Acclamation

It has been a good month of offers on GroupOn for Hamilton food.  A lot of them can even be used towards the alcohol portion of the bill which is cool.  This last weekend we went to Acclamation on James St. North using our $15 gets you $30 coupon.  I had a great burger while Reno Chick went for a steak.  Now normally I would follow that lead on the steak but about a month ago we went to this restaurant and a friend had the burger and it has been on my mind since then. 

This place has a really cool lounge in the basement which I will try to get our couples group to use sometime in the future.  If you are in Hamilton and looking for a good place to eat I would recommend Acclamation.

Bench - First Woodworking Job

Woodworking isn't as easy as it looks but I tackled my first project.  On the Ana White blog they have plans to create lots of different things for the house using a minimum of tools to create.  We really wanted a bench and shelf for our foyer and she had plans for us to build them.  Of course we wanted the Pottery Barn version but it costs so much for just the bench so I attempted to make it for approx. $100 (paint will get us just over that price).  I still have to make the shelf and will probably need a bit more wood but I won't buy it from Home Depot as the pine was all curved and made the job so much tougher.

It would have helped if I didn't return the mitre saw that I was using as my cuts would have been a bit straighter than me using a circular saw.  Also the design would be better if I mitred the corners instead of just butting them against each other.  In the future I will probably attempt to make this bench again but with better wood and better experience working with wood. 

I will say that everyone out there can do these plans from Ana's blog and you should attempt them.  Consider it a new challenge to tackle something no one thinks you can do.  I am sure your first creation will be as crooked as mine but Reno Chick tells me she loves it so that is all that matters to me.  That and not falling off of it when I attempt to tie my shoes of course!

Here it is in all of its glory but prior to painting and some beadboard that will be the backing for it.  Reno Chick will take care of those little details!  I am sure she will also change the Winter Classic cushions to something a bit more sophisticated.  See what happens if you leave the guy to do the decorating?!

Our 2011 Goals

We will have many home improvement and decorating projects to tackle in 2011 and it makes us so happy to share and document our adventures. Our detailed to do list is very long but our focus for 2011 will be:

-Having a lot of fun. 
-Taking at least one big trip (preferably to Mexico) and a few weekends away (New York, Chicago, a Golf destination)
-Loving our kids, each other, family and friends. We lost our dear friend this year so 2010 has some awful memories.
-Paint, paint and paint some more will be a major theme. This will be the lowest cost way that we can think of to really freshen up and restyle our place.  There is no surface (including all ceilings) that does not need to be touched.
-Decorate to make this place feel like our home. This is the part that excites me!!!
-Purchase a rental property...heck let's renovate that too.
-Build our investment portfolio which has been depleting over this last year. It's time to focus on saving again.
-Cook at home more often, make sure left overs get eaten and continue the habit of bringing  lunch to work every day.

Happy New Year!!! It's time for us to get renovating again.

Back from Pittsburgh

Just got back yesterday from Pittsburgh where we went to the Winter Classic to watch the Penguins vs. the Capitals.  I just love that city but it sure is a tough place to get a cab.  Luckily we have been working on the walking around our city so it wasn't too painful for me.  Here are a couple pictures of the arena to show you where we were sitting and how awesome it was to watch a hockey game from the inside of a football stadium.

Another exciting game to remember just like game 1 and 7 of the finals in 2008.

Yesterday's Lunch and Workout

Yesterday we were in Stoney Creek (just east of Hamilton) and decided to try out an Italian place called "The Express".  It has a funny atmosphere where you feel you are sitting in a banquet hall instead of a restaurant.  Luckily for us (and the other patrons) there was no Karaoke going on during lunch hour.

I ordered a calzone and was shocked at the size of it since it was only $13.

 So I did my best to take out this crazy amount of food for lunch....

But I managed to add to my Hunk by putting most of it down.  Overall a good tasting meal but the location wasn't a cool kind of place to hang out in.

Eating all that good of course got Reno Chick started on us going for a monster walk up the stairs near our house.  Two days ago she got this idea and we ended up walking 6 kms and killing my legs so you know I wasn't excited looking up at the stairs again.

That is 500 stairs of sheer pain to the top but RC was nice and we only went up to the 1/2 way point and back down 2x so we wouldn't have to cross the road.  What a tough way to burn off all those calories that I had today!

Profile: Front Exterior-3 month Progress Update

I am going to profile our home a room (or space) at a time to give an idea of what it was like when we took possession, what we have accomplished in this first three months and what our future plans are.  Since we are financial types I will try to include information on what things cost.

I want to start with the front exterior and provide the story on how we chose our home. We looked at about 40 homes and back in August of this year we found the ONE. We saw it a second time with our agent the Friday before the Civic long weekend. We spent the long weekend at the Pillar and Post in Niagara Falls and after a lot of time discussing the house decided that we were going to put in an offer. The house needed a bit of work but had all the things that were on our must have list. We called up our agent and had a third visit on our way back from the long weekend trip. We told her we were ready to put in an offer, she said she didn't want to confuse us but she had one other home for us to see. As soon as we drove up to the house and opened the front door I said "we are in trouble" I knew I wanted this house.   

