On The Street Where You Live

There's definitely been a lot happening on Chestnut Street over the past few weeks. I've been trying to type out an update for many, many days now, but our new addition, Ru, has been keeping both of us ridiculously busy. After an evening of playing with her fur aunt, Mocha, and then a morning of puppy classes and an afternoon of "helping" me garden, she's finally crashed for a nap in her favourite place: my back.

I can tell that she's grown because last week I couldn't even tell that she was there. This week, it feels like there is a small boulder on my spine. At her last trip to the vet she weighed 8.7 pounds, and now I'm pretty sure she's closer to 10! Between the getting up at 5am, cleaning up after accidents, bandaging fingers that she thought were fair game, and lots of snuggles, we did manage to get some work finished.

Continuing on with our list of resolutions, we finally got around to Resolution One: Fix the Back Hall.
Just for a little refresher, this is how our back hall was looking:

As you can see, lots of old plastic tile, plaster, and peg board, as well as a pantry area that needed some serious updating. Cleaned out, it looked like this:

Not as terrible, but not an area that was really usable, especially for the hall where we were planning on being able to let Ru stay in if we were not home. This particular hallway also had the two lowest ceilings in the house. Yes, two. There was a small archway where the ceilings of two different parts of hallway met, and changed height. You can kind of see them in the photos, one has beadboard and the other is flat and smooth. Well, not really that flat - it was pretty warped, and sort of looked like the rolling hills of Borden Carleton. We weren't 100% certain how we'd be able to get rid of the dips, but thought we'd just let Shane and his guys worry about it.

Turns out, they didn't worry about it at all, they just knocked it down. Along with a hundred year old insulation, which was basically just a bunch of black powder at this point. Luckily we have a door to the kitchen that can use to close off the hallway, so my role in all of this was to close the door and then open it at the end of the day to see what progress had been made. Imagine my surprise when one day I opened the door and our hallway went from what you saw above, to this:

No more plaster! No more plastic tiles! Now it's just....pine! At least until we get around to painting it all in the same style as the laundry room. But for now, we can live with pine. Our pantry also got an update - white wainscotting on the back, and new built in shelves, complete with a 9 bottle wine rack! We still need to build some doors to keep Ru out of her kibble, but she's only just been able to reach into the bottom set of shelves, so we've still got four more levels to work through before the situation becomes dire. I also love the cover that was built for the cast iron rad, and that it doubles as a shelf for keys/bags/etc.  You can also see in the picture at the top right that the ceilings are all now one level! They have also been raised up a bit. We did have the option to go with a cathedral ceiling with exposed beams, which would have been cool, but probably cooler in a bedroom or living room than a back hall. So ceiling it is! Choosing the ceiling though also gave us some extra attic crawlspace for storage, which is great due to our severe lack of closets. Besides the pantry doors, we still need to paint in here as well, but for now, I'm happy with the new pine look!

We also got them to install some shelving in the laundry room so we didn't have that awkward window looking into the bathroom. One door still has to go on, and then we need to do some touch up painting, but it's looking better already:

You can also see that a surround has been started around the washing machine and dryer. Eventually we will have a countertop that will go over the machines and then up to hide the taps and pipes on the wall. We're also hoping to use the tin effect tiles as a backsplash if possible. Having the cabinets makes a huge difference.


We also did some work in the sunporch. Remember the old cardboard ceiling tiles? Lots of water damage, discolouration, some completely missing, plus it didn't help that an extended family of mice was living in them over the winter.

We found out the solution was to just tear them down.

Of course, that looked really bad, but hey, we had all that pine lying around, sooo....

up it went. And now the ceiling looks like this:

It still needs some finishing around the edges, but it made a very lovely difference! The room feels a bit brighter now. Now all that's left in here is to paint, get new curtains and figure out what we're actually going to use it for! I'd love to have it as an office space, but since it has no foundation and no heat, we can't use it during the winter, so it gets sealed up. Someone suggested a summer bowling alley, which might not be a bad idea!

Now that we're getting our big projects crossed off of our renovation list, we're just left with a few small ones, like painting all of the cast iron rads (we're still undecided on a colour), sanding and staining the bannister, extending the tile around the fireplace in order to meet fire code regulations, adding some quarter round in various places, fixing the railing on the balcony, painting the trim on the house, painting the shed, putting up a railing around the back deck, extending the back deck, fixing the garden,  getting some new windows for the various porches...hm. Once you put all of those small projects together, they just kind of seem like one big project all over again. I'm not even going to get started on the various furniture projects we still have to attend to! Oh well. People are right when they say that your house is never finished, even if you build a brand new one.

To finish up, I also had to stick in a few pictures of the garden - for being first time gardeners, things are going extremely well out there!

The garden in early June, lots of peonies starting to appear, and the grass along the new fence is starting to grow! You can also see that there's some strange leaves growing all over the ground in the garden. I'm not sure what they are, so if anyone could tell me, that would be great! They seem to grow from a small tuber-like root. They were taking over, so we decided to chop it all down, which left us with what you see below:

It may be hard to tell from the pictures, but it made a huge difference, and we could actually SEE some of the plants and flowers that we had identified earlier in the spring. Also, since the grass was doing so well along the fence, TJ decided to buy approximately 500 bags of topsoil and do along the back trees as well. There was another odd leafy thing covering the ground back there, along with years and years of pine needles and pine cones, and the odd iris that had escaped the garden, so it took a lot of soil to cover it up.

You can see the odd mix of ground cover and pine needles below, but since I can't see anybody being all that interested in pictures of dirt, I stuck in a photo of our pretty poppies growing under the reading room windows:

I love watching all of the colours of flowers arriving at different times. We started with lots of blues in the early spring, then yellows and reds, then pinks, then purples, now back to reds, and I can see hot pinks, light pinks and whites starting to come out at the end of June. There's a giant rosebush which I thought was going to be wild roses, but it looks like teensy little pale pink blossoms. There's also two different kinds of peonies, along with the poppies, which sadly, did not last too long! I'd been looking forward to them since spotting them last summer before we bought the house.

Not sure what kind of iris this is, but it's very very dark, almost black, and it's about the size of Ru! Also, check out the sea of peonies. I think these ones are going to be white.

Our veggie garden is also doing well, despite having barely any sun. We've got cucumbers, red potatoes, peas, beans, heritage carrots, peppers and tomatoes. I have a feeling I've ruined my tomato plants by putting them way too close together, but oh well. Learning process! We also have a little herb garden on the deck with cilantro, chocolate mint, lemon and curry. The lavender, summer savory and peppermint that I planted definitely died out long ago.

I gotta say though, not bad for two non-green thumbs!

Ru

As we're getting closer to our one year anniversary of owning our first home, projects are starting to come together and our list is getting smaller almost every day. As of this week our major renovations are now complete and all that is left is painting, sanding, more painting, and updating the tile surrounding the wood stove insert in the living room. But all of the renovations that included knocking things out and ripping stuff up is now over. It's definitely feeling like our home now. But one little thing was missing. A very, very little thing.


A puppy! I have wanted my own puppy for years and it seems like it has taken forever to finally be in a position where we had the space and time to be able to properly take care of a cute little fur baby. Finally, after searching for the right puppy over the past year, we finally found ours. She came from a litter of 12 (that's a LOT of puppies) at Eastern Dawn Kennels in Uigg, Prince Edward Island. We went down in mid-May to visit and pick out the one that would be right for us. Then, after three loooooong, unbearable weeks of waiting, we finally went to pick her up and take her home this week.
Introducing Ru!
Named after Eriu, the matron goddess of Ireland. If anyone is interested, I've included her story at the end of this post.
Ru likes visitors, as long as they are not too big and furry, so if anyone wants to come say hello, don't hesitate!

Ru has been home for a few days now and has definitely claimed this as "her" place. She is very snuggly and when she takes naps, 99% of the time they are in your lap. Her first couple of nights have been very good, no howling or crying in her kennel through the night, and I've been the one who wakes her up at 6 in the morning to go outside! Then she is very happy to come in and get into our bed to sleep for another few hours.

She is very small as she was the runt of her litter, and only weighed 6 pounds when we brought her home. Despite this, she loooooooves food, not only hers, but ours as well. I made a bowl of soup yesterday and she went crazy trying to get inside the bowl to drink it for herself. Milkbones are her one true love however. We bought the kind that are for puppies and are about the size of my thumb, and have to break it in half to give to her. When she senses that a milkbone is near, she goes nuts and will not rest until the milkbone is in her belly. Then once it's gone she checks her food bowl just in case there are some in there, and then she checks the coffee table to see if she missed any crumbs. I have a feeling she will have no trouble gaining weight.

