Update on the Landscaping

I’ve been so busy I hardly have time to update this website! We’ve been very yard-focussed this past month. So much has been done since the last update. Our yard looks awesome now. I can hardly believe how hard we’ve worked.

There are lots of nice detail and flower photos on my flicker stream.

- Our grass is lush and healthy, and it needs a mow, but we don’t have a lawnmower.

- I haven’t finished planting everything yet, but will hopefully in the next week or two. I needed more topsoil and had some delivered last Friday. Seven yards! We need a better wheelbarrow too.

- We had Rick, our tenant downstairs, build a set of stairs from the driveway up to the backyard. They look great and I’m so pleased. (We’re going to have him build a pergola outside the suite too.) I have to finish leveling out the topsoil from the stairs out to each side, and then I’ll be planting some shrubs and ground cover. There is some grass and weeds on the right side that I need to deal with as well.

- I put up a short stone wall on one the side of the driveway up to the front stairs. I was going to just plant a few flowers at the front of the yard and put in some rocks, and we had intended on putting up a picket fence too. So from the road, you would see the plants and then the fence behind it. Once I began planting, I decided to put in a path of round pavers in order to get in there to garden without sinking in the mud. The rock garden ended up being a lot more work than I had planned. Two weekends ago, we also decided against the fence. There are a lot of lines on the house and the stairs, and we thought it might look too chaotic. (We had already bought the pickets too, so we returned them.)

- A month ago Tyler used all the limestone (which we scored for a super good deal from a local landscaper) to make a rock wall around a part of the driveway. Last week, I “finessed” it, backfilling the wall and adding smaller rocks in the nooks to make it a bit more substantial. I think it looks awesome. I also planted some ground cover above it, and behind that will be a row of low, bushy junipers.

- A few weeks ago it was our last burn weekend in Sooke, and we spent a whole day cleaning up the east side of the yard and throwing it on the fire. Ty also cleaned up under the front stairs and spread gravel there. What a difference that made. He made a little path behind it too, and a place to put our garbage bins, out of sight.

- This last weekend I spent half the day on Saturday at a workshop on ethnobotany. We walked through the forest at the Beecher Bay reserve, learning about native plants. Very interesting! On Sunday, we started priming the front stairs and railing. Ty also finished installing the cedar decking on the floor of the front patio. The deck looks great, and just needs a clear coat. The weather is fussy, very spring in Victoria, but I did manage to paint some more of the railing today. It’s just primer, and the stairs look better already!

- We had four or five roofers come by too, to look at our roof and give us an estimate. We had quotes from $8,500 to $16,000! One roofer found FOUR layers of shingles on the house. The roof looks horrible and really needs to be replaced, but the $ is a big ouch, especially since I’m not working. Our gutters need to be fixed or replaced too. One is falling off the side of the house. We’re thinking we’ll bite the bullet and just get it done.

- Still to come: a stone wall for the OTHER side of the driveway, perhaps a stone wall for where the picket fence would have been, clearing out the ditch and encouraging just grass to grow, maybe a gardening shed at the front west side of the property, fill in and spread wild flower seeds on the west side too. Inside: paint the walls, paint our funky old wooden ladder, paint the hardwood floors upstairs a high-gloss black, 1/4 round edging, install new baseboard heaters, rearrange the living room. And so much more…

Exhausted

I was sick for two days, Monday and Tuesday, after three days of pushing my body further than it was prepared for. I think it was likely a combination of all the hard work (shoveling and raking and lifting rocks) and a meal or two that didn’t sit well. I awoke early on Monday morning with nausea and aches, and while I luckily didn’t have to “throw up” at all, I did need to make numerous trips to the bathroom all day. I slept most of the day, missing Sophie’s birthday party and a sewing session with Kari, but my body was definitely telling me it needed rest. Tuesday I spent in recovery, as I was feeling very weak. Today my body feels almost normal, except for a few sore muscles, so as long as it doesn’t rain (too hard), I plan to be outside and get all those plants and trees in the ground.

