Welcome to our blog

How we increased air tightness in our house by almost 70% in less than a day.

We had been getting many questions about our insulation and vapour barrier choices for the house, so we wanted to share our selections here and the rationale.

Even after the insulation and vapour barrier is done, we’ve still got one major step that’s going to dramatically improve the performance of the house – we’re going to be performing a whole-home air sealing process.

On the last day of March 2022, we moved into our Georgetown house. If you missed why and when we moved from the County House, you can catch up here. Our time in this house hasn’t exactly gone as we had imagined (the romantic, fulfilling restoration of an old home to make it ours). Instead, […]

Back in June, I was lucky enough to have the Globe & Mail offer to publish a piece I had written on my story falling in love with old houses, and all the work that comes along with them. Here’s the article, as well as the wonderful illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick. 

Our friend Katharine MacPhail has been running an awesome podcast, Talking Home Renovations, in which she interviews folks restoring and transforming mostly old homes to get their insight, wisdom, and tips. It really is a unique series of conversations as its almost all actual homeowners talking about their specific experience. We were thrilled to be […]

One of the questions we’ve been asked a few times is who we’re reading, following, and watching for inspiration. The honest answer is: it depends! On the day, sure. But also on the project and what we’re looking for inspiration on. We’ve rounded up our top picks for old house inspo books in this post.

We shared glimpses of the new water heater back in November in our Instagram stories, and they were some of the most viewed, engaged with, and commented-on content we’ve ever posted! We’ve received so many questions about it, so we decided to share all the details here.

We don’t have many early photos of the house, with the exception of one. It was taken in 1908, when the house was about 4 years old, and from high up in the church tower about a block away: Of course, upon finding this in the town’s historical archives, the first thing we did was […]

Just before Christmas, a cool package arrived in the mail: it was my framed Certificate from the Sustainable Preservation program I’ve been taking via eCornell. In September, I shared the news that I was excitedly going back to school by enrolling in the certificate program, led by Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. […]