The day we pretended to be on HGTV: Our PARA Blog Crew Submission [Video]
This is going to be embarrassing... When we attended BlogPodium a few weeks back, one of the announcements we were pretty excited about was that PARA Paints was launching the search for their 2014 Para Blog Crew. We knew instantly that we wanted to apply because we thought it'd be fun to shoot the submission video - that AND we do have an ENTIRE house to paint, so figured we'd have no shortage of content to blog about should we be chosen.
And the Lord said ‘Let there be WINDOWS’
See that?? That right there?!?! That is me doing my happy dance. After nearly FOUR MONTHS of sourcing, quoting, choosing frame styles, then re-sourcing, re-quoting, picking colours, making custom orders, manufacture lead time, and of course what felt like ENDLESS waiting....
Behind the Dream: How we’re financing our home renovation
Ok guys. It's that time. In the spirit of keepin it real, we've decided to address the screaming purple elephant in the room because frankly, a lot of people are nosy curious. Seriously, we've had neighbours see our house going up & do everything from dance around the issue, to flat out ask what we do & how much we make! So today we're talking about money.
Confessions of a BlogPodium virgin
I have a confession to make. Well a few actually. But the first is I've spent the better part of this week in a post-vacation funk. Does that ever happen to you? You spend a week in tropical bliss - away from the stresses of your daily life - only to return & have it all come crashing back down on you?? Surely I'm not alone in this. Well today, I've made a decision to pull myself out of the funk. I'm back to blogging today because writing always makes me feel better & I'm choosing to let go of the "everyone else's recap is already so much better than yours is going to be so why bother" mentality that has been stifling me & keeping me from writing this post.
5 years. A 4 year old. 3 addresses. 2 hearts. 1 lifetime.
5 years ago today on a rainy afternoon, perched on a cliff at the edge of paradise, I married my best friend. Although we'd been together as a couple for many eight years prior, that day was the beginning of a new chapter for us.
Getting BlogPodium ready!
As some of you know, this Saturday Kes & I are attending BlogPodium, a conference for Canadian design and lifestyle bloggers where we'll get to meet & network with 250 professionals, & fellow house obsessed bloggers like ourselves! This will be our first blogger conference so I'm incredibly nervous excited!
Go go gadget house!
With the window wait nearly over & the basement prep work complete, we're finally back to focusing on our plans for the main living space. We thought we'd take a break from all of the heavy construction talk & get a little bit into some of the fun stuff.
The basement continued: The quest for more headroom
Things are moving along in the basement. We decided to use a bench-footing technique to gain more headroom. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, "bench-footing" is similar to "underpinning" which are both basically just fancy pants construction words for the process of lowering the basement floor.
Switching focus: Planning the basement
In our last post I mentioned that we've been biding our time until the windows arrive. As you know, up until now, we've primarily been focusing our construction efforts on the main living space of the house. But now that we've got a little time to burn, we're switching our focus to the basement.
Window waiting woes…
You might have noticed things on the construction front have come to a bit of a standstill lately. Well they haven't entirely - we've merely switched our focus from the main area of the house to another. More on that in a bit - but first here are a few of the lessons we've learned in the last several weeks: