Condo News: Choosing the Finishes

I haven't updated you about the construction progress because it's going incredibly slow....painfully slow if you ask me! We're not really much further along than we were when I last posted in March.
In June, we had our last appointment with the designer. We (um, I) had a list of demands requests for things we wanted. Some of these items were in the list of upgrades we could choose from, some weren't. We've already paid our deposit for the finishes, but haven't paid the balance yet - this is 100% due to the fact that we don't even know yet if the builder will sign off on our extra upgrades. Choosing the finishes and upgrades is tough... fun, but tough. I made this decision tree** to help anyone else who is or will be selecting finishes on a new build. This is basically how Kevin and I decided on our finishes.


While our finishes aren’t quite finalized, we followed this decision tree and ended up deciding on the following:

BATHROOM
Tub: When we first bought, I asked if the bathtub was a soaker because it looks like it is on the plan. I was told it was. Score! Unfortunately, at some point this year I found out I was misinformed and it’s just a regular tub. Womp womp…I was not impressed. So we upgraded the bathtub and I’m so pumped! When I first asked how much it would be, I was quoted $1600. I was like, “I’m sorry… what??” Turns out the designer thought I wanted a jetted tub. I just wanted a soaker tub and I’m not gonna lie… I wanted it bad. I’m not one of those people who just say they’re going to take baths and then never take them. I take them… all the time. Anyhow, when I saw photos of the soaker tub models, I found a modern one I love at $250.
Tub surround: Our standard tub surround is 4x16 white or ivory subway tile. We chose white. It’s nice!

KITCHEN
Cabinet type: We chose our cabinets, which look very very similar to the Adel cabinets by Ikea. Unfortunately they only had it in dark brown, so I asked if we could get it in white. I was told yes, and it’s been signed off on, but I worry they’re gonna mess that up and we’re gonna see dark cabinets when we move in.
More about cabinets: We also paid $300 to extend our cabinets up to the ceiling, well technically to the bulkhead. They’re going to be 130cm tall now. We have 9 ft ceilings with a 1ft bulkhead above the cabinets so the top of the cabinets will be 8 ft high. That’s how my parents’ kitchen cabinets are and it’s really nice to have the extra space. Kevin can hide all his candy on those tops shelves because I can barely reach them even with a stool!
Counters: We went with the standard. I like the colour, but it’ll definitely have to get upgraded when we move in. I’ll be referring to Lindsay’s blog when that time comes!
Backsplash: Meh. That’s how I felt about the backsplash options. I wasn’t impressed. We were given the option of using the 4x16 tile (that we’re getting for the tub surround) for the backsplash too, but I’d rather choose something after we move in. Kevin’s friend, conveniently named Tyler, has kindly offered to do our tiling for us. I hope he wasn’t kidding when he offered…
Appliances: We upgraded to a stainless steel microwave hood range and to a better (quieter and larger) stainless steel dishwasher. Remember this debate I had a few months ago? Well, the stainless steel won. It made the most sense for resale and it’s what Kevin wanted. Just to be clear, I didn’t not want it.. I was just undecided.

FLOORS
Main areas: We went with the standard flooring, which is carpet. I like the colour we chose, but I’m not a big fan of carpet, except for in bedrooms – I have a ridiculously fuzzy cat and allergies. We recognize that carpet is no-good for resale and wanted to upgrade to laminate or engineered hardwood, but we’re going to change the flooring on our own instead of through the builder. That way we’ll have more selection (so we can get the stain and wood we want) and it will save us at least $1000.
Bathrooms/Kitchen: We decided to get tile put down in the kitchen. If we had upgraded our floors through the builder, we could have had the same flooring put down throughout (except the bathrooms). Kevin really wants tile in the kitchen, but I’m not sure… Any advice!??  I’d love to hear your opinion. We went with a darker tile because we’ll ultimately put down engineered hardwood/laminate and it will most likely be walnut or close to that shade and I don’t want too much contrast in the flooring.

