The truth is, I’m not great at the business side of things so that’s what puts me off building up the soap business. If it were just a matter of making more soap, I’d be all over that. It’s fun, creative and relaxing for me – but doing paperwork, keeping track of expenses and inventory makes my brain go numb! I can’t stand it.

I got a new camera for Christmas, so I think I’m going to take advantage of that to post here and share my photos more often. There are blogs I read all the time that are just about everyday things, and I find them interesting. Maybe someone out there would be interested by my everyday life- can’t imagine why, but you never know, right?

This past week I’ve been making soap for my wholesale customer, Carberry Soap Company in Pickering, Ontario. I make round olive oil soaps for them in several different scents: Unscented for babies or sensitive skin, Lavender, Citrus blend, English Rose and a Patchouli soap made with a blend of veggie oils including hemp oil.

In other news, we got new blinds for the kitchen windows and it’s all looking very ‘finished’ now. There’s just one small thing to complete, which is some final painting around the small window over the sink. Somehow the small jobs just get put off, but I’ll get to it soon. We also need to touch up some of the caulking under the crown molding where it has cracked.

The spring after we moved into the house in 2005, we had the tiny bathroom downstairs completely gutted and renovated. We ended up with a beautiful, big, very WHITE shower stall. It looked lovely- for about 5 minutes. Then I started to realise that there is no good way to keep white tile grout clean long term. It just doesn’t happen. Nothing I did worked and I was sick of scrubbing and spraying with bleach solutions. After a couple of years it never looked white again, no matter what I did. Recently I was searching aimlessly online for a solution to this problem. I actually considering having the floor of the shower ripped out and replaced with a solid surface of some kind. I gave up on that idea pretty quickly when I found out what would be involved and how much it would cost. Thousands of dollars and basically an entirely new shower stall= not happening!  I tried to scrape out the grout myself using a dremel tool but I soon realised my knees weren’t going to take it, let alone my back. So- the shower sat unused for months during our kitchen renovations because we had to deal with that first. Luckily, we have 2 other showers in the house.

Eventually, I came across the website of Laurentian Tile & Grout. Looking at the before and after photos on his website, I realised I had found my answer! This miracle worker replaced all of the grout in the shower walls and floor in 2 days and it looks completely brand new again. The new grout is an epoxy that is guaranteed not to stain. Check this out.

Before: (this is clean, by the way)

After:

Yeah, I’m pretty happy with how this came out. Totally worth the cost.

I was just reading that last bit over and realised that I sound like a late-night infomercial!

“But wait, there’s more! If you act right now, we’ll rip out the grout in 2 showers in your home for the price of one!”

Just to the right in this photo is the rest of a very large (23′ x 17′) room, so the kitchen itself is closed into this very small corner by the wall and the peninsula. It is a crazy design, but I guess kitchens were built only as work areas back in 1980. Too bad only one person can work in there at one time. It was a constant frustration for us. You want to see me going insane? Making Christmas Dinner in here! Ugh!!

In the next photo you can see the peninsula with the bulkhead or…what is this called?…soffit? above it. I think there were originally cabinets attached there. Wow, can’t imagine how closed-in the kitchen must have felt when they were still there! Don’t you love the old-newspaper-looking wallpaper? (because oh yes, we want to draw attention to these useless empty soffits along the ceiling- pfft!)

So, I spent years planning and designing what I dreamed of having in this room. Ikea has an online planner that lets you lay out cabinets and appliances to get a feel for how things would fit and how it would look. I tried a few different combinations, but I knew I wanted an open kitchen with a huge island. This is the basic idea I had:

It’s hard to see in the ‘before’ photos, but the original kitchen had a pocket door opening on the wall where the stove is in this plan (into the dining room), and another one where the wide doorway is shown here farther along that wall (leading into the hallway). We decided to take out both pocket doors (they no longer functioned anyway) and make one wider opening instead.

Over the years, we made a few changes to try to make it a bit more comfortable. We changed the light fixtures, painted over the wallpaper and the walls, and changed out the ugly old light switches and plugs. We replaced the old stove and fridge at different times when they died on us. This is how the room looked the night before ‘demo day’. Of course, it’s empty because we had packed everything away already.

In this next photo, you can see that our contractor had already taken out the small pocket door and widened the opening. This was to make it easier to unload the furniture before demo.

On the wall to the right in this next photo, you can see one of the three windows along this wall. It’s a very bright room with lots of natural light. (and little Molly who always seems to get into the photos) but this was in the evening with not much light for photos.

Finally- DEMO DAY! Here’s me taking a few (pathetic) swings at the hated bulkhead/soffit box-thingy over the peninsula. It was nice to get the chance to wreck that thing finally:-)

Here’s how the room looked after the first day of hammering, ripping and sawing. The huge hole in the wall is where the other pocket door was removed. This has become a solid wall, as later photos will show. The dining room became our makeshift kitchen area, but at this point it was a disaster area too.

Next came the electrical work, so lots of drywall was torn out, and the new section of wall was framed in. You can see where the ceiling is being cut up to put in the new pot lights.

