Reno-amateur

First time home owner and renovator learns valuable lesson in home renovation: everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you expect. Follow our adventures as we gut, build, discover, despair and delight along the never dull road to renovation.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree


Behold, this, our first real Christmas tree! He's from the Maritimes - Nova Scotia I believe. What do you feed Maritime Christmas trees to keep them feeling at home and alive? Rum? Scotch Whisky?

After a long and involved search for LED Christmas lights, we finally bought this tree at Rona and trimmed it last weekend. We're quite pleased with it. We named our tree Jonah, or maybe it was Jonas...I can't remember because this has been a busy week and I haven't spent much time with Jonah since we dressed him up and plugged him in.

He fills the house with a lovely pine aroma, which is supplemented a little by a lovely white candle that is also supposed to elicit the aroma of Christmas...it really works! I'm not sure why we got a male tree this year. We just did. He sits in the little alcove of the bay window and still gives us lots of room around him for the dining room table. It makes me feel that all the headaches, waiting and letdowns that occurred around the reveal and restoration of that bay window were all worth it.

Jonah is decorated with those old fashioned glass balls. I'm sure you can still get them, but ours were made in East Germany, which doesn't exist anymore. They were left in our basement when the former owner moved out. She left quite a few things behind...a leaky roof, lowered ceilings and lots of wood paneling, not to mention an electric knife and some old rusty tools, but these Christmas tree decorations actually came in handy. I'm not sure that we'll be keeping them all, but they should do for this first lean Christmas in our house.

Sadly, there are no presents under Jonah at the moment. We decided not to get each other presents this year. The house seemed to be a significant enough present in itself. I think enjoying time with friends and family will be the best present we could hope to have. And we look forward to visiting others and having visitors drop in...there's not much to see...we are still on the hunt for a sofa and actually need some interior decorator expertise, but we're happy to be in and enjoying our home.

We are slowly still moving in and unpacking. Yesterday Jamie put up the last of the bathroom fixtures - towel rail, ring and medicine cabinet etc. It looks great - we'll be putting the finishing touches on it over the holidays. I'll send an update on the mostly finished bathroom next. Very much enjoying the heated glass tile floor!

Friday, December 01, 2006

Renovater Fatigue

Seems that all of the high octane fuel we've been burning has left us in need of a tune up. We're kinda tired. We were tired before, but now that we've finally moved in and are actually living in our new home, we seem to have lost A LOT of steam.

Jamie says he feels like he did when he arrived home after finishing Christmas exams. Bone tired and on the verge of getting sick. We've all been there, and unfortunately, there's not much one can do to avoid actually succumbing to whatever opportunistic infection wins the battle with the immune system.

I'm tired - but am not getting sick. At least I don't feel anything coming on. But alas, I lack the skill to really forge ahead and continue to do the things that need doing: hanging hooks, towel racks, toilet paper holders etc. I guess I could try, but I'm sure I'd get it wrong, only creating more work for my poor, sick husband.

Oh well, there's lots of shopping to be done: stools, a sofa and window treatments are at the top of my list at the moment. So, I'll be spending the next few days making some Jewish penicillin (chicken soup) for my sick husband and sourcing some items that will continue to make our house more livable and cozy. It's not there yet. But it will be...stay tuned!