Turning Stones to Treasure

Finally the day had come. Carpet day. No more walking on dirty yucky thin carpet, concrete and floorboards.
We found the carpet we liked months and months ago. We saw it at Home Depot. It’s by Shaw Carpets and called Peddle Path. It was brown and tan with tiny flecks of green. It wasn’t too light or too dark. It was perfect. We got a couple of small sample pieces and carried it around with us when we were out shopping to check how it went with our other choices. It also went well with our furniture going in those rooms.

When the time was nearing when we needed the carpet, we went to Home Depot to get the rooms measured. An outside company contracted by Home Depot does this and there is a $50 charge, which then comes off the price of the carpet.

Before someone came round Mr. Remodel had already taken his own measurements so he could compare them to Mr. Carpet Co.’s figures. So Mr. Measure came along and did a very quick measure. Well that’s probably all right because he does this all the time.

However, when Mr. Carpet Co. sent us the plan of the rooms and the carpet required, it was considerablely off compared with Mr. R’s numbers. Mr. Carpet Co thought we needed a lot more carpet than Mr. R did. The cost was an extra $500 and there was a lot of waste. And a lot of seams.

Mr. R firstly asked why they didn’t turn the carpet in bedroom two and run it the other way and have no seam rather than run it the way Carpet Co. wanted to with a seam a foot from the window? Well they conceded that point. On the carpet square footage, they said there was extra carpet because it could only run in one direction on the stair sections (I thought that the stairs would be carpeted with long one piece but each stair had a separate piece). Even so, they wanted to use much more carpet than Mr. R reckoned.
Mr. Remodel asked them for the measurements so he could see why his and their figure differed so much. They can’t do that they say because the measurements belonged to Home Depot. Mmmm but we paid for them? Okay, so we called Home Depot and got some story from them, which boiled down to not getting the measurements.

So what would you do? Throw away the $50 measurement fee and go elsewhere, or pay an extra $500?
We walked and went to LA Carpets in San Juan Capistrano.

Ben from LA Carpets came and measured and guess what? His figures agreed with Mr. Remodel’s. Plus, he said that with the thicker grade of carpet, it could be turned either way so we did not need all that extra carpet. (No one at Home Depot or Mr. CC asked us what grade of carpet so I don’t believe that was their excuse.) So we decided to go with Ben and scheduled the installation.

Here’s an interesting fact about buying carpet that you may not know. When we came to LA Carpets looking for the same carpet we had seen at HD, we could not find it under Pebble Path. This is because the same carpet is given different names according to which store it is sold at. I’m don’t know whether it is at the request of the retailer (making you think that the carpet is unavailable elsewhere) or is done by the carpet producer. But Ben was able to help us find it among his Shaw sample boards under the name Treasure.

Without further ado here it is.


Carpet pad is down with the carpet ready to go in the master bedroom.



We picked the thickest grade and it feels so good to walk on.


Looking good in bedroom three.


And in bedroom two.


Suddenly it is hard to remember how grotty it looked just moments before.



Happy feet, I’ve got those happy feet. Thank you LA Carpets.

Bench Work

It’s nice to have these simpler rooms to work on because we are a bit fed up of remodeling. Even Mr. R is getting tired of it.

On with Bedroom Three.


This is the walk in closet with the clothes poles removed. The slanted piece is to accommodate the stair well below. As necessary as this is, it is also vexing. It makes that corner a bit rubbish (as we say in England).



Taking the carpet off makes the floor cleaner but that corner is still rubbish.


Mr. Fix It takes a look and surmises (correctly) that the slant doesn’t have to take up all the room it does. Some of it can be removed without affecting the stairs.


That way you can make a little bench covering it so the corner will not be so rubbish.


Clever Mr. Fix It.


Looking better all the time.


And yet better.


Now the closet has a little bench for sitting on or storing things on. Thanks again Mr. Fix It.


Mrs. R is very ready to see the back of the peach paint. This wall also needed a lot of patching.


A newly painted white room with some paper blinds enjoying their last moments of life.



A couple of creaky boards replaced.
Existing baseboards are given a new coat of paint as with bedroom two.

Room and Bored

In the last post carpets were mentioned. Well as much as Mr. & Mrs. Remodel would like to bring in carpet now (since they are a mite tired of walking on bare cement, floorboards, and what yucky carpet is still left) there are still several jobs that need to be done first.
We are at the point in the project where we can really taste the finish line but there are still several weeks of work to go. Our energy and interest levels are flagging but we can’t give up now.

However, the good news was that because the downstairs rooms were completed we were able to move everything in the upstairs bedrooms downstairs making those rooms easy to work in.

