My wife likes to watch home renovation shows on HGTV. “Leave it to Bryan” is perhaps her favourite, although she does have sympathy for “Holmes on Homes” when large issues happen.
We renovated our home some 35 years ago. Built in 1904, it had many issues. For instance, it had an old coal furnace that had been converted to oil that produced hot water heat for the house.
We suspect that on more than one occasion, the furnace had failed and the freezing pipes had caused considerable water damage.
The home came with a very small electrical panel, which we upgraded to a 200 amp one. Then we discovered there were no three-pronged plug receptacles in the house.
Our walls were gutted and we discovered everything was porcelain knob and tube.
Needless to say, the house had to be totally rewired from top to bottom.
Thirty five years ago, we believed we had enough plug-ins. Today I’m not so sure. Everything also was completed in the early 1980s styling and today much looks dated.
So we are embarking on a small renovation project—we’re going to give our kitchen a refresh makeover. We’ll retain the cupboards but we will have new tops.
The countertops have been replaced once already, so we are looking to make this change a permanent one.
My wife always has had a distaste for the powerful fluorescent fixture that brings mid-day brilliant daylight into our kitchen at any hour of the day. That is going and will be replaced energy-efficient recessed fixtures.
There will be under cabinet lighting, and there will be new suspended fixtures over the island and kitchen table.
What Holmes and Bryan do makes this job appear simple—they just go ahead and make all the decisions. We’ve had to look at the styles of countertops. Should they be granite, quartz, laminate, or a man-made solid surface acrylic?
Of the hundreds of colours available, what colour would you like for your kitchen for the next 25 years?
Once that decision is made, what type of lighting fixture would you like? You get thousands of choices.
You can wander though lighting fixture stores for decades trying to make up your mind.
Are you going to choose a back splash? More choices. And then, finally, what colours are you going to paint the walls.
Decisions keep piling up. Bryan Baeumler just shows up with his iPad and shows the home owners what the final outcome will be. He must have someone agonizing over the decisions.
The project sounded so simple as we began. The wallpaper had to be replaced. Should we replace it or paint?
We chose painting and then began mulling over how we could make the kitchen better.
It seemed such a simple task.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
