My Sliding Door: Prepare to Pine

Get ready to salivate over today's tour.  It's so good, I'm even game for a trade - something not even the million dollar one had me dreaming about.

The point of this series is to take a look at "what could have been," if Hubby and I hadn't dove, head first, into the lakehouse purchase, but had instead dug in our heels and waited until the timing was right for us.  This series peeks inside homes on Lake Superior that are for sale now, which is when we had thought we'd be selling the townhouse and moving lakeside.  So far, it looks like we made the right decision.  Even though today's home is certainly gorgeous, it's nearly double the price of our home.  Here's the tour, along with the commentary I blurted out the first time I laid my eyes on these stunning rooms.

Whoa, this place is huge.  That deck and dock are incredible.  Look how solid they are!!  Why is our dock so janky?

I could definitely park my butt on this beach all summer.  

I think the hardwood floor with slate tile runner is a little odd, but genius.  What a brilliant way to preserve the flooring by the entrance, without having to give up hardwood flooring completely.  But why, oh why, did they swag that light?!?

This is my dream living room!!!  This is literally the living room I have designed in my head!!!  Look, it's got TWO sitting areas: one planted in front of the tube (for catching up on Game of Thrones), and another beside the window, for lake-watching and s'mores-making in front of a roaring fire.  I hate that to watch our television, we had to position our sofa with it's back to the view.  Arg, I love this, it's perfect.  And that fireplace is beautiful as-is, no laborious brick painting required.

AND it has a dream kitchen?!?  This is just not fair.  Look at this kitchen: it's modern, but quietly elegant and sure to remain timeless.  The giant windows and stainless appliances are just icing.  Who in this city even has taste this modern?!?  I'd like to be their friend.  Never mind, I'd be too jealous of their kitchen.  I can't think of a single thing wrong with it.  I'd swap out the light fixture (why swag it?) and add some colour, but everything is just so lovely here.

In what looks like a custom home, why the need to swag so much?

They lost me with the ceiling fan.

What the heck, is this just a bonus sitting area with another crazy-good lake view?!?  I love this kind of view because it makes me feel like I'm actually in the water.  They really need a sleek white built-in bookcase and a comfy reading chair (or two).  It's wasted as it is right now.

Are those slate floors?  I covet slate floors.  The vanity lacks storage, but it isn't made of 80s oak, so it's a win!  What's with the fake flowers and bird cage?

I'm drooling over the slate-tiled walk-in shower.  The beadboard is also pretty, and the hooks on an old barn board are a cute, rustic touch that I don't even mind.  I'll ditch all of my mid-century mod and totally embrace modern rustic to live here.

Why does the second bathroom have such a different style?  This might be a vintage dresser turned into a vanity and, if so, that's a fun idea.  But I wish the other bathroom had a similar vanity because otherwise it makes it look like things came from the clearance section.  But hey, not oak.

Hold up. 

Is that a freaking plastic tub surround?  In a house this modern and chic?  Someone in this city is making a killing selling these. 

Hey, genius idea friends: shall we turn this into a drinking game?  Every time we see a plastic tub surround in a lakehouse tour we add a shot of Bailey's to our morning coffee.



Awesome bedroom with awesome view.

Second bedroom:

Third bedroom, with the tidiest baby in the world:

I'm not really a basement-dweller, so basements aren't how I get my jollies.  This one seems a little meh (drop ceilings?), but I have a crawl space that's five feet tall (we move around on wheelie chairs down there), so I really can't throw stones.  The drape behind the wood stove feels like a bad idea, but everything else seems just fine.  You can stand upright in it, so yay.

All of the commentary above was accompanied by enthusiastic shoulder-punching of the poor soul who first viewed these photos with me.  I got really worked up about this place - it's just SO good, and so unlike any other home I've seen for sale in the area, lakeside or not.

Do you love it? 

It just SOLD!  2200 square feet, .75 acres, three bedrooms, two full baths and one powder room, central audio system (!!!), and only twenty minutes from the city.  Sigh.  Our guess is that this home belonged to one of the many NHL hockey players Thunder Bay has produced, but we're only basing this guess on the homemade lake ice rink for the wee ones.

