neighbour (and friend) heard them from her window and confronted them directly.  They did manage to dump one carpet, but not the whole van load!  Yay, Karin!  The best neighbour!

Apparently that bi-fold door was a nightmare to install.  In hindsight we should have used the manufacturer's installers.  We'll know for the next house!  ;-)

The spray foam was done while we were away as well.

As I've mentioned before, I don't love using spray foam because of potential off-gassing and the permanence of it in case we ever do need to remove it.  Remember UFFI in the 1970's?  Well O.K., neither do I, but I do know the problems it caused for the people who did install it, and I can't help worrying that spray foam will go the same way in 5-10 years.  

But we also needed the high R-value that only spray foam could provide-- especially in the cathedral ceiling of the 3rd floor.  It took a lot for me to make that call, but in the end we decided to use it only in the places where it was absolutely necessary.  

To my happy surprise, though, the installation was done beautifully, and I couldn't smell a thing when I went in a week after.  Hopefully all my fears are completely unfounded!

In the less critical areas, we framed with 2 X 6's and used JM formaldehyde free insulation.

This sun-tunnel was installed in the wrong spot during our last vacation in Scotland.  

With a bit of MacGyvering, the guys managed to stretch it over to the tub and toilet area (where there is no window).  Even on the north side of the roof, it lets in an amazing amount of natural light!

We also got a sample of the new stairs.  

I was quite worried about them because we hired a "2-guys and a saw" kind of company to build them and they had neither seen nor made anything like the stairs that I wanted.  

Something like these:

via  Houzz

I gave them a bunch of pictures and some drawings that I made, and this is what they showed me today.  Fantastic!!  I very nearly hugged him!

The treads and risers are red oak, and the stringers (since they'll be completely hidden by drywall) were done in maple.

I love the zig-zag side view.  

They even got the angle right on the risers!

Our cottage vacation

We just got back from a 2 week vacation in beautiful Muskoka.  The weather was kind of chilly for the first week, but it was just glorious for the second when we had our friends and their 4 girls join us.  Seven girls aged 4 to 10!  They were all in heaven!

We did a lot of the usual cottage things like roasting marshmallows.

Cliff jumping.

Catching frogs and tadpoles.

Kayaking, canoeing, boating, tubing...  But most of all our girls liked the freedom they had of doing whatever they wanted, and roaming around the property as they pleased.  It was really eye-opening for me to hear this from our oldest daughter and I completely understand.  In the city, their lives are so scheduled and organized and monitored.  

The water around our cottage is very shallow as well, so it is perfect for little kids.  

This next picture makes me laugh a bit, because our cottage is in an area of extremely wealthy people.  Most of the boathouses are bigger than our entire cottage--no joke!  But you can't even see our cottage from the lake!  And our dock is smaller than most people's boats.  

My parents bought the place in 1972 from the daughter of the original owner. The cottage was originally built in the late 1800's.  When I was growing up, there were very few cottages in the area.  Now there are mansions popping up all over the place.  

This is one of my favourites that can be seen right from our beach.  Amazing, isn't it?!

While we were sitting by the fire at sunset, we noticed the cottage had golden windows just like a story that I read to my 5 year old.  She loved it!  It sure is beautiful.

Although I didn't get up to any projects while we were there, we did manage to dismantle the old dock (we built a new one last spring).

I thought I could re-use the old dock boards somehow in the Bennett House.  A headboard came to mind, or a coffee table.  But I think we're going to try and make light boxes out of them instead.  Hopefully it works out. 

I hope everyone has had a wonderful summer!  

As much as we enjoyed our two weeks away, it's also good to be back.

When it rains, it pours!

After feeling like our whole project has been progressing at a snail's pace for the last few weeks, we have suddenly had a complete turn around. 

We finished our 200 amp upgrade.

All the ductwork is now complete and we have the amended city HVAC permit in hand.  The last part of this stage was the re-installation of the existing A/C unit.  We had a very bad time with the HVAC, but the installers we ended up with really came through, and did an awesome job for us in the end.  So happy to move on from this now!

We also got a surprise when the stucco guys came by to let us know they had an opening and could start our project the next day!  We had to coordinate with Steve (our stone guy) since his wall and stairs were right in the way--  more on that later, but his wall is one of my favourite parts of the house!  Fortunately he had other jobs he could go to in the meantime, and the stucco work began.

Stucco is messy work!  They have to rough up the styrofoam surface and these little bits go flying everywhere like snow.  The poor guy doing it was sweating in the heat and had all these little bits stuck to his face and arms.  I couldn't embarrass him by taking his picture, but he did look hilarious!

The stucco guys needed the back doors installed to finish their job properly so we were in a mad rush today to get them picked up.  

By the way, we also finished the cedar shakes.  I love the look of them now!  

We used Thompson's Water Seal waterproofer plus clear wood protector.  I loved it so much that we went with the same look in the front of the house and plan to use it on the deck as well. 

These are the back sliding doors that we got today.

The one in our master bedroom just got installed.

Tomorrow the big, black bi-fold door is going in.  I really hope it goes smoothly.  

Tomorrow we also leave for our summer cottage vacation-- right after our inspection.  I hope to actually get some rest up there and not worry about everything that is happening at the house.  I am getting a bit stressed lately.