You gotta scramble a few eggs to make an omelette ....

We're busily tearing apart the house across the street .... There are currently four rooms on the main floor - we'll be creating one big kitchen/dining/family room - and adding a powder room. We're also creating an old fashioned "coat room" off the front entrance. (Remember those from school?) We are big believers in the importance of transition spaces. 

SO many clients tell us a mudroom - a spacious, organized space for coming and going ... is high on their wish lists. Who wants to live like this?

Unfortunately for present day families who love older homes .... they weren't so big on transition spaces in the good old days. We always have to move things around to make it happen.

Here's a glimpse of the main floor now as it is with some demo underway. We've had to peel back the lathe and plaster (and layers of pink paint) to reveal the stare of the structure beneath. We'll need to be able to show our engineer what's holding up the few walls we are leaving in place. (With the help of a beam or two)

We also made a bit of a discovery- this fireplace, hidden behind a closet on the main floor. Surprise!  We're going to try to tweak the kitchen design to see if we can do a bit of a work around. (I am not so sure ..)

And this is the third floor. Formerly a one bedroom apartment, soon to be a lovely luxury master suite, complete with huge closet, giant bathroom with soaker tub, shower ... and an office/study/yoga space/sitting room/nursery attached to the main space. 

It's got such lovely high ceilings. Once we've doubled the window sizes and put in our skylights - the master suite will be flooded with light. I am thrilled with our plans for this area. You can see a bit of the light coming through the existing window here....

A diamond in the rough, for sure. But just wait - a few months = transformation! 

Those Finishing Touches

One of the questions we are asked all the time .... "How long does a typical renovation take?" Our answer is always "it depends".

It depends on what you are doing, where you are going (always best if you move out ...but if you can't just understand it will take longer), how much you are spending etc. etc.

But another answer is "depends when you feel comfortable moving back in". There's done and there's done, you know?

Our most recently completed project (wait til you see the real photos .. it turned out SO well) was really quite complete when our clients moved in. They have twin cutie-pie little toddler boys, so wanted to avoid moving into any more chaos than necessary. So, we made sure to do all the little things in advance - the towel racks, the laundry room shelving, the mirrors, the door stoppers, the coatroom hooks. We wanted to make it as move in ready as possible.

But no matter how complete the renovation, there are always some little things that need to be done at the tail end of a project. Those finishing touches can actually sometimes drag on, even for the most well planned and executed projects.

For example, house numbers (aren't these great?): You can get them here: www.numbermyhouse.com - a Canadian company (two brothers from Calgary started it). We ordered these for our clients - they are 16" high. They come with a template and hanging gear. They are lightweight and weather resistant. We think they are fabulous.

And new decks (we had to wait for snow to melt ..  which we were still doing well into April in Ottawa):

And there's always something that goes wrong. In this case, a stair runner was installed the wrong colour (supposed to be a grey-ish blue and if you can believe it the installers tried to convince the homeowner the colour was "kind of grey". Ugh. Our client is anti-brown and never agreed to the colour.) The new one should be in soon.

Some clients (and some home renovation company owners ... ahem...) are so anxious to move into their new space, they move in very early in the "ready" process (some would say too early). For example, when we moved into our current home, I'd say we were only about 85% done. Like, we didn't have a toilet until 5:30 the day we moved in (and we have four bathrooms!).  And while we had a kitchen, we certainly did not have counter tops (we templated for the quartz). We didn't have trim, closets or railings. The first few nights, we all camped out on mattresses in one bedroom.
It felt kinda like this ...

To be fair, by the end of the month, we were done. By Christmas (the next month) we hosted Christmas dinner.

But it was dusty, disruptive and challenging. It's a good thing we know and enjoy our partners in the various trades so much - we spent a LOT of time together. They saw us in our PJ's a lot.  This worked for us (and the temporary rental budget had dried up) but it likely won't for most.

Understanding that there is often still much work after the project is "done" is a critical part of setting expectations around the completion process.

Another ReNew Homes Overhaul

After a long time... we are back to blogging again. (The blogger half of our team - that's me - was on a bit of a hiatus doing some consulting work, which didn't allow for much blogging!)

It's been a busy time. We completed four projects in the past year - including refreshing a charming older home in Rockliffe, a first and third-floor addition and renovation in Westboro and a complete "stud gut" and addition in the Glebe, which we have just finished. More on our Glebe reno in another post, along with some awesome photos.

For now, I am pleased to announce we are back with another overhaul project.

We couldn't get much closer to home with this one.  The long-time owner of the house across the street from ours passed away, which was a sad event for all on our street. Our lovely neighbour, Daisy, was a real treasure to all of us and was always ready with a smile and a wave.  We miss Daisy and her warm family, who we got to know well over the past year. Daisy proudly owned her own home for many, many years, and we can't wait to restore it to its former glory and create a wonderful space for a new family.

The house is not without its' challenges. It still has knob and tube wiring, and because it's an older home, the layout needs to be  refreshed to better suit the needs of a modern family.

Here's the house now ....  with tons of junk sitting outside.

We are currently emptying the house ... (Ok, not "we" but it's getting emptied thanks to Warren, Steve and the goods folks who respond to Kijiji ads).

Bin #1 has already been carried away.

We've found some cool old stuff like this old bottle of "Bay Rum" Mentholated ... good for" insect bites, headaches, face wash and shampoo".

We have some wonderful plans for this home - I think it's going to be beautiful!