Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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The yard work is done for the year – now it’s time to finish our renovation projects – oh boy!

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My husband and I spent a couple of hours outside today getting the final yard work for the year finished.

We cut down plants that had died off and sawed down the sunflower stalks – yes, the stalks were extremely thick so pruners wouldn’t do the job – we had to use a small hand saw on them to take them down! We also put leaves on the garden beds to protect them through the winter, and put away our many planter containers, teak table and other odds and ends.

It’s good to be ready for winter! Of course that doesn’t mean that I’m anywhere near ready for it to snow. The snow can hold off for months as far as I’m concerned!

Now I’m tired. I shouldn’t be, but I’ve been much more tired than usual over the last two months or so, and to top it off I haven’t been able to get to sleep easily this past week, so that’s just compounding the tiredness.

So now I’m just relaxing on the couch, watching HGTV shows like Disaster DIY – which is making me think of all the renovations we’ve started in our home and haven’t completed (yes I believe we’re prime candidates for the Disaster DIY show) and preparing to get our christmas cards done.

I’ve found that I’ve been watching reno shows on HGTV more often in the last few weeks and it’s making me think about our renovations.

We’ve done a lot of work on our house since we moved in such as redoing all of the hardwood floors, painted all of the walls, did venetian plaster in the master bedroom and the living room dining room, tore down walls in the living room, dining room and entrance way (prior to painting etc), put a skylight in the roof of the enclosed porch as well as putting in a hardwood ceiling and refinishing the whole enclosed porch, totally refinished the hardwood stairs, put in a new sink and cabinet in the upstairs bath and a bunch of other things. I can’t even remember everything we’ve done, but I guess I could also include landscaping our front and backyards and putting in a fabulous garden.

Now, other than our plans to renovate the kitchen, two bathrooms and finish the basement, we still have to finish some renovations that are about 80% complete. The main ones I’m thinking of are the living room dining room. As I said we tore down walls, refinished the hardwood floors and did venetian plaster on the walls … but the ceiling still needs to be done. We bought tin ceiling panels … oh 6 or 7 years ago, and we still need to put them up. We also need to put crown molding, base molding and quarter round in the living room dining room. Then it will be done.

We’d better finish it soon because I’m already tired of the venetian plaster. LOL … and I’d like to see the rooms complete before I decide to sand and paint over the lovely plaster.

Since I’m really getting in the mood to finish our work, I’m hoping that maybe in January Chris and I can start finishing what we started so long ago. Believe me, I’m tired of look at the unfinished ceiling!

As I’ve said repeatedly over the last several months we have absolutely no extra money. However I don’t think that will slow our finishing of the renovations if we can make ourselves get started again … Why? Well, we already have all the supplies we need or pretty much everything we need. We have the tin ceiling panels (already painted – but I’m hoping we have enough of them to cover the ceiling!) and the molding stored in the basement. At the most I think we still have to buy the quarter round that we need and then some paint to finish off the molding.

Just the thought of starting up our renovations again is making me tired, but I’m just sick and a little bit embarrassed by the look of our unfinished home. Hopefully that will help spur me on to finally get started again. I’m also worried about what to do with our dog when we start finishing our renovations again … she wasn’t around when we started this big project. Hopefully she’ll listen to us and lie down in a corner when we’re working, otherwise she’s going to be a dusty and possibly paint covered dog.

So how many of you have homes that could be on a show like Disaster DIY? Have you started reno projects and found you didn’t have time (or the knowledge) to finish them? If so, are you going to get around to finishing your reno sometime in the near future?





We finally fixed that dripping shower

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Ever since we moved into our house in 2001 and we’ve had problems with the shower in the basement. You see it drips – a lot!

My husband has changed the shower head and that didn’t stop the dripping. He also tried a few other things to fix the shower and still it dripped. So, since he’s the main one in the house that uses the shower he started turning off the water supply for the shower after he has a shower. For a long time that seemed to stop the constant dripping as the water supply to the shower was only on when the shower was being used. However, recently the shower started dripping again even when the water supply was shut off on the pipes outside the bathroom.

I rarely use the bathroom in the basement, but I was down there last Friday and I realized that the constant dripping of the shower head was making a very moist environment. In fact, the shower appeared to have some mold in it. So when my husband came home from work that evening I told him we had to try to do something about the shower’s constant drip.

So on Saturday my husband got busy trying to fix the shower. First he took care of the possible mold problem by washing down the shower walls with a bleach and water solution (several times). Then he tried to take the hot and cold water faucets off the shower. Maybe we just needed to put a washer inside?

Now I have to tell you that while I wanted him to fix the shower I wanted him to do so without having to spend any money on it. Our funds are very low these days and we just can’t afford to get new Moen faucets for the shower right now. Not if we can help it!

Of course things went wrong. He got one of the shower faucets if no problem, added a washer (as suggested by one of the guys at Home Depot) and that stopped the dripping for the cold water. However he had a lot of trouble getting the hot water faucet off and when he did he couldn’t get the two pieces apart to add a washer.

He decided to take the part to Home Depot to see if he could find an inexpensive replacement. I think they laughed at him! The part is apparently about 25 years old and not easy to replace. Even a specialty plumbing store didn’t help!

I started to think this was going to turn out like our kitchen tap story! Remember a few months ago I posted about how Chris was trying to take the Brita filter off our kitchen tap and ended up breaking the end … causing us to have to buy a whole new set of kitchen faucets? Yeah that was fun!

