Meet My Ugly Baby
367 days to flip Vancouver's ugliest apartment
11 links, kitchen sink and a whale
Sep 3rd
Renovating
- [After photos] Home goes from Psycho scary to the splendid ’70s
Despite a plethora of mirrors and a leftover party smell from the 1980s, [the owner] saw that the house had genuine character. – Globe and Mail
- [Planning] Plan and Organise Property Renovation
The renovation project costs aren’t everything, you also need to make sure you ask the right questions from the contractors and think through and plan
It was woven into clothes, building insulation and coffee pots. It was even mixed with children’s play dough
- [Survival] How to Survive a Total Home Renovation
In the beginning of a home renovation, spirits are high and blunders are laughable. Several months later, you may not be as amused at the sight of your temporary living quarters
- [Historic renovation] The 39-year reno
Imagine peering up into the rafters of your basement and finding a lieutenant-colonel’s scarlet military jacket from the War of 1812.
Moving
- [Lifehacker] The Start-to-Finish Guide for Moving to a New Place
- [Apartment Therapy] Moving 101: Top 10 Lessons Learned & Tips that Worked
Get it done on moving day even if you’re an in-town move. As tempting as it is to look at the last few random bits and think “I’ll come back for that tomorrow”, the reality is that once you are in your new place, you want to be done with your old place.
Vancouver
- [Cost comparison] City vs. suburbs: Home prices are just one of many costs to consider
Our hypothetical family had a budget that would cover a [downtown] condo of 800 square feet with two bedrooms and sweeping city views, listed for $639,000. Or, they could head to the [suburbs] and purchase a three bedroom, 1,940-square-foot detached house [for slightly less at $629,000].
- [Sept 9 - 12] Vancouver Home Show
- [Vancouver's green goals] Talk Green to Us
Vancouver has the greenest building code for new houses in North America, the first net-zero multi-family building in Canada, the greenest neighbourhood in North America – Southeast False Creek – and a requirement that all major new rezonings achieve at least the LEED Gold standard.
- [Vancouver is Awesome] Whale in the harbour!!!!
It’s a whale! In the harbour! Visiting me!
I said I’d do it and I did
Sep 3rd
It almost got ugly
The night before Key Day, I looked at the dishes in the sink. Like Elin looking at the real Tiger, I’d never known such loathing. If you’d given me a golf club, it would have got ugly.
I was done with dishes. No more. Twelve months of Cave Dwelling & no dishwasher. Wasted time. A half hour or more a day – on dishes. (That’s not to say I did them every day. Or ever, really. Most often I ran and hid when it looked like Paolo was about to crack).
Still, it added up to a lot of time, for far too long, of hating the dishes.
[NOTE: Attn hippies and earth mothers: I know dishwashers use more energy/water. But I compost. That's a green light to ruin the planet in other ways. I’ve the right to love, adore and fully utilize the modern convenience of a dishwasher.]
So I swear I didn’t stage this photo.
The night prior, I’d accidently soaked the inside of my trusty gloves. A year of practice meant I knew to dry it out with a balloon whisk stuck inside. A convenient reason to ignore the dishes for another night. The next morning, look what the dishes said to me:
Peace. OUT.
Divine intervention. And so, just like I’d threatened, I packed up the dirty dishes and carried them to their new palace in the hills: to the new dishwasher.
A half hour a day, given back to me like a prize! Clean counters – always! Empty sink – perpetually! Never again will I shy from a recipe for its heavy use of pots and pans.
Dishwasher, dishwasher, I love you.
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Tiger photo c/o the esteemed NY Daily News
Painting with Vile Odious Chemicals?
Sep 2nd
Unofficial flipping goal: we want to beautify our baby – not turn it into a silent killer.
When our offer was accepted, I started at square one. Didn’t know what ‘eggshell’ meant. Had never heard of VOCs in paint. It was Young House Love’s nursery project that tipped me off.
No matter your earthy inclinations, no one should want normal paint. Normal, regular paint – even the good stuff – emits VOCs for 3-5 years! All those smells? Not good for you!
I wouldn’t want a volatile person in my house – and I don’t want volatile paint, either.
Why isn’t all paint VOC-free?
If the technology’s available and the cost is, essentially, comparable…why? Because VOCs are required in dark pigments. You want dark colours, you need VOCs. That’s disgusting. Change your colour palette. We know that regular paint is bad. For our health, the environment – bad.
The solution?
