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. Read the rest of this entry »

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:

• Osmo One Coat Only HS Plus Stain, Oak Colour - It comes in a 375 ml can. We were worried it wouldn’t be enough to cover our area, but it was (by about 3 tablespoons).

• AFM Safecoat Low Odor Polyureseal BP Gloss Finish - This stuff is low VOC, formaldehyde-free, and water based. We chose this to achieve a hard, durable finish to compensate for the fact that fir is so soft.

We like the stain a lot. If you use it, my only tip would be to stir the can often and well to ensure that your stain colour stays consistent during the whole application process. As for the finishing coat, we’re not quite done yet. We’ll fill you in once we are.

We’re almost caught up! Happy Halloween

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. So after those ongoing letdowns, it is so refreshing to post on a positive note!

So, in total, Chris and I installed the hardwood together for about 4 hours. He continued on his own for another 2, then the next day it was me on my own for 3, then my parents helped me out for another 2. That makes for 19 person-hours, not including trips to the hardware store for rental equipment pick-ups and exchanges (the hose they gave us did not fit the fitting on the compressor).

Why did it take us so long? The hardwood I salvaged nearly a year ago and unbeknownst to me, was dirty both on the tongue and in the groove (dirt and sticky sap) and anything but uniform. The boards themselves seemed to come in small, medium and large, which means they didn’t line up well. Also, some tongues were thicker and higher set than others.

Needless to say, I now know how to scrutinize hardwood based on how well it will

install! And, once we’ve sanded it down a fair bit and the finishing coats are applied, we will have one gorgeous distressed floor. Hooray!

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.

Gee, time flies. We have a bad case of the runaway deadline indeed. Haha. Initially we said we’d be done most of the work before Christmas time. Then that darned date got away from us, but seemed to be perched reliably around the end of January - or so I thought. Well, Chris thought it was more like February but I, I knew it would be January. It certainly wouldn’t be Spring as my sister knowingly predicted.

Don’t you just hate being known as the couple that is always late? Especially when, most of the time, you are late? Well, this is like that. So, I guess I’m reckoning with being ‘that couple’. I’m admitting that we’re on the stressed side of things and that this reno is taking way longer than intended. The reasons for that are many, but mainly it’s that renovating is a stressful process.

I feel sheepish saying it, being the current driving force behind Raising Spaces and knowing that there are countless others undertaking way more ambitious projects than this, but I have to be honest. Without honesty, what kind of blog would this be?

Maybe this confession as it’s turning out to be is my way of acknowledging the stresses and struggles of all the other green builder and renovator types out there, my expression of solidarity and encouragement, my pat on our collective backs if you will for doing our best to bring sustainability home.

Building and renovating green is not about following the latest design trends. From my view, it’s one of the most self-critical things each of us can do, and it’s not easy. At its core, it’s about auditing the way we live in our most private of spaces, trimming consumption, and creating beautiful and better spatial solutions with the lowest cost to our planet and health as possible.

In the end we all have to find our own balance between budgets and timelines, work life and everyday housework, and most importantly we must continue to invest in our relationships and personal well being. It’s my hope that Raising Spaces can assist all of us through this process whether by offering more information in one place, providing a space to share and reflect, and by nurturing a community of folk willing to lend an ear and a hand. At least, I for one feel better tonight.

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…

With all existing cabinets in place, our cupboards full, and the main floor tidied/cleaned/dusted (a huge thank you to Grandma for your help with the cleaning!), book club went over delightfully this past Sunday. It was a small group given the -30 C degree weather, and everyone was impressed with their sneak peek of our kitchen progress. Not quite as impressed however as they were with the veggie chicken rice rolls and green onion cakes I (we) made without a stovetop.

