C'est finis

We're still waiting to hear if we passed the rental appraisal, but we're pretty much done phase 1 of the renos. There are a couple things that need attention - we haven't thrown out the mirrored doors as the resort may want them, so they're still in the bedroom, there are some outlets still to change and we have a couple pictures to put up. Phase 2 will be a complete overhaul of the bathroom, new kitchen counter, backsplash and cupboards, bedroom ceiling.

And with a few final touches:
Here are the befores and afters:

Foyer

Bedroom closet

We celebrated the finishing (and also arleen's bday) as well:

And that's it! We'll mount the tv and get rid of the tv table, and probably paint the coffee table black and antique it. A lot of things like that, and bringing up some new furniture, we can do while it's on the rental program and use the place on a free night.

We're really happy to be done before summer, because we look over the golf course and the lake and it would be rather depressing to be cooped up doing work while watching everyone else having fun outside. We'll probably add some new pics and video next week after a couple more things are added and update the rental info.

Big thanks to: Grant for his design help, advice and inspiration; Tomas for his help in removing the carpet and hanging the light (too bad it took you 6 hours to get home in the snow!); Don for helping to stock the bookshelves with a variety of interesting reads; Arleen for the great "lucky" frog and wooden propeller clock; and Dave for his great work with the foyer wall, potlights and closet doors.

The Home Stretch

Several weekends of blizzards this winter has put us a month behind schedule. So we were pretty excited this past weekend thinking we were in the home stretch with just a few easy jobs to do. But of course, it didn't work out that way.

We didn't even get a picture of the crown moulding and beadboard in the kitchen where the fluorescent lights used to be because the lack of straight edges and 90 degree corners was maddening. Needless to say, no one was in a mood to take pictures of it at the time. But I do have an in-between pic with the potlights around:

Kitchen lights before:

Kitchen lights in-between (pic is flipped as it was taken on mac):

We have new black hardware and painted the old brass door hinges to match. Jay's installing the door catcher things here:

After I painted the quarter round, Jay measured, cut and put it down all along the baseboards and dapped the nail holes:And remember our big plans for a stone wall in the foyer? It finally happened. Over the plywood that covered the hole that Dave made to make room for the fridge that didn't fit, we put up concrete board, and also reinforced the plywood so it could hold up hundreds of pounds of stone:The stones were a lot more difficult to put up than I thought. They're individual, cultured stone that you lay one at a time and you have to try and make it look random while stacking them as tightly as possible. So it's like putting a puzzle together but none of the pieces fit. 2 solid days of working at this: Frustrated, I even had Jay outside cutting some tiles because I needed some custom sizes:

So the foyer before:And foyer after (colours are a little bright due to the flash):

And Jay did an excellent job on the flooring throughout. Here are just a couple pics:

Hallway looking to the living room before: After:

Showing a bit of the foyer wall before:

After:

Looking into the bedroom before:

After:

You can see the crown moulding and beadboard on the kitchen ceiling in this pic. What you can't see is all the dap that Jay used to fill all the gaps. Jay also changed all the light switches and outlets from brass to white. We still have to decorate, put up more pictures, clean, but we should be done next weekend. Bathroom and kitchen still need work, but that will be phase 2.