Backyard Projects Part 1

So we have a pretty long list of the things going on around here right now. In-between the indoor projects we're working on, we have multiple backyard projects on the go. I actually have a chalkboard in our office with all of the projects listed...yet it doesn't seem that I'm crossing a lot of them off lately. Every time Ian suggests another project, I point to that chalkboard and that pretty much ends the conversation...I think we often forgot how many things we have on the list.

Here's a quick run-through of what we're in the middle of right now:

To Do:

- Finishing the floors upstairs (hallway and all 3 bedrooms)
- Fill nail holes and paint all baseboards in 3 bedrooms after floors are installed
- Caulk all baseboards in 3 bedrooms after floors are installed
- Install nursery closet system
- Put together crib
- Put together nursery dresser/change table
- Put up blinds, curtains, photo frames, mobile and all other nursery accessories
- Sew crib skirt
- Create and paint change pad table topper
- Finish painting and sealing knobs for dresser/change table
- Finish buying major nursery purchases
- Fix all electrical/switches in house
- Finish putting plates and new switches around house
- Finish sanding and staining wood floor transition pieces
- Finish building up stairway posts
- Re-paint stairway railings
- Fix stone pathway and seal stones
- Plant tree and bushes in large back garden
- Plant flowers and bushes in smaller back gardens
- Seal deck
- Put up solar shade and patio furniture
- Prepare pool for use
- Finish mouldings in master bedroom
- Create roman shade for kids bathroom
- Put up mudroom light
- Put up new side porch light
- Fix up front garden (postpone to next year)
- Re-build pool deck (postpone to next year)


Completed:

- Finish privacy fence
- Rip out old plants/bushes in backyard
- Level and rebuild back garden
- Plant clematis in front of privacy fence
- Move side gate up to house
- Complete sod
- Build air conditioner sound wall
- Prepare deck for sealant
- Paint nursery
- Paint middle bedroom
- Put up nursery light

Ok that makes me tired just looking at it all! So obviously we'll blog about these things as we finish, but we have about 2.5 months to finish it all before baby arrives, so we'll see how that goes :) To keep us on track, I've posted this list on the right hand side of our menu bar of the website...now we have each other AND all of you to keep us on our toes!

So back to the backyard projects. We managed to knock 3 of them off the list this past weekend (despite the flooring mishap we had last week that I'll blog about later on), so we were pretty happy with that.

We finished the privacy fence, moved the side gate up and sodded the lawn and built the air conditioner sound wall. When I say "we" for these particular projects, I say that lightly. Most of this was Ian. I mean, I was helping...however its getting harder and harder for me to help with these projects as I get more and more pregnant, so the easy things like watering the sod, carrying back plants, etc., become my job.

So lets talk privacy fence first, shall we? We actually built this fence last year and decided to stain the deck and privacy fence as well. Finding stain was a big challenge for us last year but after 5 attempts, we did purchase a stain that we thought we liked. Since we couldn't seem to find a long period of time when it wasn't raining, we figured we'd start with staining the lattice in the privacy fence. We ended up deciding to leave the deck staining until this year and in the process made the decision to just leave the deck natural. Back to square one. So, since we were leaving the deck natural, we needed to replace the stained lattice in the privacy fence (so everything looks consistent).

Here's the fence last year:

 

then we stained it....

 

Then we decided to "un"-stain it....i.e. rebuild it;

 

 

The process for building this fence the first time around, began with 2 posts dug into the ground and cemented in. We hired someone to come by and do this for us, so they actually dug 3 holes and put in 3 posts for us. 2 posts were used for the privacy fence, and 1 was used for the air conditioner sound fence. Once the posts were finished, Ian built the rest of the frame (we actually measured how big we wanted this fence to be first and that determined where the post guys dug their holes):

We installed the top piece of the frame and then measured the distance from the ground to the top. We divided that number in half and cut 2 pieces of lattice to that size. Ian then installed a middle piece of wood to support the top lattice and to help give more support to the frame. Always level as you go...very important part or you'll end up with a lopsided privacy fence!

Next step was to install the first piece of lattice:

 Finally the second piece:

and you're done!

