Spilling the tea on my own house. Maybe this is just a roast of us. Process is very enjoyable,
we just we're just not great at finishing. So we've officially been here a year and I figured
now is a good time to give you a home rental update, how things are going around in the house.
If you're new to my home journey, you should start in our first home playlist where I walk
you through when we first bought the house, moving in renovations, makeovers to now. And as all home
renos go, things don't get done as fast as you think they do. I very much catfish my videos and
I show you very strategic angles that look good, but let me expose myself fully in this video and
tell you all the things that we still haven't finished. This is my novel of all the things
that we need to get done around the house and what we haven't done, starting with the living room.
So flooring before moving in was the smartest thing that we had ever done and because we had
the opportunity to adjust our moving dates we took it, and we put down all the flooring and it was
very simple. Except around the areas that require transitions, and the large part of flooring
is done but what we haven't finished are quarter rounds on this floor. So this,
and this,
and these. So these little pieces Stef measured the space between each and every single one
before cutting it to size. Because there's no way to take these out there was another house that
looked exactly like this and when we went to see it they had completely drywalled all of the rails.
So they built a wall around it. We could do that but it kind of loses the appeal, I feel
like and it cuts off a lot of light. If you think about how high this already is. Something that
we learned when we were doing renovations is that just tearing things apart willy-nilly is actually
going to add to your time and cost in the future. So if there are things that you can preserve you
should absolutely try to preserve them. We ripped up a lot of the quarter rounds that we could have
put back in but now we have to buy new quarter rounds in order to fit it back into place,
and then on top of that having wavy walls makes it extra difficult. So if you had things with
that were already pre-cut and pre-fitted to your place why we just ripped it up
and didn't put it back in place was beyond me. To the deck. We have a finished deck.
How we got to this finished deck was hilarious. So if you watched our backyard video:
we're short this million dollar deck is now going to cost a million and one dollars. To get
extra wood shipped here was $75, so we borrowed our friend's pickup truck went to the wood yard
and bought a few more planks gas to put into the car which our friend didn't ask us to put gas in
but like as a courtesy, gas was like $150. It was still going. Why didn't we just pay for shipping.
Only to find out that we were actually short one more plank. So then my parents have a van and they
were very gracious, we didn't think that the van would fit before but my parents and I went to the
lumber yard on a weekday. So Stef was working, and he wrote down what we needed and I know
deck boards. Went picked up a few extra and like extra planks just in case drove
all the way back, untied it from the car, carried it into the backyard only to realize
I bought the wrong deck boards. There is framing lumber so what's underneath the deck,
and then there's deck boards, finished deck boards, and I bought framing lumber. Funny story,
the guy working at the lumber yard was joking with me when we first bought the deck boards and
he was like see you in an hour and then when I got back I was like hey it's been an hour,
I'm back but anyways the deck is finally finished. It's a glorious masterpiece.
We finally managed to order pavers. Pavers were backlogged for they said up until next year but
because things died down very drastically, I managed to get in a call. She said sorry
we're sold out in the color that you want, and then as I was about to order an alternate color
her co-worker tapped her and was like oh my client just canceled on the color that yours wants,
so you should take it. So I just so happen to get our color. So Stef and his friend worked over
the weekend to move our gigantic gravel pile back into the pit. We have some adjustments to the plan
and then the pavers will be coming next week for us to officially
finish the backyard. The space between the deck and the ground was a lot more. We're about,
we added about this much worth of gravel or even more because it's very tamped right now.
And the pavers will be this thick, and then it'll be flush with
a gravel border. It still looks like a disaster though
So in the original renovation plan idea video, I had a beautiful mock-up of the kitchen.
We were thinking of knocking down all of the kitchen cabinets and replacing them. Now having
lived in it for a year, the dishwasher before I was like if the sink is over here and the
dishwasher is over here it doesn't make sense. A dishwasher that's not close to the sink which is
also inconvenient. All of these changes were going to be very costly, so now in terms of rethinking
and what we want to do with the kitchen and how we want to update it is actually pared down by a lot,
and prioritizing what we can and can't afford. I was thinking first I'm gonna paint the kitchen
maybe paint or a light stain on the cabinets. Definitely change the hardware. I think changing
the cabinet knobs is really all it takes. Big budget things would be getting a new
countertop and changing the backsplash, but then in terms of layout and everything else
it's totally fine. This light is disgusting. Whoever thought of putting a chandelier in a
kitchen is crazy. So this brings me to our stairs. The treads are a different color from the flooring
and there is no transition. I don't know how complicated it is to stain and try and color match
that, or I'm gonna paint the rails and the stairs black. If you have input on
this let me know. Stef is like I think black is weird and I don't think it's gonna look good,
and my thought is well the hardware is black already if I just paint the rails black to match
it and then I can match the stairs with black it won't look that weird. Because we have so many
steps in this house I have to paint it all the same color, and if I paint one the wrong color,
it's just going to look very strange. So my office is pretty complete I'd say. I
added cabinets that I got off Kijiji. I made a little tiktok @letitiakiu, where I did a office
makeover. The desk still needs to be changed, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with the setup already.
I put in my own blinds, I think to finish it I'll definitely add curtains as well. And then
I discovered my least favorite diy ever. It doesn't really matter if I dislike doing something
because saving money always overrides my dislike so even though it may not be the most enjoyable
task, I'll still enjoy doing it because I'm saving money. This is not it. Baseboards. I will pay
a professional however much money they need me to do to finish this. It breaks my brain. These ones,
these. This is my best work. This is my least best work. Look at all the hand prints. This was anger.
Not even close. This. Nobody tells you that you need to finish the inside of a closet. Speaking
of closets, we still don't have closet doors. So I was asking Stef why not put the closet
doors back in, but he had a point that I did not know. These floors are floating floors, and if
you screw anything in you're essentially cementing one piece down. Some things will naturally shift,
if you have one piece that's screwed down you're gonna cause a lot of buckling all around you and
it's gonna shift the entire place. We can't screw down the railings and we either need new closet
doors or maybe I was like, what maybe we can glue the railings down? One thing that we did complete:
ceiling lights. The two other bedrooms upstairs,
there were no ceiling lights. It was very dark there was only one sconce on one wall
per room. Stef wired all this on his own. Also gave us a dimmer, this.
These are definitely pluses to have.
So this is my disaster of a house. Still paint sampling the hallway.
I just wanted to show you that not everything is as it seems the catfish is real when it
comes to this house. In the new year my first project to tackle is gonna be these stairs. The
good news is that there's going to be a lot more makeovers for you to watch. It's very
embarrassing to put this out on the internet but it's the reality of our house and we'll do
a home rental q&a for you all in the future as well. So if you have any other questions
let me know in the comments below and I'll see you next time, bye!