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!

One almost-finished room

Hey, we finally have a room in the house that’s looking like an actual real room! The upstairs bathroom is painted (minus a few touch-ups), tiled, and even has running water :-)

This room is a bit of an unusual shape with the sloped ceiling. After considering different tiling options, we decided to tile the entire shower & toilet wall. And we brought the tiles up into the slope of the ceiling too. Otherwise, the wall and room would have looked a bit squat. FYI, gravity is not kind to a person who’s grouting a sloped ceiling!

I wanted the tiles to run vertically to be reminiscent of water running down the wall. And instead of the usual subway tile layout, we went with 1/3 offset. I think it gives the wall more of a random look.

Originally the glass mosaic tiles were only going to go into the niche, but I’m really happy that we brought them onto the turquoise wall as well.

The shelves in the niche and the ledge along the half wall are Silestone Calacatta Gold. They’re all remnants that we picked out of the discard pile at a local stone shop. We’re also going with Calacatta Gold for the vanity countertop.

The floor tiles are laid in a simple brick pattern and were much easier to grout than the shower walls and sloped ceiling! They’re still a bit wet in this picture – the finish is actually matte

Fast forward a few days, and Brian has installed the shower head, diverter, and body jets. There’s still the handheld sprayer to install. All the bathroom faucets are from Riobel.

Very excited to have a rainhead :-)

I cannot wait to have a shower with body jets again. We had them in or shower in Ottawa and I used them every single day. I’d prefer jets that don’t stick out, but these ones are adjustable which is a nice feature.

The diverter lets you choose where the water comes out – body jets, rain head, hand held, or a combination. You can also set it to the water temperature that you want and then just leave it there.

The wall hung toilet isn’t installed yet, but the flusher is in :-)

Not only is it exciting to be getting close to having a finished room, but once the bathroom is done, we’ll be pretty close to being able to move in. And THAT is going to be SUPER-exciting!

Turquoise shower tiles – Casa Roma, Maiolica Aquamarine
White shower tiles – Casa Roma, Waves
Glass mosaic tiles – Elegant Flooring, Shiny Aegean Blu
Floor tiles – Centura Templestone Grigio

Let there be light

It may take me forever to choose tiles and hardwood and paint colours, but damn I’m good at making decisions about lights! A few trips to HomeSense and a couple of lights that made the move with us, and let there be light in our house :-)

I bought this star light years ago and love it so much that I had to bring it with us when we left Ottawa. It’s now in the guest bedroom of our house. Not sure how low to hang it, so the chain is a bit funky.

    

Our previous rental house had a pretty ugly pendant light in the front entry. I’d had my eye on a cool geometric pendant light at Costco for the longest time, so I bought it and replaced the ugly one with it. (It doesn’t seem to be available at Costco anymore, but I came across is on the Structube web site.) Seeing as I bought it myself, I didn’t feel bad taking it down and moving it up to our house when we moved out of the rental. Now it’s hanging in the front entry of our house, and I absolutely love it!

  

The rest of the light fixtures are from HomeSense. Their lighting options are really quite good, and I don’t know if you’d be able to find similar fixtures for the great prices. I think this one was about $30 – although I made a small mistake when I bought it and didn’t realize that it’s actually a wall sconce. Ooops! Brian re-jigged it to turn it into a ceiling fixture. I love that it looks like a fishing float and echoes the big round window in the upstairs bathroom.

  

This little guy is in the closet in the front entry. I was debating another geometric fixture to echo the black one, but I really like the simplicity of this one. Also, it was a great deal at $30 :-)

  

And finally, these two fixtures are in the downstairs bathroom. I love the combination of white and wood. And check out the amazing shadows on the ceiling.

  

All of these fixtures have LED Edison bulbs from the Dollar Store. Well, they actually cost $4.00 each, but that’s still a pretty good deal. The light from them is nice and warm and bright, but without being too bright.

The kitchen has a bunch of LED pot lights on the work side, and we’re going to make a glass insulator chandelier like this one on the dining side. Thanks Gilles & Melissa for the inspiration :-)

The only lights I still need to decide on are large pendants what will hang from the ceiling beams. I’m thinking something simple and light, like these string lights.

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These fixtures are definitely lighting up my life :-)

Shiplap Ahoy

Before we had even officially bought our lot, I was saving house inspiration pictures on Pinterest. One thing I knew I wanted in our house was horizontal planking on the walls. Well, I called it horizontal planking, the more common term is shiplap. Authentic shiplap is planks of wood with rabbets on each side that interlock and create a small gap between the planks. It was originally used to clad building exteriors, but it’s made a big move inside over the last few years.

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We cheated a bit and used MDF shiplap. Not quite authentic, but a real time-saver because it comes primed and ready to paint. And there’s no danger of knots showing through the paint years down the road.

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I kept debating what walls to shiplap. I love the look, but didn’t want shiplap overload. So I decided to put it on the three walls in the main living area.

And I didn’t want it all to be white. So I decided to paint the shiplap on the wall looking out to the water white (Pittsburgh Paint Delicate White, otherwise knows as Derelict White) and the staircase wall and opposite partial wall navy blue (Benjamin Moore Van Deusen Blue).

       

We ordered a bunch of 7-1/4” shiplap planks – I think 91 (everything they had in stock) – from the hardware store, and then I got to work painting one coat on the planks before we installed them on the walls. This way I’d be sure to get the grooves properly painted, and it was easier to paint the planks on solid ground that up on a ladder or scaffolding.

And then the shiplap went up. It was fairly easy and straightforward to install (she says when it was Brian who did all the installation!) The rabbets keep the planks evenly spaced, so no need to use coins or spacers. Once the shiplap was all installed, it was my fun job to fill all the nail holes. I used Polyfil and a putty knife and did two fillings and two sandings, then wiped the walls down with a microfibre cloth.

Remember, you have to get through the ugly before you can get to the pretty! And voila, finished shiplap.

I love how the white and navy blue look together. I do have a thing for white and blue :-)

Another job down and 58,000 more jobs to go!