The Final Slough of Pre-Move-In Projects!

Thank you, dear friends, for your kind words following my last post. We feel that the entire process of purchasing, renovating, and moving into this beautiful house has been very divinely guided. And we feel deeply, utterly blessed.

But you want to know all about the reno projects, right!?

I am SO PLEASED to tell you, that as of last night, we finished the last of our pre-move-in projects, and that now, the house is ready for us to move in!

(Dare I tell you how late we slept in this morning, to celebrate?)

It was a big final push, but we did it! Of course, with the help of our friends. As of two weeks ago, this was our final to-do list:

* Finish kitchen install
* Get countertops measured and installed
* Install tile on kitchen floor
* Pull up carpets in living and dining room
* Prime and paint dining room
* Refinish wood floors (patch, putty, sand, stain, lacquer, sand, polish!)

How about we walk through those projects one by one?

Kitchen Install
Remember those 77 boxes we had delivered from IKEA?

Two weeks ago, we had only built four or five of the "base" cabinets. Well, in the process of putting them together, I quickly realized that if I built them ALL before the kitchen was absolutely ready for us to install them, they would simply be in our way, gathering all sorts of dust and grime.

So once the kitchen was ready to have the cabinets installed, I went to work with my power drill and allen key!

Jordan hung the racks on the walls while I assembled the cabinets. IKEA's kitchen installation is pretty slick, once you can figure out their instructions which are ALL IN PICTURES. No words, no descriptions, just line drawings of all the pieces with arrows. But once the racks are hung (those two horizontal, metal bars you see near the ceiling and again at hip height), you take the assembled base cabinet (no doors, shelves, or hinges yet) and hang them on the rack.

Once you have all the cabinets hung, you level them and then attach them to the wall and each other. 

See the stainless steel range hood in the centre of the photo? To install that, Jordan had to make custom cutouts for the exhaust pipe, which you see as a dark rectangle in the cabinet directly above the hood.

We are going to have SO MUCH STORAGE! And So Much Counter Space!!!

I think our real pride of the kitchen design is our peninsula, which you see in the above photo on the very left, and here below:

There will be one cabinet unit with two doors facing the dining room, and two cabinet units with three drawers each facing the kitchen. 

Don't be deceived by this peninsula's sleek appearance. It took Jordan the better part of a day to measure, cut, level, and attach the HUGE cover panel that faces the dining room. Because the back of the base cabinets are just raw particle board, IKEA had to sell us a 3' x 8' cover panel for this peninsula. (And you'd be surprised how much they can charge for a big piece of laminated plywood.) The real beauty of Jordan's work here though, is the cut out for the cabinet doors at the left end of the peninsula - in the top left corner of the photo above. Notice that the cover panel is ONE PIECE and still goes all the way around the left side of where the cabinet doors will be installed? I'm proud of my man's work. 

Measure and Install Kitchen Counters
We had to push pretty hard to get the kitchen cabinets levelled and secured, because the countertop guy came at 7:00am on May 20 to measure everything. (I don't have a picture because I was asleep while Jordan let the guy into the house.) Apparently, though, the countertop man set up a tripod in the centre of the kitchen, with a computer on it. He then had a digital "pen" attached to a long wire that fed into the computer. And he simply used the "pen" to touch each corner of every cabinet, and from that, the computer analyzed the angles and lengths and widths of the counter.

This is SCIENCE, people.

So now, the countertops will be installed THIS WEEK! On Wednesday! Then it will feel even more like a real kitchen!

We chose granite countertops for the kitchen, and they will be a dark grey (almost black), with flecks of silver and brown in them. I'll post a photo once they're in!

Tile the Kitchen Floor
Man, was THIS ever a steep learning curve project for us! There is a reason people get their tiling put in professionally. Not because pros can necessarily do a better or more perfect job, but because tiling was HARD.

Remember we finally got our subfloor secured and then our underlayer installed?

That plywood that we screwed into the subfloor was the smooth, mostly level surface we needed underneath our mortar and tile.

