Hello...
It's me.
I'm in California dreaming,
about a life without drywall dust.
We are in full-blown renovation mode over here and I cannot wait to show you the finished project. The first six months of 2015 was consumed with spending every spare moment studying -- but it was worth it. I passed all four of my CPA exams which was the most difficult thing I've ever done. But to do that, I had to shut off the creative part of my brain so I could focus on filling my head with debits and credits without visions of color schemes interrupting my train of thought.
All our waiting, planning, and saving has paid off though. Mike and I are on our way to having a home we are proud of.
I don't have many pictures of what is going on right now because to be honest, this part of the construction phase is pretty boring... but here's what has been done in the last few months:
- Replaced all the windows and the slider with Anderson windows.
- Fixed the dry-rot on the side of the house which included replacing many of the framing beams that were also completely rotted out.
- Old carpet is gone! In its place is wide-plank European oak (the stairs here are still just the exposed wood underneath).
- Re-plastered all the the walls to smooth out bad seams and get rid of the 80's orange peel texture.
- Scraped the popcorn texture off the master bedroom and spare room ceilings and refinished those.
- Painted the entire house white with this dark grey accent wall that runs up the entire length of the stairs.
- Installed LED can lights in the upstairs and downstairs halls, stairway, and spare bedroom. Installed a mini-track in the living room, and a chandelier in the master bedroom.
- Converted the old wood-burning fireplace into gas.
- Removed the closet at the top of the stairs and opened up the spare bedroom doorway to fit french doors.
- Demo-ed the half-bath downstairs.
Now that I've typed it all out it seems like a lot. As with all construction projects, what started as just replacing the windows and floors snowballed into a complete renovation minus the kitchen and two full bathrooms upstairs which are on the list for 2016.
This past year was officially the year of the grind but sometimes you have to wear your life all the way down to build it back up again. If you want to see some inspiration of where our house is heading, I started another blog focused on design (whereas this is more the nitty-gritty of just our house) which you can find here. More on our renovation process to come!
