January 2014 - Storefront Life

Toronto West End Real Estate

January is usually a slow time in the real estate market. People are burrowed in their homes keeping warm, not wanting to traipse through feet of snow to visit open houses. The market sees a few homes up for sale, but not the number that usually grace the MLS in spring, summer and fall. Still there’s usually a good little inventory that keep the market going, and offer a decent selection to would be home owners.

This winter in Toronto, there is a lack of inventory on the market, and it’s starting to make people do crazy things. It’s reminiscent of Black Friday at Walmart and people willing to fist fight for a half price flat screen tv. Now don’t get me wrong, the Toronto real estate market is always hot. Back when we were looking we saw over 100 homes and witnessed bidding wars up the prices well over our budget. The worst we experienced was a Victorian on Euclid where we had to wait in line for our scheduled showing and it went over for 100k over asking.

That my friends is nothing compared to what’s been going on in the West end of Toronto in the last few weeks.

A dilapidated fixer in Roncesvalles with soot covered walls, no heat, missing windows, knob and tube wiring and a gaping hole in the roof had over 300 viewers to it’s weekend open house.

Roncesvalles "fixer" — Roncesvalles “fixer”

The listing alone advised viewers to leave their kids at home. This was not a move in ready home. I’m surprised it wasn’t condemned, and to even have electrical and gas service hooked up extensive rehab was needed. The agent estimated that it needed $400k to make it livable. In the end it sold for $803,649. $153,749 over asking. WOWZA. [See the Toronto Star article here.]

In comparison, two streets over from our house, a move in ready, renovated semi with a basement rental unit topped the scales with 500 open house viewers, 32 offers and a selling price of $848,625. A measly (cough cough) $208,725 over asking.

West Toronto semi that sold for almost $210,000 over asking.

This is my neighborhood. The same one where I regularly find beer bottles in my planter boxes, have seen drug deals happen on the corner, and the dog caught a hooker & a john in the back alleyway during the summer. (He barked, and scared them away. )

Our neighborhood is gentrifying, and really it had nowhere to go but up. It was a working class neighborhood with tons of industry which kept it from soaring in the earlier housing booms. Now is it’s time for change, as the industry slowly moves out the condos have started to go up bringing with them new infrastructure as well (a new Metro & Shoppers Drug Mart going in at Dupont & Lansdowne). The proximity to the subway and the vast array of restaurants & bars makes it a hipsters paradise, and the real estate market has followed the brunch crowd. However, $850k for a semi?! That’s just ludicrous! [See The Globe and Mail article on the house here, Toronto Star here, and for a more candid article see the Mash here.]

Is this the way the Toronto West End market is headed? I doubt it. It most likely was a perfect storm with lots of desperate buyers and few houses on the market. Come spring when the mercury gets above sub arctic, and the sellers come out of hibernation, the market will (hopefully) spring back to its normal status quo. Until then, good luck intrepid home buyers, good luck!

High/Low Exterior Lighting

I love the look of a high end item with the price tag of a discount item.

I was perusing the exterior lighting isle at Rona the other day, when I spied this light.

Continue reading “High/Low Exterior Lighting”

Laundry Room Makeover?

Hey guys! We visited the Interior Design Show yesterday (which was awesome.) It really inspired us to get started on some new projects. I am still compiling all my pics and will have an inspiration post up for you in the next couple of days.

Speaking of new projects, on January 21st, 2013 I wrote this post (I have copied verbatim it below):

The entrance to the Storefront is level with the street. What that means for our basement is that it is completely underground and has no windows. At all. Most basements at least have some tiny windows. Not our house. Our basement is dark, damp, and the ceilings are about 6 1/2 feet tall.

So…a dungeon.

: Basement before we moved in, before the reno, before the water damage, and when there was still a strange toilet hanging out in the middle of nowhere… Now this part of the basement is storage for a lot of misc. stuff.

: Basement before the laundry was moved downstairs. Now the washer & dryer live beside the sink

: The “Laundry Room” as it is now. Note the water damage on the back wall

: The laundry sink. It needs some TLC

Its kinda depressing, right?