Hopefully next time I can show you something in our price range.  But the way things are looking, it might be an airstream trailer parked on a ravine.  I just read an article about the Canadian housing market and, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the housing market will continue to slow and the average home price in Canada will rise just 3.5% in 2014, and 1.6% in 2015.  Some of the sharpest declines will be seen in large urban areas like Toronto.  But in Thunder Bay, this weird little anomaly of a two-horse town, a 6.5% increase in housing prices is expected for 2014, and 4.9 is expected in 2015.  We'll continue to experience a listing shortage here for the foreseeable future.

With a Little Help From My Friends

I've been remiss in sharing some of the lovely features of my projects and home on other blogs and websites.  I used to share each one but then I worried that was a snooze for readers, so I began quietly filing them away on the press page, but then I realized that I'd rather share!  I want to be able to publicly thank these bloggers for the blog love, because it motivates me to keep on keeping on:

Cassie, of Primitive and Proper (a longtime read for me), asked me to partake in her "it's eclectic" home tour series.  I've been updating the lakehouse tour here pretty regularly, but it's neat to see the "before" and "after" photos of the lakehouse all together.  Click over to the feature to see!

Linsey, of Better After, was sweet enough to feature my velvet chair makeover, as was Apartment Therapy.  A lot of AT readers preferred the before (bugs and all), which I understand because the pattern was bitchin', but nothing beats teal velvet in my books.  A lot of folks jumped to my defense (thanks!), but one thing sort of irked me: some comments reveal an interesting assumption of readers who think anyone who submits a projects should expect "judgement".  I would argue that the purpose of blogs is not for people to get their nasty on, and say the kinds of things they wish they had the guts to say offline, but to showcase nifty ideas and makeovers.  I love seeing what other people do because it helps me see things in a new light (even if I'm just figuring out what not to do, because a particular makeover isn't my jam).  It would bring me no joy to tell someone I don't like their project (unless I felt I could add something constructive, like how some folks recommended a different kind of Danish oil than what I used), so maybe I'm just weird.  

But I was a chubby kid with glasses and braces, so no amount of snarking on my projects will do more than elicit a giggle.  It's a chair, people, calm down.

Speaking of Apartment Therapy, they also featured my cheap-cheap-cheap bathroom spruce, which - suprisingly - got RAVE reviews from readers.  Funny, right?  To me the bathroom is ho-hum and just good enough for now.  The chair is the real gem in my eyes.

Poppytalk did a round-up of summery Ikea hacks and included my upgraded Expedit hack.  This is another blog I've read for so long, so it was a real thrill to be featured!

This was awhile ago, but I'm still so tickled that HGTV.ca featured my framed agate art!  They are still packed up, and I'm deciding where I should hang them...

The style-savvy folks running EQ3's blog, Inhabit, chose me as May's blogger of the month, which is how I scored the sweet Eames Hang-It-All for the laundry room.  Pinch me!

This Saturday will be the first yard-saling day of the year for me, so I'm really looking forward to the weekend!

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Kitchen Progress: DIY Pantry Cabinet + Working Around the Weirdness

We've made some more progress on the kitchen: an open pantry has been built, shelves have been primed and painted, brackets have been installed, and shelves have been set on brackets and abandoned.  We just need to join together the shelf pieces and install them, finish installing baseboard and other trim (window trim is done though, yay), and then touch up some paint.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel!  Before we get to that "big reveal," I wanted to address some of the little issues we encountered along the way, and what kind of slap-dash, band-aid solutions we applied (this is, after all, just a temporary makeover).

First up, the piece of veneered MDF that was beside the fridge in the original kitchen:

Even after my Dad and I tore out the upper cabinets, it was still photographed loitering.  Why?  The flooring was installed around it so to tear it out would mean a little square of subfloor at the base of the cabinets.

We decided to keep the kitchen flooring because it's shades of cream, and a neutral enough pattern for it to work.  It extends into the front entry, laundry room and half bathroom as well.  To solve the problem, Hubby simply cut down the offending panel with a saw, I primed and painted it turquoise, and we installed the counter top right over it!

You wouldn't even guess that there's an extra piece lurking there (well, it's not fair for you to guess because you already know).