I’m almost a tad hesitant, however, because there’s a neighbour who comes ’round and critiques my plant and tree choices, and even our landscaping choices! I’m choosing to just be nice about it all, because she doesn’t really listen to me when I talk anyways. So it feels futile to explain that each thing we do is for a good reason (like putting a three-foot-high picket fence in the front will block OUR view of the ditch and the road). She also insisted that north was south, and south was north…and laughed at me when I tried to suggest otherwise. It was bothering me a little, but now I realize she’s quite confused and maybe there’s a serious reason for it. She really is a nice lady, despite her near-constant Bible quotes and referrals to “living with the Spirit.”

Spring Gardening

It’s spring and I AM SO HAPPY! Spring and summer are by far my most favourite seasons. The past winter was really tough for me. The craziness began last July-August when we bought the house, and it hasn’t much subsided since. Buying, packing, moving, getting settled, fostering Leeloo, adopting Piper, having the hardwood floors installed, Christmas, building the shed, losing my job, fixing up the suite, and now the landscaping, front deck and suite patio; these eight months have been extremely stressful, and I’m ready for a little break. Once the yard is fixed up, there aren’t any huge projects left for me to work on, except painting some of our rooms, which isn’t really a pressing item.

A week and a half ago we had our severely compacted “soil” (well, clay really) tilled. Then we had 10 yards of garden top soil delivered, which last weekend we raked out and graded. It was rough work. My back and right arm suffered. (Side note: Ever since I sanded the suite, my right arm has been sore, and at night when I sleep it goes numb. Sometimes my left arm numbs too, and I can’t sleep on my tummy or back very well, so…yeah, I haven’t been sleeping very well for the past three weeks.) Last week I studied gardening magazines and the Internet for information on what types of plants would flourish in our yard. I spent a small fortune on shrubs, trees, seeds, ground cover, grasses and other plants, as well as tools, Sea Soil, and such. I’ve even made friends with the lady who owns a small nursery near our house! I keep running into her in town and we stop to chitchat — she’s so sunny, I just love to see her.

Ty took Thursday off, and we rented a truck to get the rest of the supplies we needed. On Thursday we picked up our new lawn, two yards of bark mulch and a truckload of limestone rock. On Friday, in three loads, we got another two yards of bark mulch, two yards of top soil, a yard of flatstone gravel, four barrels of sand, another truckload of limestone and blue rock, 16 18-inch round pavers, and nine concrete caps. We did that all in four hours. All those rocks? We had to pick through a huge pile of them and carry them to the truck. After we finished unloading, we each had a beer, went to Mom’s for lunch, and when I got home I slept in the sun on the chaise for about two hours. Holy crap I was exhausted.

On Saturday, we picked up another load of natural rock (looks like slate), three garbage cans full of sand, and 60 feet of concrete stacking stones for a wall around the driveway. Then we were able to finally start working on the yard, with all our supplies picked up, and so Ty took the clippers to the brush and old, fallen-down fence on the side of the house. I put in some landscaping edging and flatstone rock. It’s starting to look good! (See more photos of the progress at my flickr account.)

More projects planned for today, and tomorrow is our day off. Phew. I’m pooped.

Finally Fini

We finally finished the renovations in the suite early Saturday evening, mere hours before our new tenants moved in. What a week, holy schmoly. The Friday before, Sharon called and asked if they could move in March 1. I figured I could get everything done in time. Which I did, of course, but I worked almost nonstop all day and evening all week, and on Friday night we worked until 3 am. I slept five hours that night. We had an enormous amount of work still to do, and it all took a lot longer than I anticipated. I worked so hard that at times I didn’t know how I kept on. I hardly ate. The only breaks I took were my numerous trips to Home Hardware and Rona for supplies. I think we spent a small fortune just on tools.

But it was worth it. We tested our mettle, and found it to be resolute. Sure, we didn’t plan it out all that well at first — “Oh, we can just take down that wall, no problem!” — but we persevered. We went way over our budget, but I guess that’s to be expected. Still, we had an enormous storage room and a useless hallway, and now we have a beautiful two-bedroom suite with a lovely, warm living room.

