Home renovations are not fast. At all. I thought I already comprehended this, but then just to keep me on my toes, I realized they move even slower than I pictured.
Regardless of how fast the progress is being made, it is at least being made. Since it has been several months, I thought it was time for an update.
All of the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC is as complete as can be to this point. We are waiting for the rough-in inspection. It may have happened this past week or it may be coming up soon. I'm not really sure, but that is the next step. This means all the water lines are in. The new wiring has been run everywhere. Light fixture boxes are in place and all the outlet/switch boxes are in. The ductwork is complete and the new HVAC units are in. It took so many more months than I ever imagined, but it is great knowing it's in now. I think it's also safe to say no more demo has to be done at this point. Hallelujah! After the rough in inspection, I'm under the impression the drywall can go up! That step alone will help make everything feel much more complete. The hardwood floors are expected to be patched in and completed soon too.
Distorted, panoramic view of the main living area, standing in the front door.
This will be the kitchen. The area for the fridge is framed in and the end cap wall is framed. The fridge had to be framed in for two reasons. On one side the wall allows us to have a place for the thermostat and switches. On the other side, the wall conceals a steel post that is supporting the steel beam that allowed the old kitchen walls to be removed. The end cap wall on the other side of the kitchen allows for more switches and outlets. This house ended up being a little trickier to re-wire because the exterior walls are all made of CMUs (i.e. cinderblocks). It's quirky and I guess was a thing back in the 40s. But it also means no outlets or switches can be added on exterior walls without having the wires run in conduits outside the walls - something we were not in favor of doing.
Upstairs fireplace. Hubby is working on re-doing the brick surround. Turns out laying brick isn't as easy as it looks. Not really a good project to do with children around - a lot of inappropriate language may have been used.
Standing in the kitchen, looking out into the dining and living areas.
Standing in the kitchen, looking mostly into the dining area. The knee wall that will surround the stairs is now framed in. We debated having a railing, but decided a kneewall would help with the layout of the dining room.
The upstairs bath is completely gutted and just waiting to be redone at this point. We're hoping to do all the tile work ourselves.
Our bedroom. I cannot wait to have windows that look outside. We currently have two windows in our bedroom...that look into creepy old window wells. Ahh, basement life at it's finest. But on the bright side, after four years of living in a basement apartment, it's easy to get excited about nearly everything! Especially sunlight!
Also in our bedroom - trying to decide on paint color. I'm leaning towards the middle color for our room and the bathroom, but a little nervous it will be too dark. I'm also thinking the leftmost color is the winner for the rest of the upstairs. I haven't even begun to debate the lower level.
Bedroom #2.
Stairs! It is so nice to finally have stairs! For months we could only get to the lower level by going outside to a separate entrance!
Looking at the stairs from downstairs. There will be a wide pass through hallway - somewhat wasted space, but oh well.
We decided to angle the doorway to this bedroom to open up the hallway to the area at the bottom of the stairs.
Looking down the hallway towards the stairs. A closet is at the end of the hallway. The bedroom pictured above is to the left.
Laundry room! After four years of NO washer and dryer, we will finally have a room devoted to just laundry! It's probably safe to say my parents are more excited than we are. They are saints who have been handling our laundry for the past four years!
Back out in the hallway, looking in the other direction.
Bedroom #4.
Family room. The shorter door frame was once the entrance to this room. We removed some walls on the back porch/sunroom to allow the full size door to now be the entrance. Once the drywall process starts, this will be completely closed off.
A bit dark, but a panoramic view of the room.
The entrance into the family room from the hallway was doubled in size. Initially the hallway felt like a long, dark bowling alley. By putting the bedroom wall at an angle and opening up this doorway, we feel like we've done all we can to reduce that issue. I like that this room no longer feels so closed off. The duct work ended up being rather complicated due to the lower level being a combination of cement slab and crawl space. It had to come up through the floor in this corner of the family room and eventually there will be a wall enclosing it. It felt like a big deal initially, but I think once it's done, we won't think about it that much.
The backporch/sunroom. On the wall to the left of the door is the former opening. On this side, Hubby plans to build a bench that opens to hold outdoor gear, with hooks and a shelf above. There are no coat closets in the house - a "perk" of an older house! This will be our way of compensating for the lack of closet space.
Standing in the backdoor, looking into the backporch/sunroom. You can see on the floor where the walls once were.
Back of the house. The backporch roof had to be rebuilt. For starters, it was done entirely wrong, but also to give it a steeper pitch to prevent water issues. It is now a black metal roof.
Looking out a bedroom window at the metal porch roof.
This outdoor storage area was technically here to begin with. However, it was not built with footers, and thus would not be able to support the weight of the concrete porch above. Now it has proper footers, is the correct height, and as an added bonus when all of that was dugout a new water supply line was run at the proper depth!
Side view of outdoor storage area. The large window you can see on the upstairs will become french doors.
Front and side porch. It feels so good to have this concrete poured! Now the construction of the porch roof can begin, meaning soon the whole house can get it's new roof!
The full view of the front of the house. I'm so excited to see how the porch roof will change the appearance. Right now the house looks so small and unassuming from the street. I never want a big house, but I think the addition of the porch roof will help make the house be noticed.
Exterior paint options. We love the grey in the middle, but the porch is going to have cedar posts, so we feel that a deep greyish green will complement the wood and give a warm, inviting appearance. The bottom green turned out to be far too light. Picking colors is so difficult when your spouse is colorblind. It involves a lot of one sided conversations. I want his opinions, but colors kind of scare him. Mostly, he just lets me know what looks horrid to him. It's somewhat humorous how different we see colors.
That's where we are at this point! Our initial closing date was a week ago. Clearly, it's no where near ready for us to move in. We're hoping progress can be made a little quicker now that it's mostly just putting it back together!