Our Front Door. The double doors and stained glass won us.

What did this house have going for it?

-Nice looking exterior with more character
-Taller ceilings and intricate crown molding on the main floor
-A fireplace with character
-Larger living room and dining room
-Bigger front and back yard
-More parking
-A main floor bathroom (a hard thing to find in older homes)
-Second floor laundry room
-Light filled master bedroom
-Beautiful staircase
-Proximity to the GO Train station was better
-We are steps away from the walking/biking path and the stairs that go up the mountain (free gym)
-We can walk to many bars and restaurants
-Just that feeling….


The negatives:

-Scary basement from hell that would probably leak all the time
-Even scarier basement stairs…my feet barely fit sideways
-A LOT of dirt, bad carpets, full of garbage
-Smells...many many bad smells


-Lots of traces of mouse poo in the house and raccoon poo on our upstairs deck
-Sketchy addition
-At least 300 more projects than house number ONE...which I like to think of as POTENTIAL

Our house was a Power of Sale and I can best describe the front exterior as Urban Jungle. I wish I had taken more before pictures but to be honest I was a little scared of what we had done to ourselves. Neither one of has much renovation experience and at the beginning I felt overwhelmed. RH will probably not believe this since I kept such a positive attitude but it was mostly a front. 

What our house looked like after taming the Urban Jungle but before new windows. Our poor porch is hidden just waiting to be noticed.

 
In the last 3 months this is what we have done to the Front Exterior:

-Removed bags and bags of weeds and cut down the shrubs (cost=free (except for the garden tools and brown bags...the garbage guys must hate us)
-Installed a new pendant light over the front door…having light is good, the previous light fixture did not work and our house was always the darkest one on the block (cost of pendant light $45 at Home Depot)
-Bought new front carpet (cost=$5, purchased on our Buffalo shopping trip)
-I wood filled several of the holes that are in our front door. The door is old but I really would like to keep it for now because it is quite beautiful. The bottom of the door needs to be trimmed slightly as it is very difficult to open and close. New paint job is also needed.
-We changed all of our windows which makes the house look much better. I really do not like the trim colour on the house (mint green) so the new windows bring a burst of white that is much needed. If this was our forever house I would have gone with a coloured window trim and capping but the extra cost ($1700) was more than we wanted to spend. With taxes and installation our windows cost $9,445. 

The new windows add a bit of brightness. On the downside you can see through them..we need window coverings on the asap.

Our future plans for the Front Exterior:

-Install a door knocker (it has been purchased for $5 from the ReStore...hint hint RH)
-Remove the cedar tree that blocks the view of our porch…I may even go crazy and chop down the other one too. RH likes the cedars but I do not. Replant with some nice shrubbery.
-Remove the rusted chain link fence from the left side of our house and replace with a wrought iron fence.
-Repave the side drive. This will involve a lot of prep work as the side drive is full of the neighbours rocks, some random bricks and lots of reno garbage.
-Shave down the front door slightly and sand and repaint the front door
-Repaint the porch floor...preferably with a non-slip product
-Purchase some outdoor seating (this will likely be second hand so some spray paint will be involved)
-New eaves trough
-Repair any rotted wood work on the house
-Paint all of the trim and woodwork on the house
-Fix the hole near our master bedroom which has attracted some wasps
-Remove the circular patio stones and bubbly curb things (during TIFF we went to see this movie "Conviction"…I was a bit embarrassed when RH said "look they have the same front patio stones as us"…this was during a scene where a murder had just occurred outside of a trailer at a trailer park…
-Possibly remove the concrete stairs and build a new set of stairs with railings
-The porch railings also need some fixing or possible replacement
-Install a new walkway and plant some boxwoods
-Add some seasonal planters

These stones will be gone!!

This colour keeps me up at night. Looking at the picture I am not sure why I have developed such a hatred towards it....it looks worse in person.

Part of our side driveway

Just some of the bricks that surround our home (there are many more piles)

 
There won't be much progress on these projects until the spring. We will be changing out our lead pipe and then will need to have the city come and replace their portion. None of the outside work will get started until that is done. Budget for all this…we hope to not spend more than $8,000 but have no idea how much the eaves trough work would be (does not include the cost of the lead pipe removal. 

Improved Blog

Not sure if anyone noticed the new banner for the blog at the top of the page but I think it is a big improvement.

I have to thank "Blissfully Domestic" for her help which is located on this page.

Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable few days with family and friends and now we can all look forward to starting a new year.  Things have been slow around the house for us over the last few days but I look to kick it into high gear for a couple days before heading to Pittsburgh for the New Year.