Changing the Door Handles

Sometimes the small things make the biggest difference. I am working my way through the house changing the door handles from the old clear glass knobs...

To these simple round knobs (cheap and cheerful!)

And now we know: do not buy the cheapest kit to drill the holes for door handles. The pieces get stuck together and the project gets stalled while your husband treks over to his grandfathers to use a vice to separate them.

Installation of Hardwood Floor

The back room sat empty for 4 months with nothing but plywood subfloor. It was still a useful space, plenty of painting and wedding projects got done in this room. Come October we were really getting antsy to get some flooring down. Before the basement problems, it was planned to be our only summer house project, but plans changed.

My parents gifted us hardwood as a generous wedding present, lovely light maple in 1 ¼” wide boards. This would darken to match the existing golden colour of the hardwood in the rest of the house. A friend with experience (and tools) spent one Saturday helping us install the floor and baseboards. Although it took 3 months longer than anticipated, the result is gorgeous and this room has fast become our favorite.

And now we know: Friends with knowledge and tools are great! Hardwood is a project that we can actually do.

And Then Water Rained Down...

One day water randomly started coming through the kitchen ceiling. The bathroom is directly above that area, so we deduced that this was were it was coming from. Not having any plumbing experience we called in a pro. The plumber cut a hole where the water was coming in and took a look. A pipe had cracked. So he replaced it and no more water problems.

I proceeded to patch the ceiling. A very crappy patching job; likely because the ceiling is ¾” plaster and I patched it with ½” drywall. Before I even got it finished, water started coming through again. Since the patching was going badly anyways, we opened it up again. We checked the toilet and monitored the drains. No source could be found.

So back came the plumber. He pocked around the pipes and looked at the bathroom. Nothing was wrong, he suggested it might be from the tub leaking behind the wall. So we cut a hole behind the shower fixtures from the second bedroom wall to monitor where the water came from.

Turns out my husband had re-caulked the tub recently. This was the cause. I re-caulked it and that was the end of that water problem.

This is how our kitchen ceiling currently looks and it will stay this way until we redo the bathroom. It feels like tempting fate to patch it at this point.

And now we know: just cause you have one giant house problem does not mean another is not around the corner. Also that my husband should not caulk.

A New Furnace is Installed

The existing furnace was oil and dated from 1963. We replaced it with a high efficiency gas furnace.

This was the most painless of our home improvements, likely cause it was done by a team of professionals. It took 2 days, the men where very nice and there were no problems. Not really the prettiest investment in your home though.

The Problems Begin

The day after we got possession of the house we were down in the basement and noticed a pool of water near the floor drain. Concerned we called in the big guns (my dad and a carpenter friend) and started investigating where the water was coming from. We followed the water flow further and further south-east in the basement, demoing walls and floors as we went. Over the course of a few weekends, we finally trailed it back to the concrete block walls.

By this time our finished basement was no longer finished. All the items we had stored down there were relocated to the 2^nd bedroom and there were piles of building material on our driveway. We were the ‘white trash’ neighbors whose house is an eyesore for the whole street.

All the demo work meant long days in the stifling hot basement. It meant finding mouse carcasses in the ceiling, cursing the crazy building techniques where someone had used nails and screws on every board and discovering that someone had applied tar to not only the interior walls but the floors as well. Most of all it meant stress and lots of time lost.

What we discovered was that there was water rushing in through our concrete block walls in a couple of locations. The water ran under the finished floor, out into the unfinished laundry room and into the floor drain. There was rotten wood, but luckily no mold.

And now we know: old people may seem sweet but do not trust them, they are evil. Don’t bother with a home inspector, they are not responsible for anything so what do they care if they do a thorough job? What you think is the worst that can go wrong can always get worse.

Free Bookcases

The previous owners left quite a few items in their move to an apartment. Some were good; an outdoor swing, outdoor chairs, and some were bad; a creepy portrait of a man, a plastic birdbath. Upstairs they left three wood laminate bookcases with gold trim that were too rickety to move.

A good sand, a couple of coats of paint and a few nails, and they looked good as new. Saved us having to buy bookcase as they were built-in in our apartment.

And now we know: paint can give a new life to any piece of furniture, even if it is stuck in the 70's

Painting the New House

Paint really makes a space your own and we planned on painting the main rooms from the start. Before even moving in, we got a crew of family together and spent 3 days painting and cleaning the house.

Funny that there are only images of myself and my father in law working!? In reality my mother and brother spent 4 days helping us.

And now we know: actually this went pretty smoothly…rare