In the photo above (pre-paneling), you might have spotted the fan which had been behind the angled cabinet:

Aesthetic contentions aside, it didn't work.  This isn't new territory for us: the range hood in the townhouse didn't work either.  We've been conditioned to cook without one - when we browned meat, indulged in bacon (or burnt the butter), we just opened a window in the adjacent dining room.  Now that we have a window in the kitchen, we'll be fine.  With our phase II remodel, of course we'll install a proper range hood and make sure it works (dream big!) but for now we blocked it off with foam for insulation because it was drafty, and hid it behind the paneling.  What fan?

Sneak peek: shelves!



The next little thing was the pantry.  I actually didn't mind the pantry (to the left of the fridge) in the original kitchen configuration.  It had neat little pull out shelves for dry goods.  But it had the 1990s cathedral style door I hate, so I ripped it out too.  When demoing, it's really hard to stop. 

The flooring was glued up to this part of the cabinetry as well, so when we removed it the subfloor was glaring at me.  If you follow on instagram, you might have caught a peek of the pantry Hubs built (and how we burned the ceiling finishing it).



We started with a super sophisticated blueprint (which included a low shelf to hide the subfloor):

 And ended up with this! (Ignore the wood piece screwed to the side, that was a plan that didn't pan out):



The pantry is almost 8 feet tall and is constructed of two sheets of birch veneered 3/4" plywood, that is good on both sides (the sheets come in 48" x 96" sizes).  It was relatively simple to build and we did it without a table saw (man, we really need one though, because it's getting ridiculous).  For anyone who is curious, here's the how-to:

Using our detailed blueprint and the cut list software that Hubby found for the kitchen paneling job, he marked and cut the pieces using a straight edge and a circular saw (or table saw for you fancy folks!).  The unit is 24" deep, so the sides are simply a single sheet of plywood that is ripped down its length and trimmed a little at one end in order to allow the unit to clear the ceiling. 

Here's the circular saw we use.  Hubby originally chose a blade with a higher number of teeth to get a cleaner cut on the wall paneling and left the blade on for this job for the same reason.  He finds it cuts a little slower, but does not tear the edges as much.  To use this in lieu of a table saw we just clamped a straight edge next to it as a guide.

The shelves rest on braces (which are just strips of plywood) that are glued and screwed into the sides.  Hubs marked the locations and pre-drilled the holes in the side panels.  These holes are large enough to allow the screws to pass through without grabbing the first layer and sucking the second layer of wood in tight.  With all the pieces cut out and the side brackets installed, Hubby brought everything into the house for assembly (it's a beast to move when it's assembled).

For assembly, we put it together face down, starting with the top and bottom.  These pieces were glued and screwed into place.  As soon as the screws were tightened and before the glue set, we checked to make sure the unit was square.  This was done by placing a tape measure across the unit to opposite corners (two measurements).  We compared the dimensions and shifted the cabinet to get it as close as possible.  The rear shelf braces (the skinny pieces below) were then glued and screwed into place.

For a clever little trick, we used extra paneling for the back so when you glance at it quickly, you think you're seeing the wall behind.  In my eyes, this little feature makes it look less like a plywood box, but we didn't sacrifice stability by skipping the back panel altogether.  The back panel is just nailed into place using 3/4" 18 gauge air nails.  A tip for nailing things together is to drive them at alternating angles.  Even if the panel does want to pull off, it means that it will not slide easily.

Once everything was together and the glue had set, we lifted the unit upright.  This was only possible because the ceiling in the dining room is a lot taller.  As you can see from the image below, we did not leave a lot of clearance (intentionally).  The shelves were then put in place to check for final fitment (two needed slight trimming).  Edges were then lightly sanded to remove any sharpness or roughness.

We worked on this puppy late at night . . .

I painted it, but first we applied some wood edge tape to hide the visible plywood edges.  There is a heat activated glue on one side, so we just grabbed an old iron and ironed it on.

The tape was then trimmed to fit using a sharp knife or a proper edge tape trimmer.  We don't have a table saw, so do you think we own fancy tools like edge tape trimmers?  Nope.



The unit and shelves were then primed and painted with semi-gloss paint, and the shelves installed.  The shelves are screwed from the outside, to pull the sides together, and through the top of the shelves into the braces, to pull them down.  We pushed the unit in place and put three screws through the back into a wall stud to hold in in place.