Now with our super cute light fixture that matches the wallpaper pattern and our $20 Habitat for Humanity Restore stainless steel sink (scrubbed with love by Chris and placed in a plywood cutout surface) we’ve entered the semi-functional phase of this renovation. I have to say, it feels fantastic! Here’s a little eye candy to satisfy a few curiosities:

The light fixture has four standard bulb sockets, but we found that using just two fluorescent bulbs gives off the same amount of light as four. We also have way more natural light coming in than before.

(Don’t forget to empty the pail!!)

Now that we have dishes and food in our cupboards, we’re eager to install hardware. We agreed (can you believe it?!?) on a metal drawer pull with a semi-antique finish and vertical lines in the design to match the veneer on the cabinetry, all at a pretty reasonable price at Ikea. Then tomorrow, Brett will be back to actually hook up the plumbing for our sink and dishwasher! I can’t believe it…installing our final cabinet, countertop, and flooring almost seems like gravy!

Did I say we were over the hump for mudding? If we were, then it was a long way down. We ended up focusing on just the east wall so that we could get the cabinets that attach to that wall completed. All this week we’d aimed to finish that mudding to get to the painting, to end up at the cabinets.

At last, the paint is on the wall and we’re elated because last night we did a reno social with our neighbours who are also doing their kitchen. They helped us hang our ceiling cabinets and in exchange we’ll help them with theirs. I highly recommend doing this! You not only share labour and tips, but you don’t feel so overwhelmed and get some social time too. Might I add, the ceiling cabinets we hung look incredible. There’s also so much more space in the dining room now that we can begin to clean and reassemble it!

Also, if you were wondering, we tried out the Sico brand of Cashmere paint, which is low-VOC and available at Rona. We’re quite happy with it except that there was no primer from the same line to speak of.

So, this morning after a lazy breakfast of banana-sesame-chocolate chip pancakes savoured while perusing the Edmonton Journal online, we installed the cutlery cabinet. Although Chris is out working for a couple hours, my hope is that we’ll get one or two more cabinets in before our dinner date at the Blue Plate Diner (go there - the food’s fabulous!).

Oh yeah, we did have a little surprise when measuring out our floor space earlier today. Unbeknownst to us, our original and subsequent kitchen design shrunk the kitchen by 11 inches, which when the kitchen is already micro and the dining room hardwood flooring does not extend into the kitchen…is a bit of a boo boo. Thus, we’ve ordered an additional 11 inch cabinet that will push the edge of the kitchen to where it needs to be as well as give us a space to store our longer cooking tools.

It’ll mean a bit more money and a 2-3 week delay, but we’ll gain storage that we needed and a chance to find a light fixture, install hardware, get the sink and dishwasher plumbed in, complete finicky mudding and painting, and find a company to install our countertop. Think we’ll be busy enough? Oh, and then there’s the hardwood

For now, I’m content to be on the optimistic side of life especially since there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Looks like I’ll be able to host book club on the 27th after all And, while the experience of learning how to mud and tape was valuable, we’ve made a pact to hire out any highly visible jobs to the talented trades-people in our area As Chris told me, the wall has ‘character’ and fits in with the rest of the house nicely.

I’ll keep the story of our UPS debacle brief for all of our sakes…

When we returned from our Ontario trip we swiftly arranged delivery so as to prevent storage charges that the local UPS freight office threatened us with. At 4pm, a lift-less truck arrived with our 560 LB recycled paper countertop. UPS had contracted the delivery out, and the truck driver refused to help unload (when actually the manager at UPS had previously confirmed to Chris that there would be help from truck to boulevard). Once the packaging was removed, our chipped countertop was revealed.

With the help of a neighbour, Chris and I hauled the heavy panels inside. All this transpired between strained phone conversations with the decidedly unhelpful UPS manager, who tried to convince the trucker to bring our package back to the warehouse.

With a makeshift waybill and photos of the damaged panel, we’ve filed a damaged product claim to hold UPS accountable. A note of advice: when ordering products from the US, choose your shipper carefully.

On the bright side, we discovered a mystery panel among the cabinet pieces that is meant to prop up the oven and make it fit properly!