Thinking about door knobs

Door knobs might not be at the top of your to-do list when you’re building or renovating, but they’re an important and necessary design element in every house. After all, if we didn’t have door knobs and deadbolts on our front doors, we’d be leaving our houses open to anyone or anything that wants to come in. Not to mention the embarrassment of being caught in a compromising position in the bathroom ;-)

Our house in Ottawa had a lot of doors. And all of those doors had curvy shiny brass levers and shiny brass hinges. I always wanted to change them out for brushed chrome door knobs, but we moved before I had the chance to make the change.

Now that we’re building our own house, we can choose whatever door knobs we want. Well, almost – I prefer knobs, Brian prefers levers. I compromised on the style, but chose the finish. I decided that I want matte black levers and hinges. I think it’s a pretty sharp look.

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A few months ago, a representative from Schlage Canada contacted me and asked me if I was interested in using their products in our house. At that point, I hadn’t given the door hardware much thought, other than the fact that I knew I wanted to go black. I checked out the Style Selector on the Schlage web site, and found that that they carry a good variety of door solutions in a number of styles and finishes. The Broadway lever immediately caught my eye. I like the cylindrical lever and simple round back plate. And it comes in matte black, which is just what I was looking for.

Of course, there are many other styles and finishes to choose from. Traditional to contemporary, there’s something for every home.

If you’d like to check out Schlage solutions for your home, click here to find the retailer closest to you.

I’ve been busy painting doors and door trim so we can hang the doors and install the Broadway levers. Finally finished up that job, and I’ll show you how they turned out in my next post. There’s a fun surprise in the guest bedroom… stay tuned!

Disclosure: Thank you to Schlage Canada for partnering with me and providing door solutions for our house build.

It’s all about that baseboard

Now that a lot of the big things in the house are finished, we’ve been focusing on the detail work. Boring and nitpicky, but it has to be done.

Right from the start, I knew I wanted to keep the trim work simple. For the baseboards, I envisioned something plain and square, but with a little bit of detail to keep them from being boring. Luckily, there’s no shortage of inspiration pictures out there, and when I came across this baseboard, we had a winner.

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Of course, when I showed Brian the picture, his reaction was “I can make that.” ARGH! Is there anything the man can’t make?! Anyway, yes, as it turns out, he can make it. And I have to admit, he came up with a genius way of doing it. Don’t ask me why or how this idea occurred to him, but he took a piece of shiplap, cut off the bottom 1-1/2 inches, and then put the 1-1/2” strip on top of the wider strip. Voila, groove. Then he angled off the top edge of the thin strip, and plain and square baseboard with a touch of detail done!

All the trim in the house is Delicate White, which is a PPG Pittsburgh Paint colour that I’ve had colour-matched to Benjamin Moore paint. I’m using Advance in a satin finish on the baseboards and all the other trim. It’s a bit finicky to work with, but once you get the hang of it, the painting goes quickly and you end up with a really nice and durable finish.

If you’re installing new baseboards, take my word for it, paint them before they’re installed. It makes life so much easier. Once the baseboards are in, you just need to fill the nail holes and then paint a quick coat or two to finish them off. And here’s a tip for getting a clean line between the baseboard and the floor…

Cutting in without taping off the floor takes forever and if you’re anything like me, you’ll get paint on the floor no matter how careful you are. Taping off the floor is pretty much guaranteed to end up being a mess, because no matter how careful you are, paint will find a way to seep under the tape in places. So here’s what to do – tape off the floor, but bring the tiniest bit of the edge of the tape up onto the baseboard. Like this:

Then roll or brush on your paint without worrying about getting it on the floor (the wider tape you use, the better!)

As soon as you finish painting, pull up the tape. And voila, perfect clean line!

Of course, you have to paint your baseboards before they’re installed to do this, otherwise you’ll end up with a noticeable line where the tape came up onto the baseboard.

I’m really happy with how the baseboards have turned out. I just wish they were all done!

OK, off to do more priming and painting!

A whole lotta catching up to do!

Wow, it’s been way too long since I last wrote a blog post! It would take too long to write about everything we’ve done over the last couple of months, but here’s the biggest news – WE’VE MOVED IN! There’s still a lot of work to do, but we have a bathroom and a makeshift (and very messy) kitchen and a wood stove for heat and a comfy bed, so really, what more do we need? :-)

So here’s a rundown of what’s been going on around the house lately….

Brian built and installed the kitchen island. And it’s PURPLE! Benjamin Moore Peerage, to be exact. It’s different, and I LOVE it!

For now, it’s got a very classy plywood countertop – I can’t wait to get the marble installed. I double-checked that the purple works with the marble, and it does :-) Although the purple looks a lot different in this picture than it does in the island pictures.

The glass for the shower in the upstairs bathroom has been installed, and we have a functioning toilet and a temporary
pedestal sink. The closest-to-finished room that we have at this point.

We installed one of two light fixtures above the living room. It’s the SLY from Eurofase. I love how it looks like waves :-) Didn’t love installing it so much, though!

And we installed this light fixture from Home Depot in the master bedroom. I love how it emulates the angles of the ceiling. We’ll install another one at the opposite end of the second floor in the den/craft area.

We have TV! As long as we don’t lose the satellite signal when it’s raining… and installing the navy blue shiplap (BM Van Deusen Blue) is almost done.

Fuzion Flooring engineered oak hardwood flooring downstairs…

And upstairs, along with custom made baseboards.

The front entry is painted Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray and the front door is Benjamin Moore Douglas Fir. I’m not crazy about how the tiles in the entry look, so I solved the problem with an outdoor rug for $35 from Giant Tiger :-)

With all the white ceiling upstairs and the white shiplap downstairs, I wanted to bring more colour into the house. So I painted some interior doors PARA Paints Lush Turquoise and BM Douglas Fir.

We even bought new pans and a kettle for our induction stove that coincidentally match the doors!

 

Half the tiling in the downstairs bathroom is done. This end of the room in the laundry area.

It was a very exciting day when the washer and dryer went in – finally, clean underwear! They’re Electrolux front loaders, and so far I’m really happy with them. We’ll be putting a wood countertop over them and some shelving on the wall.

Way back when, I wrote this post about putting the bed in the master bedroom in the center of the room to take advantage of the vie through the skylights. And for a change, I won this battle! How’s this for a bed with a view? :-)

Whew! That was a long wrap-up, but there was a lot of ground to cover! At the moment, we’re putting together and installing baseboards and trim on the main floor, and I’m about to paint the guest bedroom – once I settle on a colour. I’ll really try to be better about sharing progress updates more regularly. Maybe once or twice a week instead of once every two months! Thanks to all of you who follow the blog and for waiting so long for an update :-)