My Dad built your house. My sisters and I remember our time spent there.

I immediately invited her to come over for coffee to see it as it is now. Because WHY WOULDN’T I? It’s her Daddy’s house! We’ve done so much work in the ten years that we’ve been here but I have before and after photos and, man. If I had the chance to walk through the house where I learned to walk and to talk and where I learned that un-anchored swing sets were a very, very bad idea, I would leap at the chance. She wanted to come over but work schedules and vacation schedules and life schedules meant that it didn’t happen until this past Tuesday.

She showed up and was immediately blown away by the similarities and differences.

The house when we bought it:

And after (there’s a railing on the upper deck, now):

(And the hot tub is sunk and we gave away the primary-colored jungle gym.)

(YOU GET THE IDEA.)

Her: “This is a trip.”

I love to point out all of the work that we (Read: Matthew) have done because he has poured more hours into this house than I could ever count. Handmade floors and cupboards and rooms and furniture and so much more. He is a brilliant craftsman and I can’t help but sing his praises. Showing it to someone who knew our house before the updates was extra fun. She would point out where things used to be and even noticed that we’d moved a set of windows from upstairs to downstairs.

We’ve poured over ten years of work into this house to make it our home. We refinished the exterior of our house (Seen above) (More here). We gutted our master bedroom and made an en suite that I love. We made a craft room for me that might just become my writing room one day. We’ve renovated our Great Room twice and apart from the never ending cleaning up after meals and snacks, it’s my favorite room in the house. We have a laundry room that may be in the basement but is pretty darn cozy, even if I do say so myself. We created a little girl’s room that my baby girl loves. He’s built me a table and is working on building us a bed.

I mentioned our neighbor, John, and she smiled again. John had made hope chests for her and her sisters one Christmas. She and I (and the kids) headed to John’s and it was a fun visit, indeed. The best part was where John, ever the hunter, had a bunch of skulls lined up behind the bar in his Man Cave. Nathan guessed every! single! one! Daddy was pretty proud when we told him about it.

The end of the night saw Matthew taking a break from building our bed to come out and talk about the house. She told us that her Dad’s intent had been for this house to be the one where his kids grew up and where his future grand kids came to visit. Life didn’t work that way but it felt good to tell her to (bring her Dad out to see the house, and) tell him that we have the same dream. God willing, we will be here until the end of our days.

We have these three little people who are thankful for our home every day.

If we could stay here forever and see their kids (!) come to visit it would be exactly what we’ve always dreamed about.

A little over a year ago I had a dream. A dream of a Big Girl Room for this only girl of mine. Before I could decorate this ROOM OF WONDER I needed to have a starting point. Being the stellar interior designer that I am (Ha!) I thought that I needed to start with the bedding. It seemed silly to me to start decorating a room if I did not have bedding on which to base my color palette. Those who have been around for awhile might remember the post about my dreams for Emily’s room. I chose some Pottery Barn bedding and went to town on customizing her room. The only thing that needed to be updated was to remove her crib and bring in her Big Girl Bed.

(And also, install a ceiling light. To this day, it is a light bulb hanging from the ceiling. I want to buy a chandelier, but Matthew already bought a dome (aka BOOB) light. WHICH IS STILL NOT INSTALLED OVER A YEAR LATER. I might just have to “surprise” him and get someone to install a chandelier for me. AHEM.)

When I went to Vancouver for the BlogHer meetup two weekends ago, part of my pitch for leaving Honey with the kids for the weekend included me going to IKEA to buy the Big Girl Bed.

I had originally wanted to buy this Hemnes bed (to match her Hemnes dresser and side table):

Isn’t it ADORABLE? It is also $499. Matthew thought it was a little bit much to pay for a bed but told me, “You do what you think is right.” Sigh. It really was hard to justify spending that much on a bed when there was another perfectly adorable white Hemnes bed for less than half of the price.

I was a good girl responsible grown-up and brought home the lower priced bed.

Last Sunday (Father’s Day!) I had Matthew disassemble the crib (because I don’t know how) and take it out to the shop attic (His Dad made it, so we won’t be giving it away). Honey hauled all of the boxes for the new bed up to Emily’s room for me. I told him to leave me with the power drill and go watch some golf or something. I had everything under control. Except I didn’t. I dropped one of the side slats on my foot. And possibly said a very, very bad word. At least I was alone. He helped me get the basic frame together and then I completed the task (Allan keys and brackets and wooden slats, oh my!)

Here is how it all turned out:

The photo frames look all crooked and warped, but I can assure you that they are lined up and straight. I even used a measuring tape and everything. GO ME.