After borrowing a tile cutter from our friend Pete, we went to Home Depot and bought a LOT of supplies.

We spent a while in the tile aisle, but finally chose a large, light grey tile with white and light brown variegation to it, and chose a coloured grout to match called "New Taupe." Because NO ONE has time for WHITE grout.

Our cart included four boxes of tile, two bags of mortar, a box of grout, a bucket, a grout float (the tool you apply grout with), and 1/8" spacers. (In addition to lighting fixtures for our kitchen, a faucet for the kitchen sink, a push lawn-mower.)

The flooring guy at Home Depot recommended a certain kind of mortar (that also happened to be the most expensive mortar) that would be the easiest to work with and have the longest dry time for inexperienced tilers. But when we mixed it up, it was chalky, heavy, thick, and SUPER hard to work with.

After we measured and cut all the edge tiles, Jordan started tiling the kitchen floor on his own, but it was quickly evident that this would be a two-person job.

Being the Putty Princess, I went to work kneading and spreading the mortar into a smooth and level layer onto the underfloor. Jordan would then run the trowel over the mortar to create ridges. We used a 1/2" trowel, which you see hanging on the edge of the bucket there. Then, with our 1/8" spacers in place, we placed the tile and then press it into the mortar. And as we went along, we also had to use a damp sponge to clean up any extra mortar on the surface of the tile.

This was back-breaking, knee-busting, wrist-twisting work. 

But after pushing through the evening without a dinner break, Team Klassen was finally victorious!

I texted this photo to my voice teacher around 10:30pm. She replied, "Beautiful. Now go to bed."

So we did.

Once the mortar dried, the next evening we put our beautiful New Taupe grout into the grooves. Again, it was chalkier and drier than we'd expected. After trying to use the grout float to spread the grout (again, which the HD guy had sold to us as THE tool to use), we discovered that our gloved hands were far and above the most effective means of pushing the grout into the cracks, smoothing it, and removing the excess. Again, a quick wipe with a damp sponge to remove any extra grout.

But the grout box also instructed us that "after a two hour rest, remove the bloom with cheesecloth." I quickly ran to the Valu-Mart down the street to pick up some cheesecloth. I arrived at the store at 8:57pm and I managed to grab a pack of cheesecloth as well as a box of raspberry popsicles before it closed at 9:00pm. And THEN, on my walk home, I found a pile of empty plastic plant pots on the curb outside the flower shop! Since they'd been thrown out with the trash, I helped myself to some. I even managed to grab a couple of hanging pots that I can put my spider plants in and hang on the front porch. But that's for another post.

For two hours, we rested and watched a movie, and then wiped the tiles with cheesecloth to get rid of grout dust. Which makes you cough, so people, WEAR A MASK when you do it yourself.

24 hours later, we moved in our appliances!!!

This is starting to look like a REAL kitchen! 

Living Room + Dining Room: Remove Carpet + Paint

After teaching ourselves to tile, it doesn't seem terribly EXCITING to go back to painting and pulling up carpet, but I have to remind myself that, for most reasonable people, who plan to achieve reasonable amounts of work in a reasonable amount of time, painting a living room and dining room is a BIG TASK. 

But we're learning that we're not reasonable people. 

I think "ambitious people, who plan to achieve gargantuan amounts of work in an unreasonable amount of time" just about describes us. Don't you? 

A couple weeks ago, I painted the living room in a long morning's work. I was done by 1pm for lunch break! We chose a colour called "Fernwood Glade" that is the most beautiful shade of green. It sets off our millwork (the wood trim) beautifully.

Then, in the work of a couple of evenings, our friend Tricia pulled up the carpet and padding. 

Carpet is installed by putting a "tack strip" around the edge of the room. This is a narrow strip of wood, with small nails pointing upwards, to grab the carpet. This tack strip is nailed into the floor to hold things in place. But under the carpet, is the padding, which, in our house, was simply STAPLED right. into. the. hardwood. floors. 

