Fiddle Leaf Figs Do Not Like Me

I love to garden.  I can't wait to dive into my backyard and get dirty.  I don't have a black thumb. 

But fiddle leaf figs do not like me. 

Actually, I think they just don't like my bay window. 

Fig #1

It faces north.  It gets little indirect light.  The semi-transparent shades that hide the neighbors' cluttered backyards don't help.

Fig #2

But the first one lasted almost a year.  So I got a 2nd one.  And then it died.

I'll spare you the sadness.

I swore off plants.  Nothing alive will live here.  Instead, I started googling other options.  Artwork.  Sculptures.  DIY something!  Nothing inspired me.

But then I remembered Modern Jane's Instagram shot of a vase filled with greenery.  No flowers.  Just green.  Yes, it's alive...but how much light could simple greenery need...???

The very next day, a West Elm coupon landed in my inbox. 

Isn't that awesome?  Such a great view through those shades.  Light be damned, I can't live without those shades. 

And I filled those vases with something tall, something ferny and something small.  I need the height in this window.  Anything short looks really awful.  Filling the space at least 3/4 high is a must.



The vases were an investment.  But the branches and greenery?  So cheap!  That bundle of branches was $15.  $15!!!!  You can guess how much those little green sprigs cost.  Less than a latte.

Cherry Blossoms

The branches are blooming.  I guess I got flowers, afterall.  She said low light would be fine, they just might not open up...but I see some!!!

I can almost ignore what's outside that window.  Almost.  Just look for little flowers.

View from the entryway

I left the price tags on the vases, just in case.  I wavered between loving the new setup and feeling like I lived in a West Elm store when I walked into my house. 

But after a few days, when Steve noticed I made the change, he gave me a thumbs up.  I think those vases are staying ;)

House Tour: Dining Room

A special thanks to Jane for choosing our bathroom as an inspiration!  Do you follow Modern Jane?  You should.  She's good.  And she's in the middle of renovating Canada's Ugliest Bathroom...her words, not mine...
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Next up on the house tour, post renovation, seen here on this little old website...is the dining room.  There was a little sneak peek of this room's former color on the last post with the real befores of the living room.  As opposed to the fake white ones.

Because there's nothing better than the real deal before, especially when it's ugly. 

Get ready for ugly.

View from the Living Room

Purple!  Yes, that is a purple dining room.  Deep purple.  Like royalty.  Except no royal would paint a wall, much less a room, that color.

Bay Window in the Dining Room

Forgive this mash up of two pictures.  Back then I wasn't snapping away with the intent to show anyone, much less everyone.  But here you can see the focal point of the room.  The bay window.  Attractive selling point for a semi-detached home.

But not an attractive color!  I still can't believe we lived with it for seven years.  SEVEN YEARS!  Well, until this room changed to...

Next Color

...Sage Green!?  In here, too?  Yes, before we painted everything white, we painted this room to match the living room.  Lesson learned.  Then came time for the reno.

Framed

Taped

Drywalled

Built-in

After

Whoa!  Did you catch all that?  Me either.  Let's break it down.

First of all, those cabinets.  They define the dining room space, but flow from the kitchen effortlessly.  It's all in the countertop. 

Unify

We used the same caesarstone (Pure White) from the kitchen countertop and extended it into the dining room.  The credit for this one goes to Kirsten, the brains behind the layout of this renovation.  Now that dining room built-in not only compliments the kitchen but also functions as an extension of it for entertaining.

Brilliant!

And the cabinets themselves...

Extension

Ikea cabinets, the same as the kitchen.  But these are uppers, installed on their sides.  I know... I KNOW! 

Now you see it!

Perfect for maximum storage capacity.  Obviously, right now these hold whatever needs to be hidden.  Mostly placemats, paper, markers and other art items...all kid related.  I need an organization intervention here immediately.

Since the doors aren't meant to hang down, being pulled by gravity, we made some adjustments.  There are chains to support the hinges in case a door slips out of someone's hand (happened already).  They will absorb the drop instead of a handle denting the floor.  There are also magnets installed at the top of each door so it "catches" each time it closes.  Good safety feature for kids...and adults with butterfingers.

Home Base

Here's my favorite part of the storage.  The media "home base."  That's the cable box and IR extender which allows us to store the box away from the TV, yet still control it behind a closed door.  To the right of the box we keep our modem, router and all other media related boxes and plugs and wires...all of which are connected to the TV through a conduit (plastic pipe) that we hid in the wall.  It's not very pretty, but I love that we can keep it all BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, yet access it immediately when needed.

But enough of all that.  How about some more before and afters...

Before

...Then Green...

After (by Justice Darragh for AT)

We bought those white chairs before we decided to renovate, in an attempt to upgrade our kitchen without blowing the bank.  We loved them, so they stayed.  Comfortable enough to sit in long after dinner is over...and clean up with Fantastik or Magic Eraser.  How family friendly is that!?

Green Before

After

And that table was a pre-renovation purchase, too.  I found it at Guff.  It was lonely because after many requests, the chairs were sold separately from the table.  So it was marked waaaaay down.  And was the perrrrrfect size for our old eat-in kitchen.  When it came completely apart so I could throw it in the trunk of my car, there was no way it wasn't coming home with me.

From the Entry - Before

From the Entry - After

The biggest thing that blows me away now is how much space we have and how we use every square inch of it.  Previously, the dining room was dead space for us.  We ate in our kitchen and watched TV in our living room.  The dining room was a place we walked through but never spent any time in.

Kirsten made a point of maintaining negative space in the dining room - between it and the kitchen as well as it and the living room.  You can see how much space there is in the picture above.  But there are no gaping holes asking for extra furniture.  Our family of five can easily move around -even all in the same room- without tripping over or bumping into each other.

