Interior Design Show 2010

IKel and I went to the Interior Design Show 2010 this past weekend at the Metro Convention Centre and saw a lot of cool and fun booths!  We didn't run into Sarah Richardson, but we did see her colleague Tommy walk by!

For those who's been following our blog, you'd know I've been in love with the Riobel Eiffel series faucets for the past half year or so.  I didn't think I'd see anything more elegant until this weekend! Check out the sleek and sexy curves on this Brizo Virage series!

Another set of faucets display we really love was the Axor Massaud.  We absolutely love the triangular sinks and soaker tubs paired with the faucets and branch like wall hooks.

While at IDS 2010, we visited our friend Tyco's award winning table "Fracture".  Below, I've taken a picture of Tyco and his award winning piece.  I've also attached a video that shows why his table is called "Fracture".  It's actually really cool, as it can be broken off into three pieces and used separately, as well as reassembled into different combinations for use that way.  You can check out more Tychotic Designs here.

Something else that really caught our eye at the show were all the different tiles on the market.  Check out these turtleshell tiles below by Saltillo.  Do you like the white or grey ones better?

And what about these bubble tiles?  Aren't they cool? :)

We thought this dining table and all its colourful chairs are pretty cool, too!

And finally, there were a lot of displays for electrical and gas fireplaces.  Out of all of them, this one really caught my eye.   Check out that tree in the middle, I thought the effect was quite unique.

A night of scrubbing..

Throughout our renovations, we've tried to be careful and clean up after any drips and splatters around the ensuite bathroom. At the same time, we figured tile floors should be fine, we'd need to scrub them down afterwards anyways, right? Well.... yes and no. Yes, because cleaning up at the end is inevitable. But no, because if we had covered up the floors more, I wouldn't need to scrub as much and hard as I did! I had to scrub the whole night to clean the floors of grout, primer, paint, silicon... etc. You name it, I scrubbed it!  For once, I wished our bathroom wasn't so big...  On the right, you can see the results of my night of scrubbing. The tiles are shiny and silvery once more! Yay!

It's really hard to believe that this used to be a bedroom.  Looking back at the before pictures, it's really kind of crazy.  I couldn't help but take a few more pictures.  I'm thinking of compiling a picture timeline of this room in a later entry!

The room looks so much more complete after putting up the mirror.  You can see the reflection of the shower stall in the mirror.  And I have to say I really love the effect of the floating vanity cabinets!  Good choice Kel!

And please disregard the naked window frame in the reflection.  We'll get to painting that soon!

Before we left for the night, Kel helped me put up a sign to officially corner off our first no-shoes zone! :)

Hardwood explosion

Over the last couple of days, we've been quite busy at the house!  Kel's finished laying down hardwood for not just the master ensuite, but also the office, living, dining, and hallway!  All that's left now are the linen and coat closets.  Erica and her dad's been here for the last few days, too.  They've been helping out with the detailing.  Her dad's been framing doors around the house as well as hanging doors.  And of course, Erica's been plastering and sanding all the nicks Kel's been making in the process. :)  Kel's also ripped out the nasty green carpet that was in the foyer and his dad's tiled it.  Kel is actually grouting the foyer tiles as I type.  (No, we don't actually have Internet at the house yet, but our neighbour, "Joe" does and his connection is not protected. :)

Below, you can see the temporary rails Kel's put in for our staircase.  He had to rip out the old ones to lay the hardwood and the new ones can't be installed until the new hardwood's down.

I wasn't going to post any pictures of our floors yet because their current condition simply doesn't do it justice!  We've laid out all the hardwood planks on the floor to size to speed up the installation process.  It's like the hardwood's exploded all over our living-dining room!

And here's Kelly, grouting our foyer tiles at 11:52pm!

Ensuite shower tiles

We finished tiling our shower walls tonight.  As promised, photos are below.  We still need to grout this weekend before putting up the glass walls, but that should be quick.  :)

Hot off the press!

I know I said I wanted the next picture to be of the kitchen with all the cabinets installed, but there's been requests to see how things are. That, and Kel had to switch it up and work on the air ducts first. It's really starting to get cold these days, so it'll be nice to get that working. Most of the ducts were connected by the end of the night and we've got the heat going now!

