Tuesday 25 August 2015

before & after // where we dine

“Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening.” 
- Art Buchwald

The dining room is my favourite room in the house. It features high ceilings, french doors and three windows for beautiful lighting. The light fixture is also a fan favourite and came with the home. I love some of the pieces the previous owners had in here, but we were very excited to make it our own. The end result has a farm house, french provincial feel and style. The hutch was given to us and I used Homestead House milk paint from 3 Sheep Mercantile Co. in Innisfil. It was my first time using milk paint and we just love the end result. It adds a splash of colour against our pale yellow room. A huge mention goes to our friends Scott Parent and Nathan Romp for painting this room for us...four coats of paint later. It took forever to find curtains for this room as I could never find any that were long enough to touch the floor, let alone ones that I liked. I finally picked some up at Pier One... my first time purchasing anything in that store and probably my last! We still need to finish the trim with some quarter round as well as we have a huge wall that we are still needing to decorate.

Before


Working Away


After

























Monday 17 August 2015

over the summer // 2015

“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair...” 
- Susan Polis Schutz

This summer has been packed for us. Along with our big renovation and our garden at home, we also started a garden ministry at our church (Calvary Community Church) called Calvary Field View Gardens. We have so much wonderful help involved in this ministry. The vegetables came from LakeView Gardens and have been flourishing. No surprise there! Every Sunday, our team sells the veggies to people at our church. There is a basic price, but people have been over giving which is fantastic. With the funds raised, we are going to be donating to an organization in Barrie for those less fortunate. This has been an awesome adventure that will grow each year. Your prayers for an over growth in fruit are welcomed! Check out http://calvarybarrie.com for more information about our rock solid church.

Calvary Field View Gardens ministry at Calvary Community Church
Our cabbage at our home garden







My parents rescue dog Louis




















Saturday 15 August 2015

before & after // that cellar basement

"But the real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic."
 - Sherman Alexie

The century home basement. Many century homes have a crawl space but it turns out Gable Oaks has a full sized basement! It is what some people would call a scary basement if you have never seen one before and it needed a lot of work. Our major job this year was to pour concrete on the earth floor. Our plans this winter are to rewire the entire basement and have it neat and tidy. We also added in pluming to outside so now there are three outdoor taps. We decided that we wanted to pour concrete to rid the space of that earth floor smell, and to make it a clean usable storage space and indoor work shop. The concrete will be a means of humidity control and bug control too. 

Mitch and Bryan started off by digging the floor out to make way for concrete and still have head room. I shop vac'ed the entire ceiling to make it a clean workable space. Mitch's Dad and brother were a huge help for a full day with the digging. Mitch and Bryan took out the oil tank as we now have gas, along with all the other appliances. We created an elevated pad for all the appliances to sit on.

After digging the trenches for the drainage system, Mitch and I spent two days putting the o-piping in and clear stone over top. Mitch and a friend installed the ripple board, drainage system, and new sump bin. We wanted to prepare the space for the worst. There are no eves troughs on the house yet which can be a cause of water leaking in the future. Water leaking is preventable and next year we are installing eves troughs!

We are very excited that this is a functioning prepared space. It was our biggest renovation that took four and a half months to complete. It will be used for storage and a work shop area and is now "de-scarfied" if we ever want to sell. Thank you to our friends and family for their support and labour! Next task up is replacing the duct work downstairs as well as installing our new efficiant gas furnace. 


The rewiring will be the winter job




Gone!


The trenches don't look like much, but we went over kill on this one. They are a foot wide and one-two feet deep. We have two high points and they all slope down toward the sump bin. We figured if we are doing a drainage system once, lets do it right! We will also be putting a secondary drainage system in on top that will have floor drains. If there ever was going to be water in our basement, we have it covered! 

Lots of clear stone for the trenches


The sock covered o-piping is now in the trenches around the perimeter of the house as well as through the middle, all leading to our sump bin. 

Interior weeping/ripple board

Surface floor drain system




Duct work is out! Time for the new!