Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

We’ve been in zee blue house for 4 (FOUR!!!) months already. We’ve made some small changes in that time (a few I haven’t shown you yet…sorry!) and it truly does feel like home. BUT, we have a looong way to go to make it into the dream home we imagine it can be.

When we bought this place, we came into it with a “slow and steady” approach. We were taking on a slightly larger mortgage and almost doubling our property taxes, so we were trying to be cognizant of our wallets. Now that we’ve had a few rounds of bills, we have a much better sense of what we did in fact get ourselves into, and where we can reasonably afford to spend some cash. And so, we’ve decided to start on some of our larger projects a bit earlier than originally planned. I am SO, SO excited about it!

So, what are our plans now? Maybe gutting the kitchen or any of the 3 hideous bathrooms? A deck? Fence? Fixing our death trap front stairs? Nope.

Windows, doors, flooring, trim. Boom. (And, please don't mind some of the photos in this post. I know they're worse than usual. A lot of them are iPhone pics shot hastily in the middle of doing other things...SO MUCH TO DO!)

We’ve chosen these things for a few reasons:

When we toured the house, we noticed immediately that the windows needed to be replaced. We believe they’re original, about half of them don’t open, and the seals are broken in almost all of them (so the glass is foggy). Replacing windows is no one’s idea of a good time (hello spending $$$ on something you don’t necessarily notice), but I’m actually pretty stoked. What we chose and why is a post for another day, but I think the new windows are going to be bee-you-tee-full!

Along the same theme, our front door is literally falling out of the opening. It’s also the most heinous blue (it looks grey below, but the trim in the above is a more accurate colour...inside and out) and opens really awkwardly onto the landing inside (it swings the wrong way and basically dumps you into a post between the stair cases). It has always been near the top of the list to be replaced, we just never made it into the store to pick it out.

We also want to replace the interior doors. They are...not nice. This was one of the first things we did in our old house and it totally changed the feel of the entire place, so I can’t wait to do it again! I’ll outline what we chose and why in another post.

Now, flooring might seem an odd choice when the flooring we have is technically OK and we have other big projects ahead of us. This is absolutely valid, and flooring was kind of the last thing on our list for this round (and honestly, the window quote determined whether or not it would be done). It’s kind of complicated to explain why we’re doing it (other than shiny new floors = YAY!), but basically it just makes sense when we're doing doors and trim now and would be replacing the floor in a few years anyway. Oh, and the floor squeaks and creaks like crazy, which can’t be fixed without pulling it out. So…new flooring it is!

Finally, trim. Duh. With everything else going on this is kind of a no-brainer. And, like the doors, we’ve done this before so we know what a dramatic effect it can have. We’re going with something a little different this time, but I think it will really modernize our home.

Everything we're doing here goes together well, and will contribute to the professionally finished look and feel that we're working towards in this home.  Lots more to come and decisions to be made, but demolition has begun and we're feeling really good!

This explains so much...

The entire time we've lived here, I've thought that the doors and jambs, and some of the trim, looked...sticky. Or something. I can't really describe it, but they just don't look clean even though they are. They photograph fine, but in person, well, it's another story.

A little while ago, I figured out why.

You see, it appears that the doors and jambs, and the trim that hasn't been replaced, were pretty much all originally that gorgeous blue that still adorns our front entry way (for now...). I cannot imagine how many coats of primer and paint it took to cover all that, but it was obviously done a number of years ago since the white is now starting to wear away.

With so many layers of paint on them, it's no wonder the doors have an almost "sticky" appearance. Just one more reason I can't wait to replace them (more on that soon)! The brass doorknobs make me twitchy, too.

I could write a novella on the various issues I have with some of the finishing in this house, but the summary is that our beloved blue house has had a number of owners over 25 years who all apparently had very different tastes and very different skill levels when it came to home renovation. As a result, we have different closet pulls in every bedroom, a couple of doorknob styles (which we have only made worse, I admit, by updating the exterior locks), and at least 2 styles of baseboard. I *think* most of our casing is at least sort of the same... but then there's also the issue of colour. Blue, light blue, light green, green, and white. Oh! And dusty rose in the basement! It's everything but professional looking, which is at the core of every renovation we do.

That's all a story for another day though. In the meantime, I'm just going to continue glaring at the brass doorknobs and the peeling white paint around them and count down the days until they hit the dumpster (foreshadowing...).