poplar road

The front of the north wing has a sunken living room over-looking the street. A large gas fireplace – unfortunately painted white over the brick - divides it from the great room behind.

I initially thought we’d use this as a seating area as it’s laid out in this photo, but Richard has some brilliant ideas to transform this into my office. Bright, cosy, with a view of (potential) flower gardens, enough wall space for bookshelves and the option to close it off from the great room with a door on one side of the fireplace and a built-in bookshelf on the other. Richard loves the look of riverrock, so eventually we will recover that awful painted brick. My plants will love this room with all that light.

The kitchen, at 11' x 14', is a dream come true for Richard. Imagine it with base cabinets inset with custom commercial rangetops on one side and an overhanging counter above barstools on the other, extending from the right-hand wall to divide the kitchen from the dining room. And a stainless steel dishwasher (coming soon as the one in the photo is broken), side-by-side fridge, and gas oven. Of course for now we'll have to settle for the new dishwasher and a coat of paint.

We've got lots of ideas to make this the ultimate venue for Richard's talents as a chef, little by little. The renovations to the kitchen will probably make up a large portion of the pictures on this site over the coming months (years?). I'm looking forward to our housewarming party.…which may be next spring if we're lucky. At least with a kitchen this size, we can unpack and start cooking right away, and make improvements here and there as we have time and funds. Just getting that strip of wallpaper off the walls and painting over the yellow cupboards (which are studily built of plywood and won't need replacing) will make a world of difference!

The hallway bisects the main floor, with closets and two bedrooms at the front, and the kitchen, basement stairs, main bathroom, and master bedroom at the back. The master bedroom has an ensuite "bathroom" with no bath hidden along the rear wall of the house, a tiny closet with a cramped sink and toilet, with carpeting! Guess what we'll be ripping out first?! That's real cedar on the south-east wall (which backs on the second garage). We'll do our best to salvage all of it when we remove it, and use it elsewhere if we can. (There is a room downstairs with its ceiling beautifully covered in cedar, with a bit on the walls, but the rest of the room boasts three contrasting varieties of '70's imitation wood panelling. Yech!)

The main floor has two spare bedrooms, both about 9' x 10', with windows over-looking the courtyard. One of these rooms will be furnished as soon as possible so we can have guests to stay, and the other will be our bedroom temporarily while the carpeting and cedar are removed from the master bedroom. We might eventually bump out the wall between the master and corner bedrooms to add a real ensuite bathroom and more livable closet space.

The flooring in the two spare rooms is laminate, the third type of laminate in the house, and the most attractive, so the guest room will thankfully only need insulation and furniture to make it ready for visitors. Richard plans to insulate all exterior walls as part of making our home as energy efficient as possible. The bonus for me (besides not turning blue this winter) is it will create deeper windowsills for my houseplants! The guest room is probably the only one we’ll be able to get “finished” before Christmas.

We've been starved for space for friends - no guest room in the apartment, and no spare seats in the truck! - so we're looking forward to being able to host a crowd. With 1500 square feet per floor, it's going to feel like a castle for the first few months. The current basement layout is a bit strange, with two long, narrow rooms and a mystery closet set in the middle of the largest room; but we think some walls can be shifted, and we'll get another bedroom or two down there once the electrical work and cleaning are done.

This room with the brick fireplace is directly beneath the great room upstairs. There are two high windows at the opposite end to let in daylight, and we’ll redo walls and floors to brighten it up. Once the stench (and I mean STENCH) from the previous owners’ dogs is eradicated, it could turn into a very comfortable space. Richard the ex-HVAC salesman took one look at the wood-burning fireplace and said we'll be replacing it with gas, but I don't think we'll change it otherwise. The previous owners did all the work on it, scrubbing it with acid and a toothbrush to get the white paint off. Pity they didn't have the patience to repeat the job on the upstairs!

And finally, for those of you who share Richard's obsession with shop space, here are shots of the two garages. The first used to be a two-door, but the door on the left was filled in and when we saw it the space was so full of junk it's hard to tell if it will really fit two vehicles. The gravel drive between the garage door and the retaining wall with root cellar is a bit narrow for our large truck to turn around in so backing in or out could be tricky - although hardly as bad as the apartment parkade.

The window in the first shot is the one you can see on the front of the south wing in the main photo of the house. Richard really wanted that mower - his photos really don't do justice to the enormity of that back yard - but the previous owner wouldn't part with it. Might have to test the mower attachment on the Unimog!

The second garage used to be a carport, which they filled in (with blue vinyl siding on the outside - see the back yard photos), and the door is high enough to allow our camper inside. Or Stubby Mechano, if Richard has time or energy to do a little tinkering on the 4x4 over Christmas. (Hah.) Between the two garages he should have enough room to store his tools, truck parts, and things like bikes and camping gear, and still have space to work on reno projects; truck stuff will have to wait until he can tackle the barn.

So that's Poplar Road, "before". I'm looking forward to seeing it again when we move in, just in time for my birthday and Thanksgiving. Won't we have a lot to be thankful for this fall!