Click below to hear the story of Eriu.

April snow brings May showers...and maybe June flowers?

I recently did a journal challenge called "30 Days Of Lists", where you had to complete one list per day in your personal journal. Of course, I failed miserably. I didn't make it past day 3. However, one of the lists that I DID manage to do was to make a list of goals for your blog. One of my blog goals was to update more frequently. I guess you could say I failed at that as well. However, I do seem to consistently make at least one blog post per month, usually near the end when I've realized I've not updated for quite some time. As usual, I do have a multitude of passable reasons for why this keeps happening. These reasons all have to do with the yard/garden/jungle.

Now to set the stage, let me take you back in time to August 2012, when we first visited 2 Chestnut Street:

Funny, we didn't really pay much attention to the backyard, not realizing that it too would need an eventual makeover. Neither of us are really of the garden variety. You can just chop everything down and it will go away, right?

NOT RIGHT. It just keeps growing. Especially perennial gardens (look, here is evidence that we are learning about gardens - I know what a perennial is. Formal definition: something that keeps coming back bigger and badder forever and ever)

So once the snow finally melted, we ventured outside with our minimal gardening tools: a hatchet and a pair of giant shears. Oh how foolish we were. Thank goodness for Wayne and Eleanor next door, who kept a close watch on our garden adventure and would run over with advice and proper equipment. 

The first thing we had to do was a major leaf/chestnut/pinecone clean up. As it turns out, when you live on Chestnut Street, you inherit at least one, if not more, chestnut trees. And they are tall, and beautiful, and kind of majestic looking, and you really, really love them until you realize that in the winter, they throw all their chestnuts on the ground and close up shop. And our giant chestnut tree had been doing just that for years and years, throwing all its chestnuts into the back garden. When Dante described all the layers of his Inferno, he forgot to mention the one with the chestnuts. Actually, there should probably be at least two layers about chestnuts. We actually started our leaf/chestnut/pinecone cleanup back in October, just to do a quick tidy of the yard so it didn't look too bad. I thought it would take a day to do a quick rake up of whatever was left.

NOT SO. It takes quite a few days, apparently. There was also a lot of chopping of years of irises (irisi?), as well as cedar bush overgrowth. It was no picnic (although I think we did stop at one point to have a picnic, but that doesn't count).

88 yard bags later, this is what we were left with:

Evidence of our hard work:

(That's only a small portion of the bags. We only put a few out at a time over the course of the spring so we wouldn't scare Waste Watch PEI.)

At this point we had to decide what we were going to do: keep the garden, or bring in a load of topsoil and cover it all up and seed it. We decided to let things grow and see what happened.

I'm not sure how many times we raked the yard. But it was a lot. Most of the time it felt like it wasn't making any difference whatsoever, but finally the weather started to warm up and the grass began to grow, as well as a ton of mysterious plants. Some days it actually started to look kind of nice:

We did a lot of touring through the garden, trying to figure out just what was growing. So far we've identified forget me nots, a lot of little flowers we refer to as "those blue things", daffodils, tulips, bleeding hearts, a rose bush, forsythia, irises, lemon balm, peonies, cosmos, hostas, carnations, lily of the valley, other assorted lillies, and some sort of yellow thing that just started to blossom yesterday.

We also decided to put up a little fence portion at the back of the yard to hide the not so pretty bits, and are trying desperately to grow some grass in front of it.

For not being gardeners, I think we're doing a pretty bang up job. As of this weekend, this is how the flower part was looking:

This is also how we were looking, which sort of turned into our own version of American Gothic.

Our flower garden success led to a belief that we could now do ANYTHING, so we decided to go ahead with our veggie garden in the back corner of the yard. TJ learned how to use a rototiller, and I learned how to use a garden rake to make hills. The veggie garden was a whole other adventure in itself. A short list of items we have found in it so far include a tea cup, shelf brackets, and a jawbone with teeth. I have no idea what happened in the back corner of the yard 20 years ago, but it sort of sounds like a tea party gone wrong. 

