Income Property

Last night I attended a presentation by HGTV’s Scott McGillivray on maximizing home equity by owning income property, hosted by CIBC.  It was great!  Even though I have had an apartment in my basement ever since I bought my house two years ago, I still received valuable information from the presentation.  But not just for my rental space – for me, too!  Scott talked about flooring being one of the top 5 biggest concerns for renters and then discussed the various types (laminate, engineered hardwood, ceramic tile, etc.), which got me thinking about my floors.  Actually, in truth, I’ve been thinking about my floors a lot over the last two years.  With the exception of tile in the kitchen and the original, 98-year-old hardwood in the living room, my floors are covered in layers of ugly, chipped linoleum.  And since I’ve been on a roll with home improvement projects lately, I thought to myself, why not pull up one of the linoleum tiles from under my couch when I get home from the presentation?  So I did!  I already knew there was a layer of linoleum under the linoleum from having seen under a chipped piece of the surface, but I want to know what’s under it all.  Unfortunately, I only had the energy to peel off one tile – it was really sticky!  I don’t even have the proper tools so I had to improvise and I used a cheese knife.  (Looks like I need to go out shopping for a new cheese knife set.)  I’ll need to lift off a few more tiles of the top layer before I can begin to pull up the second layer, but I’m going to leave you in suspense for now.  I really want to know what’s under there, but I should get better tools first, make my life easier.  

Removed one of the fake parquet-looking tiles from the floor.

Close-up of the next layer of linoleum underneath.  I couldn't get a clear shot after this, so I had to post the one with Bryson in it.  My kitties are always getting in the way of the photos! 

My scraping tool - a cheese knife.  

Painting Project

I haven’t done ANY home improvement projects since my June 2011 Project Wish List blog post.  The two main reasons are time and money.  I also have trouble focusing on one project at a time, and I want to do it all, but then I get overwhelmed and I don’t do anything.  I also have so many conflicting decorating/renovating ideas that I have trouble deciding what to do.  But I’ve finally made a few decisions and took a week off work, so I’m starting with painting the house.  The weekend before I moved in, I painted the living room, TV room and master bedroom.  Now I’m finishing the rest of the house.  Assuming I get through it all, I’ll be painting the guest bedroom, my home office, the upstairs hallway, the kitchen, and re-painting the master bedroom.  Phew!  That’s a lot of work!  I already got started yesterday (Saturday) – did the prep work in the guest bedroom and office (filling holes with putty, taping, sanding), and painted the ceilings in both those rooms today.  Hopefully the ceilings won’t need a second coat and I can get started on the walls tomorrow.  In the guest bedroom I’ve picked a blue/grey colour in two shades, darker for the accent wall and lighter on the other walls.  The office will be a light-medium purple, to go with the dark purple chaise I bought for in there.  I’m going to paint my master bedroom white, then eventually put up black velvet damask wallpaper on the accent wall where the headboard is.  I’ll paint the fireplace black, which is on the wall that is directly across from the wall that will be black damask.  Since the hallway is long and dark I’m painting it white to brighten it up.  I’m also painting the kitchen white for now, to freshen and clean it up, and I’ll probably add a backsplash at some point soon.  I’ve decided against painting the kitchen green, though, because the room right next to it is burgundy and I’m not sure that those colours will flow nicely together.  This is probably more than enough to keep me busy for one week!  

This is all the paint I'll be using this week.