So the process of removing carpet is this:

* Pry up a corner or edge of carpet from the tack strip.

* Fold back a 3-4' width of carpet the entire width of the room. Use a box cutter to cut the carpet along the fold. 

* Do the same with the padding underneath. 

* Roll up this 3-4' width into a roll, and tie with string or wrap with duct tape. This carpet gets either put on the curb for pick up, or, if you have as much as we do, cart it to the dump. 

* Then, remove the tack strip around the edge of the room with a crowbar, hammer, pliers, and LOTS of patience and fear of getting poked by all those nails. Here's a photo of the tack strip around our fireplace, which was ALSO reenforced by a METAL strip. Talk about a torture device. 

* And finally, the tedious work of extracting Every. Single. Staple. from the floor. Remember our friend Dan, of infinite patience and limitless good cheer? 

Each of those tiny tufts on the ground in front of Dan is a staple with a small bit of the padding still attached. 

Once all the carpet in the living room was out, I had to paint the dining room before we could pull the carpet up in there.

This is the point where I admit that I injured my right wrist after a day spent in the garden pulling out weeds and turning the soil so I could put in my veggies. I made Jordan promise me an afternoon in the garden once the countertops were measured, and he delivered, yet again! (Did I tell you this guy is my HERO!?) I was SO pleased. But I'll do a separate post about our garden.

The next day, however, I woke up unable to turn or bend my right wrist without pain. HOW FRUSTRATING! Let's just say I spent a couple days with a tensor bandage, an ice pack, a hot pack, some ibuprofen, and some Voltaren gel, recommended by our doctor friend Ian.

In the meantime, though, I just had to paint the dining room. With my left hand.

It was slow, but I was very happy with how it turned out.

Then a quick removal of the dining room carpet (again, thanks to Mister Dan), and we were ready to refinish the floors!

Refinishing Our Original Hardwood Floors

(patch, putty, sand, stain, lacquer, sand, polish!)

Oh my. I think I need to stop this post right here, because 1) it's already too long, and 2) talking about refinishing the floors really deserves its own post. 

In the meantime, think of us as we pack up our old apartment this week! There will be lots of cleaning this week as well - cleaning up the reno mess at No. 77 so it's actually livable, and then a post-move-out clean at the old apartment so we can hand over the keys on Sunday. 

THIS IS HAPPENING, folks. 

UP NEXT: The long-awaited post about our beautiful, shiny, hardwood floors! Including disappointment, frustration, good friends, and finally, a sock-party on our slick new floors.  

Drenched in Grace

People, we are so close to moving in I can almost taste it.

Would you believe that all we have left to do this week is VARNISH OUR FLOORS!?

Well...

...and then we have to pack up the apartment, move into the house, unpack, and finish the millions of little projects we've approached and backed off, saying, "We can do that after we move in!"

It's been TWO WEEKS since my last post, and let me tell you, this renovation process has been hard. In every possible way. Each one of the projects we've taken on has been monumental in and of itself. But put them all together and you have a recipe for personal, relational, physical, and mental disaster. I can hardly believe we've survived tearing out a wall and the old kitchen, designing, purchasing, assembling, and installing an IKEA kitchen, stripping 100 years of wallpaper (Jim says it's a valuable relic... anyone want some (s)crap wallpaper shards to sell on Etsy!?), moving a ventilation pipe, rewiring a ton of outlets and installing new ones, mudding and resurfacing the walls, repairing a subfloor and installing new underlayer in the kitchen, painting the entire house, tiling the kitchen floor, stripping and sanding the old finish on the hardwood floors, and now... staining and varnishing those beautiful floors.

I'm breathless just thinking about each project! But we've made it this far and there's not much further to go.

Yesterday I stained the floors in the house! This morning, while the new stain dries (it needs 24 hours before we can varnish it), Jordan and I are finally taking an enforced and much-needed respite. And I am sitting here, exhausted beyond belief, and the only thing that I can figure is that our new house and this whole process has been simply drenched in grace.