EXTRAS
Crown moulding: I love the way crown moulding finishes off a room, but I wasn’t a fan of the selection and I kinda feel like it’s hard to choose what you want before living in the space for a bit first, ya know?..
Ceilings: The price was ridiculous to get non-stippled (popcorn) ceilings! Ca-razy!! Straight up highway robbery. I’m not a fan of popcorn ceilings at all, so it’ll definitely be something worth looking into after we move in.
Bedroom closet: I talked about this before and even drafted and sent to the designer what we want the builders to do. The original layout was okay, but then we gained 16 sq ft extra in the bedroom when they realized the HVAC unit wasn’t built into our room and they had to move the wall back. We’re hoping the designer and builder will give us the go-ahead on this rendering:


The new draft bedroom layout makes me very happy. And the extra closet space will be a treat! When Kevin and I lived at our last apartment, we shared a SINGLE closet. Men’s clothes are bulky, yo! I only had about a third of a single closet to hang stuff up.

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What do you think of the finishes we chose?? I’m really hoping to hear back from the designer soon about final costs and I’ll let you know if we end up with everything we wanted!

^{**Pixlr has improved lately! That’s what I used to make my decision tree for this post. I don’t wanna brag, but I think it looks pretty awesome!}

Appliances: Debating White versus Stainless Steel

Once again, Kevin and I are divided on what colour we want for our appliances. Through our builder we can choose between standard white, standard black, or upgraded stainless steel;  or upgraded white, upgraded black, or further upgraded stainless steel for all the kitchen appliances. When I say “standard” I mean there’s no added cost and when I say “upgraded” I mean there’s an added cost.

Here’s our kitchen. Don’t mind the markings on it. The kitchen is just off to the right of the front door. The window is south facing.

We haven’t officially chosen our finishes yet, but we’re toying with the idea of white cabinets and dark (probably polished black granite) counters. If we go with that counter, the sink will be stainless steel and under mounted. The tiles (the gridded area in the floor plan) will be greyish-brown and the floors (non gridded areas) will be walnut.

Given that information, what is your opinion on the colour of the appliances?

Kevin (obviously) wants black. That guy prefers everything in black. Unfortunately for him, black is out.

White could be a contender because the cabinets are white so the appliances will have a seamless look. When spending the same amount of money, you can get nicer white appliances because there is a premium cost for stainless steel ones. The downside to white is that people think it looks “cheap”

Stainless steel could be a contender because it’s better for resale value and looks “more expensive”. The downside is that it will visually break up the space with the white cabinets, and stainless steel is infamous for fingerprints and smudges.

I found two pictures of kitchens with white cabinets and dark counters that are laid out very similarly to what we have. The pictures are from different angles, and I realize with everything being equal, the stainless steel appliances are nicer than the white appliances in the pictures I have, but try not to let that bias you!

Which one would you go with? I need help choosing.

I kid you not, I’ve literally dreamt every single night about condo finishes for the last 2 weeks. I’m dreaming about laminate versus engineered hardwood, cabinets, counters, appliances…. I need to get a life!

Photo sources: SS Appliances, White Appliances

Condo News: A Change in the Plan

Kevin and I went in for our first finishes selection appointment. We were the first appointment of the day, but she had car trouble and was 30 minutes late so we didn’t really do much choosing. That being said, we learned some important changes had been made to our floor plan. When the designer pulled out our floor plan, the first thing I noticed was that there was an added area in the bedroom and the wall between the living room and kitchen was shorter. Initially I thought, “yay! More space in the bedroom” then about 0.1 seconds later thought, “Wait a minute, did we lose space any where else??” I told her that wasn’t our plan and she said we were supposed to have gotten an email stating they had to make some structural changes to our unit. I pulled out the copy of the floor plan as we knew it to be and made some comparisons.

