The Before Tour!

We are endlessly grateful for our new home! You can read about how we came to own it here. Now for the fun part - pictures! I did a video tour over on Instagram, which is saved in the highlight "⌂ before" but I've always preferred still photos to get a sense of a space, so here are a few. 

The home is a Greystone triplex built in 1905 and we have the main floor unit/condo, as well as adding a small basement. The basement is already dug but not connected to our home (the access is outside) so one of our biggest projects will be connecting our condo to the basement by building a staircase, and finishing the basement. When the basement is complete we'll have 1,800 square feet which is astonishing to us! We never dreamed of having this much space in the city (for reference, our family of five has been happily living in 1,000 square feet for 12 years).

We'll be putting in heated floors, new pre-engineered hardwood on the whole main floor, heated ceramic in the bathrooms, totally renovating the kitchen, taking down walls, rebuilding walls, installing a gas fireplace, renovating the bathrooms, changing the electricity and all finishings. In short, it's going to be a big project! Thankfully, I've been designing my dream city home in my head (and on Pinterest) for years now, so the decisions have been quite easy to make and planning has been relatively simple. We hired an architect to help us make sense of the basement and staircase, and a structural engineer to verify his plans. We also have a general contractor who will oversee and do much of the work, but we're saving a lot by sourcing all materials and professionals (engineers, electricians, etc) ourselves which avoids the contractor's 10-30% finders fee. 

Here's our entryway and huge 20 foot hallway! The crown moldings throughout are so magical. We also love the high ceilings! The new floors will have much wider and longer planks which will make this hallway really shine, I think! I'll be looking for the perfect narrow hallway table. We also have a really fun Spanish tile for the vestibule between the two sets of front doors. We'll be removing the radiators, opening the wall between the first two doorways to the left, and refreshing the paint (though keeping it white).

Our living room right now is quite small, but we're taking down the wall to make it larger. On the other side of the wall is a small bedroom/office which we decided to remove in favour of a comfortable large family room. We'll be installing built-in shelves on either side of the center space where a fireplace once was (wood burning fireplaces are no longer allowed in Montreal) and putting a frame TV there. We're also planning to install a gas fireplace on the wall of the former bedroom/office which will become the second half of our living room. The stairs to the basement will probably begin near where you see the large radiator above, and jut out into the former bedroom/office. Removing the radiators, adding recessed lighting and new floors, too.

Above is the wall that will come down to enlarge the space

Here's the wall that will come down from the POV of the bedroom/office

Here's the wall in the bedroom/office that will have our gas fireplace

Really glad to be adding another window to the living room! We've never had much natural light in our current condo so this is really amazing to us!

The dining room and kitchen will soon be one big room as we're planning to take down the wall which separates them. Here's the dining room:

Above you can see the loadbearing wall which will stay. The door into the dining room will all be open.

Here's the wall which will go down to open up the kitchen and dining room. You can see that it used to be open and a previous owner closed it off.

The dining room and kitchen will both have the same heated pre-engineered hardwood floors, new lighting, and removed radiators. We plan to sell the old doors and radiators as there's a big market for them here! It's been hard to know what to salvage when renovating a hundred year old home, but when we level the floors the doors won't fit at all and they're already very creaky and cracked, so we're ready to part with them. Same with the radiators - I know they're beautiful, but heated floors are by far the most comfortable and sustainable option. Radiators are also really difficult for furniture placement as they take up a lot of wall room.

The kitchen is being completely demolished and re-done! We have already designed our kitchen with Ikea and begun receiving boxes from them. When our order is complete we'll have Ikea in to assemble and install. Ikea kitchens are so easy to design and by far the best price available!  Ikea is also doing our quartz counters and backsplash. Thankfully we bought our counters during a 15% off quartz sale at Ikea, so we were able to afford doing a quartz backsplash with the savings. I've always loved the look of a continuous counter and backsplash, but quartz isn't cheap, so didn't think it was a possibility. 

This space near the back door used to be where the laundry was situated, but we're putting ours downstairs so this area will be a coat room of sorts, since we'll probably use our backdoor more than the main entrance.

Next up is the family computer area, which was really important to us! We believe strongly that kids shouldn't have their devices or internet access in their bedrooms if at all possible. Screen time can already be very isolating, so the idea of having their screen time in a communal, family space seemed like a step in the right direction. Social media pressures, cyber bullying, and pornography are real threats to children, so we made the decision long ago to prioritize togetherness and safety for screen time. We're really grateful to have this computer room area, but if we didn't have it, we had planned to have the family computer (doubles as my work computer) in the living room. We plan for there to either be no door to this room or a glass door - not sure yet!