I asked Emily if she wanted to pose on her bed for me.

I’m loving the hands placed ever-so-nicely on her lap. This NEVER happens.

She might be a LITTLE EXCITED ABOUT HER BED. She has told me that it’s her “Happy Place,” that it’s a “Princess bed,” that she’s “A BIG GIRL NOW!” She uses that last line all of the time, whether she is on the toilet or wearing new clothes I had to buy her because she keeps growing. “I’m a big girl now!” She has also been known to throw out the, “Because I’m the baby” statement about the same amount of times. She knows how to work whatever angle works best in a situation. Have I mentioned that she is my girl?

I told her to go ahead and do what she loves to do best on her bed (besides sleeping):

My baby is no longer in diapers and now sleeps in a bed. She’s growing up at warp speed. This is both wickedly awesome and horribly frightening, all at the same time.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: I want to freeze time. Right here, right now.

I highlighted our laundry room a few weeks ago and now that another room is pretty much complete (Go Honey!) I thought it was time to post some more photos.

First, a bit of history.

We moved into this house in the spring of 2001.  The first room(s) we thought we would tackle were the kitchen and living room combo.  We live in a split-level house (Ah, the Seventies) and so the kitchen and living room are basically on their own floor.

In the kitchen the cupboards were oak, the floors were a nasty linoleum and there was a half-framed-in “dining room”.  The living room had blue carpet, faded white walls and some nasty Seventies paneling on the wall dividing the two rooms.

I would scan photos from then but I have more than enough photos lined up for the second makeover we gave the room.  Plus, I’m lazy.

We (Matthew) knocked out the wall, built new cupboards and an island. We (again, Matthew) turned the big picture window in the front of the house into a bay window with a window seat (because I had always wanted one of those).

The kitchen/living room combo was now referred to by the official name of The Great Room.

When we first moved here we were huge fans of log homes and so we made the walls look like they were the inside of a log home. After the room was complete, I forbade Matthew from doing the same to any of our other rooms because HOLY WOOD OVERLOAD, BATMAN.  We have done wainscoting or wood beams in the rest of the rooms.

My dislike for the wood on the walls grew greater and stronger until I finally beat Matthew into submission Honey saw my vision and agreed with it.

Before I show you the “Before” photos (which are technically also “After” photos), I need to make some disclaimers as to the qualities of the shots:

1. I was walking out the door to spend the day at the beach with the kids when Matthew mentioned that he was going to start tearing the wood down.

2. I was too lazy to set up the tripod and take proper shots because the kids were yelling at me to HURRY UP AND TAKE THEM TO THE BEACH ALREADY.

3. I thought I would add my wide-angle attachment (which I had never used)(which also should have be used with a tripod), and though I could see that the shots were not what I wanted it was TIME TO GO.

4. You will at least get an idea of the old look.

Without further adieu, BEFORE:

That would be Matthew hiding behind Emily’s Little People doll house. That would be Emily on the coffee table.  Matthew built it when we first redid the room but he now hates it and plans to build a new one.  We will be offering it for free, to a good home.

Take a look at the hearth.  The blond brick has to be the most boring shade of brick on the planet. The fireplace itself consisted of some nasty brass and you can’t see from the distance, but there were hummingbirds etched in the glass.  Classy.

I should point out that the wood floors are not laminate.  They are real wood from a mill, which Matthew installed, sanded and coated.  He is amazing.

Here I am panning left.

Wood!  Wood everywhere! Nobody light a match!

Now the view into the kitchen:

That’s my Step Mom at the sink.  She was visiting to help with the kids as I left for BlogHer the next day.

Are you ready for the “After” photos?  I sure was. Here they are:

Matthew bought special paint and covered the brass.  He also had new glass cut.  Good-bye, hummingbirds!

Matthew did all  of that rock work himself.  The alcove that was on the left before was completely useless. We bought the shelves from IKEA and Matthew built the rock around it.  I need to add a few more photos on the right shelf above the wood but I always take forever to decide what should be included.  I do know that I will hang a large print off this year’s family photo above the chair on the left, once we actually take said photo.

Panning left, we have the bay window.  Nothing has changed, but thought you’d like to see the pine trees out the window.

We really do live in the sticks.

Panning further left we get the armoire that Matthew built.  It houses a TV and other electronics.

I haven’t finished deciding what to decorate the shelves with, but you get the idea.  The walls on either side house 16×20 prints of this photo and that one.

Panning left again we have the dining area. The chairs are from Pier One but the table is the oak one we got as a hand-me-down from Matthew’s parents when we moved here. He just bought the wood to build a new table. Woo!

