poplar road

One of the last projects to complete to finish the upstairs was the master bedroom and two bathroom renovation. You'll remember we had to renovate both bathrooms at once because we needed to steal space from the existing bath to allow for a full-size ensuite with laundry area. Although the ensuite is still only roughed in, and full of materials at the moment, the rest is nearly done. In a week or two, once the window is trimmed out, baseboards on, and shelving installed in the closet, we'll be happily settled in the bedroom. We can do without our luxury ensuite for a while, since the guest bathroom just needs touch-ups to the grout and paint to be declared finished. (I'm looking forward to decorating with Richard's antique glass, pottery, and other scuba-diving finds.) Adrienne and I worked all day Saturday on the grout, what a messy job that turned out to be. But doesn't the stone tile look amazing? Well worth the effort, although I'm kind of dreading the much larger job to be done in the master bathroom in a few weeks.

And the biggest change? We decided we couldn't wait forever for hardwood floors, and instead of living with painted old plywood for another year, we laid birch laminate. We couldn't have done it without Richard's mom, Bev, who came up for Richard's birthday, got the flooring for us, and motivated us to install it right away, starting with the master bedroom. Then, the following weekend, we had help from Rob and Greg, shown in the photos of the living room below. They worked out a faster, more effective system for installation (throwing out the instructions that came with the laminate helped a lot), and we put in two long days to finish the living room, entryway, hall, dining room, and kitchen.

This past weekend, we enjoyed a more leisurely visit with Chris, Ben, and Adrienne, who helped lay the floor in the office, grout the tile in the bathroom, get all the existing baseboards back on, and clean up the garage. (Unfortunately we didn't have time to take advantage of Chris's expertise to get our new furnace started up, so the cold snap we're having – culminating in three inches of snow today – has made it harder to revel barefoot on my gorgeous new floor.)

I have to say, paint and trim and lighting aside, it's the flooring that has really made the biggest difference to the look of our rooms. They look like one unified space now, without the ugly lumpy painted plywood and the diagonal edge of two kinds of old laminate to separate entry hall and kitchen from the "great room". It really is a great room now. Brighter. Larger. Polished. My office is fantastic with its final coat of cranberry red paint complemented by the light birch, and once the baseboards are up in the master bedroom the suede finish is going to contrast nicely with the texture of the floor. The pictures probably don't do it justice. It's fabulous. Many thanks again to Bev, Rob, Greg, Chris, Ben and Adrienne for helping us get this done.

More work still to do, of course, but by the holidays this place is going to be very, very comfortable, and we can devote some time and energy to each other, family and friends instead of this house. It's about time. So - who's coming for Christmas?