The Family Room Becomes the Den

Progress. The fireplace is drywalled in. Final sanding and it's ready for priming and painting. We'll trim the corners and the rest of it out to give it a panelled look, probably cloud white for the background and the trim colour for mouldings. You probably can't see them clearly, but there are speaker wires coming out of the walls above each of the end table lamps for the rear speakers of the surround sound system. Installed a new electrical outlet in the center of the ceiling, and a ceiling fan identical to the one in the living room. It didn't go off without a hitch, however. You see the downrod between the ceiling mount and the motor housing? It's supposed to mount to the motor housing by sliding into a bore on the top of the housing, and then you install a steel pin through holes in the bore and the downroad to connect them together. Except the downrod supplied had no holes. !&!&^%!. Being as stubborn as I am, and not wanting to take everything down, package it up and take it back to the store, I took the ceiling fan in the living room apart so I could measure the size and location of the holes in it's downroad, and then drilled the new one out. Needless to say I was pissed.





Here's a view of what I now call the den looking toward the back yard. Eventually the plan is to mount the tv on the wall above the sideboard to make room for a center speaker below the tv. Baseboard work left to do, trim around the new garden doors, install 4 pot lights, move the heater in the wall to the left of where the fireplace was/is....... you get the picture.

The cats now have the nicest room in the house. Where's the justice in that?

Family room fantastic!

The floor is in and Mike has started putting the finish on it. One coat done, two to go. It's a completely different room! From this ... To this ...

Caution, construction zone!

Things have been hopping here. We have been ripping out and rebuilding and things are looking good. We finally feel like we are starting to make some progress on the inside of the house. For this spring/summer we are focusing on the main floor.

One job that needs to be done is to move the washer and dryer downstairs. They are currently occupying the bedroom that should be Maia's. The laundry will be incorporated into our first floor utility room.

To get things rolling a few weeks ago I got out a pry bar and hammer and did the demolition in the utility room. I pulled out all of the old wood panelling and took down some shelves. Mike carried on with the tear out in the back hall adjacent to the utility room. This will become our mud room. Here are some before and after shots.

Work in the utility/mud rooms is temporarily on hold now. The flooring for our family room has arrived. Mike has two weeks off of work and is going full on with the family room renovation.

So far Mike has torn out the old ceramic tile floor and underlayment. He opened up the floor and levelled some uneven joists. He reinstalled the sub floor and added an extra layer of plywood on top. Tomorrow he hopes to start installing the new wood floor.

While the floor work was going on we took advantage of some nice weather and had our new garden door installed in the family room. I was sooo happy to bid our horrible old sliding patio door good riddance! It was hard to open and was continuously freezing up in the winter.

Mike had to temporarily suspend the floor installation while the garden door was being put in, so he went to work on ridding us of another problem feature in our family room - the fireplace. You may remember glimpses of the dated 1970's fireplace in the family room pictures near the end of this post. We were initially hesitant to cover it over, but now we are happy that we did. As it stood the fireplace was not functional, with the chimney needing repairs. It is also a major source of heat loss in the room and it spanned almost an entire wall.

Mike has coverd the brick with foam sheet insulation, built a stud wall, filled it with more insulation and covered it with drywall. Further repairs will eventually be made on the exterior and the chimney possibly covered with a beach rock veneer to coordinate better with the cottage feel that we are going for.

The family room is looking fantastic and we can`t wait to see the floor go in.

Next steps will be the installation of a ceiling fan and lighting, wiring for the tv to be wall mounted and the speaker sytem to be hooked up. Then we will decorate!

On an other exciting note, when the installers came with the garden door we also had them bring the first batch of our new windows (that will find their home in the porch area) and our new front door. Here is a sneak peek ...

One man's trash ...

The last time I posted we had embarked painting the family room. I am happy to report other than a bit of the mortar on the fireplace we have finished de-sauna-fying our back room. The walls are now lovely white tongue and groove planking with the trim and fireplace a sand colour.

We are now waiting for our flooring. Sourcing out flooring provided us with a bit of a dilemma (it would have cost us half as much to purchase Chinese-made pre-finished hardwood), but we followed our hearts and went with the re-milled barn board flooring from The Timeless Material Company. We want to keep the rustic feel of the cottage and we are really excited to be using recycled materials while achieving this look.

In the mean time we've been visiting the Sarnia location of the Habitat For Humanity ReStore in search of a few little gems for our crooked cottage. We have not been disappointed.

First we bought this door to replace the one that currently exists between the kitchen and the family room.