Left: Our kitchen's current status. You can see Erica sanding the exterior. :)
Right: Kel working on fitting ducts into the openings.

Oh, and I've had feedback that the pictures of the kitchen after tiling didn't really show our tiles, so below is a picture of *just* the tiles.

As you can see, we still need to assemble a few more cabinets and put the doors in, and apparently Kel says we need to exchange one of them because they gave us the wrong one. The one we have now doesn't have the slot for our apron sink so I guess another trip to IKEA is inevitable.

Our Kitchen Tiles

Kel finished laying the last couple of tiles on Friday, while Erica and I continued to work on the walls. On Saturday, Erica and her dad came over to help. Erica's dad worked on patching the walls and ceiling in the ensuite, while Erica and I worked on the kitchen walls and ceiling. Sanding the ceiling has got to be the hardest thing ever. It's not only repetitive, but we also had to stand on chairs, and stretching ourselves to the fullest. What sucks is that the procedure of plastering and sanding takes quite a bit of time and cannot be expedited since we have to wait for the plaster to dry, so every layer takes at least a day. Kel sealed up the last of our supporting beam with dry wall and hooked up the outlet on it, and I plastered the first layer on afterwards. The last task for Saturday was to grout the kitchen tiles. That look a lot longer than we thought since we weren't quick enough to clean up the floor, which meant we ended up scrubbing til midnight. :( That's okay though, at least it turned out pretty well! Erica and her dad came over to help again on Sunday. Cecilia also came over by mid-afternoon, brought us tea, and took a lesson on plastering 101!

Below: Our kitchen tiles!


Our hallway after demo, and now:


Our Kitchen last week, and now:

(You can see Erica standing back admiring her days work!)
Seeing the before/after pics of the kitchen makes this weekend's work all worthwhile!

Progress

Last Saturday, Erica came over and this time she brought her dad over to help. Her sisters came after a while to pick him up for lunch and they ended up helping a bit, too. By now, we've managed to plaster most of the kitchen walls, ceiling, and parts of the ensuite. (Erica brought Flora over to help for a few hours on Sunday after lunch :) Andrew and Kalee dropped by for a tour, too! It's been a busy weekend!



Ken came over yesterday to help tile the kitchen floor. We would've finished if we were not a box short on tiles.. :( Kel's picked up another box this morning, so we'll finish that tonight. Stay tuned for pics on the completed floor!

Tile Dealings

After following the roadmap from my previous post, I realized that places I called were either:
a) out of business
b) don't carry that brand
c) carries the brand, but aren't stocking that line

I found a number for the manufacturer's office online and called their Toronto location to inquire about their tiles. However, the person I need to speak to had stepped out of the office, so I left my name and number wondering if they'll really call back. To my surprise they called back within 2 hours, and asked what region I was in, to give me their distributor's name. Of course, this was the same place we found the tiles in the first place, which led me to realize that their tiles are exclusive to selective stores in different regions.

By the afternoon Kel had called Daniela, the sales rep from the store, to inquire about the price and shipment dates of our tiles. To our dismay, Daniela said that the price is actually $14.95/sqft because apparently the $11.95 was the US price. They have a shipment coming in on September 1st, but our order won't be able to make that date, so we'll be looking at mid-September time frame. Kel messaged me to see if we're still a go with the inflated price. I told him to call her back to see if she can lower it some. Daniela came back with $13.95 and said that was the best she could do. During this time, I've been randomly cold calling places in other regions to see if they carried the tiles. Upon hearing the new price offer and delivery date, I called up the manufacturer again to see if I can get the name of a different distributor from them.

"Didn't Vivian call you back with that this morning?"

"Yes, but the store said they can't get us the tiles until mid-September, and we're hoping to get them sooner."

"Mid-September? But we have another shipment going out to them next Monday!" (Aug 31st)

"Well, if we could get them next week, that'll be awesome."

"Who did you talk to at the store?"

"Karen" <-- I actually mixed up our shower sales girl's name here "Okay, I'll look into this and call you back." I told Kel of the news and we kept our fingers crossed. By 4pm, Vanessa from the store called me back. She said she heard I was interested in the tiles and could offer me the price of $11.95 and have them in there by September 1st. From the sounds of it, they got quite a talking to because she asked if the date worked for me, meaning she could rush the order if needed?! I almost feel bad for putting her in that position, but hey.. cheaper tiles, faster shipping date, same store... Woot! Below is our main bathroom in transition.. the tiles are done, the tub is in, and the drywall is up on the sides.

Tile Shopping

Step 1: Find the store and their opening hours and shift your schedule to get there in time. (Most places close at 5pm or 6pm, and 8pm on the odd day. Barely open on Saturdays, and definitely closed on Sundays.)

Step 2: Browse around and price the ones that catch your eye. Find out if they have any in stock. If they need to order them from the warehouse/manufacturer, find out how long that will take and when they're placing their next order.

Step 3: If you didn't find anything that catches your eye. Go back to Step 1.

Step 4: Once you've settled on the brand and color of tile, go online and try to find other distributors of that brand, or at least, find a listing of other tile shops in the area and get their phone numbers.

Step 5: Call each of those places and ask them if they carry that line of tiles, get a quote from them if they do and see what kind of deal you can get.

Step 6: Purchase from the cheapest quote you get.

Or of course, you can just pick it up from the first place you see it at, which would be much simpler, but when tiles start costing 12 bucks a piece.. well, you really have to think about it.

Below are the two tiles we chose for our ensuite stand in shower.


Oh, and we made another trip to IKEA last Friday to order our vanity cabinets. While there, we managed to score an entire countertop (for our ensuite bathroom) for $29! Woot!

Tiling the bathroom floor

Summer finally hit Toronto this past weekend! We had 30+ degree weather all weekend and it looks like it's here to stay. We didn't end up doing very much this weekend though, because we promised we'd help Ken paint his pool on Saturday morning, and we had a wedding to go to that evening. Sunday was also the last game of the season for their softball league, so Kelly figured he should show up since he's been skipping out on all the other games. :P So for the in between hours, Kelly and his dad managed to fix some of the piping as well as tiling the main bathroom floor.

Below, you can see Kel's dad tiling as Kel cut the tiles and mix the mortar. Can't wait to see the finished product!

Plumbing & The Bathroom

There weren't any posts for last weekend, as Kel and his dad were busy replacing the plumbing in the house, so there really wasn't much to see. They rented a mini jackhammer to dig up the basement floor where the main drain pipe was to make the cut and tore out all the old iron pipes. After that, Kel was busy gluing the new pipe sections together to prep for the final replacement. (In hindsight, I should take a picture of the hole in the ground with the new pipe, and the pile of rubble on the floor. I'll make sure I do that this week.)

During the course of last week, we started to demo the main floor bathroom. Kel dragged out the vanity sink and cabinet, and hacked away at the floor made up of tiny octagon tiles. The task after that, was to remove all the wall tiles in the washroom. At first, we were thinking of preserving the walls inside the shower, so Kel showed me how to take them out with a flat head screwdriver and a hammer. While I was chipping away at the tiles, it occurred to me that this must be what it feels like trying to break out of prison! Although the hammer was only 20oz, the consistent chipping really did a number on my right arm. Ken came by that night and laughed at my attempt. :P He then convinced us we didn't need those walls and once he got the green light, he took a sledge hammer to the wall tiles. After a couple of rounds, he showed me how to do it. Once he was satisfied I was down with the technique, he proceeded to show me how to take off the regular wall tiles with an ice shovel. (A shovel with sharp teeth at the end.) So that was our main task this weekend, we finished taking all the tiles out, and Kel and his dad took out the old tub and prepped the floors for the new tiles, as well as the walls for the new tub.

The picture below is what the bathroom used to look like, and how it was after the demolition. (And if you notice the after picture, the light isn't there anymore because I accidentally broke it with the ice shovel, while taking off the tiles. I actually couldn't figure out why something fell from above me when I was trying to take out tiles below, until Kel said, "Baby, you know you just broke the light.." Whoops!)