Will you indulge me, just this one post, as I set aside the reno talk?

Whenever I've felt like I've hit bottom (and it's happened multiple times), we've either reached out to our friends for help, or they've simply shown up, bringing food, caffeine, tools, willing helping hands, smiles, and encouragement.

On Wednesday, our friend Jim had spent the morning and early afternoon helping us sand the floor. He went home in the afternoon. A couple hours later, right when we were just about overwhelmed by the task of sanding, yet again, EVERY single room, Jim phoned around 5:30pm. He said, "Marie and I are coming over. We're bringing you dinner and we're going to help with your floors."

Then they spent the next four hours belt sanding the edges and filling nail holes. Down on their hands and knees in all of our mess and dust.

And do you know what? They came BACK the very next day and worked alongside us until 5pm. They even brought a salmon salad lunch, already plated, along with drinks, bread, and cinnamon buns for dessert.

I asked J., "What did we do to deserve this? These friends!?"

And he answered, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

We are learning that this kind of grace arrives when we are most in need of it, and when we are most incapable of doing anything to deserve or return it. 

It's a pretty solid foundation for a home to be built on.

It would take me another dozen blog posts to tell you about our friend Nada, who brought us coffees and dinners during HER OWN exam period (can you believe she wrote 11 exams!?). Or, to tell you about our buddy Pete who just stops by on the way home from the disc golf course to see how things are going, and then jumps in to cut and mortar the tile. Or I could tell you about Megan, who taped and primed each ceiling and room with me, or about Charlotte, who then helped me paint those rooms, or Tricia, who calmly and quietly pulled up the carpet in our living room in one quick evening. And of course I'd have to tell you about Dan, who has quietly, quickly, and cheerfully done all the gross, tedious, back-breaking tasks we asked of him.

Undeserved, unreturnable grace.

My hope is that these acts of overflowing love and generosity will shape us as we move into this beautiful home. And, that this grace that we are receiving we'll be able to give to everyone who comes into our home. I want this grace to soak deeply into our newly painted walls, our refinished floors, our shiny new kitchen, the tile that we laid down ourselves. I want it to motivate all our plans for future updates to the house, so that we do everything with the goal of making the home more welcoming, more hospitable, more safe for people who need a place to be loved.

Maybe my tiredness is making me emotional and slightly sappy. But maybe, just maybe, the patient persistence required to renovate this house, and the humility to accept what I cannot possibly return is shaping and changing me as well.

A lot can happen in 9 days

Friends. Things are HAPPENING here at No. 77.

Just this last week, I realized we were halfway through our six weeks of allotted pre-move reno time, and we were nowhere NEAR our target schedule. Emotionally, physically, mentally, I was reaching a breaking point. I think maybe it had something to do with the 18th or 19th time I had to sand the. same. darn. wall. before I could even caulk or tape or prime.

I turned to Jordan and said, "Honey. I need help."

And he delivered! We phoned up two of our friends are in transition right now and asked them to come work for us for a couple days.

And MAN that's when things started to happen! It's amazing how quickly things get done when they are getting done without you.

Charlotte and I got the bedroom and office taped, primed, and painted.

Dan pulled up the carpet in both the bedroom and the office.

Between us, Jordan and I finally got to put down the underlayer of our kitchen floor! Let me tell you, there is something deliciously SATISFYING about laying down a 4 x 4 inch grid of wood screws with a power drill.

I also primed and painted the kitchen window trim (see how pretty and shiny it is?!)

We got so much done this week look what started happening last night:

And this is now the state of our kitchen-in-progress:

Mister J. is just now out on a run to the hardware store to get a new blade for the sawz-all so we can cut holes in the under-sink cabinet and hang it on the wall.

And this morning, I got the living room painted! (This photo is terrible but I'll try to post a new one tomorrow with the morning light so you can see the colour better.)

Top photo is in-progress painting and bottom is finished painting!

This weekend, we're focusing on getting the kitchen installed because the people are coming on Wednesday to measure for our countertops.