By Day 4, all of the flooring had been torn up. We were conflicted about taking out all of the hardwood floor, but we couldn’t come up with a good way of saving it without having an odd transition into the kitchen area and we didn’t want to try to match the wood since it has yellowed quite a bit from light exposure, and there were areas where the finish had worn off (under my office chair from the casters- guilty!) We decided to go with cork for the whole room, which of course added more $$ to the job…like everything does!

By Day 11, we had new drywall all over the place and things were looking much cleaner.

Day 16 and we have a new sub floor and the footings for the base cabinets are being installed.

Base cabinets and the island!

Day 28 was pretty exciting- granite countertops! Oh my gosh the island looks MASSIVE!

Then we had a visit from the plumber and we’re back to having running water. We had a filtered water tap and a soap dispenser added too. We love our new pull out sprayer faucet and the new sinks!

Subway tile backsplash with glass tile accent strip. I agonized over the grout colour and finally decided on Delorean Gray. It turned out exactly like I wanted:-) Just enough colour to show the pattern but not too graphic.

The new cork floors! I love the pattern- it’s impossible to see crumbs:-) We decided to go ahead and replace our foyer flooring at the same time. Renovations are like a virus, once you get started they keep spreading!

Foyer Before: Ugly, damaged parquet floor:

Foyer after: Lovely cork, yeay! It feels so good on the feet too.

Here’s where we are today (Day- oh sheesh, let me count- yep, it’s Day 58!) We have some of the cabinet doors and our garbage and recycling pull-outs are installed. The crown moldings are up (but not yet painted) and we are still waiting for the island cabinet doors, the cabinet and drawer handles, the glass fronted cabinet doors and glass shelving, the baseboards and a fresh coat of paint on the walls,  the painter to finish the ceiling, the electrician to install the ceiling lights…then I get to decide about window coverings.

Along this set of base cabinets there are two which we decided to change to drawers. Base cabinets drive me crazy- I can never find anything wayyy in the back of them. The drawers are built but not yet switched out.

The upper cabinets on either side of the sink will have glass fronted doors, glass shelves and interior lighting. We decided on a cross-hatch patterned glass to disguise the cabinet contents a bit.

The hood fan still has the protective paper on it and it still needs the cover for the chimney pipe. Stuff is all over the counters because we aren’t using the cabinets yet. Hate the mess but we are LOVING the kitchen already!

Later today I think we are getting the cherry doors installed on the island and all of the cabinet handles put on. At that point I think I will feel safe enough to start bringing everything back in and organizing the cabinets. We’re on the home stretch- more photos to come soon!

If you’re like me and you want to see all the nitty-gritty details and lots more photos, I’ve been photo blogging the whole renovation since we started in a set on Flickr. You can check it out by clicking HERE There’s an option there to watch them as a slideshow but then you don’t get to see my rivetingly interesting written commentary

Comments welcome!

I painted the room Cabbage Patch green a few months ago and I love it. Don’t you just love paint names? Sometimes I think the colour names influence my choices. My living room paint is Warm Muffin and my dining room is Ryegrass. The only one I think I didn’t like the name of was the bathroom– Candlewax…reminds me of earwax- eww!
Anyway, I digress…now it’s time to find some nice storage boxes and open bins to use on the shelves to make it look all tidy and Ikea-Catalogue-ish.

Update: High praise came from my 16 year old son Devon, who said “hey, the laundry room actually looks like a laundry room now”

This first photo is how our house looked just before we bought it back in Jan 2005. It was built in 1980 and very little work seems to have been done since then! It’s a great neighbourhood, but there are still so many things we would love to change. Unfortunately, finances are such that anything other than painting and needed repairs aren’t likely to be getting done any time soon. To make me feel better, I like to remember everything we’ve done to it in the past nearly-4 years. I took lots of before and after shots, but had nowhere to post them, so maybe I’ll start here.
One of the first projects we took on was taking part in the Home Smart program through BC Hydro and Teresen Gas. We had our home’s energy efficiency tested, then certain upgrades were recommended. We replaced all of the old aluminum framed windows and patio doors with double vinyl, and replaced the exterior doors, added weather stripping, caulked around the fireplaces, doubled the insulation in the attic and crawlspace, bought a new higher-efficiency furnace and installed bathroom fans. The new windows and doors made a huge difference in the look of the house, inside and out- and are much better for security (anti-shatter glass, UV protection, etc)
The second photo was taken after this work was done. We also bought wood blinds for the big front windows and took out some of the big plantings in the front garden. The last photo I took today. We had the exterior painted last summer and we are so happy with the colour change. It’s called Tuscan Hillside. (I like paint chip colour names and I usually remember them!) Our neighbours said it looks like a new house! We also had the gutter downspouts replaced which doesn’t show here, but looks so much better. The old ones were peeling and falling apart.

You can see our little Pink Dogwood tree near the end of the driveway. This was a wedding gift from my mom that we planted Summer 2005. I hope to see it grow tall and covered with blossoms one day. For now, it gets about 20 flowers in the spring.