Progress...and a snafu or two

I am starting to feel like I am living in an HGTV episode. You know the ones where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong? The ones that leave viewers thinking “HOW predictable! OF COURSE everything goes wrong!”

That is my life right now with this home renovation project. Last weekend, I was feeling great, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We were slowly but surely getting rid of debris, and I painted a room!

Progress!

Another room needed a bit more drywall work, and then it would be ready to paint.

Progress!                    

I had a plan for what would be accomplished each day and where I would be by the end of this weekend. I am going out of town for a work trip on Tuesday and will be gone for three days. Last weekend, I painted the home office area, and I decided I would feel quite pleased with myself if I had the dining room and downstairs hallway painted by the time I had to leave on my trip. Then, I planned to spend next weekend beginning work on my kitchen cabinets. I know that is going to be a massive amount of work that is going to take some time, but once they are finished, all that will be left to do before the flooring can be placed is to paint the kitchen and family room. Again, a lot of work still to do, I know, but like I said, I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I told Tony that if we stuck to the plan, we could have it all finished and start moving everything back in by mid-July. I even wrote these deadlines I gave myself in my planner, thinking that if they were visible to me each day, I would be more likely to stick to them and not give in to laziness on days and nights when I wasn’t in the mood to work and would rather sit on the porch with a book and a frosty drink.

You know what they say about the best laid plans, right?

On Sunday afternoon, Tony had a bicycle accident and broke his elbow and a bone in his hand.

So much for the perfect plan. He won’t be able to do anything using his right arm (and he is right handed) for 12 weeks.

Nothing got done on the house during the week at all, until Friday night when Lauren and I, with guidance and some help from Tony, pulled the old carpet off the stairs.

All week, I felt rather defeated and down about the wasted days, but there really wasn’t much I could do anyway because the drywall work in the dining room wasn’t finished.

I am happy to say I finally gave myself a kick in the pants and decided to look on the bright side of things, because really, in the grand scheme of it all, what is a little ol’ delay, huh? The work will be finished eventually, and in the meantime, I really don’t have to clean much since everything is filthy and there is not really anything that can be done about it at the moment. Another bonus is that now, I don’t have to feel rushed to get the cabinets finished, and I can take my time with all the rest of the painting as well. To celebrate my shiny new positive attitude, I even bought some flowers for the kitchen so that I can have at least one thing in this house that is pretty to look at.

 

Tony managed to finish the drywall work with one hand and my help, and I came up with a new plan, a much more relaxed plan than the first one.

Plan B hit a snafu, too.

Thursday night, one of the girls was taking a shower, and water started pouring into the kitchen from the upstairs bathroom. We had a similar problem a couple of years ago, but it had been fixed, and there had been no water leakage issues since.

Now, my already gross kitchen looks like this:

 

Rachel’s boyfriend was over hanging out yesterday, and Tony put him to work cutting a hole in the ceiling so that he could try to figure out where the leak was coming from. He was a trooper, and with Tony’s guidance, they found the cause of the leak.

 

When one-armed Tony tried to remove the offending joint and piece of pipe, he ended up breaking the main line from the bathroom.

Oh, the fun just never ends around here!

He cleaned up and went to Home Depot intending to buy the pieces he needs to fix it, and wouldn’t you know, Home Depot doesn’t sell those things. He will have to purchase them at a plumbing supply store, or call a plumber.

And, it’s a holiday weekend, so no plumbing stores will be open until Tuesday.

And, the man swears he is not going to call a plumber.

Tony is a very handy guy and can do just about anything. However, I fear that he may have bitten off more than he can chew when it comes to fixing the main water line, above his head, with one arm.

Lord, help me. I am praying that he doesn’t cause more damage when he tries to fix it.

In the meantime, I present the one room (our home office) that is finished and ready for a new floor.  One down, four to go.

Before:

 

During:

 

And after: (The white part under the chair rail will have picture frame molding once Tony has the use of his arm back).

 

Coming up next is the dining room and hallway. They look like this at the moment:

 

 

 

 

Hopefully, by tomorrow, at least one of them will be coated in a creamy yellow.

While this home renovation project has turned into way more than I expected it to be, I am rather enjoying it all, even with the setbacks we have already encountered. I have been doing a lot of reminiscing and writing about so many memories from when we were planning and building this house along with reflecting on good and bad times spent here. I originally planned to blog about the whole sprucing up process, but I have a sneaky feeling it is going to end up being way more than that as time goes on. Somedays, I write and write, and I am rather enjoying that, too.
Until next time, Adios from the chaotic construction zone. Hopefully, the coming week will be less eventful than the last.

Dancing in the...Dust

When we moved into our house nearly 22 years ago, I thought I was the luckiest person. We were moving from a house that had been built in the 1970s (and was still stuck there!) It was a great house with a big, beautiful yard, a gorgeous tree right outside the front door and neighbors that we loved.

However, we didn’t own it, and I did not love the harvest gold appliances and bathroom fixtures. While I loved the huge kitchen, I most definitely did not love the dark fake-wood ornate cabinets or the floor that looked like various sizes of pebbles in all shades of orange, gold and brown. All of those things may have been quite groovy in the 70s, but in the 90s, they were just blech. And ugly.