It’s sitting right next to the problem, right now, on the shelf in any hardware store.
- What kind of thinking is keeping the toxic stuff there?
- Who’s buying it?
Not this tender innocent.
3 things about No-VOC paint
- I can expect comparable quality and coverage. Great. I’ll take it! I love comparable!
- It doesn’t come in dark shades, but the lighter half of any paint chip can be made without VOCs. Perfect.
- It’s really not that expensive. I kinda don’t believe you – but we’ll see.
2 types available in Vancouver (low- to mid-range $ bracket)
- Sherwin-Williams’ Harmony is $44/gallon. No VOCs.
- CIL*, offers a Naturaliving range of No-VOC paint and primer: $25-$31/gallon.
I stopped in, as well, at Farrow & Ball where I learned that they only make VOC-free paint. As for the cost? Know the adage, “if you have to ask – you can’t afford it?” I later discovered: $125/gallon. So that’s what you pay to avoid the unwashed masses at Home Depot.
I’m sure there are others – but I needed a swift decision. CIL’s Naturaliving will do just fine. I’m ecstatic this is possible – at a price equivalent to brands we’d be using anyway.
Get to know VOC-free
- The NYT on non-toxic paint
- VOC-free painting from a painter’s point of view
- Long list of non-toxic paint options
- Low-VOC paint round-up – US availability (Re-Nest)
If anyone’s looking for a willing CIL Naturaliving guinea pig – I’m signing up. Really excited to try out this new paint and keep our ugly baby VOC-free.
* CIL stands for Canadian Industries Limited and is a home-grown brand. CIL is also a town of 2,279 in southern Azerbaijan.Photo found here.
Day 6 and life is grand
Sep 2nd
Wallpaper, you’re mine.
Real life resumes! We’ve got clean towels and Whole Foods’ tastiest provender. Reasons to celebrate, both. But it’s day 3 of no home-based internet and that sucks.
Note to self and snarky glance in Paolo’s direction: call to transfer the internet as the first thing on next time’s moving list – not the last! They’re busy and they don’t care how much you need to read [insert names of embarrassing websites].
Am I in the only building in Vancouver on Wi-Fi lockdown? Unneighbourly!
We few, we happy few, we bandwidth-sharing neighbours?
No? (None of these ideas worked either – even substituting ‘Canucks’ for ‘Liverpool’. Points for trying, hey?)
I can only sit and read the names of other peoples’ wireless networks, wondering what way-awesomer name I’ll give my own. (Network name ideas?)
Linksys – so 2004.
Still, enforced internet time at coffee shops means getting shit done on the home-front – in a highly caffeinated way. In a superb cosmic collision – Home Depot’s paint sale starts today.
Vite, Paolo, vite!
Day 5: Battle plans, basic provisions
Sep 1st
In olden days, battles were fought differently. Armies would arrive weeks and months in advance, and make camp. They’d dig in and get to know the land. Perhaps rape and pillage the locals, while those higher up the chain schemed and formed the battle plan.
I’m always up for Fisticuffs Vs the French, but today (day 5!) my focus is elsewhere:
Utter. Destruction. Our shag carpet is 40 years old… which means all manner of filthy things could have touched it. Wayne Newton. Yoko. Burt Reynolds. Who’s to say their foul forms haven’t slithered across my shag? I can’t be certain. It has to go.
But. We’ve urgently got to stock up on provisions. Somehow moving even within the same city depletes any and all reserves of energy, food, and toilet paper. Where did it go?
Groceries, then destruction. Provisions, then pillaging.
Napoleon, Nelson, Monty… how’d you hold your troops back when their enthusiasm outran your readiness?
My bottled impatience is running on fumes. I just want to get going – to rip down walls, to eradicate the popcorn ceiling…to obliterate. I’d probably be quite a good pillager.
The Battle Plan
First – deal with Mazlov and his needs. Find the towels, buy dishwasher soap. Get milk. A few more days to make camp. Then?
This is my logic – check it for flaws: for any given area, first attack popcorn ceiling and wallpaper/mirror mosaic, then prep for painting, paint, use the nasty carpet as a perpetual drop cloth, rip out carpet, install laminate, rejoice. More or less – that’s the plan.
Practice session
After starting on the living room’s vinyl wallpaper last Sunday – we may as well finish it. For no other reason than “it’s there, and it’s ugly.” Weekend Warrior Project, take 1. Then?
