Progress

A lot has been accomplished this week at the new house.  Lots of demolition and mess-making for most of the week, but then at the end a little bit of reassembling.  It had to get really ugly before it started to get better, but I think (and hope) we are rounding that corner.  Evidence of the mess is here in our lovely dumpster:

I was in charge of this project alone this week as Brett was in NY for work.  Each time I went to the house to check in (I try to go twice a day) I had AT LEAST one child with me (in a construction zone).  It was very hard to take decent pictures while making sure Grant didn't tumble down the stairs or stick his hand down the exposed sewer pipe or play in the insulation or step on a nail... you get the picture.  Toddlers and construction zones don't mix!  So I do have a few pictures to share, but not as many as I'd like and most of them aren't that great (since I had only one eye on the camera and the other on Grant!).

A few updates:

1.  We decided to put hardwoods in the entire house.  It'll cost us about $2,500 more upfront than high quality carpet, but in the long run it will save a lot of money because they will never need to be replaced (we could never replace 1300 sf of space with even the worst carpet for $2,500).  Plus, we do prefer the look of hardwood and the cleanliness factor. In the end, I just couldn't bring myself to write that check for such a large amount of money for basically a disposable product. Short term pain for long term gain here!  Plus with young kids, the inevitable potty accidents, throwing up, spitting up, spilling paint, dropping pens, and other incidents will not cause permanent damage!  Yay for that!

Here are some pictures of the hardwoods installed in the master and kitchen (unfinished).  They look great.  We are considering leaving them natural, but will try a few light stains on them as well and decided once we've seen our choices on the floors.

2. Once we saw (and mentally processed) what a MESS taking out tile creates, we decided to go ahead and start the remodel on our master bath also.  We were going to do it in 3-6 months, but the messy reality of demolition changed our minds.  Envisioning all that dust and noise and strange people in and out of our personal space for weeks while we lived there just became a very unappealing prospect.  We have an idea of what we want to do in there, but now we need to make some decisions and order some tile and fixtures.

Here is the tile removing mess I am referring to (serious noise and serious dust, people):

3.  Although last week I was thrilled to see the demo and the cleared out space in our kitchen, I must admit that I did have a brief but powerful moment of panic this week in the face of all the mess.  I was walking in the house with Pierce and Grant.  Pierce had to go potty (bad!).  We tried the half bath - no toilet.  Tried the master bath - people in there doing demo work.  Tried to go upstairs to the kids bath - no stairs!  Moment of panic.  I thought, "What have I done?  I have a house with no accessible toilets, no stairs, and a bunch of people I don't know inside.  Agh!!!"  Then Pierce reminded me to try the back stairs and go through the attic space connecting the two separate upstairs spaces.  So we did.  And we arrived a one functioning toilet.  I think I am over my panic.  It caught me off guard.  But it has passed and I hope it won't come back.

4. We did decide to open up the closet in the playroom to create more usable space.  And it is awesome.  I am so glad we did it.  The pictures don't do the space justice (according to Brett who was not impressed with the pictures I texted him this week in NY, but when he saw it in person was also thrilled).  The kids agreed to model for us to give a little bit of perspective on size.

Before:

A wall with a closet behind it.  Hi, Sydney!  Hi, Pierce!

After:

A serious addition to our formerly SMALL playroom.

Ignore the pipe running down the middle of the space - an unfortunate discovery that will be rerouted.  And the hanging wires and missing drywall will be remedied also.

That's all for now.  Next time I'll show you our totally trashed master bath!  Agh!!!  Will anything be put back together???