We have floors!

The living room carpet all gone!

Starting to lay the floor. It's laminate - Canadian Maple coloured.

The master bedroom - all pretty and red with wonderful floors.
If you look really closely you can see the paint difference - went to a more yellow cream (left). It's almost all done now, just 2 walls left and the baseboards and moulding. Then the doors and trim around the doors & windows can be done.

And this is me, trying to ignore the huge mess I'm living in. Happily knitting away... some day I'll be able to do more than a square with lots of holes...

The Bedroom...

Still needs another coat and the white trim updated and we need to move our stuff in, but here's a quick update of the colour:

First the fantastic primer:
The paint just added a richness, very bright and shiny and deep looking.
Slightly different lighting

This is what would happen if we didn't first use the primer - not loving it!
Can't wait to have it finished so we can move in :)

What we're living in

So here's a few pics of the start of re-painting our condo. We started with the little room, the colour turned out a little too yellow to do the rest of the house in and the paint smelled SO BAD it was awful!It was our original intention to do the majority of the place this colour, but we've now switched to Pratt & Lambert paint, which is about $15 more a gallon than the Ralph Lauren but is supposed to be top of the line. The lovely lady at the paint store has taken my 2 samples and is mixing us a lighter cream and a more grey pewter (too brown).

The mostly painted room:J's starting to move in - interesting how the colour changes with the time of day.
All across the top of this window (about 9 feet) we're installing a 6 inch wide bookshelf that we'll paint the same glossy white as the trim is going to be for some of his books.
Still have this much to go!

This is to show you just how much better our heater covers look painted white. That ugly part where the paint peeled off (have to re-paint) is the original colour.This is our bed. In the middle of the living room.

The bathroom- I've started to primer the walls, we've ripped off the ugly medicine cabinet and plan to replace it with a nice flat framed mirror and a nicer light fixture. I'll probably put some sort of cupboard above the toilet instead as really, where else do you get face cream in the morning?


And J has talked me into a VERY bold bedroom - we're actually painting it Velvet Red. I'm nervous, but hey, guess we can always put 3 coats of primer on it and start again, right? Pratt & Lambert Velvet Red:

Our closet "walks through" to the bathroom and I plan to install (by that I mean J will install) a floor to ceiling 3 foot wide black & white Shoji panel that will slide open to the side. Similar to this one, but only 3 feet wide.
And I will have glossy white trim, a black headboard & nightstands and pretty fabulous things like this white embossed candle that glows from Partylight.

AND I bought new shoes! Yay!

The Living Room

So, our Christmas present to each other this year was a new flatscreen TV. Found it at Memory Express of all places - it's a computer store, so I didn't even realize they sold TV's. It's a 37" LCD Sharp Aquos that you can buy at Future Shop for about $899 and M.E. sold it to us for below cost - $400! It was missing the part the connects the TV to the base so it has to be wall mounted, but hey - that's what we were going to do anyhoo.
Here's the first night we got it home:

J plugged it in right away to play some Mario Kart. It was too late at night to start dismantling the wall unit and put it up.
This is the living room after taking apart the huge wall unit we had created when first moving in - part of it went in this corner, the other shelf in the computer room. Feels so much more open now.
Yes, I did hang our Rock Band Fender up on the wall - with white pushpins no less!
So, I think the next thing on the list is going to be painting. We have a floor guy coming in the next little bit to take a look and make some recommendations on the process. As our building shifts a lot and the concrete needs to be re-leveled we want to make sure we do everything we can to have it last. But in the meantime, I think I'm going to paint. I'm thinking light cream walls, keep the dark grey in the kitchen, and glossy white trim. I plan to accent with light grey and red and black, and I think the cream and white paint will provide a warm fresh base. I also want this picture that's above our couch to continue to fit in, as it was painted by J's brother's girlfriend for us, but we'll see. It may have to move. I also took down the curtain rod above the window and am so far liking the clean crisp lines. Of course, being a girl, I'm sure I'll change my mind, but for now, it's good.

Look what I can do!

Bicycle Built For Two
Yup, that's me! The song reminds me of my dad, singing to us as kids and I just couldn't resist.

Get your original SUV now...

As the USA's Big 3 auto manufacturers face bankruptcy, we must go back to the old time basics. We will soon need to embrace the original SUV.

Transcending: Words on Women and Strength by Kelly Corrigan

The Weather Outside is Frightful

And to think we came to Quadra to get away from the snowy cold snap our city is having!

But hey, we've visited tons of people, had an amazing infrared sauna and then a steam shower followed by a 1/2 hour massage each and we're on our way to a fondue party with more friends. If only the snow/rain thing that's going on would finish...
Merry Christmas everyone!

Nailed it! ha ha...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West
The Midland
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

It's Official!

I'm a student again! My next class starts Jan 8/09 for 16 weeks, just Thursday nights for 3 hours. Advanced Financial Accounting. That I will be taking with my good friend. Our exciting topics include:
"An in-depth study of six major areas of advanced financial accounting: standard setting in Canada and internationally, financial instruments, income tax allocation, long term intercorporate investments, consolidation, foreign currency translation and the translation and consolidation of foreign subsidiaries, and not-for-profit and public sector accounting."

Did your eyes glaze over a little? It sounds pretty complicated, but we're smart cookies and have lots of resources available at work.

Jeremiah's birthday was a few weeks ago, and as usual I hemmed and hawed over what to buy this incredible yet complicated man. For quite some time he's been pushing the idea of buying quality items for the house, and has wanted a kitchen knife. So, I let my fingers do the walking and ended up finding a really cool store in Inglewood specializing in hand crafted kitchen knives. Knifewear.
Of big interest to me was the long history of the family trade and the fact that they're from Japan (always a sell with J). The experience of bringing him to find the store, chatting with the owner and being in the presence of someone passionate about their items was a treat. We finished off the day with a superb latte, a visit to the Tea Trader for some organic loose tea and a stop at Nectar Desserts. Mmmmmmm. We had a raspberry mango tart topped with the most delicious fresh flavourful raspberries and a slice of layered chocolate heavenliness (otherwise known as cake).

The dark colour is exactly how it looks when it's taken out of the fire, the shinier bits happen when it's sharpened. Most knives are thouroughly polished up before selling, but we liked the unfinished look.

Check out the cool way he signs his art - I like the heart!
The blade is so fine you can cut tomatoes as fine as tissue paper with no effort. I think it was worth the $300 price tag.