The first month
I polled the parents on this one – unanimous vote: do the bedroom first. It’ll be the easiest – and it’s the only room with a door! Won’t it be dreamy to have somewhere I can walk in bare feet? Then?
The next 337 days
My kinda-sorta-I’m-totally-making-this-up-right-now plan…
Living room/Dining room/Hallway
I guess after the bedroom, we’ll pretty much know how to spruce up the living room. Problem: there’s no door, it’s a big space and it’s totally open plan. Dust control? Forget it. Hmm…a problem for another day.
Bathroom
No idea. Absolutely no idea. Will be memorizing the plumbing section @ One Project Closer & supplementing with liberal doses of YouTube between now & then. Would you laugh if I said it’s small and therefore should be quicker than the kitchen?
Kitchen
Why save the kitchen to last? Because – compared to The Cave – this kitchen has a dishwasher and can therefore do no wrong. Maybe I’ll get the DIY derivative of Stockholm Syndrome and won’t want to change a thing. Would you stage an intervention?
The sprucey-uppy bits
Spring Cleaning on speed. Waiting to see what’s left of our budget at the end, this’ll be the land of finishing touches. Moulding, curtains, new light fixtures.
My coffee’s cold. Nothing further.
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Pictures, from 2 wholly different battles in totally different continents and centuries, found here and here.
Cleaning and lies we tell poor people
Sep 1st
Ensuring any household move leaves the appropriate aftertaste – it ends with cleaning. You think you’re done – and then you have to put on rubber gloves to explore crevices you didn’t even know you’d rented.
Vladimir Lenin Landlord had made the schedule clear:
You give back keys at noon, then leave.
Stringent stuff, but I was happy to oblige. Monday was a gong show moving day – which left 6 daylight hours yesterday morning to turn The Cave into a Lysol commercial. *Shiny*.
A month ago, I’d planned to move apartments with an efficiency worthy of Eisenhower’s attention. Similarly – I had a vision for cleaning day.
On cleaning day, I’d channel Longoria – not Dugger.
How’d that pipe dream pan out? Oh, just about as spectacularly as I imagine the rest of the project will unfold…. not exactly. Nice try, honey pie.
For reasons I’ll outline later – outsourcing got vetoed and we cleaned it ourselves. Like with actual muscle power. And unlike Dumpy Dugger, I don’t have 50 kids to…project manage.
Abhorrent. Anyway.
- The Cave is 550 square feet or fewer – we figured we’d be sailing with a 4-hour window to wipe it clean before the inspection.
- 2 of us. That’s 8 hours, right? An insane amount of time for city dwellers to scrub and Swiffer.
- We’d be opening the bar by 11, latest – toasting bye-bye loser landlord, hello ugly baby.
I. Am. Delusional.
6:15 a.m.
Paolo attempts very valiant and almost adorable wake-up call.
6:30 a.m.
He tries again, this time with coffee. Success.
7 a.m.
Return to The Cave. Paolo tackles the bathroom unasked (good lad) and I reinvent the kitchen.
7:30 – 11:59 a.m.
We scrub our way through an entire box of Mr. Cleans, until his magic erasers are nothing more than crumbs in our rubber gloved-hands. Walls get washed, windows are Windexed. Oh, right – and we clear our entire balcony of the hundred plants (and other random crap) we’d forgotten.
Not super stressful but, in essence, full of suck.
So why’d we do it ourselves?
Answer forthcoming. For now – would you rather:
- Sleep in when impossibly tired?
- Or drink all the wine?
Stay tuned – mad science to follow.
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Photos found here and here. Photoshop efforts meant in the kindest of ways.
For posterity. For your edification.
Aug 31st
For crying out loud.
The shit left over after the professionals moved what should have been our every last possession:
- heavy, dirty plant pots on the balcony
- TV and computer monitor (would you rather break it yourself or watch it ruined in the hands of strangers?)
- 3x lamp shades (never found boxes big enough and didn’t want them to get squashed – ha!)
- mops, brooms, swiffers – totally annoying to transport
- bikes
- wine glasses
- 3 plates, an Ikea popsicle mould, 2 spoons, 1 butcher knife
- the full contents of our fridge
- wires and internetty crap, modems, etc.
- coats and our nice, fancy clothes
Note to self and other lazy cheapskates
- Once your suitcases are full, just buy the wardrobe box.
- Don’t be lazy, pack the damn wine glasses.
- Move stuff you don’t trust anyone else with before moving day. Even if it has to go on vacation to your parents’. Just get it out of the old place.
- Figure out what the hell to do with your bikes. We kind of forgot about ours.
The Idiot Check
That’s the last search through all drawers, cupboard and closets after you’ve cleaned and are ready to return the keys. That’s when we found our 3 plates, popsicle moulds, 2 spoons and butcher knife.
We might be idiots, but we’ve still got the capability to make icy treats.
The I-Told-You-So
Don’t leave stuff unpacked just because you can’t find a box. Those irritating lampshades should probably have been my first hint to call a green moving company. Moving drum shades naked and unprotected, we managed to smash one and dent another. A stupid move.
As for the fridge?
Next time, I’m announcing myself as a total charity case at least 3 days before moving. Friends, family, Rob Feenie: leave room at your dinner tables. I’m coming. Chucking out milk, and debating whether to keep or throw a barely used jar of mustard was the l-a-s-t thing I felt like doing after cleaning the oven.
Life’s too short for condiment attachment.
Moving! Not too many letters apart from mooching.
Moving Day: Landed. Survived.
Aug 31st
Our movers – Paolo and I agree on this – earned 6/10. (That’s a Canadian 6/10, which is overly generous and actually a 3).
- They were on time - 1 point
- They made certain to check what was staying and what was going – 1 point
- They were fast – 1 point
- They dealt with our jumble of mismatched boxes - 1 point
- They brought covers, blankets and shrink wrap – 1 point
- They worked hard – 1 point
No uniforms – no points
Somehow, I just trust people more when they’re in uniform. Flight crews wear them, why not moving crews?
Some whining about the new building – no points
It’s got an elevator, what’s the problem? Shut up and start lifting.
All our boxes (which I’d colour-coded room-by-room) were deposited upside down in a heap - no points.
It was like they’d never seen a Duplo set in their life. Their delivery system abused physics and sacred order. Actually, minus points. -50 points.
They dropped boxes off the side of the truck – no points.
I appreciate that this time-saving maneuver saved us some dosh. But my precious possessions weren’t so keen to defy gravity. I can still hear Färgrik and Svalka crying.
Not sure where I went wrong in picking these guys.
- They were Better Business Bureau approved
- Had good reviews on Google Maps
- And I grilled them as to why ‘they’d be the best’.
I don’t dream there’s such a thing as a truly painless move, but these guys… kinda sucked.
As for the really sorry looking guy painfully packing his life into a U-Haul yesterday…. dude. Promise us you’ll never do it again.
Who do you guys recommend? Who gets 10/10 and why? What are red flags and how do you avoid the sucky ones?
P.S. Just popping over to feast your eyes on the ugly? Why not join Team Ugly Baby: so much hotter than Team Jacob. Subscribe now or get email updates – like magic!
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Looney Tunes photo property of Warner Bros.
Meet my ugly bedroom
Aug 30th
Do you have awesome friends? I do. While some are keeping us well fed, others are helping us document every step of our Ugly Baby’s transformation.
Realizing we needed proper Ugly Baby before shots before any boxes arrived, our lovely friend & stellar photog Andrew beat the moving truck to our place & snapped some commemorative, wide-angle ugliness. He’s archived every inch of the “before” & I’m ever so grateful.
So why not meet my ugly bedroom?
The "feature" wall
Dreadfully dreary
Let's see that wallpaper again
Fingers crossed for a transformation bordering on unrecognizable. Thanks Andrew!!
My stuff is having babies
Aug 29th
How the mighty fall.
Tomorrow’s moving day and we’re not exactly packed. It’s all that remainder crap.
- My desk’s contents.
- Really fragile wine glasses.
- The stereo.
- A closetful of coats.
- Cleaning supplies.
- Whatever’s left in the fridge.
An inter-city move really allows for great laziness. Besides, we ran out of boxes and I can’t be bothered to get anymore. I’m going to do what I know is stupid and wrong and shove it into a million canvas bags.
I’d rather shut my eyes for the next 48 hours and wake up when it’s over. It wouldn’t be hard – I’m so dog tired. It feels like jet lag. The sort of creeping tired you just can’t fight. Properly sleepy.
What to do with all the remainder crap? Really no idea. I think when your stuff hears you’re moving, it has stuff-babies and that stuff begets even more stuff.
Officially sick of moving. Said by someone who actually loves moving.
Angelina, got any room in your camp? I want adopting.
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