where to start...

Well, what can I say it's been way too long.  It's been a busy 8 months....(OMG! 8 MONTHS since I've blogged, seriously??!!)  We celebrated Max's birthday and then the house renovations began.  Our main floor entrance, living room, dining room and hall were completely gutted back to the barn board of this 102 year old house.  We started with replacing all of the knob and tube wiring, opened up most of the rooms, removed a strangely placed 1/2 bath, ripped up the splintering hardwood and dry walled over the pop corn ceiling.

Let the dust fly!  Wall to the basement, under main staircase was knocked down, drywall came off to get to the wiring and to open up rooms.

Back to the barn board.  Carmon pulled out old newspaper, blue jeans and mice nests from between the walls - good times.

You can see here where the 1/2 bath was on the main floor, not ideal as it was right next to the dining room and teeny tiny.

Carmon ripped up all of the hardwood, underneath was years and years of dirt and dust.  He also pulled up every single nail...back breaking work.

Our little helper, sanding the sub-floor.

Drywall up, rooms are defined, hallway is much brighter and open.

New stair railing, now our basement stairs are open to the main floor.  Painting the railing has yet to be done. 

We REALLY wanted to have a fireplace in the living room.  We had to rethink our furniture layout and made it work.

No going back now!  The hole has been cut thanks to our friends at Hearth and Home Fireplaces.

This is our end result - we absolutely love it.  The mantle is custom concrete and was made by 2 Stone here in Calgary. 

Putting everything back together has been fun, most of the furniture came with us from Toronto but we've also added a few HomeSense finds like the Ikat stool, our hall and dining room light fixtures as well as our huge linen shade from Restoration Hardware.  There is still so much to do, the list is endless actually and a tad daunting when we plan to do most of the work ourselves.  Carmon is such a handyman and an impressive contractor so we are always planning the next phase.  

Still to come for the main floor - new windows, doors, window treatments, baseboard and railing painting.  Don't even get me started on the rest of the place!!  Stay tuned!