And, once all the carpet is up, we'll be able to refinish our floors. I'm thinking of a super-glossy, golden, caramelly-honey colour to reflect the light. What do you think?

But I did make Jordan promise me at least one afternoon of work in our backyard this week so we can get our veggies into the ground. I'm hoping we're close enough to May 24 to avoid any more frosts!

I can't believe we're finally at this point. I can *almost* imagine Moving Day. While we still have a lot to do, it finally, finally seems manageable and acheiveable, especially with our amazing helpers. Here's what's left before we can move in!

* Finish kitchen install
* Get countertops measured and installed
* Install tile on kitchen floor
* Pull up carpets in living and dining room
* Prime and paint dining room
* Refinish wood floors (patch, putty, sand, stain, lacquer, sand, polish!)

Those are the most essential things. Of course there are a million little things that would be nice to get done before we move in, most of them can wait until we are in the house.

UP NEXT: Learning to refinish floors!

It's amazing to me how much you learn, how much you HAVE to learn when you're doing renos on your own house. It's pretty amazing, the set of skills we are amassing during this time. Jordan and I have new nicknames, because of how much we felt we'd mastered these new skills. I have been dubbed the "Putty Princess" and J. is the "Caulk King."

I know. We'll do anything to add to the joy of this process.

And I'm especially glad and grateful to have you all following our progress and cheering us along. So many of you have mentioned that you're thinking of us, and let me tell you, every thought helps.

So THANK YOU.

A Quick Update: Learning new skills!

I have a few minutes for a quick update, and a few of you have asked me when my next blog post will come! The thing is, while there's been lots of progress here at No. 77, the pictures simply won't do justice to the amount of work we've accomplished! 

Jordan and Jim have done SO much electrical work! They've run new wires for outlets for our kitchen peninsula, they've fixed a broken breaker and added a new one. They've boxed in the new pipe that they moved from the middle of our kitchen into the wall. 

Jordan's also made some progress on our kitchen floor. We were going to install a new 'underlayer' on top of our existing subfloor when we noticed a few cracked and creaking boards. We didn't want to install tile and then heavy cabinets and appliances on top of that, so we had to replace those boards. Well, three trips to the lumber yard and six hours later, we'd only managed between the two of us to get TWO boards replaced and none of the underlayer installed. 

However, in doing this work on the floor we had to pull back the carpet from the dining room, and the hardwood underneath seems to be in really good shape! I'm looking forward to refinishing those  floors. Mostly because it will mean the END is in sight! Or rather, that our most pressing goal of moving in by the end of the month will be in sight! 

I've gotten a few smaller things done around here. My friend Charlotte and I planted the pots on our front deck! 

We planted a lot of orange-y pink begonias, some lime green coleus and potato vines, as well as some bight pink and purple coleus. Our friend Marie also gave me a couple pots of begonias for my birthday! They match perfectly. This morning I picked up some veggies for the backyard as well as some New Guinea impatiens for the long raised beds at the front of the porch. 

This week I've also continued my work on the walls. Forever these walls! Our contractors paper taped and mudded over the seams between cement board panels, which was a huge task. They also installed drywall onto all our main floor ceilings so we don't have to strip wallpaper and sand THOSE boards. I can't even imagine. 

We were hoping to start painting earlier this week, but in true home renovation style, even that had to be postponed a little while. We went to the store, picked out our colours, bought samples, and I hurriedly painted on patches in each of the rooms to see if we liked the colours! Well, we confirmed that the texture of the cement board still showed through the paint, so..... I taught myself how to skim a wall this week. 

Basically, you have a huge bucket of drywall mud - heavy, gloopy, thick stuff. You scoop some onto a "hawk" which is a piece of stainless steel with a handle on the bottom. Then you have to put the mud on the wall with some technique. Then, with finesse, you scrape off all but the thinnest little coat of mud, leaving a (*hopefully!*) smooth surface. 

I did a first layer on each of the walls, patching up the worst gouges and pock-marks in the cement board. Then, comes the SANDING. 