Off Center

But maintaining that negative space & balance between "rooms" means our table is off center.  The good news is, you'd have to look for it.  This picture is taken standing on my tippy-toes looking over the basement staircase railing.  Not a view you'd normally see. 

The table is centered in the space, which doesn't center with the window.  And since we couldn't move the window, we decided to forgo a chandelier over the table...which would accentuate the off centered-ness even more.  Instead, the table is centered in the space and the potlights are centered over the table.  And all is right with the world.

Green Before

After (by Justice Darragh for AT)

All in all, our open concept space is working wonderfully for us.  We have no dead or repeated space.  The flow works for the size of the footprint.  And we even created storage without taking too much square footage away.

While there's not much to it, the dining room might be one of my favorite places because of how well it works for us.  But wait, we haven't discussed the rest of the house up close.  Stay tuned! 

Deconstruction

I've been quiet on the blog...which means I've been busy at home. 

But I've been struggling.  Because none of it seems very blog-worthy.  In fact, it's all opposite of what I've posted.  Everything I've done.  Now it's un-done.  This is not progress.  Well, you could argue this is progress, just in a different way. 

Progress toward demolition.

!!!!

Here goes:

BEFORE - organized mudroom

AFTER - hooks drilled into cleat

BEFORE - styled livingroom

AFTER - basement couch, coffee table gone, rug rolled

BEFORE - dining room

AFTER - table & chairs sold, pictures away, staging area

BEFORE - dining room other view

AFTER - boxes for storage, goodwill pile

BEFORE - welcoming basement

AFTER - 1/2 an ikea kitchen, rolled rugs, bannister removed

I'm documenting "befores" of the 1st and 2nd floor.  I'm mega-stressing over clearing out half a house.  I'm dreading/anxious to be moving into a local furnished apartment for three months. 

I can't wait to get this party started...!

Now You Don't

It feels like we bought our new kitchen appliances 5 years ago.  In a dream.  Except we paid real money. 

But then reality hits like an empty room.

Ignore the photobomber.

We decided to put the dining room set on Kijiji/Craigslist after the holidays.  We weren't in a super hot rush to move it, and we could try pricing it where we wanted...instead of discounting to get it gone. 

And guess what?  It sold.  In a week.  For asking.

Fist pump for putting a dent in that appliances down payment.

(For those of you following the floorplan, the table & chairs you see in the drawing are currently in our kitchen...so the dining set we had no emotional attachment to was on the chopping block)

This is the biggest reality check for me so far.  This renovation is happening. 

And now we have a dance floor.

"We Want to Keep the House From Falling Down"

Good words to hear when talking floor plans with a structural engineer. 

Because we want to remove all the walls on our main floor during our upcoming renovation, we have to replace them with strategically located posts and beams, both steel and LVL.  We were introduced to an amazing structural engineer when we dug out our basement...so we invited him back to help us on the main floor project.  Nothing like continuity when it comes to structure.

I mentioned in my last post that we had a sticking point in our floorplan. 

This is it.  Walk through the first doorway above and you're in the living room.  On your left is the wall separating the living room from the dining room.  It's super hard to get a good picture of it.  So I circled it in the floor plan:

Why would this be a sticking point?  It isn't load bearing.  It's not integral to the structure.  Unless it's connected to a wall that leans.  Yes, that handwritten note on the floor plan above says "leaning wall" with an arrow pointing to the outside (not shared) brick wall. 

Our non-load bearing wall is a buttress. (SFX: groan)

That lines up to the second step of our staircase.  (SFX: louder groan)

I've been worried/freaking/frazzled about how we're going to remove that buttress and support the outside wall without putting a post against the shared wall and cut up our staircase. 

My designer, Kirsten, was optimistic.  See how the buttress wall is gone, the outside wall has a spot for a post, but the staircase is untouched?  Love that. 

And so did the structural engineer.

Truth is, we got lucky.  We thought about removing this tricky wall -just between the living room and dining room- before we knew it was a buttress.  We were going to demo it when we dug out our basement.  But our engineer noticed the lean.  

Long story short, he had us put a steel beam (the width of our house) in the basement ceiling directly under the buttress.  This way, if we ever wanted to open the living room to the dining room completely, we could build a steel frame and tie into the beam below using posts at the outside wall and in the hallway. 

But now we won't have a hallway....or a place to put a post....

Cue our engineer:

This is my bad drawing of his solution.  It's a cross-section of our house if you chopped it top to bottom through the buttress wall.  I've drawn the steel and the staircase. You can see in the basement, we already have the posts and beam in place.  What's on top of it is his idea...

At (1), we would place a steel post "on top of steel post & beam"
At (2), the steel beam and steel post would have a "welded joint" for highest strength
At (3), the beam would fit "into shared brick wall"

I'm not an engineer, and I can't remember the exact words.  But because the single post and beam would be welded in place and at a right angle, it would have the strength and counterstrength to hold the house and the leaning wall in place.  Like a buttress.

Music to my ears.

So we can get rid of this.

And keep this.

I got plans for that gorgeous baby gate, to-die-for laminate on the steps and aren't-you-jealous-of-me ceramic tile.  Complete with missing grout.

So that's it for the sticking point.  Solved.

What about the rest of the support?  Aren't there like two more rooms past the buttress wall?  Yes. 

Luckily enough, we know our house is typical in one way.  It has wider foundation walls.  See that lip behind gorgeous baby gate #2?  I cursed that thing in the basement dig.  Now I could kiss it.

A post will rest on that lip about 2 feet back from the right edge of this picture, hidden in the powder room wall.  The other post will hide in the kitchen, on the outside foundation wall.  And if all goes well, the beam will hide in the ceiling joists. 

So now, with the structural situation figured out, all I have to do is get a family of five ready for demolition day.....!!!!!!