Let’s start with Bedroom Two.


At some point, someone had removed the cottage cheese finish from all the ceilings but it was still in the closets so that had to come out.


Plus we took out the carpet in the closet so we could do this.


This is spare tile from the upstairs bathroom.

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Although this wasn’t a difficult colour to cover up, the walls themselves needed a lot of patching. This had been a child’s bedroom and the walls were in a rough state.


Ah looking better.


Then up came the carpet. Interestingly, the baseboards were not in bad condition so we decided to keep them and paint them.

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Finally we got to replace the temporary paper blinds with cream-coloured vertical blinds by Levelor.

Ready to Land

Today we are going to focus on a part of the house we haven’t dealt with at all but that you will have seen in passing in some of the past pictures: the stairs and the upstairs landing.
I’m showing you most of the process from start to finish but Mr. Remodel and helpers have been working away in this area along with some of the other rooms - as you see from the pictures.


Here’s what we started with. Love the scribbling on the furnace door.


The gaps between the metal railings were too wide for the current building code so we would have to do something with this railing even if we liked it (which we do not – way too retro for Mr. & Mrs. R). Plus it wobbles too much to lean on it with any confidence.


Up came the carpet and about half a ton of dust and dirt lying underneath. We also removed the silly little strips of wood that someone put on the edge of the stair treads to make them the correct length (or do I mean depth?)


We talked about doing hardwood stairs but Mr. & Mrs. Remodel think that if they ever fell down stairs, carpet might break less bones on the way down. You don’t really want to think of yourself as being that old or feeble but we are hoping to grow old in this house.


Ooo look new stair treads! Ultimately it was easier than trying to make the old one work by adding to them.


Give Mr. R and the helpers an opportunity to rip stuff out and there’s not stopping them. The floorboards were creaky so Mr. R thought they needed to be screwed down tighter. Except five minutes later it became a good idea to rip most of the landing up to put down new boards.


We were sleeping upstairs at this time so I was more than a little interested in this work getting done as quickly as possible. Mrs. R isn’t up to tightrope walking when she gets up in the middle of the night. Too James Bond.


Here is Mr. Remodel’s replacement for the metal railing. Inside the drywall is a wooden frame with an end post going down below the floorboards so it is nice and sturdy.


Painted and ready for the final touch.


A wooden top made from the dining room wood flooring. Plus another look at the nice handrail made from the same flooring.


With the baseboards in we just have to wait for the carpet.

Bits & Pieces 2

Remember the closet in the art studio?


Mrs. Remodel wanted her shelves to be very particular sizes and spacings to fit what was going on them so Mr. Remodel obliged and made her some lovely custom shelves to her specifications.


The cleats are in place.


Shelves in place.

Somewhat less exciting but very necessary are door casings. We decided to change them all upstairs so they would match (there were a couple of different styles going on). We also had to put them in for the new door to the master bedroom downstairs.


Here are the master bedroom casings before they were painted. Mrs. Remodel had the thrilling job of checking all the new casings to make sure all the indentations where the nails were had been filled with a little bit of spackle (Pollyfilla).


After painting.


One of the upstairs bedrooms.


Even the furnace door got new casings.

I’m in Pieces, Bits and Pieces

Well it’s a bit of a mish-mash today to show some of the work that doesn’t need its own separate post.


When we were tiling the floor in the master (downstairs) bathroom Mr. Remodel had Mr. Tile continue the tile into the bedroom a short way. This allows us to come into the bedroom with dirty or perhaps sandy feet without treading on the carpet. It also means that you don’t get constant wear in a well-traveled area.


With the master (downstairs) bedroom painted we could take down the old broken blinds (the only window coverings left behind) and put up new ones. These are very simple vertical Levelor blinds cut to size at Lowes.


For the living room we chose something a little fancier. These are cloth blinds with a grass cloth look on the front. They look really good but are a little bit of a pain when we pull them closed. The grass cloth fibres catch on each other so you have to separate them to get them to hang straight and flat. They look really good and we just put up with them, but we wouldn’t ever use them again.


I don’t think I’ve shown this light yet, or if I have I’ve forgotten. It is from Portfolio and matches the pattern on the lights in the kitchen.


Here is the fireplace with the new vented natural gas log set we bought from Lowes.


Testing the fireplace to be ready for colder days ahead.

I will be the first to admit that baseboards are not very exciting but here are some anyway. Baseboards really do have a way of finishing a room.




In the master bedroom we had to pull up more carpet to put the baseboards in but we are still sleeping in there. Thankfully Mr. R has left us some carpet to sleep on!