Guys. I HATE SANDING. Thankfully we aren't working with the orbital sander anymore, because that kicks up the WORST dust.  And, thankfully, drywall dust is nowhere near as smelly, and probably nowhere near as toxic, as the wallpaper dust. But it dries out your hands and it gets everywhere, even though it's pretty good at falling right to the ground. After this first sanding I'm going over with another very thin layer of mud, and hopefully that will be ready to paint by this weekend. 

If you have a spare moment to send us encouraging thoughts, please do! There seems like a lot of work still ahead, and I know we're going to run into inevitable glitches along the way. It would be nice, however, to have at least one of our projects go according to schedule.

Here's a rundown of what we still have ahead of us: 

* install underlayer of kitchen floor

* build and install kitchen cabinets

* get kitchen countertops installed

* prime drywall on all ceilings and prime dining room walls

* paint all rooms and ceilings

* tear out carpet and refinish hardwood floors

* pack up the old place and move into the new place!

In the meantime, we just do what's next on the list! Or, we do something that brings us joy, even if it's not essential to getting moved in. 

UP NEXT: Painting party on the weekend and hopefully installing the kitchen early next week!

Contractors, Electrical Work, and building IKEA furniture

So much has happened at No. 77 in the last ten days I hardly know where to start this update!

How about we go section by section?

WALLPAPER
MAN, this wallpaper has consumed my week. But let me tell you, I now know about 37 different techniques for removing wallpaper, and I did manage to land on a few that really worked. The biggest accomplishment is that it's ALL GONE from the living room, master bedroom, and the office. And, the trim is all paper-taped and ready for our contractors to come in and mud the seams to make the walls super smooth and ready to paint.

I used a wallpaper steamer to strip most of the wallpaper in the master bedroom, since the bottom two layers were SUPER stubborn and I could not coax it off in any other way. Steaming wallpaper is boring, hot, smelly, tedious work. But steaming was effective and I'm glad I finally got it all done. 

Jordan removing the wallpaper debris. Gross stuff.

Then I had to move on to sanding the walls. Stripping wallpaper off cement board leaves little nubs and chads on the surface of the paper, all of which needed to be removed. And, in the living room, I the bottom-most layer of wallpaper was so brittle it wasn't in an intact enough layer for even the steamer to take it off, so that ended up needing to be sanded off as well. 

So we sealed off each room, donned respirator masks, and went at it. Let's just say it's punishing work. After 8 hours of sanding on Saturday, this was my final post-apocalyptic look: 

Please note my pants are BLACK.

Have you met me? Do you know what colour my hair ACTUALLY is?

All that was left was to vacuum up the centimetre of orange pulverized-wallpaper dust out of each room, and turn it from a weird moonscape into a house again. 

CEILINGS

After stripping and sanding all of the walls, I wasn't about to pull a Michelangelo and do the same process on our ceilings... which are made of the same cement board and covered in three layers of wallpaper. It's just NOT going to happen. 

So, Jordan and I decided to remove some of the beams on the ceilings, to lighten up the look by making the ceilings less dark and oppressive. We've retained the main beams in the office, master bedroom, and the living room. 

Master bedroom ceiling, remaining beams.

Living room ceiling, with a couple missing beams on the right that will go back up.

However, we removed all of the beams in the dining room, because we took out the kitchen wall and want the dining room and kitchen to flow into each other. 

Jordan putting in electrical boxes for our kitchen lighting.

We've asked our contractors to put up drywall on the ceilings. It will just cover the ceilings and give us a smooth, new surface that will be totally paintable. Also it will fit snugly in between each wooden beam, and we'll just finish the edges with some quarter-round trim. 

Electrical and Plumbing

Remember that PIPE we discovered when we took out our kitchen wall? 

Turns out it was just a vent pipe for steam from the bathtub drain. Jordan and Jim were able to remove the original cast-iron pipe (who makes pipes out of CAST IRON anymore!?) and replace it with a PVC pipe, but moved it into the corner of the wall.