Nothing has been planted just yet, but the seedlings I started are looking promising.

So right now things are looking manageable, though I suspect this is because the irises haven't hit their full stride just yet. In August I'll probably be putting out an SOS call. Possibly to the guy who brings the topsoil.

Another thing crossed off the list...

So it turns out that after a terrible start, we really DID end up painting the laundry room! Of course, it took much longer than one Sunday afternoon (who knew that painting over pine boards with grooves required more than just rolling on the paint, it also required filling in EVERY SINGLE GROOVE with a teensy little paintbrush? Not us!) but it finally gone done. And there are pictures to prove it! TJ said I was taking too long getting around to writing a blog post and uploading said pictures though, so he took care of it. So now let me present to you "Painting the Laundry Room: A Blog Entry" by Terence John McGeown. (sidenotes by Victoria K. Coulson). He wrote it on April 13th, sent it to me on April 18th, and I am now finally uploading it on April 28th. A very timely fashion.

S'pose it's about time we stuck another aul' update on here, just in case yous think we're complete slackers.

After a few weeks of trying to do everything, everywhere at the same time and a lot of distraction from unattended projects, we decided we’d better just focus on one room at a time. Defintootly a good plan and already paying off.

Behold, the laundry! Tremble at the sight of its merciless wood panel. 

Quake in fear at the rotted window of doom! (The bottom of the windowframe was made of caulk when we moved in. It had to be literally sliced open to allow the window to open. No joke.)

But fear thee not intrepid readers, for the wood panel has been conquered, the rotten window slain.

Not much craic painting the beast, all those grooves make rolling pretty ineffective. Nonetheless we slowly but surely got the whole place primed.

 Two coats of colour later (over them bloody grooves again) and with the trim done to match the main section of the house, the place looks miles better.

(Sidenote from Victoria: So I've come to realize that we're really good at taking pictures of the process of renovation, but really bad at taking pictures of how everything looks when we're all done. I blame this on the fact that we're completely exhausted and cranky by the time we've fixed everything up, so we usually throw all the paint cans down into the basement and stomp back to the couch. Which is exactly what we did in this case. No lovely pictures of how tidy and clean everything looked when we were done, no, instead you get a camera phone picture of what the laundry room looks like now, 2 weeks after everything was finished and now covered in all of the random things we threw in there to get the next room cleaned out and ready. I hope you enjoy.)

A brand new window! And....

Painted walls! Hmmm. So this is a little anti-climatic. It looked a lot better without all of our stuff in there.  But at least it's starting to look a little nicer. We're waiting on the builders to arrive and make us a surround and countertop for the washer and dryer, as well as a wall of cupboards to hide the old window frame above.

Now back to TJ:

We're not done here yet though. Not by a long shot. Next we needed somewhere to kick aff our boots. Maybe somewhere to hang bags and set stuff down.

[Enter Pinterest, stage left]

So, we shamelessly nicked an idea off the internets and made another bargain flea market buy, a twin sized headboard and footboard. To the workshop we go. Turns out there was some very nice wood under all the paint, but some damage near the top. No bother for us though, repainting was already on the cards. Scraped, sanded, primed, then off to Dr Teejenstein for surgery. Cut a bit off here, stick a bit on there, Bob's yer auntie. It was taking shape now. The secret ingredient definitely wasn't just a really old shelf from the basement sanded down and stained. A wee lick o' paint, few nuts and bolts, lo and behold.....we have a bench.

Yeah, it's a wee bit wonky and someone else did all the hard bits but I'm proud of it all the same 

So there's the tale of our laundry room. Stay tuned for our next venture, the back hall. Remember this? It was one of our New Years Resolutions. And we're really doing it! We've even cleared it all out and everything:

We'll be getting new walls, a new ceiling and my personal favourite, a new pantry! Then the room will finally be ready for my even more personal favourite - a puppy! Just imagine a comfy little doggie bed in the back corner...

Herrmmm...

Sunday: "Let's paint the laundry room!"



Reality:

Whoops.

Test drive

I'm testing out a new way to post to our blog - from my iPhone! If this works, my mind will be blown and I can say to my grade two self, "self, you were totally correct in thinking that some day your poor fingers would get a break from all the writing they were required to do because one day computers really would take care of everything!" Sadly, that argument didn't work in grade two and my teacher didn't see any value in my plan where I would be allowed to go to the library and play Oregon Trail instead of practicing my handwriting. Anyway, here is the finished product of my thrift store mirror makeover:

And then March Break was over...

Today is the final day of March Break, the day when kids are groaning about having to wake up early again tomorrow and teachers are hoping (or not?) that their flights from the Dominican land in time so they can drive home in the middle of the night and appear fresh as a daisy in front of the class tomorrow morning. For me, it's a day of realizing I accomplished nothing over the past week and reflecting on all the things I could have done instead of chain-watching my way through the final season of Downton Abbey. Really though, I regret nothing.

I had been looking forward to the break because it was finally starting to seem like spring was arriving on the island. The days were longer with the time change, bringing a new sense of motivation into my life. I was going to GET THINGS DONE. I was going to PAINT THINGS. LINE THE DRAWERS WITH CONTACT PAPER. PUT STUFF AWAY. And then I woke up on the first day of spring to this:

Spring. You're doing it wrong.

Needless to stay, I shuffled my way to the couch and stayed there for 99% of the break, only leaving to shovel the driveway and reheat my coffee. However, I believe that this is a testament to just how cozy our little house has become. When we first moved in back at the end of October, I found it really hard to relax because I would sit down and not be able to ignore all of the things that still needed to be done. Of course, there's still lots to be done, but it's not as much as before. Now it's stuff that can easily be ignored, for the most part. And ignore it I do!

TJ has been much better than I at getting stuff done. He's built himself some sort of basement workshop that hosts an interesting assortment of tools. I wasn't sure if he knew what to do with them, but he assured me he did, and I have to believe him because he's been doing stuff like this:

Left: a close up of the back of our stair treads - lovely gaping spaces

Right: stairs after TJ fixed the spaces with quarter round

I'm quite impressed, because I can't do that sort of thing. I excel more at spray painting things, although even that sometimes doesn't go quite right. Actually, my real talent lies in finding things to be rescued from thrift shops. This talent seemed to develop after I started reading blogs like Young House Love and Vintage Revivals. I'll be honest - I'm not quite as talented as these folks, but someday in the future, maybe, just maybe, if I keep on visiting thrift stores, I just might get there. At least, this is what I tell TJ in order to trick him into celebrating Thrift Store Saturday each week. I think he's starting to enjoy it.

The spoils of Thrift Store Saturday:

Sidenote: I'm also not quite as talented at photographing things as these other bloggers. I suspect this has to do with only half of the picture being in focus as well as my choice of background: the kitchen floor. One day I'll get it right. Maybe.

 Left: I'm not entirely sure what to call this. A musical decoration? When you twist the bottom, it plays "A Partridge In A Pear Tree". Very, veeerrryyy slowly. I already have spray painting plans for this.
Middle: Green glassware, my favourite of all things. Perfect for minty cocktails in the summer.
Right: A dog. He now sits on the mantle in the living room.

Left: A giant greenish yellow glass jar, which has been added to our apothecary style downstairs bathroom cabinet.

Right: A picnic basket, which also currently lives in our downstairs bathroom.

And the mirror - I thought I would have to fight a lady for this mirror. I found it in a box of junk and pretty much ran up to the cashier in order to buy it before anyone else. Just as I was handing over my cash I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to face a woman who was making googly eyes at my mirror. "Where did you find that?" she needed to know. "Were there any others?" "What box of junk?" "Is it real wood?" "How much is it?" "That's a really lucky find." "I wish I found it." "I want a mirror just like that." "GIVE ME THE MIRROR."

Okay, she didn't say that last part, but I suspect that's what she was thinking. I'm still trying to decide what I'll do with it (spray paint anyone?) but I can rest assured knowing that it's safely hidden in my dining room  somewhere nobody will ever be able to find it and steal it.

Speaking of mirrors, we also finally put up the mirror in our hallway which had been sitting on the floor for months and months.

I think it really accents the jumble of cords and the bag holding the cordless phone I have still not unpacked.

Now, to end this entry, enjoy a photo of all the camera equipment that is now sitting on our dining room table safely stored away. Any ideas on what I should do with it? At first I thought maybe I would keep it and learn how to use it all, but now when I look at it I just get tired. So....here you are:

Selling point: it's now clean.