We took out the wall behind the wood stove and made this whole area the living room. We added a wall on the right side of the old room to make a small storage area. Some electrical had to be moved, and a baseboard heater installed. We cut out two long strips of drywall on the ceiling and put in insulation.

Oddly, the shared laundry room at the back was open to the suite. We put in a wall and a door there, by the kitchen, so we don’t have to walk into the suite to get to our laundry.

The floor obviously became an issue. We weren’t prepared to replace the whole floor, but the living room definitely needed new flooring because half of it was just concrete, and the other half was simply a very thin vinyl. VERY cold on the feet. After much debate, we opted for carpet. We tried to go on the cheap and bought from the Carpet Dollar Store. You can’t get much for less than $1.50 a square foot. But I didn’t skimp on the underlay (hopefully). The carpet guy I found on Used Victoria ended up telling us that he had to charge more AS HE WAS CUTTING THE CARPET. Apparently it’s a very difficult carpet to install, and the seams are a nightmare. Sure. He didn’t do a great job, and with delivery cost near $400. All told, less than 300 square feet of carpet was $1,100. I didn’t even measure for enough carpet, and so the carpet doesn’t go to all the other rooms. We were pretty bummed, but it turned out to look just fine. I got these lovely wood transition strips too, and this little touch really makes the floor look great.

Unfortunately, we had to have the carpet installed before I sanded the drywall and painted, so we had to put thick plastic down to protect the new carpet. What a mess. The sanding part? The hardest thing I’ve ever done. And so gross. I absolutely LOATHE the feeling of sanded drywall on my skin. And my hands? Trashed. I did, however, get a kick out of wearing my sexy mask.

My radial sander broke as I was sanding the ceiling. Either because I dropped it, or it doesn’t like sanding upside down. I didn’t have time to get to Rona for a replacement, so I used a crappy old regular sander and my own brute strength. Rawr! Any idea how hard it is to sand above you? It makes a person want to die. And so I’m terribly embarrassed, because the ceiling looks freaking horrible. But I got over it after a while. Once I primed it, there was no turning back. And cleaning up that sanded mess was a pleasure like no other. I didn’t get any photos because I didn’t want to take my camera in there.

The “hard part” over, I set about priming and painting. This should have been a lot easier. But no, not in my world. Because despite my best efforts, I like to do things the hard way. Oh well, maybe it wasn’t so bad. I bought this beautiful paint called “Hazy Skies” from Benjamin Moore. After I bought it, I put a swatch on the wall in the second room, and after much deliberation decided it was a tad too grey.

Listen, I spent a couple of hours going over colours in the living room: putting the paint chips on white paper, looking at them in different light at different times of the day and on all the walls. So for me to go and put the real paint in a different room was just silly. What was I thinking? I know better. Obviously, after spending all that time in the living room to make sure I got the right colour.

The suite isn’t super bright. We have a bank of large trees to the south that block the sun. The living room has but one small window. So it was very important to me that I choose a light tone to reflect light, but I also wanted a warm colour tone. I really love blues and greys, and they suite the “west coast” feel of the property. But they are cool colours. As well, I wanted to steer away from beige and taupe because they are so BORING. Besides, I heard grey was the new beige. But not too grey. This is tricky stuff! Perhaps you’re thinking, “It’s just rental suite, why are you going through so much trouble?” Well, my integrity is at stake. I just cannot rent this suite to anyone unless it’s good enough for me to live in. This is a good thing in the end. Because if our tenants see that I CARE about their living space, then hopefully they will respect it as much as I do. Give them crap, they will treat it like crap. To me, it’s a no-brainer.

But back to the paint. I went up to Home Hardware to see if they could make my Hazy Skies just a tad green. Sure! That’s what the special computers are for! I picked out a lovely sagey green called “Beach Glass.” Well, I took a risk, and she added to one gallon the wrong tints and it ended up being much MORE grey. So she mixed up a fresh gallon of Beach Glass. Looked green in the store.

