We never got around to doing our cottage update, simply because we didn’t have the most successful day renovating. We started by renting a couple of sanders to refinish the original stained pine floors. Unfortunately we listened to the advice of the Home Depot employee and took these ridiculously useless sanders, which acted more like vacuum cleaners with sand paper attached to the bottom.

The sanders might have done a decent job if the floors we perfectly even, but after 70 years of wear the floors were cupping. Basically meaning we would have to sand down the raised edges in order to get the grime in the middle of the board. There is a specific sander for this specific job, a drum sander which is the one I originally wanted.

You can really see the difference here.

So this Thursday we’re up again, but this time with drum sanders. The amount of work is pretty intense, so we might end up painting the bedroom floors white. The floors for the most part will be covered with beds and rag rugs so why make more work than necessary?

This week the whole family is going up to the cottage to enjoy the nice weather. I hope everyone has a wonderful long weekend!

On Saturday we hosted photography Per Kristiansen at our shop for the opening of his show “Piles”. This is the second time we had the pleasure to host Per’s work for contact, you might be familiar with the show we did two years ago.

The show is on until the end of May, so please drop by the store to see it in person!

We had a live jazz band for the event, which did crazy jazzy versions of Deep Purple and AC DC.

Oysters!

 

Tonight! Opening party for Per Kristiansen’s Piles, a part of the CONTACT Photography Festival. Per installed the show last night and it looks fantastic in the showroom. There will be opening parties going on throughout the Junction.

Public: 6pm-9pm
Private: 9pm-12am

Mjölk
2959 Dundas Street West

It’s going to be a good time! Please RSVP if you think you will attend.

Yesterday was our second trip to the cottage for more interior renovations. We removed all of the old linoleum and carpeting and spent most of the day on our hands and knees removing hundreds of nails. When I woke up this morning I could feel my knees buckle.

I assume people put layers upon layers of flooring over these pine floors in an attempt to keep the place warm in the winter, I just don’t understand why someone would go trigger happy with a nail gun to keep the linoleum in place.

This is about a quarter of one room finished.

You can start to see potential for some beautiful grain, next week we’re going to rent a belt sander to get rid of this excess gunk on the floor.

We got a bit excited and starting working on removing the kitchen tiles, something we weren’t sure if we wanted to remove.

It was by brute force the flooring was removed and by far the least enjoyable job we have done since starting. Not only did we have to remove the ceramic tiles, we also had to remove a layer of linoleum which was nailed to a sheet of plywood which was nailed to the floor with a million nails.

Originally I was considering putting in a whole new kitchen, specifically a free standing kitchen to make it less formal and more of a working cottage kitchen with open shelves, and racks for hanging pots and pans. After taking some measurements and mentally placing the kitchen I had in mind I realized my vision just wasn’t going to work. The space was too cramped.

The white kitchen cabinets already in the space are non-offensive, and even though I might have laid out the kitchen differently, the amount of closed cupboard space is very generous. The decision is to replace the tired blue counter-tops with wood and install the white ceramic sink from our old apartment. We’ve already done some updating by replacing the colourful fish hardware with nice simple black and white knobs from IKEA.

Still lots of work to do, we need to replace the office style drop ceiling with pine slats.

Here is that sun room again which we are going to paint the floors white to differentiate from the rest of the cottage. I guess someone else had the same idea because when we lifted up the floor we discovered it had already been painted. Hopefully with a good mop job, we might only have to add a top coat of white porch paint to clean it up.

Déjà vu! This was nearly the same opening photo from our first cottage renovation 2 years ago. You may or may not know that our cottage also has a matching guest cottage on the property that used to act as a rental unit when Juli was growing up. During the first renovation we focused on the cottage closer to the lake and it was more than enough to hold ourselves and our friends over the summer.

With the arrival of our baby we decided to start working away at the guest cottage so our friends and family have their own private space. It is going to a be a lot of work, but my brother Frank and I started taking day trips once a week to get the work done.

Our first step was to empty the furniture in the cottage, and box up all of the miscellaneous antiques to be sorted out after the renovation. With the recommendation from our neighbor we contacted a local antique dealer to visit the cottage and make an offer on the contents.

They gave us a reasonable offer and hauled away everything later that day. Originally we were just going to donate everything, but I’m so glad we called these guys, they were really nice and came to the cottage within an hour of contact.

The bedrooms are really tired looking, and all of the windows need an update.

The water tank in one of the bedrooms already has a decent frame around it, I think we’ll panel it up with some nice pickled pine wood.

There are some details we are happy to keep, including these beautifully oxidized copper sconces in the sun room. This room is going to be the highlight of the renovation complete with matching daybeds.

A view from the living room to the sun room.

We started pulling up the carpet, which lead to 2 layers of linoleum nailed to the floor with a million nails. Next week Frank and I will be on our hands and knees pulling them up one by one.

We still don’t know if we should sand down the pine floors, and treat them with lye giving them a bleached effect. Of course the other more simple solution is painting them white like the main cottage. Part of me wants this one to have more of a natural feel, as if the cottage was never really renovated, just smartly re-worked in the 60s complete with Aalto furniture, white plaster, and pine floors.

What do you think?

This week we had a bit of time on our hands so we started working on a custom sandwich board for the shop. We bought a couple of nice wide boards and began to burn them a la Terunobu Fujimori.

The next step we sealed the board with a very matte polyurethane called Bona Traffic. This will keep the charcoal from rubbing off onto your hands.

We found some really nice copper hinges to match our copper wall light by Poul Henningsen.

Here it is drying out in the sun.

We commissioned Melinda Josie to create the illustration for the sandwich board and a matching version for our window.

Here it is sitting outside doing its job.

Here is the logo in the front window, it used to read “Pure Scandinavian” but with the amount of Japanese and Canadian influence I think this is more appropriate.