It's a little imperfect but that didn't stop us from high-fiving each other and congratulating ourselves for having built something so awesome and functional and HUGE.  The minute we slid it into place, the fridge no longer seemed as prominent - which was exactly my plan!  I've decided that every time something is a little imperfect - especially if I've painted it white - I'm just going to refer to it as "cottagey," which is perfectly acceptable for a lakehouse like ours.  So this pantry is cottagey, and we love it.  I can't wait to add large glass canisters and actually buy things like flour and sugar. 

We still need to add baseboard to the wall, and in front of the pantry, because without that it's a little too cottagey, but it's definitely taking shape.  I wander out the garage every now and then and caress my boxes or Pyrex and glassware.  So close!

UPDATE: a little bit of baseboard trim and caulk makes the pantry look more built-in and finished:

The paint for the paneled walls and pantry was provided by CIL.  The colour is White on White (in eggshell for the walls and semi-gloss for the cabinetry).  You'll see more of the painted paneling soon!

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Hallway Perch

One of the things I don't love about our house is the compact entryway.  My dream house has enough room to put a substantial console table or bench, but I'd settle for enough room to turn around comfortably.



After we painted the hallway, replaced the lights, and hung some artwork, I started pondering furniture.  This is going to make me sound like I'm 100, but lately I've been needing a place to sit down while I put on my shoes.  It's not because I can't touch my toes, it's because Szuka loses her mind if she so much as hears the coat closet open.  While I'm bent over tying laces, which confirms for her that were are, indeed, going OUTSIDE, she often knocks me over with her zeal.  

I really like Sarah's fresh spin on the DIY tree stump table but we have a DIY to-do list that is a mile long and, truthfully, hacking away at a stump doesn't sound like fun.  When Natural Wood Decor approached me about reviewing one of their products, I immediately started pouring over their inventory of wood stools and end tables.  I thought a cute wood stool or table would be a perfect perch for putting on shoes, plus a handy place to set my purse.  When (if?) we have the time to make something custom for the space, it could be used in the living room for parties, outside on the deck, or even as a plant stand - I love hardworking, versatile furniture.  I liked quite a few styles, like (clockwise) the C-shaped wood end table, the oval drum shaped table, the wood balance table, and the inverted V mango wood stool (which was a close second choice for me, but I thought the wood was a bit to orange for our place).

Ultimately I chose the round zig zag wood table because it reminded me so much of Sarah's DIY version, but much more polished because this one has been hand carved.  It's made from beautiful, sustainable Acacia wood and is available in two finishes; I chose agate grey.  No two are exactly alike.

The grey finish, made from natural and non-toxic oils, is so pretty.  I'm also pretty mesmerized by the heart of the wood.  In fact, when I was paying HST at the Canadian Border Services Agency, the fella working the cash was obsessed with this table.  He was excitedly explaining to everyone else who worked there about how these are made, and what an art it is.  I wish he'd been enthralled enough to waive the HST. . .

Here it is in the hallway:

Because of your advice, I decided to keep the door for now but splash on a coat of paint - I am just waiting for it to be warm enough.  I was leaning toward orange but then I decided to go for my love: turquoise (no surprise there).  A cheery door will add some more personality to the space, and the grey-toned Acacia wood will look great against a vibrant aqua.   When you actually stand in the hallway, it's much more colourful because you can see the turquoise kitchen cabinets, the turquoise polka dot laundry room curtains and the hallway artwork. 

To the right, you can also catch a peek of our DIY kitchen pantry.  I'm very excited to see the lakehouse becoming more functional.

Disclosure: I was provided the zig zag for review, but was not compensated or encouraged to provide a positive review.  All editorial decisions, including which item to review, were mine because I'm bossy like that.  It is currently on sale for $204 with free shipping within the U.S.  For International shoppers, and residents of Alaska and Hawaii, Natural Wood Decor use Bongo International as a 3rd party shipping carrier.  To purchase, create an account with Bongo (info can be found here), and then checkout on the site using the address Bongo has provided.  I appreciate that they go this extra step to ship Internationally because I've seen so many shops refuse to ship outside of the U.S., or ask that the consumer arrange shipping.  Natural Wood Decor is celebrating their fifth year in business, so it's no surprise that they know what customers want!  Take a look at their blog, Verde Lifestyles, for more inspiration on green living.

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