Problem SOLVED.

Jordan and Jim have also spent a ton of time this week working on the electrical outlets in the kitchen, moving the switches and plugs from the removed wall to places where we need and will use power in our new kitchen.

Here's a list of what they've done:

• moved a light switch from the floor into the wall just to the left of the door entering the dining room
• converted an outlet from behind the old stove into a power source for our new range hood and fan
• ran wiring into new boxes for pendant lighting that will hang above our kitchen peninsula

And probably a bunch more that I can't remember right now! 

Contractors, YAY!

After removing all the wallpaper debris, sanding, vacuuming, and paper taping all our millwork (baseboards, and trim on windows and doors), we were ready for Jay and Eric to come in and work their magic. They set up shop yesterday, and went straight to work patching up all those cement board seams, as well as smoothing out rough patches and nicks in the wall. 

 

Their work will include: 

• mudding, sanding, and paper taping all the seams
• priming and sanding the walls
• installing drywall on the ceiling
• finishing the walls in our kitchen

Once they're done, we'll be able to PAINT THE HOUSE. I think I'm gonna cry when I roll that first coat on. It's been a PROCESS to get to this point. 

IKEA building party!

Last but not least, this is MY task for this week: 

77 boxes of IKEA kitchen cabinets got delivered to our No. 77 house yesterday. How perfect is that? My bestie Charlotte came over for a few hours in the afternoon, and we catalogued and organized every single box (not a single one missing!). Then, we built four of our 12 total cabinets for the kitchen. With bright pink hammers and screwdrivers. The goal is to install it early next week! 

Some final thoughts...

I can't believe how much we've gotten done so far. We are nowhere near the end, folks, don't get me wrong. But seriously. We are pretty much on schedule. And we have had So. Much. Help. from so many friends! I wish I could introduce them all here, and tell you all the big and little things they've done to help us out, from bringing coffee to holding the shop vac while I sanded the living room, cutting through 100-year-old cast iron pipe, from pulling out bushes in the backyard to itemizing IKEA cabinets. 

A friend recently posted on Facebook, "People who don't accept help are rarely reached out to for help." Or, put another way: If you ask your friends for help, they will ask you for help. 

So many people have already come in and out of our house in the last two weeks. We've already spent hours drinking coffee, eating lunch, and taking snack breaks on our amazing front porch. We have asked everyone we know in London for help, or to borrow their tools. We are asking for a lot of favours now and running up huge relational "debts." Jordan and I are going to be returning these favours for years. 

But honestly? We wouldn't want it any other way. Life is meant for relationships and community, and nothing forges friendship faster than sharing hard work and accomplishing something concrete. 

So when you are next tackling your big life project, call us up. We've got our work clothes ready. 

Demo Day #2: Wallpaper, and demolition, and debris... oh my!

Oh man, am I ever tired.

Renovating a house is the ultimate in "lifestyle" fitness (of which Jordan is a great advocate). Yesterday, for 10 hours, I did squats, shoulder presses, chest presses, and cardio. Today, I feel like a limp noodle.

But we got SO much accomplished in just a few short days!

Friday afternoon, after my final exam (!) of my Master's (!!!), I went straight to the house and J. and I tried to get a good picture of exactly what we wanted to do on Saturday, with all our amazing helpers.

The biggest decision we made was what to do with the walls. So, after trying a number of very frustrating and unsuccessful methods, I felt I had a good grasp of the technique required to strip the wallpaper. I had managed to reveal enough of the wall underneath so that our contractor friend, Jay, could come over and take a look at it and give us our options as to how to finish the walls.

He didn't recognize the under-layer, so got his dad on the phone. After texting over a photo, we heard Jay's dad say, "Ohhhh that stuff is the worst."

Uh oh.

We discovered that under the seven layers of brittle wallpaper lay cement board. It's about a 1/2 inch of cement covered in paper on either side. The panels are about 3 feet wide, and are sealed with nails and a plaster-like seam.