The final pan to the left:

I think that the whole room is so much brighter now that the paneling is off of the walls. It also seems less tacky.

I also think that the room finally lives up to its name of The Great Room.

My favourite part is the hearth.  It is no secret that I hate winter, but with the fire roaring, a good book and a hot cocoa (or hot toddy) in hand, I think I could be pretty cozy there.

Care to join me?

(Helpful hint: Do renovations BEFORE you have kids, if at all possible.)

Our house is about 90% complete.  In each and every room.  The only projects that are 100% complete are the exterior of the house (Flickr set here), my craft room and our ensuite bathroom. Emily’s room is done except for the big girl bed and the light bulb hanging from the ceiling.  I’m still pulling for a chandelier but Honey wants to use a boob light (not a literal boob, just one of those dome lights with a center circle).

This summer we made the commitment to get rooms FINISHED.

(We also decided to redo our great room (Kitchen/Living Room). It was the first room we finished.  Fast forward seven years and our tastes have changed. Figures.)

The most recent room that we can add to the “completed” list is the laundry room.

Last fall while doing a Foto Friday post about White Balance, I used a photo of our laundry room to illustrate the different White Balance settings.

Nothing says “clean laundry” like a concrete floor and drywall dust.

Fast forward to today and the room is FINISHED.  As part of the “finishing” process in our house, we are trying to hang photos on the wall.  So that our house looks like some people might actually live in it.

When Matthew got the room completed I asked him what photos of mine I should develop.  Some photos of scenery?  Or maybe of some pretty flowers?

He had an idea that was far more brilliant than I could come up with.  He thought it would be cool to get the kids to have a mud fight and take photos of it.  Let me show you the end result of the room itself along with the photos we hung on the walls.

The photos on the wall:

(Is it me, or does he look sixteen in this photo?)

See?  BRILLIANT.  I married up.

More laundry room:

As I was taking the following photo I thought that it might be a good idea to clip a piece of fabric around the shelf to hide the stuff underneath.  I’ll get on that. Give me a year or so.

The photos:

Our nasty deep freeze (Hey! It was free!):

The photo:

There are more mud photos that I plan on hanging in the kids’ bathroom.  It is the next room on our “to complete” list.

I am pretty happy about how it all turned out. I am also happy to be married to a man who can renovate like none other and can make pretty much anything out of wood.

I am also happy to have one more room done. For now.

Our house is 95% done. What that means in English is that each room is 95% done. It looks good, and is livable, but is missing that final 5%. You know, light switch covers, the occasional baseboard or light fixture.

Sigh.

There are TWO rooms that are 100% complete. My craft room (I love it) and our ensuite bathroom (I love it, as well). Oh yeah! We also redid the siding (Flickr set here) on our house two summers ago.

I have gotten tired of feeling almost complete in our home. Our house did not looked like anyone actually lived here, save for the toys scattered everywhere and the Goldfish crackers strewn about the floor.

I have started doing things in order to make our home looked lived in. I have bought picture frames, developed photos (Gasp!) and actually HUNG THEM ON THE WALL. Go me.

I posted a little while ago about the bedding that I ordered for Emily.

It came shortly thereafter and was even better that the photos. The sheets were completely worth ordering the second set of bedding. Woot! My sister Mel is buying the extra quilt and sham for her daughter. The cousins will be matchy-poo.

Before we left for Mexico, we spent a couple of days getting the kidlets settled in at Grandma and Grandpa’s.We headed with the kids to IKEA in the hopes of finding a dresser for Emily. Her room was in dire need of a makeover.

Do you like the navy blue towel hung over her window as a black-out blind? We are all class over here. At least it is a step up from the summer I put aluminum foil on Graham’s window to keep out the sun. I think the neighbours assumed we had a grow-op going on.

We found the Hemnes dresser and I fell in LOVE. It went into the cart, as did some really pretty sheer curtains. We wandered through the As Is department, and the Hemnes side table was in there for 50 PERCENT OFF. Honey said it was up to me to decide whether or not we should buy it.

It went into the cart.

Last week, amidst the kids’ sickness, I managed to assemble the dresser. This weekend, Honey was kind enough to install some blinds I had bought as well as the IKEA curtains.

(Please excuse the lighting in these photos. The weather was not cooperating, but I was excited about the progress.)

The cradle will likely have to go into storage in the attic once we put her into a Big Girl bed. The move to the Big Girl bed will likely happen the earliest of: 1. She can crawl out of her crib and 2. She is FIVE.

What?

Here is the dresser all set up.

The side table will go beside her future bed.

Her Big Girl bed will be the Hemnes bed, because I am ALL ABOUT the matchy-poo.

Picture it with the above Pottery Barn bedding. Mmmmm…

Honey wants to build her a bed, but I want him (Master Craftsman that he is) to build OUR bed first. We have a King-sized mattress, complete with a sweet pillow-top. It is GLORIOUS. It is also ON THE FLOOR.

We are buying Emily’s bed. I am putting my foot down (softly).

Here is the rest of the room.

Did you see the pillow sham? SO CUTE.

Her room is not finished, but I have a dream…

1. I have more white frames and plan on filling them with more of my favourite photos of Miss Emily. Like this one.

The colours match her room perfectly to boot.

2. The current light fixture is a BULB hanging from a ceiling. I suggested a chandelier. Matthew told me that he had already purchased a “Boob light” (dome light). I told him that I thought a chandelier was feminine. He told me that boobs were feminine. Touche.

3. I plan on painting the wall above the wainscoting a VERY pale pink. Like the “Pink Swirl” (bottom left). I had originally thought I would maybe paint the wainscoting white, but if all of the furniture is white, that might be a bit much.

4. I made that little “Emily” sign out of chip board. I was pretty proud of my bad self. Since then, I have seen what Ali has for Isabella, and have seen the work of Chelsea in her etsy shop. Should I get a bigger set of letters done?

I am an accountant, NOT an interior decorator. I would still like the chandelier, and am debating on painting the wainscoting. And also the letters. Here is where YOU come in.

Thoughts?

For those who could care less about interior decorating, and only come here to see photos of the kids (HI MOM!), today is your lucky day!

With the Mexico trip and then the infestation of sick bugs, it has been a month since we have been to church. We got all gussied up this morning and I yelled at asked the kids to line up on the couch for me. This was the best I could do.

I really need to stop torturing myself. And them.

When we got home, I took Emily out on the (brown, dead) lawn to take some photos of her in one of her new dresses.

After searching high and low for weeks now, I finally found her some brown shoes yesterday. At Zellers of all places!

She likes them, as well as her dress. Here she is workin’ it.

Poser.

Here it is from the back.

Look at that hair coming in!

I told her it was time for lunch, and she was off and running.

She prefers running to walking these days.

I honestly thought I would have a house full of boys (Those were the odds), and now that I have a girl I want to embrace our joint girly-ness and make her room as cute and as cozy as it can be.  Please help me do this, oh wise Internet friends.

Or just comment on the photos.  That never fails to make me smile.

Peace.

Last spring, we had a fantastic idea. Get the renovations all done by fall 2005 and have more time as the kids grew to do FUN things. Well, Matthew finds a lot of fun in working with wood, but more along the lines of furniture building as opposed to wainscoting and laying floors.

We have a great room (open kitchen/living room) that we completed in 2002. We also have a family room down half a flight of stairs (we have a split-level house). Once it was full of my work-station, the entertainment unit, my treadmill, a couch, and TOYS, there wasn’t much floor space left. We decided to add on to that room. The added bonus: a big deck off of our master bedroom that one day I can sit on and read/surf while watching my children play.

It was also time to do the inside of our master bedroom. It was completeIy gutted last summer down to the studs.

Then we had the fire. Getting the house back to where it was before the fire was obviously first priority. That took all of last fall. Matthew then completed our room & ensuite. I have pictures of our loo on Flickr and you’ve seen the craft room (it’s off of our bedroom), but I still need to post the bedroom shots.

The push has been on to get the house done (mostly) before Baby D gets here. We could have let the renos drag on for years, but we thought it best to do them while the kids are so small. Once they are bigger (and naps/diapers/etc. fade out), we want to have the time to do cool family stuff. Go to the cabin, the Coast, the PNE, skiing, etc. Thus, we decided to hire my brothers to help us get ‘er done.

She almost is. There are some finishing touches needed on the exterior as well as the clean-up. The family room has been mudded/sanded/primed. Once my brother leaves tomorrow, Matthew will be back inside to paint, lay the floors, put the tongue and groove wood on the ceiling, and put the fixtures in the bathroom down there. The end really is in sight. All of the before and after photos are on Flickr, but here’s a sampling:

Before:

After:

There. Now you know what has kept us so busy…apart from our monkeys. Isn’t Matthew a talented, talented man?

BEFORE:

AFTER:

My “Type A” personality felt at peace with all of the organization that I did. A place for everything and everything in its place. I’m still excited about it, but now I’m contemplating my next project. No rest for the neurotic.

Just think of all of the stamping I can do in this great space…especially since I just ordered even more stamping stuff. I might even branch out to other crafty arenas. The possibilities are endless!