 

So this year, the only thing that had to be done, was to remove the top finishing piece, unscrew the old lattice and insert the new pieces. It didn't take us as long since the frame was already in place. Since taking this photo yesterday, we've planted 2 clematis that will hopefully grow up the fence over time and give us some additional privacy. So privacy fence- done!

We also completed the sound wall for the air conditioner. As I mentioned above, when Ian had the guys dig the holes for the privacy fence, he had them dig one post for the air conditioner sound wall. This wall goes directly from the side of the house into the post, so we really only needed that one post dug into the ground.

Before the post was dug into the ground, we started off with this:

We basically re-did the gardens around the backyard this year, so we didn't need to remove any plants or work around much.

From that point, Ian was able to install the second post against the house and then attach the middle and bottom bracing pieces:

The boards were each attached to fill in the frame and finally the top piece to finish it off. It already makes a big difference visually and will be nice when we are sitting on the deck to mask some of the sound from the AC unit:

Lastly, we moved the fence gate up and sodded behind it. Almost 2 years ago, Ian decided to rebuild our side gate. We have 2 side gates, however the one side mainly acts as an access to the pool shed. When Ian rebuilt the gate, he kept it in the same place it had originally been, which was a good distance away from the pool shed. However, this left us with a large area of ground that either needed to be filled in with patio stones or grass. If we chose grass, he'd have to open the gate to mow it, which was a pain. The solution? To move the gate closer to the end of the house/edge of the patio stone. This would still allow us to lay sod, but on the OUTSIDE of the fence, for easy access with mowing.

Ian basically disassembled the gates and reinstalled them against the patio stone:

From this picture you can tell where the gate used to be- basically where the dirt begins:

Now that we had moved the gate up, we needed to sod the large area of dirt. Ian had a summer job laying sod once, so it tends to be a pretty quick process around here. In 10 minutes we had gone from the picture above to this:

It definitely looks much better and will be a lot easier to maintain.

So that's what kept us busy this weekend! Not a huge dent into our list of projects, but I'd say we're on our way.

Have any of you been working on backyard projects lately?!

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul...Part 3

After we had the railings and posts painted, the next step of the process was to get the treads put on. We had hired a stair builder to do this for us- they came and measured each of the current stairs in order to build the treads to size and then gave us a sample of the stain to make sure it matched our current hardwood floors.

We were pretty happy with the sample stain, but the hardest part of this decision was which wood to choose. Do we go with maple or oak? We actually have dark bamboo hardwood in many of the rooms in our house (those that aren't tiled) and wanted to make sure the stair treads matched up with that. We originally thought maple, as the look of maple wood (very little grain) is more comparable to the bamboo, however the railing for our stairs is oak. So oak it is! We figured we should keep consistency within the stairs and keeping it all oak was the best way to do this.

So we crossed our fingers, met the guys on the day they arrived with the treads, went to work and prayed that we wouldn't come home to the biggest mistake we'd ever made.

We left our stairs in the morning looking like this:

 

and came home to this:

 

 

Phew! The treads looked fabulous. The stain on the oak is so dark, that its hard to see a lot of the grain (which works well with the bamboo) and the stain colour is pretty much a perfect match. HUGE sigh of relief!

 

However, we were met with a few new challenges. Notice the difference in the end posts on the railings?

 

 

We had talked about cutting off the end of the bottom stair so that it didn't round out, and wanted the railing made into a straight line to the bottom. In doing that, the stair builders had to cut the railing fairly short to deal with the curve at the end, and this resulted in the end post being mounted higher up than we had hoped. Whomp whomp.

 

You may have also noticed the gap of tile that now exists beside the bottom stair. We did think of this before and have extra tile lying around, so we'll be able to fill that hole up. One day we would LOVE to replace these floors (not really our style), but thats a huge (and expensive!) undertaking since these floors carry through our entire main floor into the kitchen. One day...one day.

We also found that the bottom post itself was no longer substantial to hold the weight of the stairs (not literally of course), but it no longer looked large enough. Strike 2.

So the best way to resolve this? Build up the bottom post. This also poses the problem, that we need to build up the 2 posts at the top of the staircase as well....hmmmm...so we're in the process of working on this.

Issue #2- railing colour does NOT match with the treads. Sigh. Our last post filled you in on how much time we spent trying to find the darkest brown paint we could...and apparently its not dark enough! So now, we need to get the railings all repainted...ONCE we find a darker brown or colour match something else that we have that is a very dark SOLID brown colour.