This is the floor plan I blogged about a few weeks ago:

Unfortunately she didn’t have a copy for us to take – she thought we’d already been notified – so Kevin and I both took pictures. Here are the changes:

IN SUMMARY:
Kitchen floor:
Before – no tile.
Now – it’s tiled. We always assumed it would be tiled and this just got missed on the floor plan, so it’s not really an issue


Kitchen dimensions:
Before – 12’10” x 10’5
Now – 12’6” x 10’5”. We’re losing 4 inches of space in the kitchen due to the…


Wall between living room and kitchen:
Before – Thinner and longer
Now – Thicker and shorter. We’ve definitely lost some of our precious wall space in the living room. The reason they stated is to give us a wider doorway and to increase the light into the kitchen.


Bedroom Layout:
Before – The southern wall was straight and our HVAC was originally drafted into the stairwell.
Now – We gained 16 freaking square feet of extra space when they redrafted the HVAC back into our unit!!!

Let me just state, the beds in the floor plan drafts for every unit are double/full-sized beds (dimensions: 54x75 in / 137x190 cm), which is the same bed we currently have. When we bought it we considered getting a queen sized because Kevin is TALL and his feet hang off the end when he lies straight, but we didn’t have enough space in our apartment for a queen sized mattress and weren’t sure a queen would fit well in the condo… so his feet hang off the double or he sleeps diagonally lol

The 16 extra square feet are conveniently configured into a closet shape... I can’t be the only one to notice that. Well that got me thinking: While 2 double closets are great, I think we would benefit more from turning that new 2x8 ft nook into a closet and removing the original closet altogether, giving us about 2 extra feet in the bedroom, which would allow us to fit a queen sized bed in there.  The side of the bed that is beside the closet doors in the original plans would be beside a wall in my hypothetical plan, so we wouldn’t have to worry as much about having space there for getting into the closet because it would just be a wall.

After our meeting we took a trip to Ikea to scope out closet systems. We found some fantastic Pax wardrobe configurations with sliding doors.. but they’d set us back about $1000… yikes. Unfortunately I didn’t take pics, but here’s some other Pax eye candy for you


We also checked out some dark versus light kitchen finishes in Ikea. I’m team “white cabinets” and Kevin is team “dark cabinets”. Whose team are you on?

To be honest, after looking at multiple cabinets options, I’m kind of leaning towards dark lowers and light uppers…

I’d love to hear what you think based on the layout we have!

Other condo news:
Finishes Appointment
Construction Update and Security System
Our Floorplan
Condo Finishes Waiting Game


Images: Pax Wardrobe 1 (Ikea Hackers), 2 (Roncevalles Victorian Reno Diary)

Condo News: Our Floorplan!

Here is our condo floorplan! I thought it was high time I showed it to you. Our unit sold out pretty fast (there were only 3), so I had to scan a printout I had instead of grabbing the image from the online gallery... hence the lower quality photo. 

Here are some details!

• It's 716 square feet - not huge, I know, but we're happy with it. It's 50% larger than our apartment and we were perfectly content there.
• It has one bedroom, one den*, and one full bathroom (ensuite) and one half bathroom
• It's a corner unit (south-east facing: ideal!)
• It has a balcony - some units only had Juliet balconies, which is still something I guess, but we wanted some kind of step-out outdoor space.
• We have one parking space and one locker
• The two black circles are cement columns
• The weird gap in the middle of our unit is where the stairs are...
• We're on the tenth floor of a mid-sized building so we're not worried about "stair noise"
• And it has TWO FULL WALLS of windows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think that pretty much sums it up. Any questions??

*condo developers in Toronto clearly VERY loosely define what is considered a den. To me, this is just a big(ger) living room and a not-so-sneaky way for developers to ask for more money!

New Bedroom Layout

My new bedroom is an en-suite with a walk-in closet. I'm happy (and lucky) that my parents have a spare en-suite bedroom at their house. This room used to house all of the workout equipment before I moved back. Here's the layout of the room. 

The big set of windows face west so I get a lot of afternoon light (and heat). The room is above the garage so I can hear the door opening and closing, but I leave at least half an hour before anyone else in my house (6:30am!) during the week so it doesn't bother me at all. 

