A sign of good drywall and painting

This was probably the slowest week of the renovation as I said,  It’s all about drywall and painting – which are important and vital, and messy as all get.  Afterall, this is what people will see so it needs to be done right.

Firstly, it’s amazing how seamless a wall looks when it’s been drywalled correctly.  In the picture on the right, you would not know that the wall was extended to the right by about 2 inches – you can’t see it, and that the paint job is partially the old paint job from 6 years ago and one from today.  Seamless.

The paint colour for the living room is Behr Promenade Green – using Sherwin Williams paint, matched to a sample that was taken from the wall we tore down.  The kitchen is Sherwin Williams Bees Wax.

The kitchen is starting to take shape and as of Tuesday next week, we’ll have cabinets in!

Next week it’s

• Second coat of paint on the walls
• Cabinet installation
• Crown moulding installation
• Electrical and lighting installation (we hope)
• Counter top templating

Week after

• Counter top installation (we hope)
• Plumbing
• Completion

We are well on track with this project.  The only thing that would delay the project is the counter top or if the cabinets were wrong in some way.  It would be nice to have this all done by my birthday. 🙂

Our starting and end point

The second reno we started, and first to finish is done – the laundry room.

I still can’t believe we went from this awful peel and stick tile to real tile and real paint.

Yes, that awful… olive green colour that was common in the 1970s no longer exists in our laundry room.  It does, however, exist in our storage locker.  And that’s okay.  I don’t see a need to renovate that.

You can see how awful the space was with the new with the new washer and dryer – which still needed to be stacked.

Once stacked, we can put the freezer back in, put up some nice shelving and we’re back in business.

That won’t happen until Monday when our washer is replaced with, hopefully, a non defective unit.

So why do the laundry room?  Well, it needed to be done – we needed at a minimum, a tiled floor. The state of the peel and stick was just awful.  The walls needed a fresh paint job – I don’t think they had ever been painted since the unit was built.  In short, it needed some TLC.

In the cloud of laundry!

The colour choice?  Sherwin Williams Resonant Blue.  That’s a personal decision.  If one of these days we sell the condo and move, whoever moves in can paint the laundry room whatever colour they want and I think they’ll like the tile we put in.  That said, I want to be able to spend time enjoying the space as we have designed it.

We’re ecstatic about the job ATD Contracting Services did on the space, and the progress they’ve made on the kitchen.

Talking to our contractor this week, they commented on how well organized Scott and I were with where with setting up a rack to place all our food and dishes, having our coffee maker, microwave and toaster available;  having a place for everything that we all will need access to.  Even having food pre-made and frozen so that all we need to do is to microwave some veggies, and maybe make rice in the rice maker and we have a complete meal.

The one thing I have been surprised about this renovation is how dusty and how dry the condo has been.

Let me be clear – I knew it would get dusty, I’m just surprised at how quickly after the first day of demolition and just how far reaching.  There’s dust all the way into the bedroom, even keeping the doors closed.  Obviously covering things up goes a long way to keeping the dust off our stuff, unless, of course, your dining room and living room are acting like a makeshift kitchen.

Having a great vacuum helps.  Scott and I have been vacuuming the condo every day, where we can.  Mainly the floors but we also did a bit of a dusting of the entertainment unit and surfaces we could access.  I’m very glad for HEPA filters on vacuums these days.  Honestly – Dyson all the way.  I would not consider any other vacuum on the market today.

The other issue we’ve had is around the humidity level of the condo.  With all the dust and stuff flying through the air, the humidity level has dropped quite a bit.  Add opening the door to the balcony or opening windows and the humidity level dropped to about 21%.  There’s a fine balance to opening up and getting fresh air in the place, the vacuum and pressure that causes spreading dust around the condo and the humidity level.

We a run a small room humidifier to help things out, which also shows the humidity levels in the air.  Closing up the windows brought the humidity level up by 10 to 20 points alone.  To really boost the humidity level, Scott and I having our showers in the morning helped as well.  And that has helped up to be able to breathe better.

The bathroom renovation of 2012 really showed us the stamina required to get through a 2-3 week renovation.  Now for me, I have to admit I’m struggling a bit more because I was away for most of the bathroom renovation.  Hats off to Scott who lived that complete renovation and this renovation.

Next week is drywall, painting and electrical panel installation week:

• Dry walling – Bulk head, and a two-foot wide wall 
• Patching any holes and such in the kitchen and laundry room
• Painting of parts of the kitchen and the laundry room
• Hopefully getting our washer finally repaired and all setup
• Getting the electrical panel replaced

By the end of next week, we should be able to put the laundry room together and be done with that, freeing up a considerable amount of space in the living room.

Once our new electrical panel is in, we can then get rid of a whole bunch of stuff in the bedroom.  Mainly our boxes of Christmas decorations and the tree, that live in the storage room where the electrical panel resides.

I’m probably dreaming, but It would be really nice if the cabinets arrived a bit early so that things could be installed that much sooner.  April 15th can’t come soon enough, admittedly.  If all goes well, then the week of April 22nd will be final electrical, and counter top installation and backsplash by April 29th.

I’m not really sure how much Scott and I have reduced our carbon footprint, and made ourselves greener.  We’ve recycled our appliances – or at least, we hope they’re being used for parts, etc…

Yeah, I drive a Prius which means – theoretically, I use less gas and drive on recycled electric power from braking and slowing down.

Our televisions use LED lighting as well, instead of fluorescent tubes as well.

The lights we use throughout the condo have gone from incandescent to Halogen lights and CFLs.  However, there is new technology we are going to be using.

We’re going to be using LED lighting under our counters instead of Xenon lighting which was going to be used.

I’ve also decided to invest in LED lighting in the form of Philips Hue.  I can change the colours of lighting in my office, plus for now – in the kitchen and the laundry room.  Mmmm.. disco dancing in the laundry room.  This technology is part of the ZigBee alliance which is a cool home automation alliance.

Apparently they will be coming out with potlights and such in the future as part of the Hue line.  Which would be very cool since we have pot lights in the bathroom and kitchen.

I’m not sure we’ll do too much in the way of home automation – but, I do have to admit – a digital panel on the wall to control the dimming of lights would be pretty cool.

And, of course, I’d love to see if we can use Nest thermostats in the living room and bedroom in the future.  Shame that they’re not part of the ZigBee alliance – yet.  I think it would go a long way to helping us keep the condo cool or warm, smartly.

Our dishwasher, picture right, is just completing it’s very last dishload for us before it gets replaced, tomorrow.  It’s kind of sad because all of the original – our first ever – appliances,  have now all been replaced.

Yup… Tomorrow is the big bang, aka demolition day for our old kitchen.  Finally!  The day is here.

But true to form, ‘big bang’ also has another connotation for Scott and I.   We never seem to do anything simple.

We’re adding on a renovation to our laundry room as well.  Why?  Well, see, we got an awesome deal on a Samsung washer and dryer.  Problem is, the plug for the dryer is very close to the ground stopping us from stacking the units.  And we were counting on stacking the units.  So why not move the electrical plug this week with all the electrical work to be done in the kitchen, plus replacing our electrical panel.

At the same time the tiler is here working on the kitchen, why not tile the laundry room?  Same with painting?

And on top of all that, our new washer is leaking out the front door and needs to be services – and I know it’s not due to user error.

The stress of the renovation has been quite something.  Trying to figure out what faucet we want, paint colours, throwing out/recycling stuff we don’t need, not wanting to deal with the sales rep cancelling the order for our dishwasher when we found the next model up for $50 more, etc… It adds up.  We seriously could use a vacation after all is said and done in 4 to 5 weeks.

But, you know, the renovation will be worth it.