So there you have it. I truly feel that these stairs will look great once we get everything right...its just taking longer than we anticipated. Go figure.

We've still come a long way so far...

I also wanted to mention that the walls will all be painted (the current colours are the choices of the previous homeowners) and the hallway light fixtures replaced (not exactly our style), so a lot more work to do!

The staircase saga continues...

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul...Part 2

 

Bring in the painter! In continuing our staircase overhaul saga once we had ripped out the carpet, staples and cleaned the floors, the next step was to bring in our painter. If you missed the first part of our staircase project, you can read that here. Since we were working with a special paint and really didn't want to mess this up, we figured it was best to bring in the pro's.

 

Our plan was to paint the posts and railings, since they had already been previous stained and we didn't want to go through the work of stripping, sanding and staining them. So we went on a search to find the darkest brown colour we could find. We wanted the stair treads, railing and posts to all be a dark brown (the same colour as our wood floors), but it was almost impossible to find a perfect brown colour to match. We actually went to 3 different stores for paint chips and ended up going with Behr "Bitter Chocolate"- the darkest we could find without going black:

 

 

 

Here are the railings and end posts painted with the dark brown and all of the small posts re-painted white (we use "Simply White" by Benjamin Moore for all of the white paint in our home) : 

 

 

You can see in this picture, the section of curved railing is the original stain colour and the post has been painted with the dark brown. This was done as we decided to get rid of this curve in the staircase and straighten the bump at the base of the stairs. The plan was to cut part of the railing out and straighten it, so we didn't need that one section painted:

 

 

Once the paint was on the railings we thought it matched fairly well with the floors...until the treads were put on. Once we treads were put on, the railings and posts looked much too light, and we didn't like the contrast of the painted areas with the stained areas. As well, the brown paint was not dark enough. I would recommend either going with a black paint or getting something colour matched if you have that option. We wanted to do a colour match, but they were unable to colour match to a piece of stained wood (the wood grain has too many variations of colours in it and the system would not pick it up properly) so we had to go with a premixed colour.

Back to square one. We are now debating on stripping, sanding and staining the railings (using a tester piece of wood elsewhere in our house) and seeing how they react.

Oh and I also forgot to mention we weren't happy with the post either. Once the railing was cut and straightened it looked fine, however the end post itself is not substantial enough. We are now thinking of replacing it, or finding a way to build up the post to make it larger.

So this project took a couple of unexpected turns. Its going to be more work than we were anticipating, but once its complete I think it will look great and totally change the look of our entrance.

Expect many more posts to come on the progress of these stairs!

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul

We decided to redo the staircase.

 

It wasn't that we didn't like the function of it, but we are slowly updating this house one room at a time and the staircase was one of those things that constantly kept nagging at us to change it

 

We knew we didn't want the carpet on it anymore, so we decided to take a risk and rip the carpet off, hoping there could POSSIBLY be nice wood treads underneath. Then we would simply stain them and all would be right in the world. Nope plywood. So we knew we needed to stick with full carpeting of the stairs or go for the overhaul. We went for the overhaul. Not without a ton of planning and inspiration pics of course.

 

Here are a few that inspired us (all of which you can find on our Pinterest here, and one that we actually posted to our Facebook page yesterday):

                              Via:  Contemporary Staircase by Cambridge Architect LDa Architecture & Interiors

Via

 

 

 

Via

and the image that has inspired the overall look that we want for our hallway:

 Via

 

So, after seeing all these beauties we couldn't really keep the carpet. One day after work I came home and the carpet was pretty much gone. Ian went to town and ripped it up, staples and all...well most of the staples. Him and I spent another 4 hours one night taking out ALLLL of the staples on these stairs. I can honestly say, there could have been a tornado that destroyed our entire home and that carpet still would have been firmly attached to those stairs there were so many staples.

 

After the staple removing party, we ended up with this:

  

 

And if you didn't see it on our Facebook page, here was the before:

So we're in it now! Carpet is gone, and there's a lot to do to get these beauties made-over. We've actually come quite far this week, and we're almost finished (with a few set-backs of course), but we'll share the next phase of this project with in our next post.

Have a great weekend everyone!
Melissa and Ian