best room in the house

After a long week at work I'm crossing my fingers tomorrow brings what I consider to be the perfect Saturday morning: we have nothing to do, the sun shines into our basement studio, and we hang out in our pyjamas making things.

The flood and our collective eagerness to use the basement has kept me from taking any decent "after" pictures of the finished reno. Fabric, supplies and taped up drawings quickly took over and we still haven't brought our rug back in (the poor thing is rolled up in the garage until I figure out how to clean the groundwater out of it). If you look closely you can see the wonkiness in the flood-damaged floor, but it no longer bothers us - we've decided to live through another spring/summer before replacing it so that we can feel confident last summer's flood truly was a freak occurrence.

Basically we love this space. Everyone has their own desk, I have a cutting table and a fabric stash I can see, and if one of us goes down there it inspires others to follow. Milo has been drawing more, Sadie types up her stories and we generally make a mess. The mess might not be photo worthy but it's just what we hoped for way back when. We have the room to be creative and if the sun shines tomorrow, that's exactly where we'll be.

sneak peek

Ahhhh. We are practically there - I've got very little painting left to do, we've taken off the floor protection and we've even moved down a piece of furniture. Oh, and the kids had an improv ballet session on the empty floor tonight. Basically we're super excited.

This moment hasn't come without some panic and craziness, but I'm prepared to blame that on too many hours spent painting. You see, when we first uncovered the floor in the hall (photo on left) my heart sunk. All I saw was red in the finish, a tone that I didn't expect to be there. Which then led me to question my wall colour choice. On a section of wall that was finished, and at that point finishing anything was a milestone (because after jinxing myself, I did paint the bathroom 3 times, just like my kitchen debacle, but this time in oil.) I have a bad habit of obsessing about colour and caring way too much about getting it just right. Luckily I have an amazing husband who knew exactly how to save my sanity. While I was at work he brought down a carpet, a bookcase and my favourite mushroom lamp so  the space looked lived in. The floor is just one part of the space, and truthfully it isn't red at all. I was just going bananas at the wrong time. And since that night (only two nights ago!) I have finished up the main room and done the one risky move - a black wall. Thankfully the unanimous vote in the house is that we all LOVE it.

Thanks to a quick March Break road trip to Montreal (aka, "escape painting") I managed to knit up another pair of socks for Sadie. I used the Two-Tone Socks pattern in Debbie Bliss Simply Baby but with larger needles and yarn. The yarn is Koigu Kersti which seems to be holding up really well in the other socks I've made for her, plus she loves the variegated palettes. I grabbed a Berroco variegated skein for another pair of socks while we were in Montreal, at a great yarn store called Espace Tricot. Highly recommended!

Also highly recommended is Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child. Oh, wow. I loved this quiet, fairytale-esque novel - and not just because the cover is amazing or that the description of hand-sewing a snowflake embroidered wool coat had me swooning. It is just a charming story, wonderfully told.

For more knitting and reading stories visit today's Yarnalong.

getting there

This image shows how I wish our days were being spent right now. We'd be playing around with display items, putting an inspiring little doll into a vintage light fixture then standing back to debate if the placement was right.

But of course, that's not the case (though we did do that).  Here is where our focus is - in the big giant mess in our basement. It's getting to be a very exciting mess though, and it's amazing what has happened in the last 10 days. The floor is down (and protected under all that cardboard), the drywall is done, and there are light switches that actually turn lights on and off! We painted all last weekend, much to the kids' dismay, and I'm currently procrastinating about heading down there again right now. Back when we signed the contract somehow taking on the painting component ourselves seemed like a good idea (truthfully I quite enjoy painting) but it's a HUGE job and I'm not very fast. Every wall, every piece of trim, every square inch of ceiling and awkward closet needs at the very least 3 coats of paint. Our goal this weekend is to get the bathroom and laundry room done because we actually have things that need to be installed in both. I've agonized over paint colours for the past few weeks and hope the final decisions are decent (my kitchen debacle is fresh in my mind). The bathroom will be Benjamin Moore's Balboa Mist and the laundry room Collingwood - which are side by side on the paint chip, and both on the warm side of gray. I used Collingwood in our upstairs bathroom but this new bathroom has carrara floors and (soon-to-be) countertop so I hope the slightly lighter Balboa Mist works. Ceilings and trim are all Para's Cameo White, the same white everywhere else in the house. I'm nothing if not consistent.

Soon, soon we'll be moving in and starting to make things again. But for the foreseeable future, I'm glued to a paintbrush.

exhaustion

If there is one thing this renovation has taught me, it's this: we are not renovation people. We're homebodies. We find joy in being comfortable, in coming home to a relatively clean house that's quiet. So now that we're past the 5 month mark with this project, it's getting harder to let the noise, the dust, the daily, important questions not affect our moods. How do people go through renovations over and over again? And when they do, how do they accomplish anything outside of the reno? (I'm not knitting or sewing as much, let alone blogging.)

But there is good news - the end is in sight! These photos show progress, like having stairs again and having my own laundry machines back. Drywall has been going up all weekend and there is tile on the floors of the bathroom and laundry room. We're getting there. 

Sigh.

progress

With the temperatures dipping, we're pretty happy to have the basement closed in again. Little did I know that cinder blocks and concrete would be so exciting! Up until last week the new room under the porch was still roof-less, meaning we were living with a big gaping hole that let cold air in. This room is also where the new boiler will be housed so obviously we've been without a heating system and it's still not up and running yet. We are keeping somewhat warm with space heaters, but we're waking up to morning house temperatures of 12 degrees (55 degrees F). Brrr.

Now, I'm sure these two photos are incredibly boring but I can't help it. That concrete floor is almost 3 feet lower than our old basement! We can see where the walls will be! I want to sneak down there all the time just to stand and imagine the final space (and sneaking is hard, it involves climbing down ladders through windows and getting very dirty in the process). The two photos are from either end of the space but they show the one compromise we had to make: raising the floor of the bathroom and laundry room to deal with our problematic sewer connection. We were connected through the back of our house - very unusual - so the plumbing itself wouldn't allow for an 8' ceiling. These two rooms, and the landing outside, will have a 7'2 ceiling. But I kind of like the look of the raised step even in this rough state.

We're still weeks and weeks away from a finished space, but it's so satisfying to see it coming along. And of course we're breathing the biggest sigh of relief knowing that the underpinning is over and the house never fell down.

Phew.

moment in time

Two weeks into the reno and it's full-on chaos. I'm not yet used to having a toilet on the front lawn, but the resident "mighty machine" is a fun sight every morning.  It's the big gaping hole that's a little bit disconcerting.

This is that big gaping hole up close. Scary, right? I mean, that's the front door up there, a mere 8 inches from nothing. Not to mention I took this photo from a place previously underground. So weird.

Amidst the jackhammering and dust, I had a day alone in the house (well, alone from my family, not alone from a construction crew). With that time I finished up a quilt for Sadie. Now that Sadie and Milo share a room, I've been trying to make them similar-but-different bedding. I had a double size red corduroy quilt in storage so I cut it in half and then made a single patchwork border along one side. I chose different fabrics and binding to suit my lady and little guy, but the red is a nice, warm similarity. If their room is ever tidy I'll try and take a photo of the finished quilts. But that's a big if.

This is the wee work corner I have set up in Milo's old bedroom until the basement is finished. What you can't see is that I share this small space with the cat litter. Oh well, small sacrifices. At least during this chaos I can still make.

Only 4 and a half months to go.