Because the south side of my room (where the bed is) is a bigger area, I initially thought I'd make that side the "living room" area and have my bed on the north side (where the desk and TV are), but that layout didn't work at all. I have the Ikea Brimnes bed and wanted to put the head of the bed against the wall where the closet (labelled "storage") is, but then I couldn't open up the drawers on one side. I tried to put the head of the bed against the small window, but then I didn't like that people could see my legs when I was in bed (the bedroom has a French door with no cover whatsoever). Ultimately the bed ended up where you see it in this layout. I'm not sure if it's gonna stay there though. I'm always rearranging. What do you think? Would you have laid out the room differently if you were me? 

Condo Shopping with Michelle

Michelle recently got a permanent full-time job (congrats!) and as such, has been keenly researching condos so she can move out of my parents' house. Michelle's a librarian so she's an extremely thorough researcher - she's got a spread sheet of condo prices, payment structures with varying interest rates, etc. This weekend, my mom and I went with her to various condo sales offices. A couple of them were busts because they were sold out (but didn't say so on their websites...), but we got some very helpful information at the Fuse Condos sales office. We were actually looking for the Upside Down condos sales office, but stumbled in to the Fuse office and decided to check it out. Turns out Upside Down condos is the same builder so we were in the right sales office all along. 


I like checking out how the condo model suites are staged because they always use reflective or glass elements, along with smaller scale furniture to make the rooms appear larger.


Here was the floor plan of the model suite they had in the sales office. It's 794 square feet with a 116 square foot balcony, and as you can see it's a 2-bedroom unit. All the finishes in the unit are standard.

I took pictures of the common areas, the master bedroom and master bathroom.

Here's the kitchen and dining area. The table was small, but nicely set up. The kitchen looked  good, but obviously if you've seen any kitchens I like (such as here or here), you know I love white cabinets. My mom and I both agreed that white cabinets would've been the right way to go here because it really would've brightened up the space. 

 This nook is cute! It reminds me of the nook in my current apartment, where we have our desk and wine rack. These mirrors remind me of the mirrors I got from BB Bargoons. This image is definitely going in my inspiration folder!

I wasn't a fan of the furniture or colour in the living room, but I like that the coffee and side tables have mirrored tops. It's a great way to bring light in to a room.  

The bedroom was very well sized for a condo - something like 10x12sq ft. I like the furniture, but again, not a fan of the colours...

The bathroom was nice. Soaker tubs are pretty standard now with new builds, which is pretty awesome.

Have you seen any nice condo model suites lately? I'll pass on any suggestions to Michelle. 

Wonky Bedroom Layout

The configuration of our bedroom is loopy... there's a good-sized west-facing window on one wall, an awkwardly built closet in the NW corner, a floor register in the SW corner, and a jut-out thing in the SE corner (which I think houses electrical or plumbing or something like that). See for yourself:

This is a (mostly to scale) floor plan of the apartment's bedroom and bathroom with the furniture laid out accurately. I've tried and I've tried to better reconfigure this room, but I just don't think it's in the cards. The window is actually centered on that wall, but the built-in closet makes it looks off-centered. I tried to camouflage the situation a bit by putting a curtain rod across the whole wall and using curtains that match the wall colour. Oh, I forgot to add: the window and curtain rod are level, the ceiling and floor... not so much. Check it out:

Open - it's this view that irks me!

Aside from looking lopsided (although I assure you the rod is level) the curtain kinda look alright when closed :)

 I feel like I can hear Mike Holmes' voice saying "make it right"... but I don't really know what I should do. I think I might try "un"-leveling the curtain rod so it's even with the ceiling instead of the window and I'll shorten the rod so it's only above the window, not the whole wall. As for the soon-to-be-permanently-exposed wall....well, I'll find some way to balance it out. Maybe something like what John and Sherry did for their guest room to balance out the wall where the bed and window are...


Suggestions are welcome!