Next is the solo kid room, which for now will be Lily's, but later on be Oli's. After 12 years of all three sharing, we're really happy to have two bedrooms to share between our three kids now! Oli and Chloe are very close right now so we opted to have them share for now, but as everyone gets a bit older, our girls will share. The solo kid room will double as our guest room when our out of town friends and family visit, so it will have a queen sized bed. This room needs new walls entirely! One wall will come down and be set back to make this bedroom a bit bigger. We're keeping the light though - I love it!

The kids' shared room is the largest room in our house and will sleep Chloe and Oli to start and later on, Lily and Chloe. I plan to write a long post about why we see no problem with room sharing, and in particular brothers and sisters sharing rooms, because my goodness have I received a lot of comments and questions! We won't be dividing this room because there's only a window on one side, for one, but mostly because we think it's a lovely large room that's perfect for sharing! More on that later. I love how they get a nice big window and an exposed brick wall. Like everywhere else, we're changing the floors, removing the radiators, and adding recessed lighting. You can see it's working to house all of the boxes for our Ikea kitchen right now!

Finally, the main bathroom. Currently the only bathroom, but we'll be adding a second one in the basement, which will also be where our bedroom is, the laundry cubby, Brad's tiny office, and a small bonus room which will just be big enough for a small couch and a TV. This bathroom is currently in two parts, one toilet room (without a sink) and one sink and shower room. We're uniting the two and borrowing space from our pantry to make the bathroom quite spacious for our kids and guests. The kids bathroom will have two sinks as well, which I think will help us out a lot in the teenage years!

Here's our little pantry which will be smaller after the bathroom renovations, but still more than I could ever have dreamed of! Storage in the city is so rare. Currently under my bed is a jumbo box of Costco freezies and other non-perishables. You just put things wherever you can! So having this pantry, even in a diminished size, is a huge blessing.

Obviously this tour lacks basement pictures, but I promise, it's just a hole in the ground at this point! I can't wait to share more and include you on this journey. We feel incredibly thankful to have this old, city home to call our own. Thanks for sharing in our joy! 

We're Moving!

This blog has become many things over the years, but it began as a place for me to share our newlywed nest with my family living a province away. From the start, it's been about making a home with a small budget, DIYs, thrift finds, and making our Montreal flat truly ours. From that initial rental, where we brought baby Lily home from the hospital, to our current home which we bought 11 years ago when I was pregnant with Oli, I've loved documenting where we call home. And now there will be a new space to fill the pages of this blog and our hearts. Yes, we're moving!

In front of our new home! 

After almost 11 years in our tiny condo, we are thrilled to be moving to a larger home in our neighbourhood! We've been so happy in our current home and it will be emotionally hard to leave. So many memories have been made here. But at the same time, we're ready. Our three kids, ages 8, 10, and 11 have shared one bedroom for their entire lives. We have never been able to offer our overnight guests more than our couch for the night, and have been limited in a lot of ways in this small space. That said, I am so grateful for the 11 years in a quite small condo, as it's taught me so much and really shaped our family culture and values toward minimalism and contentment. 

We started looking for a new home in 2021, though I'd regularly been browsing MLS for years prior to seriously looking. For us, our non-negotiables were three bedrooms, some sort of office space for Brad, who works from home, and staying in our neighbourhood, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal. Anything else was negotiable. Old homes, modern builds, triplexes, single-dwelling, sky rise buildings... anything was a possibility so long as we had one more bedroom than we have now and could stay in our beloved neighbourhood. The challenge being that Le Plateau is not known for spacious homes, three-bedroom homes, or affordable homes. The vast majority of homes in our neighbourhood have 1-2 bedrooms and are well under 1,000 square feet. It's a densely populated area with homes packed in like sardines, which coincidentally is one of the things we love about living here! The community, the vibe, the architecture... It's all so lovable. But house hunting here is tough. 

We were fortunate to buy our current home, which has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and is 1,000 square feet, over a decade ago. Buying back then meant that house prices were much more affordable, so going on to our second home was less intimidating, having that equity from our first place. But still, we were looking for months before we found anything in our budget with our non-negotiables. We had a lot of homes that felt right and fell through our fingers, some at the very last minute. Our hearts were broken more than once, especially one place where we had an accepted offer and the sale was nullified by the City after it was discovered that the seller had done illegal work and the home wasn't to code to sell. 

So what's our new place like?! You may have seen the video tour on Instagram, but I'll explain more in detail soon. The funny thing is that we'd seen our new home on MLS during our many searches, but never seriously considered it. For one, it needs a lot of work. The back porch is also shared with many neighbours, so there isn't much privacy, which was a hard pill to swallow since we have a quite large back balcony in our current condo. Now those elements don't bother us, as there is a large front porch and we have a great team working with us to renovate it, but at the time, it felt impossible. After losing the home where we had the accepted offer Brad suggested we circle back to what is now our new home. We couldn't really remember why we were so against it earlier and decided to visit. 

