Well it’s been almost a month since we moved to our new apartment. One of the most tiring months in recent memories. I understand now why moving is one of the most stressful life events! And we only moved across town! I really feel for those that move across the country or continents. I truly thought we were minimalists (and we mostly are!) but moving really confronts you with your things. Even though we are so thoughtful about what we bring into our home and we edit regularly, we still moved things that I couldn’t believe we were moving.

Anyway…. this isn’t a post about the pains of moving, it is a post about the power of fresh paint and floors to change the feeling of a space. I also thought it was as good a time as any to share our floorplan for our 900-ish square foot 2 bedroom apartment. It has two floors. The living space is upstairs…. living room, dining room and galley kitchen. Downstairs is a bathroom and two rooms. You have to walk through the “den” to get to the bedroom so it is not technically a two bedroom. The “den” is now our bedroom with the high ceilings and the bedroom is the kid’s shared room with quite low ceilings (just under 7 feet).

FLOORPLAN for the Beach House (what we’ve been calling it since we can walk to the beach now).

I’ll share some observations about the floorplan soon but for this post I just want to focus on the changes we made in the first two weeks. The unit was painted a taupe colour that I hoped would be quick to cover up. I was wrong. When you choose a bright white it takes 2-3 coats to cover up the old colour. I used Benjamin Moore Aura paint in Chantilly Lace (eggshell). It’s my favourite white. I love how crisp it is but it never feels stark or cold to me. I used the same paint for our 600sqft apartment as well. I also love the BM Aura paint for the low VOC’s and that it’s waterborne (if you are local I would recommend Coast Decorating Centre on Main Street for BM Paint, I find them so helpful there).

I went through 6 gallons and 1 gallon of primer for those tiffany blue accent walls. I should have used the Bath and Spa paint for the bathroom but I just used what I had on hand as I wasn’t planning to paint the bathroom in the first couple weeks but as I got going I realized if I’m already making a mess, I might as well keep going.

I painted myself to save money, I’m not sure I would recommend doing that, ha! My Dad helped for a couple days. Trevor helped for a couple days and my brother and sister-in-law helped a full day. In the end I think I painted for 10 days! This included baseboards and caulking. So while I saved money, a professional painter could have painted this place in less time. I actually enjoy painting and it helped me feel really connected to the space. Also I had spent most of my reno budget on the floors so there’s that!

AFTER Dining Room with our Skagerak Georg Table and bench, and our Bubble Lamp brought over from our old apartment.

The flooring is a slightly white washed engineered white oak from a local flooring company. If you are planning to do the floors of your own place I would recommend budgeting $5-10/square foot for material and $5/square foot for installation. You can save money by doing demo yourself or by installing the floors yourself (skilled job I would only suggest if you are really handy). You can also shop around for a better material cost or even find a batch second hand from another job that over-bought. We were removing 5 different types of flooring in this condo (vinyl, linoleum, tile, tile and laminate) so I left the demo to the professionals (removing tile is a messy job). A few things to look out for are complicated stairs will cost more (mine did!) and an older place might require additional levelling before installing the flooring which may be an additional cost (mine did).

I opted to have the same flooring throughout the entire space (except for the bathroom). This meant carrying the floor into the kitchen and down the stairs.

Here are some photos of the before space and the after. The after’s are by no means done. As I have shared before I am fighting against all my instincts and trying to take our time settling in here and slowly making the space work for us. This means we are still in the middle of a couple of projects and the walls are still mostly bare. Share more soon. Hope this information is helpful! A fresh coat of paint can do wonders for a space and new floors, if in the budget are a way to bring the everything together. (Paint kindly gifted by Benjamin Moore).

BEFORE Our Bedroom with a view to upstairs

AFTER Our Bedroom and view to upstairs (bathroom door on the right)

Fresh Paint and Lighter Floors for the Beach House