Our options, after talking them over with Jay, were:

1) Tear out all the cement board, replacing it with drywall. While this would be doing it "right," it would cost the most, cause a TON of debris, and you never know what you will find behind those walls!
2) Simply put up a layer of 1/4" drywall OVER the existing walls, wallpaper and all. This would be the fastest and simplest option. However, we'd lose some depth on our beautiful baseboards and millwork around the windows and doors.
3) Strip all the wallpaper, sand all the surfaces smooth, nail in all the rusty nails flush with the walls, paper tape all the seams, and put a skim coat of mud over all the walls. This is by far the most labour-intensive option, but would cause the least waste of materials. However, once everything's mudded and painted, the surface would also have a slight "ribboning" effect, which means that if you run your hand over the surface, you would feel a slight bump at each seam.

Option 1 wasn't really an option for us, considering the cost and time it would require. Jordan was drawn to Option 2, but I felt strongly and morally opposed to simply covering up the wallpaper nightmare. I would ALWAYS know it was there, lurking underneath the drywall. Jordan was reluctant to consider Option 3, saying "it'll take you a week to strip all that paper!"

But I said, "Let me try!"

My method for taking off the wallpaper consisted of scoring, spraying, and then stripping it.

First, we took a scoring tool and poked tiny little holes in the wallpaper. (Pro tip #1: Do NOT give the wallpaper stripper to your biggest, burliest friend. Ahem, RYAN. It is likely he will be too exuberant, causing the tiny plastic wheels on the scoring tool to overheat and MELT. Pro tip #2: If you take said broken tool back to the store within an hour of buying it, the nice people will probably replace it for you. No charge.)

This is the "Wax on, wax off" stage of Grasshopper training.

Then, wearing a respirator mask, you spray warm water mixed with a concentrate of wallpaper stripper solution on the walls to soak it through. (Without the respirator, you get a wicked sore throat. NOT GOOD for singers!) Wait until it drys. 

Then, using a stainless steel putty knife, we found the seams of the panels, because the wallpaper for some reason doesn't stick as well to the seams. Once we revealed the seams, I could slip the edge of the putty knife under the lowest layer of wallpaper, and with any luck, strip it off in chunks. And here's what the finished office looks like, sans wallpaper:

Ryan and I got this room done in a couple hours! I felt very proud of us. 

The master bedroom had it's own six layers of wallpaper, including a super dark floral layer and a layer of blue paint. However, the wallpaper in that room isn't coming off easily. I think it will require a couple rounds of scoring and spraying to really start to come down. 

However, once Amalea and I got into the living room, the wallpaper in there came off like a dream! After scoring and spraying and letting it dry for a couple hours, we were able to take the paper off the whole room in less than an hour! THAT was satisfying. 

So even though we will eventually have slight bumps in the wall from the seams of the cement board, I think we will be really happy with the final result. 

Meanwhile...

Our friend Jim came back and helped Jordan cap off the water in the kitchen. Then they took out the rest of the kitchen. Here's what it looks like now, but that big beam at the end of the dining room ceiling also came down:

In the basement, Jordan and Pete took down some of the ceiling so we can run some electrical through for the kitchen.

So here's a current look from the living room through to the dining room: 

Mama and Papa K. came back through the house after our initial demo day, and were so impressed with how much had changed. We are so blessed to have had such amazing help yesterday!

Here's a list of everything we got done:

• capped water and uninstalled kitchen sink
• uninstalled cabinets in kitchen
• took down many, many, many beams of the coffer ceilings to make it less "oppressive" while still maintaining the style and distinctive look
• took down the huge mirror from the living room
• stripped wallpaper in office and living room
• took a trailer of debris to the dump and already filled up a second trailer
• bought a compost bin at the dump
• brought up a cabinet from the basement and organized the sunroom into "reno command centre"

Tomorrow we're making a run to Ikea to order our kitchen! It'll be good to have a day off from the manual labour! 

UP NEXT: chiseling tile out of the kitchen and stripping the last of the wallpaper!