Turning a sow's ear into a silk purse......

So why would we have ever considered this tiny ugly house as a possible home?  Well......we had already sold our old Victorian home and were living in a quasi-apartment (a house that had been sectioned into three apartments of sorts)   We had originally planned on building a bungaloft which had been designed to our specifications - and some day that might come to fruition.  Unfortunately we lost out on both building lots to build our new house on.  It turned out to be a very good thing though, as there were perpetual water issues in that area that caused many flooded basements and very expensive solutions.
Desperate to get out of this claustrophobic apartment living, we were looking at almost anything on the market.  As I was doing drive-bys on the listed houses in our small town, I liked the look and position of this house on Boulton St.  It was only a two bedroom though.  Our realtor made the appointment and we looked at it at 4 p.m. and our offer was accepted at 8:40 p.m.  Wow.  It was conditional on us being able to put on an addition and that was confirmed the very next day.  And so our adventure began.

All I can say is wow.........

 The front entry had as much wood as you can find in a forest!  The previous owner's little dog had ripped parts of it out - which they had hidden behind strategically placed furniture.  Lucky for us, since when we ripped it all out, we found a myriad of electrical issues that took fifteen days to sort out.  It was an absolute miracle that the house had never burned down!  That's one of the down sides of do-it-your-selfers - a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing and can put following owners in harm's way or cause a   lot of expense in remedying it.  

A much more inviting entrance

The front half of the house is now not only safe, but beatifully re-done.  We wished we could have had the money to put in a new fireplace, but that just wasn't in the budget.  So we made the best of it with a total make over.  The colours for the whole house started with rugs from HomeSense.  I loved them then and I still love them eight years later.  That's something for me!  They have a large paisley print but in non-traditional paisley colours.  

The wee skinny door was the linen closet!

The past version of built-ins

This wall to the bedroom was so poorly constructed that you could push it back and forth.  So obviously this was ripped out and rebuilt and sound proofing installed at the same time.  Notice how none of the doors match?  What was that about - "if it's free, it's for me"??  

Instead of the closet, the antique clock has a place of honour

 After about three years of living with white interior doors, I was bored one February and decided to paint them.  The colour is BM, called Deep Caviar.  It's a charcoal/brown that is soft enough, but has wonderful depth.  Personally, I love it and have done the same in our current home.  Dave made and built all the trim and I painted every little bit, as well as all the walls and ceilings.  The blue on the walls did not look like that in real life.  It was an experiment with a new metallic BM paint and didn't live up to it's look.  Very disappointing.

The wee home office

 The fridge needed a back and we also needed a place for the phone and bills - a.k.a a home office.  So we managed to tuck it into the back wall of the fridge.  It also has a fabric covered magnetic board and lots of storage for all kinds of paper products that are necessary to life.  Who ever said we were going to be a paperless society in the near future was dreamin', because I think that was about ten years ago.  Anybody out there with significantly less paper?

The original 1940's kitchen

After the gut....

We're back in business

There was not much to the kitchen after the previous owners moved out.  They had had a big freezer on the right side under the windows.  I just can't imagine how anyone could function in something that was lacking in so much storage or counter top space.  I know that there are people who can create amazing food in kitchens without much to them - but that's not me.  I'd rather be outside than cooking or even worse, cleaning up after.  So I definitely need a kitchen that's going to inspire me to want to be in it.  Beauty, function, storage - luckily we could create our own.  Never having had a galley kitchen before, I wasn't sure I'd like it.  It did present some issues due to the fact that it wasn't a dead ended kitchen, so the highway effect was the major drawback.  You couldn't beat it though for ease of steps.  Everything was just two and a half steps away from each other.  I loved it.  I had more storage in there than I do in my current kitchen.  I've had to put some things (well, actually a lot of things) in the basement due to lack of space.  That's the difference that drawers make, versus doors on the bottom cabinets.  I'm looking so forward to that change - and that's happening in just a few short weeks - yay!

  



Dave made all the crown molding and kitchen cabinets as well, in our shop down the street.  That made it terribly easy for us to keep the mess out.  All he had to do was bring it on site and install.









 





There's a pantry at the right front of the picture and all the food storage was contained there.  A built-in mini wine rack and then a straight run of eight feet to the stove.  Heaven......  We did a stainless steel back splash that was custom made and then set a glass tile border in the middle of it to add a bit of colour.


 

I chose pull down blinds in an organic woven fabric.  I hid the mechanisms with left over fabric from the living room curtains, creating the effect of a wide stripe valance that was Velcro-d into place.














When someone was watching t.v. in the living room, or the kids were already sleeping, we could easily slide the door closed.  During the day, the frosted window panels still let light through.









So that concludes the first part of the renovation.  More to follow of eradicating the ugly........