OT: Pet Peeves

I am so behind in writing some posts but I figured I would throw this little off-topic post in here!  Today at Lowe's in Hamilton I was in some considerable need to use the washroom.  Now I won't give you all the details but the pet peeve showed up in the stall.  Now at a gas station which requires a four foot piece of wood to protect the key usually still has a toilet seat that is the same shape as the bowl.  But here I am at a public company's public washroom for customers and there is an elongated bowl and a round seat.  Next time I will take a photo but I wasn't in the mood this morning.

The store wants to sell me all sorts of stuff to fix my house and they can't even get the correct shape seat on a toilet bowl.... hmmm.  Anyways I am now off to Home Depot to get some baseboards for the back two rooms as I managed to get a brad nailer this morning from the Restore for $65.

We have internet access!

You really can't live these days without internet access and now we are back up and connected to the world!

Now all I have to do is start to take pictures of our place and post them online to share with everyone.  I have been working this week on the dog's room hardwood floors and I will head back downstairs to finish that job.

Next task will be to figure out how to install baseboards to cover the 3/4" gap that the bamboo hardwood needed from each of the walls.

We found out how old our house is

Yesterday RenoHunk's brother stayed overnight at our house.  In between too many beers he was able to install the outdoor pendant light we got from Home Depot. I had a crying fit about this same light a few weeks back, we had some difficulty with the installation...and I really just wanted the light up that day. With a $45 light you definitely get what you pay for in terms of difficulty of installation and ability to change the light bulb.....but it is up and looks great. Before this light the front of our house was pitch black and dreary. I feel kind of silly for the crying fit but I just wanted to have the light up and hit my first reno temper tantrum.

Yesterday we also found out when our house was built courtesy of the municipal property assesment showing up in the mailbox. Our house was built in 1895 and the approximate size of our home is pegged at 1900 square feet. I think that is before the small addition that we have in the back of our house which adds another few hundred square feet. 1895 is pretty old....

Open Houses and New Ideas...

OK I admit it...I am an Open Houseaholic. Saturday and Sundays are tough days for me as I secretely want to devote a few hours each day to looking at homes. Real Estate agents must hate people like me (but in my defense I have purchased three homes in my lifetime and we are actively looking for a rental property). This Sunday between hours spent cleaning up the backyard and taking the kids out for Halloween we magically had 30 minutes to spare to see two open houses. It was fantastic....and I even came accross a cute idea for our home. Our home is over 100 years old and we are trying to maintain the original charm while balancing the need for modern comfort. One of the open homes had brass dust corners in their staircase corners. I think it would be a nice detail to add to our staircase. It is a bit difficult to visualize but I will take a picture once they are purchased and installed. 

Decorative-Brass-Dust-Corner

Some pics of our Neighbourhood

We still haven't sorted out the issues with our camera so I thought I would post up some pictures of our neighbourhood. After living in Oakville for the last 10 years it has been a bit of an adjustment to move to Hamilton but so far everything is working out pretty well. Living in a city we can walk to a lot of restaurants and bars and we are very close to the Escarpment trail and the stairs that go up the mountain (a great work out). I really enjoy discovering a new city on foot and seeing the architecture of the older homes and buildings.

I am loving my new teapot...

I found this Le Creuset tea kettle at Home Sense a few weeks back and it has already been put to a lot of good use. I am in my thirties and would you believe I have never owned a tea kettle before!!! That just seems so wrong. With most of our free time being spent split between the kids and reno's having a nice cup of tea at the end of the day just feels fantastic. It's amazing how sometimes the smallest things can make a huge impact...

A Wonderful Thanksgiving....

I really enjoyed making Thanksgiving dinner at our new house. The gas range was installed late Friday afternoon (talk about cutting it close) and it looks fantastic and cooks well too. We made a turkey and just some basic side dishes to keep it low stress. To make the weekend even better the washer and dryer were also installed along with two brand new toilets.

The house finally feels comfortable. There are still tons of reno projects and decorating to do but we sort of know where everything is and can take a bit of time to relax when needed, there is no better feeling.

We even started to clean out the basement (basement=dark and dingy, partial dirt crawlspace, super creepy, fit to be in a horror movie...I am secretly afraid to go down there alone but getting braver. This will be a HUGE HUGE project and one I didn't think we would get to so soon. Since we bought the house power of sale the basement is full of the previous owners stuff ..and the owner before that...and the owner before that. It is overwhelming, my guess is cleaning it out will involve about 7 trips to the dump and 5 days of work. We were rewarded with a few huge scores. Score #1: Finding an old cast iron heat register that should fit in our upstairs bathroom-the current one is badly broken. Score #2: Dark and dingy basement no more. Reno Hunk found a secret hidden light switch which turned on four flourecent light strips that flood the entire basement with light. Score #3: An old broken window which I will use on the second floor patio as a trellis.

What else do we really need to do....get internet access so we can post some pictures!!