On the wall, wet, it looked very green. Like medical gown green. Hrm. No turning back now. It was rush time. I didn’t put on a swatch, I just went for it, hoping it would turn out okay. After the first coat on one wall, I grabbed the paint chip and compared it to the paint. NOT THE SAME. NOT EVEN CLOSE. The paint on the wall after dry? BLUE. No doubt about it. It’s robin egg blue. I was worried. It looks a bit baby nursery. But after two coats, it looked really good, and the colour grew on me. Now I love it, but of course since it was a mistint, it can never be recreated. BOO!

I originally bought my paint from the Benjamin Moore store in Langford, and the girl there said the folks at HH mistint their paint quite frequently. Urgh.

So I still had a gallon of Hazy Skies. Since the blue is so dominant, we decided to use this in the “hallway” area. It looks just fabulous. What a gorgeous colour. Calm, sophisticated, light. It changes with the light, and often looks a tad green, perhaps reflections from the blue. I think it looks sort of like putty, or plaster. We love it so much, we’re going to use it upstairs.

A note on Benjamin Moore paint: I love it. It is superb paint and I feel it’s worth the few extra bucks. It goes on so smooth and easily (with the right roller brush). We also used a telescopic handle for the first time and love it. I broke the one I bought within 20 minutes, and then Tyler broke three of our broom handles. Someone needs to invent one that can’t break. Still, it’s a way better way to paint.

With the painting of the walls done, I set about paint all the trim and Tyler worked on everything else: framing in the window and building a sill (which involved making a hole for a bolt that was sticking up – tricky!), cutting and installing the door trim and baseboards, securing and moving some baseboard heaters, spray painting the wood stove pipe cap, installing the transition strips, putting in bathroom hardware, replacing light bulbs, and cleaning up.

And so this is the result of all our hard work. We think it looks awesome.

Doesn’t Hazy Skies look fabulous?

Even Piper loves it!

For a complete set of photos, visit my flickr photoset.

What’s next? Well last week we also had our driveway cleaned up and leveled, and then crushed rock put down. It looks really good, even though it’s not my ideal driveway, and there’s no more mud when you step out of the car. We’re going to build a patio for the suite: a simple pergola and lattice to block the view of the cars and driveway a bit, and space to hang flower baskets and such. I’m excited about this, as spring seems on its way and getting outside more lifts my spirits. Next week we’ll have top soil brought in for the front yard too, and we can start making some bedding area and planting for the summer. Yah!

Eureka!

There’s this little joke that I like to tease Tyler about. I am certain that one day we will be refinishing the floors or stairs and I’ll tear up a loose board and find an old dusty canvas bag filled with lots and lots of money. Enough  money for us to run away and live like kings in Fiji for the rest of our lives. There are many uneven, loose floor boards in the house and whenever I step on one I lose myself in this fantasy of flipping up that board and discovering some kind of treasure from years past. I know it’s a bit silly, but I also think it’s hilarious.

Well I didn’t find a casket of jewels or come across a small fortune, but I did manage to find a tenant last week. And let me tell you, I am so relieved. It’s a major stress and a delicate balance. I’m a rather nice person, and so having to tell someone who wants to rent your suite that YOU don’t want them to is difficult for me. We’re picky and we want nice, quiet, normal people to rent a part of our house. We want someone who will respect the space. We have put a lot of energy and time (and money) into the suite to make sure we would attract those types of people. And we did, but not all were perfect for us.

The first lady to look was very nice and had lots of good energy. I was a little leery about her 20-something son who was living with her “only for six months”. Because you know how that story goes. But really the clincher was the fact that she has three cats AND a dog. She said they don’t make a mess, but if my experience is any indication, animals most certainly DO make a mess. And I’m having beige carpet installed. I want it to stay clean for at least a little while. Besides, Tyler and I are not so sure having three cats in the house is a good idea, what with his insane allergies and all. Our ad said “small pets considered,” and so we considered them and decided NO. She didn’t seem none too pleased with me. “Oh, I understand.”