Couldn’t we just dig out the basement and make it nicer/finished? We could, but that would be expensive and hard. We could never have any windows, and a room without windows is just a bit sad. It would make a good dungeon, but a family room or guestroom? Not a chance.

So…what will become of our basement? Realistically, it can be some storage, a laundry room, a maybe a workshop. You wouldn’t want to spend HOURS working down there, but its warmer than the garage in the winter, and a good place to keep craft/DIY supplies. 1/3 of our basement is already drywalled on the ceiling in the laundryroom area. We’re thinking of adding the workshop to that room, and then using the rest of the basement as storage/utilities.

What do we need to do to get it in shape?

Eradicate the spider population (shudder)
Install a Dricore subfloor to allow any moisture that does get in, to get to the floor drain.
Some sort of (cheap & cheerful) flooring over the Dricore
Figure out what to do with the brick dust that the foundation bricks shed regularly and give the bricks some sort of finish (they have been previously painted but are flaking and yellowing from the water damage from a flood last year). I am thinking a breathable basement/masonry paint.
Install the awesome laundry bases we have had sitting in boxes for the last year.
Scrub our original cast iron utility sink, and refinish the outside of it. It’s beautiful, but has seen better days after the reno and copious amounts of paint brushes being washed in it weekly.
Figure out something to cover/disguise the plumbing/electrical/dryer venting on the laundry wall. Thinking building a floating wall out of wooden slats
Curtain or wall of some sort separating the laundry & workshop from the rest of the basement
Adding some lighting to our dark staircase
Prettying up the staircase ceiling (Paint or more wooden slats?)
Adding a storage rail & hooks to the staircase wall to act as a mini utility closet
Moving the rubber flooring that is currently in the laundry room to the storage area of the basement
Fill some areas of the floor that are crumbling
Organizing/purging the misc crap that has been growing in the basement
Buying A full size ironing board (we only have a mini one, how do we survive?!)
Building a drying rack (preferably one that folds away)
Adding a counter of some sort to stop socks from plummeting to their death behind the dryer. Also a good spot to stack folded clothes etc.
Shelving or cabinets above the washer & dryer for storage of laundry detergent and cleaning supplies
Purchase a dehumidifier to try to control the moisture levels better (especially in the summer)

Here is some of my Basement Inspiration:

Laundry Room/ Workshop Pinterest Board

This isn’t a project that we’ll be focusing on, but we hope we can chip away at it and end up with a usable space (that’s a bit prettier and less scary.)

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

So that post was almost exactly a year ago, and guess what we’ve done to remedy the situation?

NOTHING.

Not. One. Thing.

Everything in that post holds true. We have not improved the floor, the light, or the storage, and the spider population is increasing exponentially.

Where does that leave us? Well its late January in a very cold Toronto. My garage is freezing, and I’m getting antsy to DIY. I miss the smell of sawdust in my nose, or paint in my hair. I need to be wearing ripped paint stained jeans, a giant hoodie, and some earplugs.

So I decided it was time to take on the great big project of our basement laundry room/crafting workshop.

Am I crazy? Absolutely! Is it nice and toasty warm in the basement? YES! So its decided, I am turning the sad, sad space into a pretty, useful space that I wont dread using.

NOW. Where do I start? Anyone? Anyone… Bueller… Bueller?

Don’t Crank That

Sometimes in home ownership you make costly mistakes. Case in point: We close our skylight too tightly.

We have an opening skylight in our bathroom. It opens and closes with a big pole that you turn the handle and it cranks open.

When we had one of our cold snaps I walked into our bathroom to find out skylight had shattered. Don’t worry, it was just the inside piece of plastic (they’re double layered with air in the middle for insulation.) The skylight has a screen, which luckily caught all the jagged pieces of broken plastic.

It still caught me completely off guard. Who knew skylights could just shatter? Why did it happen?

We called our roofers and they assured us that it wouldn’t leak or anything, and it was marked as a low priority. Flash forward to the bitter cold snap we’ve been suffering from (grrr polar vortex grrr). Because it is just sooo darn cold out, and nice and toasty warm inside, we were getting a whole lot of condensation on our now uninsulated skylight. The condensation was dripping down onto our floor and making puddles. We called the roofers back, they upped the importance and scheduled a site visit on one of the coldest days of the year. Upon inspection they discovered that we appear to have tightened the skylight too tightly, and when it expanded with the cold it broke.

