zoë siskos

The wall had it comin'

Since March we have been doing major renovations on our home. Since March of 2009. It was LAST year that I ripped out that godforsaken green carpet and painted the condo.

Our plan was to get bamboo flooring installed right after but there were a few hiccups and we kinda let it be. Yes, this means for a year we have been living without floor coverings on most of out floors. Walking on plywood. Not fun. Not to mention the general disarray of the house. I am in a constant state of getting things organized. I want to be done.

We finally ramped up the renos this April, determined to get things done. I haven’t been blogging much about it because I want to show ‘Before’ and ‘After’ photos, and, well, I don’t have all the ‘After’s just yet.

In the meantime, here is a quick lowdown on what’s been going on in the Siskos/Holmes pad:

Floors:

We originally wanted to do bamboo flooring but that plan went awry. At the time I was pissed but sometimes things have a way of working themselves out. Instead we are going with something called ‘Texturock‘. Basically, it’s a coating of small stones and pebbles. It’s a gorgeous look, very natural. We’re doing a lighter colour border with a charcoal colour inset (kinda the opposite of this photo). This will be everywhere in the house except the living room. There, we’re doing the same lighter coloured border with engineered hardwood inset. It’s a beautiful mixture of natural materials and our decor is very modern and colourless. I also couldn’t be happier about the company that’s installing the floors, Stonecote. We’ve been dealing with Jerret and Chris and they’ve been so awesome through the whole process; we couldn’t ask for better customer service. Every time they’ve come over to do work or talk about the install, it feels more like friends coming for a visit than contractors. I think they are just as excited about this install as we are!

Doors:

The doors we had were ugly commercial style doors, which means they had metal casings. We basically had to cut the walls out in order to get these doors out. The frames were also metal, which meant we had to build new frames. And finally installing them? Well, I won’t ruin the surprise…I’ll have a detailed post on this (and the customer service from Milette, the company we bought the doors from).

Baseboards:

We wanted larger baseboards to create a more polished look. Also, James wanted them stained to match the doors, I wanted them white, to blend in with the walls. You’ll have to wait until that post to see who got their way.

Door casings:

Typically, I would just bundle these in with baseboards, but we had to do such a custom job on these that they deserve their own story. I love where we live because it’s so unique, but because it’s so unique, it gives us a lot of hassles.

Dining room wall:

We used to have a wall of mirrors – very 80s porn. But, we took them down (you can see the process here) and had to replace the wall. I had to use a jagged saw thing to do a lot of the cutting; I felt a little like Dexter (as you can see in the photo above).

We’re well past the half way point, which means I should have ‘after’ pictures soon. I can’t wait!