Second was a very sweet young woman and her nine-year-old son. I liked them both, so I offered her the suite. The same day, she found another place to rent that suited her better. Boo! I was kind of bummed. Because the other potential tenants were an older couple who seemed really nice and I thought they would be perfect, but the husband was a bit loud and sometimes cheeky and I just knew in a few months it would start to get on my nerves. Hey, I’m sensitive! Thankfully, they never called back when they said they would.

I answered lots of e-mails and sent photos. The only other person who came to look at the suite was the person we’ve rented to. Her and her husband are relocating from northern BC back to the Island. The husband is still there, packing up and getting everything ready for the move. So Sharon has been staying with her parents and looking for accommodations. I liked her immediately when I met her: soft-spoken, sweet, well-mannered. Her mom came too, and I just wanted to hug her she’s so nice! And Piper LOVED both of them. (That was a good sign. Piper barked at the brash old man.) They have two Pomeranians, and they hardly go outside or bark too much (hopefully!). Thing is, Piper goes crazy for a minute or so when someone comes to the door or when we torture her by making her jump and dance for her treats, so it’s just a part of life with a dog. So not long after they left, Tyler and I talked, and I sent Sharon an e-mail to tell her that we would be happy to offer them the suite. She came yesterday to sign the rental agreement and give us a security deposit.

The relief and tension has melted away. I have a good feeling about Sharon and I just know they will be great tenants. I’ve been feeling my intuition is a lot stronger lately, and this instance is no exception.

Now I just have to finish the renos! Their move-in date was set to be March 15, which was lots of time for me. But now there’s a possibility of it being earlier, and I still have a ton of work to do. Thing is, I’m working on articles this week and next, and I’m already behind on those. I can’t even describe to you how happy I felt when I flipped the calendar over from January to February, but February is turning out to be a super busy month. Sigh, that’s okay, it’ll just make spring come that much faster. I’m already noticing some bushes and trees with new shoots coming forth, and with that I feel the deep clouds of winter lifting slowly away.

Rewind: Browsing for a Home

Looking for a house to buy is hard work, especially when you aren’t even sure exactly where you want to live. If we could have afforded it, I would have bought a house in Oak Bay without question. However, house prices there are ridiculous, and there are few properties with suites (“mortgage helpers”). Of course, I looked, but do an mls search in Oak Bay and the least expensive house is often over $600,000! They say to buy the worst house in the best neighbourhood, and while this maxim is generally a good rule of thumb, it’s not so black and white. We couldn’t afford a house in Oak Bay. Well, actually we COULD, but then we would be absolutely stretched to the maximum debt to income ratio and we were not interested in putting ourselves in that position. We had to leave ourselves some room to breathe in case of job loss, increase in interest rates, etc.

So we looked at houses all over town — old and new and newly renovated. We had little idea of what we were looking for.

• Fairfield. The cheapest house at the time we were looking was $525,000 and needed major renovations. It was also TINY.
• James Bay. Way too expensive.
• Fernwood. We looked at a lot of houses in Fernwood, thinking it was still a “reasonably” priced area with lots of potential to increase in value. Nothing. The cheapest house we looked at, around $400,000, seemed a tear-down to me. There was one I really liked, but it hardly had a yard at all. I wanted lots of greenspace to garden.
• Oaklands. I love the Oaklands area. We couldn’t find anything here.
• North and South Jubilee. We spied a couple houses in these areas, but for the price they just seemed too much. Small houses with big price tags. 1,200 square feet? No suite? Postage-stamp-size lots? For close to half a million dollars? There was a cute house near Oak Bay border that I really liked, but it had an odd layout and no bathroom upstairs by the master bedroom. I thought it was a possibility, for the price of $420,000, but Tyler said no way. And that house didn’t sell for MONTHS. He must have known something wasn’t quite right.
• Saanich, Hillside, Quadra Village, Burnside, etc. We looked all over and just couldn’t find anything quite right for us.