It was so bright! So many windows! And really large for our neighbourhood! Plus there was a possibility of finishing our portion of the basement, giving us even more space! But most importantly, it's in the heart of our neighbourhood and has enough bedrooms and office space. When we inquired we also found out that not a single offer had been put on the home. This is likely due to the fact that the market isn't as hot for larger homes in need of a lot of repair. During the pandemic many families left the city, and since our home is part of a triplex, it can't be used as an Airbnb according to the bylaws. Thus, the home of our dreams was untouched on the market and we ended up getting it for under asking price. I still can't believe it. It really feels like God saved it for us. 

I can't wait to share the before pictures and all of our plans for the home with you! 

What I Love About Our Kitchen & What I'd Change

Anytime I'm in a home, the room I'm most eager to see and the one I'm likely to spend the most amount of time in is the same - the kitchen. It's truly the heart of the home in my opinion. I love standing around a kitchen, glass of wine in hand, chatting away while something delicious is cooking. That's my ideal way to spend an evening with friends (Remember when friends could come over for supper? In Montreal, that's still a distant memory with Covid restrictions, but at least they're fond memories).

One day I dream of designing my own kitchen and making all the choices. Perhaps when we move in a couple of years to a slightly larger flat in the same neighbourhood. Anything larger than our current house in this neighbourhood will be a big price jump so we'll probably have to go fixer-upper style. Meaning I might get to realize this dream! Thinking ahead, and just because I love kitchens, I'm always noting what I like and don't like in a kitchen. My own kitchen being my case study, here are the things I know I love and those I just don't. 

WHAT I LOVE

I love a white kitchen. Food and spices and grains and cookbooks bring the colour I want - keep the rest white, I say! White cabinets will probably always be my choice.

I love our subway backsplash. We had it done years ago and it made a huge difference! 

I love that our kitchen is open. There are only three walls with the other "side" left open to the rest of our open concept home. 

I love having an island with stools. It's a natural place for the kids to take most of their meals, for homeschooling Oli, and for meal prep overflow. Under the island is also where I store our compost bin, recycling, and garbage (not shown) and a huge tub of our all purpose flour (shown).

I love our magnetic knife strip.

I love how I display my cookbooks.

I love having clear canisters for grains and flours (buying in bulk saves packaging and money, plus it's pretty).

I love displaying my favourite tea pots and dishes (I'd love real open shelving, but since we aren't able to renovate this kitchen I removed the doors from our cabinets).

I love how there are a lot of drawers.

I love our appliances. We bought the stove and fridge secondhand off kijiji when we moved and have never had a problem. We won't move them though.

I love that we installed under cabinet lighting (cheap, from Ikea, provides a lot of light!)

I love our sink faucet - the head is extendable so the entire sink gets clean as well as large awkward things like big pots. Couldn't ever go back to a stiff faucet!

I love how we hang our pots and pans to save space and for ease.

I love our Montreal print (by Bess Callard)

Ahh, that felt good. I should do this more - listing all the things I love about something. Especially when that something is a kitchen I can find myself complaining about from time to time. Highly recommend! And definitely start with what you love, because next up is less peachy.

THINGS I'D CHANGE

I'd change the corner sink - it's so depressing washing dishes in a literal corner! No view, no space, no light. Whyyy??

I'd change to a gas stove in a heartbeat.

I'd change the range hood, as ours works very poorly (or maybe we just have bad ventilation living on the second floor or a triplex?)

I'd change the countertops in a flash. White or pale grey quartz, please.

I'd change our corner cabinets. The foldable doors are wobbly and awkward and corner cabinets are never used to their potential as the far apex of the corner is just way too far back! 

I'd change our cabinet faces to shaker style - ours are more traditional with some moulding that isn't my jam.

I'd change our island from the Ikea unit we currently have to a built in, real deal, matching countertops to the kitchen, island. I'd also make the island a bit longer so we could fit three stools across the one side.

The most major change I'd make is natural light! I really really want my kitchen of dreams to have a window. Seems like not much to ask, but you must consider that we live in a classic Montreal triplex, which means windows on the front and back only. But a girl can dream...

I loved hearing from you on this Instagram post all the things you'd change and love about your kitchens. Keep the comments coming over there!

The Kids' Shared Tween Room!

As always, our three kids, girls and a boy, happily share a room. I know this is scandalous to some, but it works for our fam! Over the years our kids have grown incredibly close and I think it's in large part thanks to them sharing their toys, books, and space constantly. Some day we do hope to move to a slightly larger apartment in the city and have three bedrooms, which would provide a bedroom for two of the kids to share, and one solo kid room, but that's not happening any time soon. Our kids understand this, and any of their friends who have siblings share a room too - it's city life! But as they get older we have made a few changes which culminated in this bedroom makeover with the goal to keep them as happy as possible in their shared space.

