Week 2 of our DIY Home Renovation - Where There Is Smoke...

I started week 2 of our DIY home renovations by removing the doors and trim to clean and prep them for my painter who was set to start then too. Clorox is a fantastic cleaning tool by the way. It was oddly satisfying to spray the Clorox on and watch the smoke stains run off the doors as it slowly dripped down the door. It was easy to tell which doors were in a heavily smoked area because some of them came cleaner than others, but most of them were salvageable. It’s my goal to keep costs as low as possible on this renovation so I’m planning to reuse as many of the existing house features as possible, doors included, even though I think they have a very dated style, same as the trim. I was hoping a coat of paint would help bring them closer to the 21st century, just the primer made a huge difference so when they are done getting painted I think it will be mission accomplished.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/469ec5_acef8db68e0f4a6cafdd7448898322f5/360p/mp4/file.mp4

This was probably one of the most disgusting yet satisfying projects I've ever done. But lucky for me, they did come clean!

At some point during the design phase my crazy head decided that I wanted to make the house look like a new build, aka. a cookie cutter, but I also like the idea of doing something a little more personal. I decided I would make the house feel more like a home by doing something a little more custom in each room. So far, I have plans for the upstairs bathroom, the girls room, and the main living area. The living room, dining room and kitchen will be completely open (hopefully).

My accent wall design

I wanted to do a feature wall in the dining room, something to add colour and texture to the room to balance the completely white kitchen I’m hoping to install. Several hours on Pinterest later browsing accent walls I learned that anything goes in terms of patterns, but I tend to like more abstract patterns. One trip to the hardware store later for some MDF boards and a roll of green tape and my feature wall came to life. I purchased 3.5in x 8ft pieces to make the project go faster but it would be cheaper for you to buy a large board of MDF and then cut it into smaller strips for the wall. It took longer to tape the lines on the wall and move them around 7,842 times than it did to cut the wood and nail it to the wall. I opted not to silicone the edges (mainly because my painter painted it before I had the chance) but it probably would be a good idea to do that so dust doesn’t build up behind the boards.

I have a bad habit of jumping all around when I do renovations which makes it seem like I’m not accomplishing anything. After we finished setting up the feature wall we did a lot of little projects, like removing vanities and washing machines from the house. Thanks to Marketplace I was able to recoup a bit of my reno expenses by selling some of the existing house features which I appreciated.

I did make some big design decisions this week: Deciding on the location and size of the walk-in closet lifted a huge weight off my shoulders! I planned out the hallway in the basement and set a location for a closet in Grayson’s room. I decided a kitchen downstairs wasn’t feasible and laundry upstairs wasn’t either and a few other odds and ends. But, in terms of getting things done, installing two new light fixtures outside, which I’m pretty sure was the only other thing we accomplished, didn’t seem like a huge win – but at least we aren’t moving those boxes out of the way 100 more times before we’re done with our renovations.

Accent wall with the MDF, all ready for the painter next week!

A lot of the big projects were started by my painter, Kidd Paint Services, who determined that it would be cheaper for me to pay him to remove the stucco from the ceiling than it would be for him to paint it with special paint for smoke damage. I was thrilled to hear that I HATE stucco! I think it looks awful, I think most textures ceilings do but stucco is the worst and it’s impossible to clean. I’ve seen Thalia eat berry flavoured apple sauce and manage to paint her highchair, the surrounding table, living room furniture, floor and ceiling red. I didn’t think removing the stucco was an option, but I am so incredibly glad it’s gone! Call me crazy but it’s money well spent, or rather saved. The ceilings were scraped and painted this week which felt like a huge victory! But it also meant that we couldn’t make a lot of mess inside or I would end up with dust marks all over the ceiling, hence why I was setting up lights outside and playing this or that with exterior paint plans, I think I am going to paint the front window and screen door black, thank you for voting on that poll for me!

I spent a lot of money this week too because I ordered my kitchen cabinets, purchased from Castle Kitchens, a local supplier out of London, Ontario. After having my kitchen projects cancelled not once, but twice by a different installer and finding out Castle Kitchens was able to supply the cabinets for half the cost of the other cabinet company I was talking to, and in less time, I finally felt like my dream kitchen was possible without breaking my renovation budget. I’m very excited for the cabinet to be delivered later in August!

Visually, the house didn’t change much this week, but, we set ourselves up for progress on a lot of different projects next week which I think is equally as important even though my impatient mind keeps saying we didn’t get anything done. Maybe next week will bring more visual and olfactory progress, the more paint and primer that find their way onto my walls, the less my house will smell like smoke and the happier I will be!