Good Things Come to Those Who Wait!

Back in April I finally had McG talked into taking the wall down between our kitchen and living room.

This is what our kitchen looked like BEFORE...

and this is what it looked like once the wall was down.

It opened up the flow of the house and we love it!  But doing this left us with one dilemma...a space between the two floors that looked like this.

The original floors we knew were from Bruce Flooring in gunstock colour.  We contacted the company that installed the floors originally and we could order a new box for approximately $150.00.  I felt that was too steep a price, since we didn't need a full box...we really only need about 8 square feet.  We had a few pieces here that were leftovers from when the original floors were installed but it wasn't enough to do the whole spot that we needed.

We checked out our local Habitat Restore but they didn't have anything close to matching.  I scoured Kijiji (local Craigslist) and did find one option but it was snapped up before we could get there.  We tossed around the option of filling in the smaller section with the wood we already had and then using an "accent tile" as an option for the center section.  But I felt that would look too deliberate.

Then a few weeks back we stopped into our local Home Depot.  For fun we went to the flooring section to see if they offered our floor..they didn't.  We stumbled on some clearance flooring at the back of one of the aisles and to our amazement there was a box of "Bruce" flooring in the pile.  It took us a few minutes to get it out so we could look at it and what we found inside was what we thought would be a pretty close match to our flooring.

McG scouted out a salesperson to see what the price of the flooring would be.  They guy told us $35.00 for the box since it wasn't a full box and was basically all that was left of that particular kind. He gave us a piece of it and we drove home to check it out against our flooring.  The width and finish of the wood matched ours perfectly, however, the colour was just a hair lighter.  We decided that for $35.00 we would take the chance and use it since we could mix it with some of the other flooring we already had here.  We went back to the store to buy it.

When we got there the guy that had given us the price was no where to be found.  The cashier called up another flooring employee and she ended up giving us the box of flooring for $30.00 - an even better savings!

We brought it home and sat it in our spare bedroom for a couple of weeks to acclimate it to the humidity levels of our home before installing it.  This past Thursday night McG installed it.  He was finally able to use his floor nailer that we purchased to put flooring in at the other house.  (We decided on laminate and he never did use the nailer).

It went in pretty smoothly and you can hardly tell the difference between the two floors.

The new floor is the three rows between the two arrows below...

Sometimes great things come to those who wait!!  We are loving our finished floor!

What We've Been Up To...A Garden and Yard Tour

It seems so long since I've sat here and composed a post...the month of June has gone by so fast it seems, but that's most likely because we have been completing quite a few projects on our to-do list!

 We've had a pretty wet spring, but that hasn't deterred us from tackling some outside projects.

We dug out some existing gardens and got the soil levels down away from the foundation.  I've planted some hostas along with a dwarf Japanese Maple tree that the kids bought me for Mother's Day along the back of the house.

I also painted the support posts on the "carport" sitting area black to clean them up and make them last another year until we can really tackle this project.

McG and I dug out the shrubs and stone from this area and added new gravel and a small shed to hold our garbage pails and recycling boxes out of sight.

McG got my fountain up and running in its new home as well.  I love to hear the water while I'm out in the garden.

I've been busy adding to the garden under the tree in the back yard.  Most of it we brought from the garden at the other house, but we've added some cedars and small shrubs to this space as well.

I've cleaned up the garden bed along the "carport" as well thinning out some of the plants and adding some pots of flowers.

McG has started to remove the grass for our new patio.  It will be a space where we can put our outdoor fire pit and enjoy some marshmallows and hotdogs cooked over a fire.

The brick edging for the back garden was recycled from some of the existing garden beds that were here when we purchased the house.  This area under the big Maple tree in the back made the perfect garden space as there wasn't much grass growing under the tree anyway.

We will be moving the stairs to the other side of the deck soon and re-routing the sidewalk to make access to the septic tank cleanout a little easier.

Earlier in the spring McG finished trimming up the pine trees along the driveway.  This gave me even more garden space since it provided another area that had no grass growing in it.  We cleaned up the edging and I've been planting along there as well.

Most of the hostas in this garden were splits from ones that were already in the yard when we bought the property.  A few of them I purchased new and the rest I split out of my Mother's garden.  She was very generous and helped me fill up this space.

All of the garden art and other "pretties" came from the other house when we moved here.  It is so nice to finally have them in their new home!

This garden is approximately fifty feet long.  It's really taking shape and we've been getting many compliments from people passing by.

I've also been working on trimming all the existing bushes in the front of the house and adding a few hostas and perennials to this area as well.

McG also set up my smaller fountain in the front garden under our bedroom window.

Most nice days you can find me in the yard, cutting the grass or weeding the garden beds.

It's been a busy month around here as far as the yard goes, but those projects are almost finished up.
Next we will be onto painting the exterior of our home and rebuilding our back deck.

Never a dull moment around here...what have you been up to around your home?