Bathroom mashup ...

What do you get when you mix classic cottage with 1980's tacky and then throw in some Star Trek? Our bathroom! This is one of the rooms in the house with fantastic potential, but at the moment is suffering from a terrible identity crisis.

This, we l-o-v-e about our bathroom. Classic cottage kitsch. There is tons of storage and awesome little shelves built into the frame around the mirror. A nice touch is that the shelves are slightly hidden, so items can be stored or displayed, but aren't in full view.

This, on the other hand, we don't love so much. It's the 1970's disco gold-fleck counter top. It, I'm afraid, is on the endangered species list. It does get a temporary reprieve however because the "big" bathroom renovation stuff is not high on our priority list.

These, however, are not so lucky. We absolutely can not stand the 1980's faux bronze antique fixtures that adorn our bathroom. And unfortunately for us someone in the past had managed to find the COMPLETE matching bathroom fixture suite, I mean everything from toilet roll holder to towel bar, to cabinet hinges, to door knob ... I could go on, and on. As I mentioned, the bathroom was a longer term project on our renovation roster, but largely due to these babies I am giving the bathroom a little makeover to tide us over until we can do the serious work.

The walls and vanity will be painted and new hardware installed. Mike has already taken down the triple sliding glass doors on the tub. While very functional, they looked somewhat dated and the fact that the girls almost pulled them off the track on more than one occasion quickly slotted them for removal. I will probably also find a new light fixture. While this futurama Star Trek number is not ugly, it's not really in keeping with the cottage feel that we are going for.

In the long term, the bathroom will see a new ceramic or marble tile floor, the tub insert will be removed and replaced with a free-standing, claw-foot tub and the linen closet will probably be taken out in order to open the space up more. I don't expect to see any of that work to happen in the next year though.

While the cat's away the mice will ...

install light fixtures? Yep. While I was visiting some family with the girls Mike was busy at home getting some pest-free, um, I mean uninterrupted work done. He ticked a lot of small jobs off of his list, but for me the most exciting one was light fixtures in the kitchen/dining area.

He also started digging a trench around our foundation. Remember I said we hadn't had any nasty surprises yet except for the lovely red shag? Well, I spoke too soon. The brainiac who re-sided the house last time actually put the lowest run of siding below grade, as in buried under the dirt. This is another of those "who does that?!!"s. Mike was aware of this when we bought the cottage and had always planned on digging out around the foundation wall, pulling off the lower pieces of siding and properly finishing the foundation with insulation and parging up to an appropriate height. Unfortunately when he was digging his trench in the front yard he discovered this:

That would be rot in the sill-plate, the piece of wood at the bottom of the exterior support walls that sits on the foundation. It's not a catastrophic find by any means, but it will be a tedious job to chisel out the rotten areas and replace them with new wood. Thank you idiot installer who did the siding improperly.

Bargain bonanza!

Mike and I scoped out some light fixtures for our kitchen at a local home building store. While we aren't quite ready to do any major work on the kitchen they were on sale for 20% off so we thought we would grab them. We are trying to do our renos on a budget - not el cheapo, but trying not to break the bank either. The store only had two of the three fixtures me needed in stock and had to ship one in from another location. When I picked them up today the clerk apologized and said that she could only give me the fixture from the other store for the price that the other retailer had it listed - $74. OK, no big deal. But then she says, "but you got the full clearance price on the two from our store." They were $75% off! Cha-ching! So we got three light fixtures for our kitchen - two pendants and a larger main fixture - for a whopping $169! (HST included!)

Oh, and here's what they look like ...

We thought they had a bit of a retro-cottagey look. We do plan on toning down the chrome finish though.

The two pendants will go over my new counter island/bar section. Well, it's not totally new. It is an existing bank of cabinetry, but it previously had uppers over it (this picture was taken before we took possession).

The day the ceilings came down so did the upper cabinets. It made a huge difference. The kitchen now has a much more open feel to it and the counter space is so much easier to work with. The counter top will be widened to better accommodate stools on the far side and the old cabinets will be re-purposed and used in our future mudroom.