this old cat-house

Monday, September 07, 2009

if there is one thing i love, it is sanding floors. i complained about this in every single room we reno'ed in edmonton, but the worst thing ever is the copious amounts of black boogers that result from sanding (sorry to be so graphic, but doesn't it help give some scope to the pain and tears that go into our projects?!). gross, oh so gross.

so anyway, first there was 'lovely' ikea laminate all across the main floor of our house, which we had to rip up immediately for no other reason than the fact that i cannot stand laminate flooring:
then, there was chipboard, which is so terrible i will not show the picture. imagine a porous floor in winter in ontario, with three cats, with renovations, that is completely un-vacuum-able. bleck. so we had to rip this up as soon as possible also!

then there were softwood planks, which were originally a subfloor when the house was built:

then there was sanding, sanding and more sanding. as previously mentioned, ian and i learned a few tricks in good-old-edmonton, one of which is to never ever sand all the floors in your entire house with a belt sander. so we rented the push sander from RONA (which, by the by, charged much less than Home Depot) and the sanding was finished within hours. enter me, a new method of applying stain and varnish, and no cats (they had a vacation at grandpa steve's) and here is what came up:
here is just a small glimpse of our brand new goodwill/pawnshop furniture. somehow we managed to furnish the entire living room for under $100, which we are pretty proud of. plus, we hauled it all home in our yaris hatchback, which was a pretty hilarious event.
that's it for now!
ps. did everyone note ian's 'bachelor pad-esque' suspended speakers set-up? with this set-up, there is no way he can say no to my idea of installing a draught beer tap as part of our kitchen renos next summer eh?

New city, new house, many new projects...

Here we are, two years later, with another old cat house. We learned a few things in Edmonton, and we've put (some of) them to use here in London. Firstly, why have roommates if we can build a basement suite and have a tenant?

Here are some "after" pics of our first major project: