A tour inside

Well, I haven't posted for... years. But here's a little peek at what it looks like inside. It's mostly done (no master bathroom yet, no stairs up the back, no window trim or backsplash tile). But we're loving living in it.

Floored

The carpets are in! All from Home Depot, which did a nice special on installation (flat fee no matter how big the room/house).

It looks fab. Now Stef and John are working on bathrooms, and... we might actually move in this summer!

Photo special

I have failed to post any pics for ages, so here's a whole bunch.

Coming in the front door


The kitchen (haven't decided on a countertop yet)


The dining area


The living room, with wood burning stove


View from the living room sofa-to-be


My office / kids' playroom, already being used as an office 2 days a week while Stef does Daddy Day Care!


Going upstairs, with skylight and new pony wall instead of balistrade


Freya's yellow room


Spare bedroom


Master bedroom (the bath will be moved!)


View from the 'library' on the main floor


View from the master bathroom toilet. Seriously.

Spring has sprung

But no grass has 'ris'. Sadly we're now months behind schedule (it was suposed to be FINISHED, inside and out, by the end of 2012. Ha!) But it is looking great. The kitchen is in -- black cabinets from Ikea. And we have some nice flooring for everywhere. For the record (sorry this is boring):

- Main floor: engineered click-together red oak from King of Floors (1000 sqft)
- Kitchen floor: tile from Ames, Burnaby. Discontinued 17"x17" black speckled. $2.50/sqft (80 sqft)
- Kitchen backsplash: tile from Factory Outlet, Burnaby. subway shapes. Italian white stripes. $4.59/sqft (24 sqft)
- powder room and laundry floor: tile from Factory Outlet, Burnaby. 13"x13" dark grey. $1.99/sqft
- upstairs bathroom: tile from Factory Outlet, Burnaby. 13"x13" light grey. $1.99/sqft
- carpet from Home Depot: 'city lights' deep pile for the playroom; light grey speckle for the upstairs. roughly $2.10/sqft

All I want for Christmas...

"Is for this @#"$ siding to be finished!" says Stef. Well, he gets his wish. The last nails went in on Friday, just in time for a very sunny Christmas eve, and it looks lovely. Nice one Stef!

All Freya wants for Christmas is her two front teeth -- and she's got them too (the bottom two that is). The little razor blades haven't done me too much damage yet, and though they made for a few restless nights and a lot of drool, they didn't seem to be too too painful for Freya either. She's eating a spoonfull of rice cereal a day now, and on Christmas the plan is to give her a little pureed turkey with milk. Mmmmm.

Meanwhile the interior is being painted -- a creamy white everywhere except a few rooms: grey blue for my office/playroom, maroon for the master bedroom, and light yellow for Freya's room.

And the exterior world has also gone a lovely white, white, white... there's about a foot of lovely powder out there, which makes it tricky to get the stroller around but very pretty indeed.

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you have a white one too :)

Going green

It has taken more than 2 months, but the siding is finally nearly done, turning the house from the white of Tyvak wrap to the much prettier green of our siding. This has the dual effect of making the house look like a proper, grown-up house, instead of a toy project, and also helps it to blend in a bit with the landscape. (It irritates us when people say it looks huge... we're happy for it to blend in a bit! Ironically it has just started snowing, so as the house gets greener the landscape is getting whiter). This has been achieved thanks to the hard work of friend Pete (a proper carpenter who usually designs kitchens) along with the helping hands of a handful of other friends and workers, and this nifty blue machine (pic), which I believe is called a cherry picker, but I call the big blue machine thingy.

Stef is taking great pains to do a good job, making sure it will stay waterproof, and that all the fiddly bits around the windows and roofline are done just-so. As a result it looks amazing.

All about Freya...

Some photos of Freya's first month of life. Isn't she adorable? We think so...