I learned a lot by looking for a house. Never owning a house before, I hadn’t ever even thought about assessments and what they meant. In many areas and depending on the age of the house, the house was assessed at a lot less than the land, like the house we rented in Oak Bay for example. I came to realize that it is the LAND that holds so much VALUE. So buying a new home on a tiny piece of property, especially in a new subdivision, would just be silly for us. Even an older home on a small property doesn’t make sense. We wanted something that had lots of potential. We wanted to buy a home that would always have a lot of value. We also realized we didn’t want to buy a new home or a newly renovated home, as we would be paying more. But we also didn’t want to take on a total home renovation project for our first home. We had to find some middle ground.

During our search, our landlord told us that he had decided to sell the house. He felt pretty bad, because he knew we wanted to stay there for a few years and he really liked us. I even ran into him downtown around Christmas time and he told me, once again, that we were the best tenants he ever had, by far, and he was so happy we had found a wonderful home to buy. I miss him a little bit, actually. Jerry and I had a rapport with one another. As well, it had only been a few months since Tyler and I had rented the whole house from Jerry, and rented out the lower suite ourselves. Our friend Jenny had moved in, so it was a bit of a shock to her that the house was going up for sale, quickly at that.

We loved that house. There were lots of things that I didn’t love, the DIY repairs and such, but the house had an energy that just always felt right and good. The asking price was $860,000, way out of our price range of course, but we pitched Jerry an idea for us to all go into “business” together so that we could eventually buy the house from him. He actually gave it some thought, but they needed the money. They were moving back east to go back to school. I thought that would be the case, but I was glad I tried. I really do love that house. And its location a block from Willows Beach makes it highly desirable. (Oh, how I yearn to be back there. Location location! I miss that beach.) The listing is still online if you want to take a look.

But at this point we realized buying a house was the right direction for us. Was it coincidence that Jerry decided to sell the house the same time we decided to buy? We didn’t want to rent again, and we didn’t want to move again for at least five years. Knowing that we would have to move once the house sold, which we thought would be quick, we really set about to find something.

And that’s when I came across the listing for our house. I had looked at it months earlier, in fact, and LOVED it, but since it was in Sooke, I felt it wasn’t an option for us. We discussed moving out of town a bit, but had decided against it. Coming across the house a second time, however, we thought we could go have a look at least. And that will be the subject of the next posting…

‘Tis But a Flesh Wound

Yesterday I felt very tired, after not sleeping so well the night before. I’m stressed about finishing the suite, finding a tenant, what it will be like to have a stranger living in my house (even though the suite is private), etc. and it’s actually keeping me from sleeping well. I thought we had found a great tenant, but yesterday she told me that she had rented something else. Bum-mer.

So I arrive home after babysitting a cranky little girl all afternoon and decide to do a few things in the suite. It’s one of those projects where you can’t do everything in a few days. It takes a while and I have to be patient, but I also have to keep positive and plugging away at it. Perhaps it wasn’t the best day to be cutting drywall and hammering.

Things I Learned (or Re-Learned)

• measure twice, cut once.
• don’t try to divide a thin piece of drywall into two even thinner ones. It doesn’t work.

  

   

• hammering nails directly upwards is REALLY hard.
• don’t put your face right in front of where you are hammering a nail, keep it to the side.
• ALWAYS WEAR SAFETY GEAR. Drywall crumbles in eyes = ouch.
• try not to get the finger of your disposable glove caught in the screw while using the electric drill.
• screws should go in straight.
• 1 1/4-inch screws are better than those really long ones that you are unable to screw in with that powerful electric drill.
• don’t fall off the ladder.

While hammering awkwardly upwards (to secure the metal edging on a corner), I somehow smacked my finger in between the hammer and the railing of the ladder. It hurt, but I kept hammering because I was getting frustrated. A few moments later I looked down at my hand and saw that the finger glove was all bloody! Aw, ’tis but a flesh wound, but I sure could be more careful.

