home is where the couch is

our first house. her big plans. his hard work.

4:45 PM

Tile error

Posted by Terri |

Things are slow going in the back room addition. I'm painting all the tongue and groove boards. There are about 200 of them. Or more. Feels like more.



 The Man has been working outside nailing up 2x4's around the window so that my little brother can put some aluminum or something around them to give them the framed look. The little brother says you don't need wood underneath, that he can just bend the metal so that it looks framed. But honestly? This is us and we're awfully good at banging into things. That metal will be dented like crazy if there's nothing underneath to keep it solid.



We have a visitor for a few days. Another teenager. I don't know how long they're going to be here but this should be interesting. Three teenagers and two adults with one bathroom. We better get crackin' and finish this thing so that none of us kills each other over cold showers!!

When we had a contractor here to work on our addition, the main thing we wanted was for our floors to be level and not bouncy and for everything to be structurally sound. Well, the floor in the bathroom is still bouncy. Grr. There's nothing we can do now except put another piece of plywood on top to strengthen it. I plan on doing the tiling and I will cry if they crack from bouncy underlayment. It's bad enough that I opened the tiles the other day and they were the wrong colour. And I can't return them. I did cry actually.

What colour I THOUGHT I bought
What colour I ACTUALLY bought

What happened was I got a super great deal through WagJag. I went in and I could have sworn that we looked up the tiles my brother had gotten and ordered the same ones. So I didn't check my tiles when I picked them up 8 months ago. I assumed that they were correct. I know, I know, when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me. So anyway, I opened them and they are really dark. Like black. And if you saw my previous post, I bought a dark Ikea vanity. So it's dark on dark. I'm trying to look at it that it's going to be a very masculine bathroom. I'm so disappointed because I hate walking in a room and just hating something every day. That's what's going to happen. I'm just going to hate it. Every. Single. Day.
The tile I have to work with
I know I pick on the Man for being a perfectionist, but this is my issue. Things don't have to be perfect, but they have to at least look like the image I've had in my head for 2 years. This doesn't. I don't have the money to go and buy new tiles. I keep looking at the receipt and going online and checking to see if somehow there was a mistake, but I can't find it. I'm debating at going into the tile store and looking at their tile board for this tile and see if there was a mistake on it saying it was one colour instead of the other. I just don't think I would've picked this colour!! I even have a photo of the one I wanted on my ipod! Maybe I should go in, just to cover all the bases. I'm ranting now, sorry. Arg. I'm just so disappointed.

Few hours later...
I did go to the store. I thought for sure their tile board was incorrect. But it was me. I ordered the wrong tiles. What to do? Well, I've decided I'm not going to live with it. I'm going to take apart my Ikea vanity and return it and get a white vanity. Good thing I like putting Ikea furniture together! Can't say I'm going to like taking it apart though.
You may think I'm nuts, but honestly, there's some things I can't live with and I would rather do things that feel like a hassle rather than regret it every time I went pee. I haven't told the Man yet; he'll probably tell me to just leave it and don't worry about it. But this is who I am. He nitpicks about things 1/8" out of place, I nitpick about colour.

A few more hours later...
yup. He told me to leave it, that he's fine with the two dark colours. Where's my ikea hex key??

10:44 AM

Ikea bathroom vanities

Posted by Terri |

I love putting Ikea furniture together. It's like lego for adults. If you ever need help putting your Ikea purchases together, give me a call.

The Man needed to be picked up from the airport, so after I found him wandering around looking lost, we stopped at Ikea to pick up our bathroom vanity.

In our previous bathroom reno, we bought a Godmorgon vanity with a Braviken sink.


I love the design of the vanity. I love that you have drawers that utilize all the space possible, instead of cupboards that just waste space. Our upstairs bathroom is very small and we needed as much creative storage as possible. After going through the bathroom and getting rid of a garbage bag worth of junk, everything we need fits in that vanity.

For our new downstairs bathroom, we bought the Godmorgon again, but this time we're getting a different sink. They didn't have this kind previously. Maybe they did elsewhere, but not at the Ikea I went to. 
We purchased the Odensvik sink with only one bowl. It's a bit deeper and since we bought a much wider vanity, the sink has some space on the sides! One con about the Braviken is that the sink expands to almost both side edges, not leaving a whole lot of room for hair dryers and straighteners...

We thought about trying to float the cabinet. They show that a lot in their catalogue, but that thing is super heavy and I can just envision it crashing down one day, so we'll use their legs. They're handy anyway when you have uneven floors since the legs are adjustable. It was very helpful when we did our reno upstairs with our sloping floors. This downstairs floor should be much more level.

So that's what I did this week. Along with help the Man drywall the bathroom ceiling and bring in all the main room ceilings tongue and groove. It's been sitting under our hillbilly garage waiting until we have room to store it inside again. I've been looking at it and debating what I'm going to do with it - besides put it back up on the ceiling. I think I'm going to paint it white. For those of you gasping with horror. Stop. It's starting to feel brittle and at least the paint will hold it together. Plus it's in that older honey shade which is not going to work in this room. Get over it.

3:26 PM

I can see the light...

Posted by Terri |

Renovating is such an up and down experience. It's so exciting at the beginning, before you realize it will take over your life and create such a mess. We're almost done all the insulating, which in my opinion, is the worst part of it. I can handle the mess, the lack of floors or walls, the lack of an extra bathroom with teenagers. I can handle all of that. Insulation is so itchy and messy, it gets in your lungs even when you're wearing a mask. And now we're almost done!! Hallelujah! In the last few weeks, we've gotten:

one wall dry walled and a bit of the other... 


the fireplace installed and working (no surround built yet)



the french doors installed - which after 4 months of not having a door, just a giant space for one, taking the chance that someone could just walk in if they wanted to....let's just say I sleep a lot heavier now.



the wall and ceiling for the bathroom framed and that horrid double wall fully insulated



I found a great priced shower to purchase that checked off both of our wish list for showers - rainshower and handheld - and the plumbing is hooked up for the shower. The plumber looked just like Mason from Dead like Me.



I found and purchased pendant lights on sale, one for each side of the sink


Now that so much of the picky stuff is done, we're almost at the fun parts!! Put up the siding. Drywall, prime and paint. Put up the tongue and groove ceiling. Lay the heated floor in the bathroom. Tile the bathroom and install the fixtures. Put in hardwood flooring. Put up moldings around windows, door and bottom of walls and then voila! done. Sounds so easy.

There was a lot of complaining from the Man that I was always trying to get out of doing stuff. I freely admit that I was. It was things that I wasn't the great at doing and if I attempted to do it, he complained and picked at what I did. So, yeah, I did get out of as much as I could - but I made sure he had a meal every night, that there was a path to areas in the house and the sheets got changed when they were too picky with insulation.

We were reading about Myer Briggs personality profiles. He's an INTJ and this is what it says about him, it totally goes over into the way he works on this reno:

"INTJs are ambitious, self-confident, deliberate, long-range thinkers. They dislike messiness and inefficiency, and anything that is muddled or unclear. They value clarity and efficiency, and will put enormous amounts of energy and time into consolidating their insights into structured patterns."

and then there's me...

"In the workplace, the INFJ usually shows up in areas where they can be creative and somewhat independent. They have a natural affinity for art, and many excel in the sciences, where they make use of their intuition. INFJs can also be found in service-oriented professions. They are not good at dealing with minutia or very detailed tasks. The INFJ will either avoid such things, or else go to the other extreme and become enveloped in the details to the extent that they can no longer see the big picture. An INFJ who has gone the route of becoming meticulous about details may be highly critical of other individuals who are not. " 

 I haven't gone over to the dark side, it's my personality to avoid very detailed tasks! And all of those upcoming projects are creative...

I have to say that my Man is the hardest worker in the world. He would work all day and come home to work on the back till 12 or 1 to finish something off. He is such a champ. It should get a little easier for him now. I love the upcoming projects and plan on being in there like a wet shirt.

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