One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

It turns out that having a baby cuts into blogging time!  Although we haven’t managed to update the blog in the past six months, we have managed to work on a few projects around the house. 

When we last left off, our subfloor was complete and we were anxiously awaiting the installation of our carpet and built-ins.  After the subfloor was laid, Dave painted the walls and finished the trim work.  Lowes installed our new carpet and our basement was finally ready for use!

We found a couch from Ikea that would fit down our tiny stairwell (a common problem in many of the old houses in Toronto!)  We also installed the custom built-in cabinets we had ordered from the same person who designed our kitchen.  At this point, our basement was pretty much complete, aside from a few minor things that we decided to leave until the fall while we focussed on building a deck in the backyard. 

All throughout our renovation, we always considered ourselves lucky that we never had any major setbacks.  Well, it seems that our luck had finally run out…

Shortly after we finished the basement, here is how it looked:

Yep, that’s right.  Our beautiful, newly finished basement was all torn apart.

One morning, Dave flushed the basement toilet and it didn’t sound right.  He looked in the floor drain and noticed the water level was on the brink of flooding.  Luckily he caught it in time and we immediately stopped using water and called a plumber.  The plumber checked our drain pipes with a camera and discovered that an old clay pipe had shifted, causing a blockage. 

This is when we were really kicking ourselves.  Two years ago when we started our renovation, we replaced all the plumbing in our house, except for about 25 feet of old clay pipe under the basement floor.  At the time, it was a decision we made to save some money.  Obviously, we regret that decision now!

We could have fixed shifted pipe by just digging up a small section of the floor, however, we didn’t want to end up in this situation again down the road.

And so, the built-ins were removed, the carpet peeled back, the subfloor ripped out and the floor dug up.  The pipes were replaced, giving our house 100% new plumbing.  

Now, we’re in the “rebuilding” phase.  The subfloor is back down and the carpet installers will be here next week to re-install the carpet.  Hopefully we can show a picture of completed room soon!

Basement Floors

Before the arrival of baby Logan, we got started on finishing the basement.  The first step was to deal with the floors.

In the laundry/utility room, we decided to paint the concrete floor to clean it up.  We used a concrete primer and paint to finish the floor.  This will brighten up the room and make it easier to clean.

Here’s the transformation:

In the rest of the basement (the area that will become our family room) we plan to install carpet.  To prepare for the carpet, we needed to install subfloor.  Dave did some research and found a new product that has a half-inch profile which will save headroom. 

The product is called Tyroc.  The base of the subfloor panels are rubber, made from recycled tires.  The surface is magnesium oxide which is resistant to moisture and decay. 

Although it was hard to find in Toronto, it was worth searching for.  It was relatively easy to install and, so far, we’re happy with it.  Here are the before and after shots:

We’ve chosen our carpet from Lowes and will have it installed once the painting and trim is done.  Progress is much slower now that we have a baby who we’d rather spend our time with.  However, Dave is starting to find some time to work down there, so hopefully Logan’s play room will be ready soon!

Basement Interrupted

Finishing our basement has been an ongoing project over the past couple of months.  However, our work was interrupted on January 31 by the birth of our son, Logan! 

We’ve been busy getting settled and enjoying our time with our new little man, but will be getting back to work soon.  Hopefully we’ll have some basement progress to share with you in the coming days.

The Nursery

As we mentioned back in November, we’ll be welcoming our baby boy in the next few weeks.  To prepare for his arrival, we’ve been busy working on a few key projects.

Of course, the most important project (or at least the first priority) was finishing the nursery.

We decided to use the smallest of the three bedrooms for the nursery.  It’s a pretty small space, but we’ve managed to make it work.

We painted the walls a pale aqua (Benjamin Moore’s Icing on the Cake).  The curtains and crib bedding are Sweet Kyla.  The crib and dresser are by DaVinci, ordered from CSN Baby.  Our Dutailier glider was passed on to us by our generous neighbours who no longer needed it… what a treat!

Our goal with the nursery was to create a room with some fun colours, without using a really boyish theme.  We’re really happy with how it looks so far and hopefully our little guy will like it too!

The only thing left to do is get some artwork for the walls.  We think we’d like to incorporate his name into the art, so we’ll wait until he arrives to choose something.