Decorating for a shared room with girls and a boy has it's challenges, but typically my style is quite neutral anyway, so it works for us. I've always aimed to keep their furniture and bedding white and let them add colour with their favourite objects, toys, and artwork. To see the kids' room before this makeover, see here. We used to have grey and white striped walls (which I painted nine years ago!) and mainly white bedding and furniture. It felt very personal and bright, but it was starting to feel a bit kidd-ish, especially since the kids' room hadn't seem any major changes since the kids were toddlers. Lily in particular, who is about to turn 10, has started wishing her bedroom was a bit more grown up. Oli, who's almost 9, is easygoing about their room, but he's starting homeschooling in the Fall so I was interested in making some sort of desk corner for his work during the day. Chloe, who is almost 7 didn't care what I did as long as I kept a place for her stuffed animals and her owl collection ♡

The biggest change was painting over the grey stripes with a warm white (Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace). I didn't realize what terrible shape the walls were in until I painted over the countless scuffs and stains. Nine years and three kids can do a lot of damage! Painting the trim was so gratifying! It's such an easy chore and makes a huge difference. 

Another big change was the kids' bedding. I teamed up with Maison Tess to try out their new kid's line of Muslin bedding. I'm usually kind of colour-phobic and keep things as neutral as possible, but their colours are so beautiful!! We chose the Amber Muslin Duvet Cover for Oli's bottom bunk and the Rose Muslin Duvet Cover for Lily's top bunk, both with a Whisper White Muslin pillowcases. Since the floor trundle bed isn't seen during the day, we've planned to keep our regular white duvet there. 

These duvet covers are incredibly soft and look even better with several washings. They're so soft we have no need for a flat sheet and even on hot nights the kids insist on using their duvets! You may remember that Brad and I also use Maison Tess linens so we already knew we'd love the product. They're handmade in Portugal and the quality is unmatched. I also love Maison Tess for being a women-led Montreal small business. Initially I wanted linen for the kids' room because it's what we have and we love it, but Muslin is truly the perfect kid's fabric. It feels like every kid's favourite blanket!

I also reorganized the kids' books and bought two new bookshelves to house their growing library. Tip: Making stacks of large book series saves a lot of space on the shelves and it's sometimes easier on the eyes than the rainbow coloured spines 😂

The large chest of drawers holds all of our Playmobil and some of our boardgames. Each child also has their own drawer for their personal treasures. Their closet keeps all of their clothing, costumes, and countless bins of Lego. The mirror on top is a new addition, something I found for $10 last summer while thrifting. It makes the room look larger and Lily especially loves it! The tall book shelf with two drawers is where the play food and doll clothes live. It may look like they have no toys, but they have a fair bit, just tucked away. I assure you, during the day it's never this clean, but we have a rule that around 3pm each day they need to pick up their room. With three kids in one room, it's impossible to keep it clean for long, but I also figure with three pairs of hands, the work to keep it clean should be light. 

This makeover took 12 hours and was a whirlwind (it's amazing what you can do when childcare is incredibly scarce and you find yourself with a few hours of it!) I painted the first coat of paint when a friend of ours offered to take the kids out for ice cream and some park time for a couple of hours. While the paint was drying, I fed the kids dinner, hung out with them, and tucked them in on our pull-out couch. With the help of Melatonin, they were all asleep very early (6:30pm) and far from their bedroom. I finished the second coat of paint at 8:30pm. I then painted the trim and did some touch-ups on their mid-century desk while the paint was drying. by 10:30pm the paint was fairly dry so I started moving the furniture around a bit and cleaned the floors where I'd dripped paint. Their new duvet covers were stuffed, beds were made, all furniture was placed and the room was cleaned by 1:00am. The next day I was literally limping! I didn't realize it at the time but painting is hard work!! I was in rough shape for the next 24 hours, but it was worth it to finish a burdensome project so quickly and surprise the kids in the morning. 

I'm thrilled with the end result and so are the kids! Their room feels more mature, organized, and fresh and at little cost of money or time. We still have another two or three years in this apartment before we'll be ready to leave and I think they'll be happy in this tween space until then. 

Sources:

Bunk beds, floating shelf, two bookcases, white lamp on desk, circle rug - Ikea

Oval couch (actually an ottoman covered with a spare linen sheet) - thrifted 

White chest of drawers - Goldtex Kids (see here for post)

Top and bottom bunk linens - Maison Tess kid's collection (coming Summer 2020!)

Bird wall art, mirror, accessories on dresser, Chloe's owls, most books - thrifted

Mid-century desk - roadside find (see here for the transformation!)

Desk chair - Prunelle (similar also on Amazon, Structube, etc)

Top bunk dress pillow - H&M Home

Bottom bunk dress pillow - Indigo

This post was in collaboration with Maison Tess

All opinions are 100% my own.

To book a collab, contact me!