Mike purchased this dresser that he plans on transforming into an entertainment cabinet. It will be modified to be incorporated with our (non-functioning) fireplace in the family room. The tv will sit on top while the componentry and dvd's will be housed in the cabinet. It is a "Peppler" of Hanover piece from before the time that the company was Sklar Peppler.

My personal favourite is this little cabinet. I'm sure most of you will think I'm crazy (I know our kids do) but I love this piece. Initially Mike didn't want it. He said we didn't have room. I assured him that there is a space for it in the livingroom and that once restored it will house some of our less frequently used china. I also told him that it was all I wanted for my birthday and it only cost $20, so what could he say?!

It is hard to see from the picture, but there are some cute little carved details on the front and a built-in silverwear compartment on the top. I plan on repairing the veneer, rebuilding the interior shelves and then painting the piece. Since the veneer is quite badly damaged in some areas and it doesn't appear to be a high quality wood I am not going to attempt to patch and stain the cabinet. Rather, I will paint it to go with our new kitchen cupboards (once we have them picked out).

There is a label on the back of the china cabinet that identifies it as having been built by the North American Bent Chair Company of Owen Sound. I did some research and discovered that this business was established in 1892 and closed its doors in 1945. That means my little ugly duckling is at least 76 years old.

We are excited by our vintage finds, especially because we have managed to discover some pieces that were manufactured in the area. We really like the idea of bringing some local history into our home.

Sayonara sauna!

Happy New Year! With our trip in December and the holidays it has been quite a while since I've posted. Unfortunately with all of this going on not a lot has happened in our house since the last update. However, with things getting back into a regular routine work has started once again.

First, we have a new fireplace. Literally the morning we returned from Florida our fireplace man called and told us our new unit was in and asked if he could come the next morning to install it! Yikes! While Mike had removed the old propane stove he still had to smash out the old brick hearth and build a platform for the new insert.

We now have a fantastic new propane fireplace. We still don't have the surround or mantle built, but here is a peek at what we've got so far.

Pre move-in.

Tear out.

Prep work.

New fire box.

We still need to build the surround which will be clad in this cultured stone. It is very close in look to the actual beach stone that was dug out from under our house.

The mantle will be built from an old barn beam that we have acquired. Unfortunately it is currently wrapped in plastic and not available for public viewing. You'll all just have to wait for the final reveal!

The other project in progress is the family room. In a previous life it was actually a hot tub room! The walls and ceiling are completely lined with tongue and groove cedar boards. Except for the fireplace the room looks like a glorified sauna. We absolutely cannot stand it any more so I have begun the tedious job of painting it out.

Since we are going for a cottage/beach house look the planking is perfect. The room just needs a lot of cosmetic help.

Because of the grooves in the planks and the primer I need to use I am having to brush on the paint and can't use a roller. It has taken me two days to do just the first coat and this is excluding the fireplace and the ceiling. Fortunately Mike has started to help paint the ceiling. Since I'm not the tallest person this is an enormous help and a great relief to my aching back!

Even at this early stage the difference is dramatic. I can't wait for the finished product. There will be hardwood floors, garden doors in place of the dated slider, new lighting and a refacing of the fireplace.

Taking back the porch ...

Originally the front of our house was a screened in porch with an upper balcony. At some point the structure was closed in, the old exterior wall removed and the area made part of the interior space of the cottage. While it adds to the square footage and allows for year round enjoyment of the beautiful view it was an awkward addition. The area wasn't really part of the livingroom, but it also wasn't defined as it's own separate area.

For a while Mike and I considered returning the structure back to a porch. Fortunately sanity prevailed and we came up with a solution that will allow us to enjoy the view, separate the space from the livingroom and utilize the area twelve months of the year ... the indoor porch ...

Pre-move-in (ie. previous owner's layout & stuff)

In keeping with our "recycled" home theme for the crooked cottage, the windows across the top of the interior porch wall were purchased for $25 from an architectural salvage yard. Some more pieces of finish trim need to be added and the whole unit painted. In the spring the front of the house will be reframed to accommodate a full wall of narrower, side-by-side windows, similar to the look of a screened in porch. Oh, and flooring. We need new flooring. That is the last hold out patch of the nasty, dirty old carpet and it has.to.go!!

When's a door not a door?

... when it's a wall.

Up until this week our house had three doors (not counting the patio door). Besides not being very energy efficient it was confusing. On more than one occasion we had visitors knocking at the back door - which wasn't completely their fault since the "back" door was at the end of the driveway, facing the road. Our "front" door is closer to the front of the house, but on the side ...

Well there is door confusion no more. This week Mike closed in the back door. Once we build the garage this part of the house will become the end of a hallway anyways, so we aren't really losing anything, except an extra draft.

In the spring the front door will be moving around to the actual front of the house. What a crazy concept!