Today is a day off from renos, weeee! Happy about that…

Renovation Update

Renos in the suite are moving forward, albeit slowly. We didn’t want to wait until we were completely finished before putting an ad out, because then we would likely have to wait until April 1st to rent the suite. So we cleaned up as much as possible and put an ad out. The suite shows really well even with the living room unfinished. We’ve had five inquiries so far: a 50-year-old landscaper with her 26-year-old son living with her for six months (she also has a dog and three cats); a young couple with a four-month-old baby; a single mother and her six-year-old son; and a retired man and his still-working wife whose house they rent is being sold. An interesting cross-section of people, and three out of four have pets. I’m slightly reluctant about dogs, knowing how dirty they make this house after being outside. I bought carpet yesterday, and it’s light beige! I wanted something neutral, and now I’m thinking damn that’s going to look dirty fast.

I have to tell you, it’s emotionally taxing on me, all these renovations. I want to learn and I want to do as much as possible myself, but I don’t have any experience at all with homes. I’m finding myself trying very hard to plan ahead, but I keep making mistakes, or miscalculations. And then I feel stupid and inadequate and why did I think I could ever do this? It’s almost a DIY disaster around here some days.

We took down a wall, and now of course getting heat to that room properly is near impossible without cutting dozens of holes in the TEXTURED ceiling. There is an electrician here this morning, trying to solve this problem. We’ve managed to figure something out, but I will have to fix a few holes in the wall, and the baseboard heater isn’t in the best spot. Hopefully it heats up the room enough. I’m sure carpet was the best flooring solution now, as laminate would have been too cold on the feets.

Am I worried too much about the comfort of my tenants? We’re spending $900 to put carpet into 300 square feet. And I even bought pretty cheap carpet at $1.50 a square foot. Then there’s underlay, installation, tax. It all adds up to much more than we wanted to spend, but we didn’t really budget or prepare very well before taking the wall down. Should we have left the room as storage? Should we have put in laminate? Should we have tried to match up the very thin flooring (which sits right on top of concrete!) and thrown a rug over the tiles leftover from the wood stove we took out?

Sure, I’m concerned about how much $ we are spending on our rental suite, but I also feel good about it. It’s just in my nature to do things as right as possible. The room needed heat and it needed to be a long-term solution. The rooms needs flooring and it must be comfortable. I learned an important lesson once, from the landlady at my Metchosin home. It was such a lovely house. She told me that she designed and built it thinking how she would feel if she was living there herself. I always appreciated her sentiments — afford others the same respect you would give yourself. It’s simply a good way to be.

Rewind: The Lead Up to Look

Let me just preface this little story by telling you that I love houses. I can spend hours looking at MLS and real estate sites for interesting houses, and I even have a peek around now that I am settling into my own house. (I like to keep an eye on the market.) Being a passenger in the car is a great pleasure because that allows me to check out houses and the landscaping, roofs, driveways, etc. around them. HGTV? Pleasantly addicted. Some days we spend the afternoon just watching home reno or real estate shows. Don’t even get me started on how many magazines dedicated to interior design I own…

I’ve wanted my own home for many years. Perhaps it’s a nesting instinct. When I was single, owning a house was too expensive (don’t like roommates), and living in a condo did not appeal to me in the slightest (I want LOTS of space). Near the end of the first year that Tyler and I lived together, we rented the top floor of a house on a busy street while I went to photography school. It was a nice enough house, but much too small and I hated the busy road. It stressed me to no end. And it just never felt like a home to me. We decided that once I finished school in June 2006, we would move. We wanted to buy a house, but that was in our two- to three-year plan, and we needed more space immediately.