A new skylight was ordered, and it was safely installed yesterday taking all the broken pieces of plastic and condensation with it.

Our pocket is lighter, or egos a little bruised, but at least we have a drip free skylight back in our bathroom.

While talking with the roofing company we learned the following:

Only JUST close crank windows & skylights. Over tightening can warp the frame and put pressure on the glass/plastic risking breakage.

DON’T CRANK THAT SOULJA BOY!

On the positive side, dude I’m the freakin HULK. I am so strong my muscles break skylights!!!!

A Wee Bit Cold

While the East coast is getting hit with a big snowstorm, here in Toronto its cold. Like really cold. For the third time in three weeks its dipped into the -30’s with the windchill. For my American friends that’s about -22 Fahrenheit. A week an a half ago it actually went below -40c (-40f).

While it was only -32 when we woke up this morning, we were greeted with frost on the inside of our front door.

Yep, that’s INSIDE THE HOUSE.

Yes, I know I live in Canada. Yes I know it gets cold here.

However Toronto usually doesn’t get this kind of cold. We are usually buffeted by the lake and get very little in the way of snowfall, and usually we are about 5 degrees warmer that other areas. Apparently Mother Nature decided to teach Torontonians a lesson this year, and show us what a real winter is like. (p.s. it’s a bitch)

So as you can imagine, we haven’t done much on the house in the last few weeks! We are working away on a lighting project that we hope to finish this week. We are bundling up on the sofa watching Klondike, and HGTV on repeat. The dog refuses to go out for walks, and wants to be underneath blankets at all times, and we had soup for dinner last night (I hate soup.)

Excuse me while I go drown my cold weary bones in hot hot coffee.

Canada’s Handyman Challenge

Do you have a favorite TV channel? One that you turn to first to see what’s on? Mine is HGTV. Before owning a home I lusted after every home and project and reno on the TV just itching to get my own place. I wanted to learn how to frame a wall, why plumbing needed to be vented and how to tile and drywall. I wanted to be a handy(wo)man.

Needless to say Canada’s Handyman Challenge is one of my favorite shows. It takes average handy Joe’s, and puts them to the test in home building/repair challenges. To top it off, the judges are my favorite hosts on HGTV. Bryan Baeumler, Scott McGillivray and Paul Lafrance. The new season of CHC is about to kick into high gear, premiering tomorrow night (Tuesday January 21st at 10pm ET|PT) on HGTV Canada.

One afternoon when I was busy working on the kitchen project my phone buzzed with an email asking me if I’d like to come down to the set of Canada’s Handyman Challenge and sit down with the judges and host Jenn Robertson. Would I like to visit behind the scenes of one of my fave shows and interview three of my heros? Nah. I’m good. I’d rather be elbows deep in plumbing.

So I went (of course!) I battled a closed road and an out of the way set location and literally ran to make it in time.

When I arrived, I got to tour the set (which was freakin’ awesome!) and then sat down with Bryan, Scott, Paul and Jenn with surprise guest (our buddy) Mike Holmes.

My first realization: Scott’s hair really is that great.

Next realization: The guys are old friends, who get along great and enjoy taking the piss out of one another. Throughout our round table the guys were super relaxed and personable. Scott even told us bloggers that he checked out our blogs (swoon). The strange thing is that you watch these guys on TV so much you kinda think that you know them. That they’re your friends, when really you’ve just been voyeuristic looking at their lives from a box in your living room! They quickly put us at ease and were very candid with our questions.

The four lucky bloggers attending got to ask the gang a question. My question was a bit self serving (I was trying to get the inside scoop so I could take the prize at next years competition.)

I asked this: “What is the one skill that the candidates and handymen in general are lacking?”

I LOVED their answers. Here is what they said:

Scott: Passion.

Paul: Math, Science.

Mike: Confidence.

Jenn: Ability to hang wallpaper! She says there’s always a wallpaper challenge. PRACTICE HOW TO WALLPAPER!

And my favorite response:

Bryan: Planning.

