Home and Garden Diva

You are here: Home / Archives for Home Improvement / Renovating

We really need to finish our living room and dining room reno

by

Do you ever watch home renovation or design shows on television? Sometimes when I find that I have some spare time on my hands, usually on Saturdays, I take some time to watch some of my favorite design or home reno shows.

I find TV shows like Flipping out, Marriage Under Construction, Homes Inspection and any DIY shows interesting.

My husband and I are home renovators. Well … stalled home renovators. We currently have an unfinished living room dining room ceiling and need to finish the wall (currently open and covered by plastic!) that runs between the basement stairs and the dining room. Its been that way for oh .. about … four or more years.

I did say we were stalled in our home renovations didn’t I?

The only good thing about taking our time renovating is that I’ve had tons of time to come up with renovating and design ideas and plenty of time to see what ideas have stuck through the years. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to put in the all glass brick wall between the basement stairs and dining room anymore … you see what a few years to think about things can do?

I’m hoping we’ll put on our renovating hats again in a few months .. I really want to finish our living room dining room. All we really have to do to finish the reno job is put up the tin ceiling, maybe add in monte carlo fans in the living room for cooling, put up molding and baseboards and then work on some new furnishings – possibly.

Are any of you stalled DIY’ers? If so … what did you do to get yourself motivated again?

I’m starting to wonder about my new neighbors

by

I’m really starting to wonder what’s up with our new neighbors. They’ve owned the house next door to us for close to 6 months now and they still haven’t moved in.

If they were doing constant renovations I could understand why they haven’t moved in yet, but they only seem to come to the house lately every three weeks or so and only for few hours.

When they first got the keys to the house they started rewiring the house. The house has or had old Knob and Tube wiring and he’s ever so slowly replacing it with up to date wiring … but 6 months? Whiles he’s been doing that, she’s been stripping the paint off the molding in each room and the front door.

From the look of things I think they’ve punched holes and done work in pretty much each room of the house … so even if they did want to move in their house is in no way ready to move in. LOL

Maybe they’re feeling a little in over their heads? I mean, when they first bought the house they were coming by to work on the house every weekend – All day Saturday and Sunday. However, like I said above now they’re only coming by once every three weeks or so for a few hours.

I’m actually starting to wonder if they’re really going to move in or if they’re starting to think of their house as an income property. I sure hope they don’t rent it out. We’ve had it with living beside renters!

Anyway, they did come by earlier today for a couple of hours and they had something with them that looked like I don’t know … one of those commercial pumps. I have no idea what they’d be using that for, but that’s what it looked like. Gee I hope they aren’t about to tear out the plumbing or pipes and the pump is for the flooding they’re expecting. LOL

What would you think if you had new neighbors that barely came to their new house in the 6 months that they owned it? I think it’s kind of strange.

I don’t think I could live through a huge home renovation

by



I’m watching a show on TV about a contractors point of view on big home renovations. The show goes over a renovation from start to finish.


The episode I’m watching is about a couple that wants to add an addition to their house, expand the house out over their garage and put a pool in their backyard. Big job. Naturally they’re having problems with their neighbors over the trees of all things.

I think if I was going through a reno that big I’d be dipping my face in the best wrinkle cream I could find each night … so stressful! So expensive. Plus whatever estimate a contractor give you at the start of a job always goes up. I’ve heard you should plan for at least a 25% increase … so if you’re getting a renovation done and a contractor estimates that it will cost $100,000 to complete the job be prepared to end up paying out $125,000 or more.

I’m so glad we were able to do most of our own renovations ourselves. Of course when it comes to renovating our kitchen we might have a professional come in and do half the work. We’ll see.

Have you ever gone through a huge renovation .. like tearing half your house down and adding an addition? How long did it take? How much did you age as you worried over things?

New neighbors coming soon

by

It looks like we’re going to have new neighbors soon. Yeah … I hate having an empty house beside us … of course I hated our bad renter neighbors even more.

The couple who bought the house came by earlier this evening. I think it was their first visit since the house officially became theirs. I have no idea when they might move in though – maybe this weekend.

If they’re like us, they’d be smart to keep their current house, apartment or condo for another month and start some renovations before they move in. That’s what we did and it’s amazing how much we got done in one month! We knocked down three walls, tore out all the carpeting and sanded and then put polyurethane down on the wood floors, painted every room of the house, got electrical work done to replace all of the old knob and tube wiring and had some new duct work done.

Wow … I think that’s everything we did .. I might be missing some stuff but that’s the main things we did to our house in a month before we moved in. mostly on our own!

I was rail thin by the time that month was over … oh and we each only took two weeks off so we also worked for the last two weeks of that month.

I had to drag my husband kicking and screaming into our big home renovation. I think he would have rather sat back and taken a enzyte, but in the end he really liked getting his hands dirty and had a feeling of accomplishment at how different our house looked once we were done .. oh and it looked good. It’s all open now instead of having tiny little rooms on the main floor.

Anyway, I have no idea if the new neighbors will renovate or not – but knowing the house they bought as well as I do, I think it would be in their best interest to renovate as the house needs work.

I just hope they’re nice. We have to share a driveway and considering the driveway is only about 10 feet wide our houses are very close together .. so the better we get along the better for all.

Do you ever go to open houses just to look around?

by

This past weekend my husband and I decided to go to a few open houses being held at some homes that are up for sale in our neighborhood.

We aren’t thinking of selling our home or moving – not just yet anyway … but we were curious as to how the home owners had renovated and decorated their homes.

One open house we visited was in a home that’s very similar to ours in design. Like us – they had knocked down the walls in the entry hallway, and the walls separating the living room, dinning room and main hallway in order to create an open living room dining room area. The only big difference was that they hadn’t taken out hte stairway hallway as we did. We felt that our main floor looked a little bigger or more open than the home we were in.

Another house that we visited was totally modern – stark white walls, white furnishings and just about everything stainless steel in the kitchen – including the Hansgrohe faucet. The house was a little too modern for my tastes, but I enjoyed looking around.

My husband and I are still renovating our home. Actually our renovations are stalled … so visiting a few open houses might have helped motivate us to finish our renovations and gave me some ideas for how we might decorate once we’re finally done our renovations … well if we ever manage to finish!

Do you ever go to open houses to just look around and get ideas?

Meta

Tags

basement bed bedroom clean cleaning clutter dog exercise family fitness flowers friends Furniture garden Health help home house husband ideas Kitchen laptop Lighting money Music neighborhood neighbors party plants room Shopping sick skin spring summer tips tired Toronto Travel tv Vacation walking warm winter work

Pages