In the end we didn’t have to spend any money on new faucets or smaller replacement parts. Instead we took one of the plumbing specialists suggestions and soaked the faucet part in vinegar for several hours to remove some of the corrosion on the fixture. Then, yesterday evening, my husband used two wrenches to carefully pry to pieces apart. He added a washer, put the parts together again and installed the faucet in the shower where it had been before and ta da! It seems to have worked. No drip, drip, drip!

I really have to be careful when I ask my husband to do home repairs! It seems to always cost us more money and or frustration than we think it will!

At least the water bill should be a little bit lower now. I’m sure all that dripping was wasting a lot of water. Plus, now that the shower area won’t have a constant supply of moisture the room and shower stall should hopefully be mold and mildew free. I hope!

Have you ever tried to do what seems like it should be a small home repair only to end up spending way more time and money than you ever thought you would to fix the problem?

Getting ready to finish our home renovation projects

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As most of my regular readers know my husband and I have been slowly (very slowly) renovating our home. In about a month we’re going to finally finish our living room dining room.

All that needs to be done in the living room dining room is to put up the tin ceiling tiles and then put molding up around the ceiling and at floor level. Then our long time living room/ dining room reno will finally be done.

Sometime after that I think we’ll start to work on renovating our kitchen. It’s a tiny kitchen, but I think if we rearrange the way the cupboards are set up and move the refrigerator from the area between the back door and basement door (unsightly!) we can modernize the kitchen and make it look quite nice.

Moving the fridge will make a huge difference in the look of the kitchen. I can’t wait to be able to do that. Of course as I said we have to rearrange the cupboards and probably move the sink over in order to do that.

Speaking of the sink. We currently have a double sink, but each sink is on the small side. I think I might look at a large undermount sink as a replacement for our small double sink. It will be nice to be able to soak a large roasting pan instead of only soaking half at a time!

As usual, if we do start renovating our kitchen sometime later this summer we’ll be doing most of the work on our own. We really don’t have much money to spare and we’re pretty handy Do it yourselfers. It will just take longer for us to do it on our own!

Have you ever done a kitchen reno on your own? Any advice?

My husbands 150 dollar mistake

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Why do guys tinker with things that don’t really need fixing? Why???

Last weekend Chris was in the basement cleaning up our tool area when he found our old Brita “on tap” water filter. The one that we had on our kitchen faucet had been leaking a little bit so Chris came up with the great idea that he’d just put the old Brita filter back on. (of course I think we replaced the old filter because it was leaking …)

I think that Chris thought something was screwed into the end of the faucet so after removing the first Brita filter and trying to replace it with the old one (which didn’t work) he started prying away at the end of the faucet. I think he was doing that so that we could put the end cap back on the end of the tap – if he could find it in the basement where I’m sure he put it when he took it off so that the Brita Filter could be added to the tap.

The next thing I knew I heard swearing. Chris had somehow broken off a piece of the end of the faucet!

Chris’ tinkering of course meant that we needed to replace the whole kitchen facet! Why? Well when we turned on the water it pretty much sprayed all over since the end of the tap was broken. I guess it’s good that we aren’t totally broke, but it was an expense that we certainly didn’t need!

It was about 7 pm when we decided we needed a new tap so we rushed off to Home Depot. We had to go fast because it was closing at 8 pm! Once there we picked out a Moen facet – chrome to match our double sinks. It was something like $126 for the faucet, plus we bought some plumbers tape and putty to prevent leaks – all in all with tax it came to just under $150!

It’s one of those that have a long arching tap and a single levered handle to control the stream of water and temperature of water. Similar to our old one, but much nicer. The old facet was a very cheap set that the previous home owners must have put in when they “cheaply” redid the kitchen before selling.

I like faucets with a lever handle. Maybe it’s the nurse in me liking to keep things from getting contaminated, but if your hands are dirty you can just use your wrist or the side of your hand to flip the water on – that way the handle doesn’t get contaminated with whatever is on your hands that needs to be washed off.

The next day when Chris went into the basement to continue cleaning up the tool area and to try to clear out some of the clutter in the basement (we’re having our oil tank replaced in April so the basement needs to have some space to move around) I told him to stick to his work and not find things to fix or that would distract him from the job he was supposed to be doing! God know we don’t need any more expensive mistakes!

Guys! Geesh!

Don’t you hate it when things start breaking down in your home?

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I rarely use our basement washroom, but for some reason, I used it earlier today. That’s when I made a discovery … the taps we have in that bathroom are beginning to break. Figures .. just when we have NO money we’re probably going to have to go out and buy a new faucet set.

My husband knew the taps weren’t in good shape, but he never got around to letting me know. Men!

If we can keep the taps for a while, well until we have some extra money, I’ll wait and get some Moen faucets. We’re eventually going to redo the basement and basement washroom so I’d like to pick out nice, quality fixtures if at all possible.

Doesn’t it figure that things start breaking down just when you can’t afford it? That happened to my sister in law and her husband. They just bought a new house (across the street from where they had lived) and once they moved in, in October they realized that their furnace wasn’t working so they had to replace it. They also had to replace the washing machine and dryer, plus their water softener and snow blower just broke down too! They replaced the water softener … at a cost of $2,500 bucks! Why??? I’m sure they could have lived without soft water for a while. I think replacing the snow blower (considering their new property is larger than their previous property plus it’s on a corner so that means more snow to shovel!) was more important.

Anyway .. isn’t that a run of bad luck? A new furnace, washer, dryer, water softener and soon hopefully a snow blower … that must be $15,000 or more in extra expenses they weren’t counting on!

I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing else in our house breaks down. Our washing machine and dryer came with the house and we estimate that they are going on about 35 years old! Yeah, I’m sure they are energy hogs … we’re going to replace them soon … but hopefully not before we can afford to replace them.

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