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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

2.3%

*warning: This post is a little wordy. I promise to work on that in the future.

I am seriously excited to tell you all about the progress on my (ok fine, OUR - Karl has been awesome and is completely embracing the idea -how lucky am I?!?) "Thirty before Thirty" list! So excited in fact, that I do not even know where to start! Eeek!

A little background info:
In 2009/10 we (and by that I mean mostly Karl, his dad and my dad) did a lot of boring but necessary upgrades to the house. Insulation and such. In the attic in the basement. This was a) quite costly b) a huge time suck c) very very messy. As much as we hated that, we do enjoy the impact it has had on our hydro bills.  Not to mention how much we love having a guestroom and an awesome playroom for Hudson. Oh and then there were all the govn't rebates, which actually paid for about  60% of it all. So really, I think we did OK! :)

But now... back to the future:

As you can probably tell from my list, 2011 is going to be the year of "prettyfying" (Karl's word - not mine) the house.

2011 - I love you already!

Thus far, we:

- Emptied out the office closet, sorted all the various bits and pieces of paperwork that's been piling up and got rid of one of the desks (the blue one).

- In order to empty out the office closet, we needed to find alternate storage for winter coats, sleeping bags and our formal wear. The coats and sleeping bags will now live in the laundry room closet. It used to have some pretty dilapidated shelves, so we took them out, installed a hanging bar. The coats and sleeping bags will stay there, the formal stuff will be moved into the bedroom closet once that is finished. For those of you who are familiar with the peculiarities of our home - I am speaking about the smaller closet - the one that used to have a chimney.

(For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about... When we bought the house the basement had this awful 4' x 7' fake stone covered, wood burning fireplace. If you looked up the chimney, you could see the skeleton of what once upon a time used to be a bird. And judging by the size - I am thinking a crow or something equally large. It was fantastic. When we (again, I mean mostly Karl) took it down we found that the wall in behind it was completely scorched. So was the part of the chimney flue that was IN our bedroom. Oh ... and... did I mention that in order to have a chimney, they geniuses who constructed it took simple sawed through a floor joist, causing my living room and bedroom to sag towards one another? I digress...sorry)

- Since we were already in the basement, Karl also managed to get all the post reno junk and tools out of the cold cellar, build a work bench for his shop and we are currently working on getting that back into working order.

It's amazing. We now have tons of "new" storage space and I can not wait to claim it all!

But wait... I am soo not done yet!

We also started installing some new shelving in the office...

That's right, my goodness... I completely forgot to mention my trip to IKEA this Sunday. The one where I spent the equivalent of the GDP of Somalia (go ahead, google it ... I was shocked) in under an hour. Yup, sure did! My poor little car was so weighted down on my way home I did not think I would ever make it up the escarpment!

So yes, new shelving! I will be posting pictures soon, I promise.

For now, here is the inspiration shot.

I think I am supposed to give credit to all my photos. You can find this item here

AND ... here are our brand new (to us) RECOVERED! CHAIRS! Fresh from the upholster ...



I am smitten.

Also, in other list related news - Karl and I had a date on Friday night! We went skating at the outdoor rink in front of Waterloo square and then out for dinner - and those are all the details you will get!


Oh yes, and I baked something new(ish) on Saturday. I may just need do a separate post about this later.

By my calculations, that means I am now 2.3% done with my list. But you know what? I am really looking forward to tackling the remaining 97.7%.

Hoping everyone's new year is off to a great start,

M

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mirka, I have somewhere the pictures of that hideous fireplace and dark, dingy basement. It will be interesting to post before and after pictures. I'l sure e-mail them to you.