We looked for many months for a house we could afford. We found the perfect house for us, outside of our budget of course, near Willows Beach in Oak Bay. And what a house! Beautiful. After one viewing, we went home and decided we couldn’t afford it, especially if we wanted to buy our own house in the future. And then the landlord called, and told us he would lower the rent for us by $200 because he liked us so much and knew we would be great tenants. We accepted. We couldn’t resist. The house is around 2,000 square feet and you can see the ocean and beach from the front deck. The location is excellent. Oak Bay has its dissenters, as it’s an area for the well-heeled (and sometimes snobby) for sure, but after being there for just a few weeks I realized why it’s a desirable place. It’s a nice place to live. I loved living in Oak Bay almost as much as I loved living in rural Metchosin. And the house always felt like a home. That space has a good feeling about it, an energy that I can’t really describe, but thinking back to it makes me feel warm inside. I feel the house needs a lot of updating, but it still has so much charm. (We even tried to buy it, despite its close to a million-dollar price tag!)

I feel as though our lives were leading up to buying our first home, we just hadn’t realized it. I was constantly crunching numbers and trying to see how we could afford a house. With a boatload of debt and student loans, and prices in Victoria rising faster than a rocket to outer space, it seemed so out of reach. And then in July 2007, a friend of mine and her husband bought a house for over $500,000 on the outskirts of Victoria. I was stunned. If they could afford it, we should be able to as well! She gave me the skinny on their acquisition, and so I made an appointment with the same mortgage broker she used. He looked at all the numbers and set about to show us our options. We could do this!

And with a budget in mind, we set about to look for a house to buy. I was beside myself. We didn’t know if this was actually going to happen, so we didn’t tell anyone. We were especially concerned about our landlord, since we had told him we would stay for at least three years. He was also planning on going back to school in Toronto and wanted tenants he could trust to take care of his house. He told us he would never sell it. I didn’t want to leave him high and dry, but we also had to move forward with our own lives.

And so we looked at houses, and looked, and looked…

Renovations in the Suite

I write this on a sunny but cold Sunday afternoon. Miraculously, it seems, it’s not rainy here in Sooke. Before we moved here, we lived in Oak Bay near Willows Beach. It was awesomely windy there and sure it rained, but I never noticed the weather to be much different than the other eight areas of town I’ve lived in. Forty-five minutes west we moved, and it rains like the devil. The weather here just seems so different. And so I am thankful for sunny, dry days. (My toes, however, feel like they were dipped in the Bering Sea.)

We aren’t doing much work outside in the yard yet. We’re working on renovating the rental suite on the lower level in hopes of finding a tenant for March 1. Our previous tenant left in December, and we’re feeling the pinch from the lost income. The suite had quite a large unfinished room (drywalled, but not mudded and taped) that was being used as storage. A middle area between all the rooms seemed too small to be useful, and we’ve decommissioned and taken out the wood stove that was housed there. It made sense for us to take down the wall behind the wood stove and open up that entire space. That way there can be a more defined living room, and two bedrooms instead of one. (Also, more square footage = more rental income.)

After much consultation with friends and family as to whether the angled wall could be bearing or not, Tyler started taking the wall down. After a twinge of uncertainty and a little Internet research, I was instructed to call the builder who moved the house and ask him. We needed to know for sure. He told me it was a partition wall and okay to knock out. Yahh! And so the demolition continued.

For the past week I’ve been mudding and taping and mudding and mudding the drywall, while Tyler works on other jobs in the room. He’s framed in an area at the back of the room for storage, and we’ve realized that a baseboard heater should be installed now on that wall before the drywall goes up, so we’re on the hunt for an electrician in the area. Ty also cut out a length of drywall in the ceiling last night so that we could stuff insulation in there. Not sure why there wasn’t any in there already… but we need to do something to help with the noise transfer between our living room floor and the ceiling in the suite. It’s a bit ridiculous, actually. Tyler has also taken out the stove pipe and capped it at the ceiling. Today he bought the tools to drill into concrete so the storage space wall can be secured to the floor and he can install the door.

It seemed like it would be such a simple job, finishing that room, but now sometimes it seems it will never end! My goal is to have the room ready for primer and paint by next Friday. I’ll be so happy when this is all done! Then I have the fun job of finding a tenant…

More to come on my adventures as a mudder, as well as the other wall and door we’re installing by the shared laundry room.