And we're in!

This is how a house becomes a home. It's official!  We made the big move from two bedroom apartment in the city to house in the burbs.  It's been a crazy couple weeks with a lot of adjustment, but so far we're loving being here.  We've started in on some work already but there's plenty to come.  Here are a few snippets of  what's already been going on, complete with pics of Isla enjoying her new digs. 





Floored.

Well, almost.  We officially found a floor we love.We close in five days (FIVE DAYS) and the floor will go in on Thursday and Friday next week.

So after much hunting around we found a floor we liked.  Then after discussing with Craig's interior designer sister and her awesome boyfriend we took some advice and headed out to a random little flooring company in our new city.  And my friends, we didn't just find a floor.  We found true love.

We've been having a tough time finding something that strikes the right balance between light and dark, cool and warm, casual and formal.  And of the utmost importance - not orange.

Without further ado, le floor:

The top sample is what we were planning on going for.  We liked it.  A lot.  But we were concerned about the dark uniform shade showing dust.  You see, we're kind of lazy.  If I can avoid sweeping every single day, I'm all about it.  Add the fact that we expect there to be some dents and scratches with a dog and a little girl running around and the top sample could have spelled trouble.  Don't get me wrong - it's beautiful, but not quite ideal for us at this point in time.  I've shown it to a ton of friends who are now considering installing it in their homes, so if you're interested in the top sample you can find it here at Home Depot.  We were quoted $3.49/square foot, but apparently it also goes on sale fairly often.  Installation from Home Depot is approximately $3.00/square foot, but we've been assured by many friends that this is a job we can do ourselves.

The bottom sample is what we'll be installing instead.  We found it at Paramount Floors in Mississauga.  It's solid red oak and instead of the 3 1/4 width that's pretty standard at a lot of big box stores it's 4 1/4.  (3/14 is also available at Paramount, but we love the wider pieces).  This floor has extra scratch protection and is priced at $4.70/square foot, though we were lucky in that this particular floor was in stock because someone had placed a huge order, they'd created it, and then the people changed their mind and went with a different colour.  Because of this we were able to bargain down to a happier price for us, although this particular floor is a steal at list price.  They do their finishing on site and their prices started at $2.60/square foot.  They do custom colour in addition to what they keep in stock.  Check them out!

Hats off to Steph and Justin for this awesome reccomendation!  The floor's getting delivered on Monday and my mom's wonderful significant other will be helping us out in a big way later that week with the installation.  Lots of reviews and pics coming up at that point.

T-12 Days - Living room tackle

And then we close!  WOOHOO!!  I can't believe we're this close to this actually happening! 

What I should be doing:  spending every possible moment filling dozens of boxes with the last three and a half years of our life.

What I'm doing instead:  planning our first major project.  Yup.  It's not even officially ours yet and I'm already making plans to rip something out.

This is not our furniture.  These are pictures from the listing.

The flooring in the living room and dining room.  It's not good.  At some point in our house's history they laid laminate flooring in a number of rooms, and it's not faring well.  Now, don't get me wrong - I've seen laminate done beautifully.  But for whatever reason this stuff is gapping all over the place.  We could live with it for awhile, but we realized that once we've loaded in the piano, dining table and chairs, couch, bookshelves, books... yeah, we're not likely to pull all that out to replace the floor.

So we're going to make a go of it!  The laminate's coming out and hardwood's going in.  I'll post pictures of the changes and the progress when those happen that first week.

Our only problem right now is finalizing what shade we want to go with.  The paint colours are staying as they are for now.  We aren't normally grey people, but we both feel like it works well in this space.

Do we stick with light flooring, like the current stuff, or switch to dark?

Elements that we're planning for this room:

A 1913 Steinway upright:

*not actual piano*

10 of these

This table which seats 6-10 with leaves

In the front half of the room we'll have as-yet-undetermined bookshelves, couch, etc.  The plan for this room is to be a little more formal, and not the super comfy hangout space that we'll watch movies in with friends and family.  That said, we still want it to be very welcoming and go with our laidback style.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves while we live there.

Once I figure out the floor colour.

Welcome to our home!




Our house is a very very very fine house

 

Welcome welcome!  My name is Jill.  I'm 28 and in the past few years my husband Craig and I have tumbled quickly into this thing called adulthood.  Just a few short years ago we were teaching English in Korea and generally bumming around Asia.  Now we have a baby girl, a dog, and a mortgage.  No minivan, though.  We can't take responsibility for the vehicle in this driveway - that belongs to the people who currently own our house.  We haven't gone that far yet.

I'm not going to lie - I'm still kind of blown away that we own a house.  Us!  Home owners!  After 10 years of apartment living we're finally taking that final leap to being what we call 'real people'.  This purchase takes us out of midtown city living and drops us squarely in the suburbs.

Let me tell you about this place.  It's lovely.  It's on a street that ends in a cul-de-sac, so there's very little traffic.  As a result, instead of cars the street is full of many kiddos running around playing.  LOVE!  Can I tell you how excited I am for Halloween??  The house is about 25 years old, four bedrooms, a cute little fenced in yard, and a little deck on the back.  It's in fabulous condition and completely move-in ready.

That said, it's not project-free.  I'm already walking around mentally painting and re-painting and re-painting again just about every space.  I've online-shopped way too many furniture stores and managed to refrain from hitting that 'buy now' button.  I'm incredibly tempted to paint every room in the house in the two weeks before we move in.  Instead, I'm going to try to practice a little restraint and work on this whole thing slowly. 

And I'm going to let you come along for the ride.  Yay!  Are you excited?  I'm excited!

Now, there are a ton of design blogs out there, and I'm ridiculously inspired by them.  I'll definitely be sharing those with you along the way.  However, I haven't stumbled across many *Canadian* DIY design blogs.  Hopefully I'll be able to shed some light on resources available to us north of the border while I put this together. 

With all that said, welcome to our home!  We close on April 18th and officially move in on May 1st.  I hope you'll enjoy watching us take this place and really making it our own.