Bryan says people don’t stop and think/plan out what they are doing, they just go head long into the project without thinking how they’re going to do it. I couldn’t agree more. I see my projects going downhill fast unless I plan it out beforehand. I plan on taking Bryan’s advice and planning out my projects more!

I can’t wait to see the judges in action (and what candidates posses the skills the judges are looking for!) I will also start planning my plywood challenge for next year.

Here are a few more behind the scenes pics (I couldn’t share all of my pictures as I was invited on set during the FINAL challenge. So check back after the finale and I will be sharing more pics!.)

I will be chatting on twitter tomorrow night during the premier (Tuesday January 21st at 10pm ET|PT) on HGTV Canada. Follow me @storefrontlife for my witty remarks about my new best friends Bryan, Scott, Paul, & Jenn.

Until then you can get your CHC fix by checking out host bios and behind the scenes videos about the show here.

Would you ever try out for Canada’s Handyman Challenge? Will you be watching tomorrow night?

Focus on the Journey, not the Destination.

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it. -Greg Anderson

That is crappy advice. Cause sometimes the journey SUCKS.

Case in point: Gathering supplies for an industrial chandelier project in mid January in Canada without a car.

This is how our weekend went:

Friday after work I took three buses and a shuttle to get to Ikea North York (aka the Ikea in the opposite end of Toronto from where we live.) Getting two lights (which have been sold out at my local Ikea for months). Then taking a shuttle, three subways and a bus to get home. Three and a half hours later I had my lights, and fro-yo. So there’s that saving grace.

Saturday El Granto, myself and the dog headed out to the lumber yard. We took our favorite route along the West Toronto Railpath only to find halfway along our route the path turned into 2″ of solid ice covered in water. AKA the most slippery walk ever. Then it started to rain. We proceeded on city streets, which weren’t much better. Why cant people with corner lots SHOVEL THEIR SIDEWALKS?! Insert blood pressure rising. We got our needed lumber, and El Granto carried it home while I wrangled the bags of supplies and the pooch.

El Granto carrying home a 4x4 8 foot post. — El Granto carrying home a 4×4 8 foot post.

Next we dropped off the dog at home, and took the bus & streetcar to Home Depot to get everything else we needed.

Our menagerie of weird supplies for this project.

I then braved the skating rink which is our backyard, and headed into the garage to spray paint while the weather was warm enough. (It had reached +6 in Toronto, and with the heater on in the garage I could get it to +10, which is the minimum temperature for my spray paint to cure.) I set up my drop cloth and painted three light coats on all my lights & supplies, and left it to dry.

Sunday I went to check on my paint, and discovered that the drop cloth had fallen onto the lights and f@#ked up my paint job. Insert string of expletives. I conquered my anger, sanded down my newly painted lights, and painted another two coats of paint. I then marched them inside to safely dry in the basement. Where no big mean drop cloths could fall on them and make me cry.

Our light(s) after 6 coats of paint. Three would have done it except for the damn drop cloth that decided to fall on it and wreck everything. — Our light(s) after 5 coats of paint. Three would have done it except for the damn drop cloth that decided to fall on it and wreck everything.

SO three days of journey, very little accomplished, and no actual “industrial chandelier” made.

Eff you Journey. I will stop believing.

(Not) Burning Down the House

El Granto is a bit of a tech nerd. He’s not quite Howard Wallowitz, but the man likes him some gadgets. Hell he even has a watch that receives his texts and emails.

I may not be the biggest techy, but when it comes to our home I really have been taken up with home tech. From the simplest touches such as our bathroom fan with a timer, to our IR repeater and of course to our Nest thermostat. I love them all. I want to turn our house into robot house. Bring it Jarvis.

While we’re not quite at the whole home automation level, we have just added three super cool new smart home additions.

Meet our Nest Protect Minions.

When I posted a pic of our install on Instagram I had quite a few questions asking what on earth these things are.
They’re awesome, that’s what.

They also happen to be super smart smoke/co2 detectors that help keep us safe whether we’re burning dinner (that never happens I swear) or fast asleep. They sense smoke and co and will give you vocal warnings when something goes wrong. There is two levels of warning. I like to call them “burnt the toast” and “the effing house is on fire!”. The former will let you know when things are a bit smokey and let you turn off the warning with a wave of your hand. The latter will tell you to get the hell out of your house and notify you via the Nest app to let you know your house is burning down.