When we decided to build this house, I wanted most every surface to be white. White floor. White countertop. White appliances. White walls. You get the picture. Our house was so sparkling white it was blinding.

Not really blinding, but it was very pristine with not a speck of ugly dark brown or harvest gold. We did however choose hunter green carpet (it was the 90s after all!). For some reason, I loved that carpet. When the house was being built, the builder called one day to tell us it was our last chance to change any of the flooring we picked out because he was ordering it all that day. We briefly talked about changing the carpet color to tan, but decided what the hell? If we got tired of it, we would replace it.

Yeah, that did not happen.

If I had been able to look into a crystal ball in 1994 to see that my beloved hunter green carpet would be the harvest gold and avocado green of the 90s, I wouldn’t have chosen it because I grew tired of it less than 10 years after moving in. By then, we had 4 kiddos and no extra money to replace carpet. Also, it held up very well and still looked “good” so it was harder to justify ripping it up. And I grew to hate it. My decorating taste has changed more than once over the years, and it was always hard to pick new paint colors because it had to look good with that hunter green carpet.

But, 22 years ago, I loved every single thing about this house. Everything. I walked around the empty rooms the day we closed, taking it all in, thinking of how I would decorate each room, dreaming of the memories we would make here with our children, one of whom was still in my belly, just 2 weeks away from being born!

Like I said, I loved it all. I loved the front porch that already had a chair waiting for my 9 months pregnant self to sit in while I bossed everyone around and told those who were helping us move where to put things. I loved the crisp white vinyl floor in the kitchen and the oak parquet in the hallway. I loved the hunter green carpet. I loved the white countertops and the golden oak cabinets. I had just been relieved of 8 weeks of bedrest the day before, and I couldn’t wait to put my beautiful, spacious kitchen together. I loved the white walls that were a blank canvas just waiting to be coated with pretty paint colors and wallpaper.

This house has been through many transformations since then. I have wallpapered and ripped down wallpaper while cursing and swearing that as God is my witness, I will never wallpaper again. I have painted and repainted so many times I can't even remember how many. We covered the white vinyl kitchen and bathroom floors with ceramic tile. We finished and refinished the basement, bought new furniture and curtains and replaced the fake wood baseboards. We have rearranged kid’s bedrooms as our family grew. Yet sadly, the hated hunter green carpet survived every single one of my redecorating escapades. But alas, the time has come! I have said, “Adios!” And, “Good riddance!” to most of the green carpet. It is still on the stairs and in the upstairs, but there is not a trace of it downstairs. There are now 38 boxes of beautiful wood flooring waiting to be placed throughout the whole first level. Yay and yahoo!

There aren’t enough adjectives to describe how I feel about that. Giddy is the first one that comes to mind.

And those piddly little makeovers of the past? They are nothing like the transformation my beloved home is going through now.

This renovation that started out with us only replacing the carpet in the dining room and office area has turned into one of those “If you give a mouse a cookie” situations.

*If you decide to replace the flooring, you are going to realize that you simply cannot have beautiful new floors with walls that haven’t been painted in years. So you are going to want to paint them.

*If you paint the walls, you truly must paint all of the white baseboards and doors and trim. Because who wants beautiful new floors, freshly painted walls and dirty white trim?

Not me.

*If you have pristine new white baseboards and trim with newly painted walls, you really must paint the ceilings, too. Right?

*And if you are putting beautiful new floors down in the kitchen, the 22 year old cabinets that need some love and attention just won’t do any longer. Will they?

Nope.

*And if you decide that you are going to finally take the plunge after years of thinking about it and paint your kitchen cabinets, well, the old, stained white countertops that bleach won’t even clean will feel left out if you don’t replace them. Won’t they?

Yep.

All of the above is where I have been over the past month.

In my head anyway.

Right now, I am in the painting ceilings and trim phase while walking across dirty subfloors that are crying out to be new and pretty and loved. Not only are they dirty and oh-so-gross, I can’t walk through my house barefoot because of the nails and staples in the subfloor that we are slowly but surely smashing down with a hammer. These Sketcher sandals have become my very good friend over the past month.

 

My plan at the beginning was to blog about it as we progressed, and that clearly has not happened, but I have been taking photos along the way. Don’t be jealous now. I just know that everyone dreams of living in a home that looks like this!

 

Those are photos that have been taken over the past month as we have ripped all of the flooring from our downstairs. I gotta admit that while I loved that vinyl flooring in 1994, when we uncovered it a few weeks ago, I wasn't feeling the love.

We have progressed, though, and this is what my house looks like today.

 

I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and yesterday, I finally was able to start painting. So far, I have only painted the ceilings and trim in the dining room and office space. I have chosen a paint color to cover up the red, and my next project is to primer over the red walls. I used to love that red, but it is time for that color to go, too.

My house is definitely a work in progress at the moment, and while I hate what I am living in now, I know (hope!) it will be so worth it when we are finished.  

I will have to keep reminding myself to dance in the dust and find things to love and enjoy about the process as I sweep and hammer and paint and breathe some love back into this home.