Oh, how the little things can make such a big difference! As some of you may have noticed, our green kitchen reno slowed to a stop. There has been nothing to report for several months, which was really demoralizing, especially as I prepared newsletters with updates from other bloggers who were building entire green homes from scratch!

Meanwhile we were left with an assortment of glaring niggly finishing tasks that we had neither time nor energy to complete, not to mention a floor that turned out nothing like what I had imagined.

Enter Super Dad.

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I’m betting I’m not the only one who, whilst renovating a home that’s long on character and short on ecofeatures, has seriously wondered ‘why not build the ideal green home from scratch?’ This is the question on Chris’ and my mind while our nearly finished green kitchen lays idle.

As everyone knows, home renos take time – and lots of it. The best scenario for us would have been to do all our planning up front and then to take time off to do the reno. This works for some folks, but in our case taking time off is really difficult. Continue Reading →

Many an idle moment I’ve spent visualizing precisely how to seal up the hole in our east wall – a hole that for the last five months has been our no frills recycle chute.

I made the door out of leftover cabinet material and a metal picture frame no less than a month ago. Then Chris and I bought a screen door spring hinge with two extra hinges just in case. The problem of installing the door still remains.

It wouldn’t be so irritating if we weren’t losing gobs of heat from the hole in the wall. Since the snazzy 3-ring binder propped shut with an urn doesn’t have a reliable seal over the hole and temperatures have been consistently lower than -20 degrees C, it’s safe to say we are indeed losing heat. That and the wall around the hole is cold to the touch. Continue Reading →

Looking back on my sporadic blog entries, I feel compelled to explain myself. And at the same time, we really have no excuse as to why we’re not done our kitchen yet. The question ‘are you done yet?’ got old long ago, but the pesky irritation of it is clearly not motivation enough for us to eagerly hack away at the finishing details that remain.

I won’t say we haven’t done anything in the past two months. Chris sealed our chute box with spray foam to prevent major air leaks, and I finished the painting. Yup. That’s about it. I haven’t told Chris yet, but my fastidious taping of the cabinet edges apparently wasn’t good enough. Paint seeped through in a few spots, so I have to figure out how to remove it without damaging the cabinet finish. Continue Reading →

Since my last post, Chris and I enjoyed a fabulous fall break to Europe. Don’t get all jealous on me now, I’ll have you know that the weather was way nicer in Edmonton than anywhere we were. And, on the one really nice day we had in Rome, we couldn’t even wear shorts because we went to the Vatican! No bare limbs allowed. For real.

Plus, it was England’s wettest summer in 90 years! Anyway, we had a great time, visited with family, and saw some amazing historical architecture. Back to the house.

Here’s a video of us installing, sanding, and staining our reclaimed kitchen flooring. I think you’ll like it. I had way too much fun playing with a couple new video editing features.

We still have yet to put the final finishing coats on – 3 coats so far. If we had used harder wood, I might have considered wax. In any case, the products we used were: Continue Reading →

This has been a long time coming folks, sorry for the delay!

l’ll let the video do the talking. This was way back in the spring when we were working on our countertop. (It gets better toward the end of the video ) More to come soon!

It took all weekend, a load of creativity and much grunting on all fours, but we now have a floor! The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction is fantastic I think because things really look like they’re coming together.

On top of that, our appliance store referred a new installer to us who has, as of yesterday, installed all our kick-plates! Not only did he show up, but he had all his tools ready and spent the entire day completing the niggly detail work that we are more than happy to hand off.

This is in contrast to another installer who repeatedly would not return our calls nor show up when promised. That’s what has been happening for the past 3-4 weeks. Continue Reading →

The malicious cold that’s been taking people out in these parts did me in for most of March. Although my voice is back and the coughing fits are nearly over with, my pace is still much slower than normal and I’ve apparently emptied my bed of all occupants but me this night. Must be that I still have a restless lung or two, and a spare rattle hanging out in this nose of mine. So what better opportunity to catch you up on our kitchen happenings and pluck these straggler thoughts from my sleepless mind. Continue Reading →

Chris and I are currently learning a lesson in patience. It’s been about 54 days since we’ve had our beautiful paperstone countertop at the house, stacked against the wall uninstalled. We’ve been ready for installation for at least 15 days. Alas, with the booming industry in Edmonton right now, we’ve been unable to secure an installer until today.

We now have a date, and it’s one week away. This explains the infrequency of my posts, but I am happy to say that I shall have more to share soon….

It’s been a little while since our last entry, basically because we’ve been waiting for that last cabinet to be made and shipped to us. The only news at this point is that we’ve put all but 6 handles and knobs on our cupboards. They look really great, and now getting into the cupboards is a whole lot easier. Oh, and we had our electrician install the under-cabinet lights, and the over-the-sink light. Looks pretty swank!

If you look back into some previous entries in this blog, though, you will notice that while waiting, I learned how to use imovie in a very basic way. So, a few more videos have been pasted into older entries. Mainly, they show us tearing our kitchen apart. So, if you’d like a visual, do check the videos out

Stay warm…