It’s a bit hard for me to explain their awesomeness in prose alone, so I will let this video do all the hard work for me.

My favorite part has to be the “nite nite” check, when you turn out the lights for the night the system does a full check and a pulse of green light on all the Nest Protect units lets you know that everything is working and you can safely go to sleep. I also really like that if the Nest Protect senses co2, it will talk to our Nest thermostat and tell it to shut off our gas furnace. Pretty darn cool.

The Nest Protect works with our Nest app, so everything is working together and updating you on one app.

We installed right before Christmas, and just like the Nest Thermostat install it was super easy.

Read and follow the simple instructions.

Scan the QR code on the back of the Nest Protect, enter in your settings and wait for it to sync itself.

Nest Protect doin its thing — Nest Protect doin’ its thing

Then attach it to the ceiling and pop it into place.

After all of them are installed (we have one in our basement, one on the main floor and one on the second floor). You test the whole system and relax, cause your house is now way smarter than you are.

The current weather has put the system through its paces. We were able to check on the system and up the heat during the ice storm & cold snap to make sure the dog wasn’t freezing, and neither were our pipes. We also had the peace of mind that the house was safe, and we could also use it to check and see if we had power when most of the city was dark.

Are they worth the price? I say yes! And if you’re in Canada and don’t already have a CO detector, as of Jan 1, 2014 it became law that you have to have one. So get a co detector!

*BTW We really truly have no affiliation with Nest, we just love their stuff.

Wood Paneled Peninsula

My least favourite part of the kitchen used to be the peninsula. It was short and stubby, too small to use as a prep space and looked awkward.

I had originally hoped to build the peninsula deeper to house a beverage fridge and get full counter depth cupboards & drawers. However it became apparent that to do that we would loose valuable dining room space, and be unable to have a 6 person dining table.

We were not willing to compromise on the dining table (we love to entertain!) so the peninsula needed to stay skinny. If we couldnt make it wider we could at least make it longer. We added only one more cabinet, which not only made the kitchen symetrical, but made so much more work space. Its amazing what a foot can do. Now you can stand comfortably at the peninsula and chop veggies or converse with someone in the diningroom.

Such a small change, but a world of difference. Now the peninsula is my favourite part of the kitchen. The concrete waterfall is the icing on the cake, but you may have noticed we added a bit of a special touch on the back of the peninsula as well.

The peninsula used to be backed in an Ikea cover panel that matched the Ikea Adel kitchen cabinets. It worked just fine, but after we added the extra cabinet, the old cover panel wasn’t big enough.

We could have went out and bought a larger one, but thought it might be a fun area to add something special, and make our kitchen look a bit more custom. Enter a trip to the hardware store.

We picked up three 6 foot long pieces of tongue and groove 1×6 unfinished pine flooring from Home Depot along with a 1×4 piece of kiln dried pine. Back in the garage we cut down our lumber to three feet long on the miter saw, and headed into the house armed with some wood glue and a brad nailer.

We started at the top of the peninsula with a board facing groove up. We brad nailed it into the cabinets making sure we nailed through the sides of the cabinet frames, not just the backer. When attaching the second board we added a bit of glue to the groove, slid it tightly against the other board, and continued nailing. You will notice that we didn’t run the wood all the way to the wall. The stove is tucked into that corner, and to give the stove a bit more breathing room, we opted to only panel to just past the oven door. It saves on wood, and I will worry less that I will light my house on fire when I run the self cleaning oven.

Once we reached the bottom, we went to the garage and cut the groove off the past piece with the table saw so we would end with a nice smooth board.

Cutting off the last tongue with the table saw

Last board installed (note the absolute chaos of the kitchen in the background!)

After the boards were installed we got out the wood filler and filled in the brad nail holes.

Nail holes (and the stupid little divot my brad nailer leaves) — Wood Filler

After letting the filler dry, we took the sander to the boards and gave it a quick finish sand.

Now we were ready to finish it. We pushed back the countertop (we hadn’t yet adhered it to the cabinets at this point) taped off the area, and added a coat of wood conditioner then two coats of stain (same color as our dining table & coffee bar shelves).

