Bathroom reno

And that's all I have to say about that!

Tunes

I'm a huge music fan. Music is super important to me and it has been my entire life. I was brought up surrounded by music. I swear my dad was one of those first people to buy a CD player. I am one of those people who likes to have music going ALL THE TIME. Although I can appreciate the relative silence of being outdoors (and would never bring an mp3 player on a hike), I almost always have music going in some way or another. In the car. At home (either mp3s played on the computer or CDs in the player). At work. At the gym. Anywhere I can control my auditory surroundings, I do.

While my dad has certainly been a huge influence in my musical upbringing, so have my friends. Introducing friends to new music is such a cool way to share! :)

So, in the spirit of The Hour's Operation Disk Drop, I've been dreaming up a way to share music and have music shared with me. What do you think? Are people up for this? Much like the holiday card exchange, this would be a simple exchange of CDs.

What I propose is that whoever would like a CD from me, including some of my favorite tunes, should email me their address. I promise not to use it for any nasty things and I promise no stalking either... honest! ;) Seriously though... I won't have time for stalking, I have a house to fix!

email = sterkte dot one at gmail dot com

C'mon... it'll be fun!

Snippets of home

We've really started to get excited about the potential of our new home. Sure the next few weeks are going to be completely batty, but that's just a part of home ownership, right?

I thought I would share a few snippets of our new place. I've decided to include some of the more interesting features for the sake of amusement alone. Now please keep in mind that the folks who lived here have been here for years and they are an older couple...

The master bedroom is currently sporting some very lovely wallpaper, border and window coverings. Not only do the window coverings and border match, but the carpet in the bedroom is also a lovely dark tealy green!









The fun fan in the 'back' bedroom. What makes this fan fun is not only the design on the fan itself, nor the fun lightbulb... but the double receptacle. When someone installed the fan, they chose to put in an entirely different supply box for the electricity rather than use the one that was already there. Not quite sure why, but that's what they did. Something for the electrician to deal with.





The famous bathroom:

Well what you see here will not be in existence when we get our hands on the bathroom and completely gut and rebuild it. In some ways it's a shame because just look at this border!!! Isn't it beautiful? Usually I just look at wall paper and wall paper products and shake my head, but in a bathroom? That's just wrong!





And now the real piece de resistance.... the toilet. Not only is it a beautiful swirly grey-green-purple, but it's also outfitted with a MASSIVE tank! I swear we could fit our entire new toilet in the tank alone! The funny thing is, we're thinking of moving the tank to the basement to use it as an indoor pool... seriously though, we're going to put a few thousand bricks (or other) in the toilet to reduce the volume and use it as a backup toilet in the basement.



Now to the things we like. Or more, the things we LOVE about the house.

While the carpet in the house is widespread, as is the wall paper, we have some inside information that the floor under the carpet is hardwood (yes, they're dirty... shush!). We're going to rip that carpet up and refinish the hardwood so that the house just shines! We're not sure if we're going to sand the floors and refinish ourselves or hire someone to do it. We're going to get some quotes to make that decision for us.





In addition to the floors, there is also some beautiful woodwork in the stairwell. This curly banister is simply too beautiful to ignore. A shot of the banister from upstairs was one of the things that really caught us when we were looking at the house online. So much character!

Anyhow, just wanted to share some little things about the house! We intend to really bring this house to it's potential, and we intend to make it far more efficient (energy, heat and water) than it currently is.

It's official (Part II)

Well, we signed the mortgage papers today and our insurance should be cleared by Monday. We meet with the lawyer sometime towards the end of next week and we officially have possession the week after that. Our official move in date will be towards the end of March since we paid for our last month's rent last September.

Here's a couple of things that need to be done (in no particular order):
- Wet seal the slice in the rubber roof on the sunroom
__(oh yeah, can I tell you how much I wish I could have done this the day we put the offer in?
__Nothing like watching the snow fall, and then melt, and think about all that water that should
__and could be stopped from entering our sunroom!!)
- rip up carpet
- refinish hardwood under carpet
- hope above hope that the hardwood is OK to refinish and doesn't need extra love
- rewire house (to be detailed later!)
- replace rotting beam in crazy cold cellar-y room in the basement
- re-insulate floor of attic
- remove 20ft length of galvanized pipe in basement and replace with copper
- remove wallpaper, remove wallpaper, remove wallpaper, plaster some cracks and paint, paint paint!
- and last, but not least, completely renovate the bathroom...

What's that? The bathroom is one of the most expensive rooms to renovate? What's that? We've already put most of our savings into a down payment? And we need to buy a fridge and stove??

Such meaningless points!!

Let's do it anyway!

Before we move in, we really need to redo the bathroom. Officially it would be fine, but the peeling laminate floor, 1,000 gallon toilet and hideous vanity need to go. We figure that without a bathroom, one can't really live in a house, so why not completely redo the bathroom before we move in?

The past week has brought several visits to Home Depot, Rona and some local building/tiling/appliance stores. The past week has also brought conversations with dads and advice from coworkers. It's going to be one hell of a ride from next week until the end of March.

We've asked the dads if they can help. We've asked some friends if they can help. We've decided that we can probably do the floor tile ourselves. We've decided that if possible, the dads can help us with plumbing, electrical and demo. We've decided that the bathtub tile will probably need to be done by someone who really knows what they're doing. And, we've pretty much decided that we'll need a contractor for some other stuff. So much to figure out in the next 6 weeks!

On top of all this, the entire house should be rewired soon. While we could just go with what's there for a little while, why not just get it done? It's a pretty major thing and we would both rather it get done before we move in. Then the inconvenience of moving stuff around won't hinder us from getting it done. I think we'll be asking for a parental short term loan.

Anyhow, that's it for now. I predict an awful lot of house posts in the next two months...