After staining we finished it up with 5 coats of Satin Poly. Five coats may have been a bit of overkill, but its beside the stove and oven, and will get its fair share of abuse.

Next up we needed to address the toe kick. For the rest of the kitchen we have plain white toe kicks, but it just seemed weird to carry on the white for the back of the peninsula, so we opted to use a piece of 1×4 pine stained & polyed to match.

We then moved the countertop back in place, making sure the wood was flush with the countertop edge, attached the countertop to the cabinet, and slid the stove back in place.

Making sure the countertop was flush with the paneling

Total Cost: About $15!

2014 DIY Goals

We didn’t fall on our asses completely with our 2013 DIY goals, but I’d like to do even better this year.

This year my goal is to not fall on my ass.

Likelihood of success: slim to none.

Well there you have it, list done, I’m going back to bed.

Oh… about those real 2014 DIY Goals. Okay okay, here they are.

Main Bathroom Makeover: You’ve never even SEEN this room! When we moved in we gave it a coat of Tiffany blue paint, hung a white shower curtain and that’s about it. After living with the bathroom for three years, we’ve noticed it’s a bit lacking in functionality. The vanity is too small for El Granto and I to get ready at the same time (which we do) and the storage is not as useful as it could be. (Aka too little and of the unorganized variety.)

Bathroom Vanity & Mirror (sorry about this terrible picture, I shot it months ago and apparently forgot how awful/out of focus it was)

The strange (useless) gap between the vanity and the wall (and hells yeah, we have a happy face nightlight)

Our goal is to build a larger vanity with drawers and his and hers doors and storage. We’d also like to build a new counter with built in trough sink and two faucets. A new mirror and lighting will have to follow as they will be off center and dorky looking after the new vanity.

When we moved into the Storefront there was a stacked washer/dryer in our main second floor bathroom. This dryer and it’s poorly constructed venting was the start of our water woes that resulted in Mike Holmes coming to fix our house. During the reno, Mike & the crew moved our laundry to a safer location in the basement. What was left is a large (empty) closet in our main bathroom which thus far just holds a laundry basket and some extra TP. We’d like to conquer the closet and custom build a linen closet with glass doors for pretty storage, and drawers for other not so pretty storage (I’m looking at you toilet paper). We’d also like to build in a hidden laundry basket door/drawer system. I really enjoyed making the media cabinet last year and am itching to do some more cabinet making in the bathroom.

To complete the bathroom will be a new shower curtain, towel hooks, art etc. I am also hoping for new tile (but that may be wishful thinking.) It’s a BIG project that we hope to start sometime in the spring.

Staircase/Hallway: The upstairs hallway was on my list last year and it never got done. I would like to finish it off, and continue down the staircase and knock that off the list as well. The staircase is the ONLY remaining beige wall inside. The reason it’s remaining as it’s hella tall, and going to be a pain in the ass to paint. While I’m at it, I’d like to do some trim work in the staircase, and beef up our newel posts to make them more appropriate to the period of the Storefront. Aka less 1990’s more 1910.

Do something with the backyard: The grading is sliding sideways and we’ve lost half the dirt/sand in the backyard in the last year. The pathway is sinking, creating a lake when it rains and the grass refuses to grow in the shifty sandy soil. I would also still like to put in a patio of some sort and build some patio furniture. This looks like an easy task but is HUGE. It may not get done this year.

Backyard Lake. — Backyard Lake created by the sinking pathway.

Garage Love: The garage needs a little TLC. We need to add some lumber storage, make a new workbench for our bench top tools, add some insulation and figure out some sort of sawdust control system. As El Granto got a new belt/disc sander for Christmas, I think this project will be starting sometime soon.

Paint the exterior of the Storefront: I would love love love to remove the siding on the front of the house, re-point the brick, clean it, and re-do all the flashing. Unless I somehow come into a lot of money, this is not going to happen in the next year. To live with the front of the house for now, I would like to prime & paint the siding to give it a new lease on life. While we’re at it, I’d like to de-beige the back of the house with some paint as well. I would also like to try a new paint color on the front door & mailbox. I’m thinking something fun, like green or blue.

What do you think? Is it a do-able list, or am I going to fail miserably?