Renovations are stressful. That's what everyone has told me.
Truth is I didn't expect it to be very stressful, after all we had a month to get everything done before moving in and we had a decent size budget. But I didn't anticipate all the decisions that had to be made about EVERY TINY LITTLE THING! And the last minute changes and additions and then the contractor drama. It is turning out to be quite the stressful experience.
Here we are the day we closed on the house before any work started.
Kids were playing in the dining room
And in the kitchen
The next day the renovations started. First thing was to open up the wall between kitchen and dining room. The whole renovation centered on this wall being gone. We made sure (before buying) that the wall was not load bearing. However, no one could have predicted that venting was running through the walls. Game changer.
The next step was taking apart the kitchen. Our original plan was to paint all the cabinets and reinstall them. We repositioned one to give us an idea of how an island in the center of the kitchen would feel
But by the next day everything was carted out to the garage
Part of our renovation was to install canned lights. Rerouting all the electrical was tricky and then there was an issue that they didn't line up the new lights with the existing light over the sink. Huge issue that took a few days to sort through and finally come up with a solution.
By this time we decided to scrap the idea of painting old cabinets (would cost $2,000+) and buy new cabinets. This meant that we could work and island into the design. Here is the support for the island.
A view from the family room all the way through the kitchen into the dining room
Josie has been such a trooper through this whole process. We are dealing with renovations from 8am until we pick kids up from school at 3pm. This means her nap time is usually in a stroller or in the ergo. No down time for this little peanut.
Truth is I didn't expect it to be very stressful, after all we had a month to get everything done before moving in and we had a decent size budget. But I didn't anticipate all the decisions that had to be made about EVERY TINY LITTLE THING! And the last minute changes and additions and then the contractor drama. It is turning out to be quite the stressful experience.
Here we are the day we closed on the house before any work started.
Kids were playing in the dining room
And in the kitchen
The next day the renovations started. First thing was to open up the wall between kitchen and dining room. The whole renovation centered on this wall being gone. We made sure (before buying) that the wall was not load bearing. However, no one could have predicted that venting was running through the walls. Game changer.
The next step was taking apart the kitchen. Our original plan was to paint all the cabinets and reinstall them. We repositioned one to give us an idea of how an island in the center of the kitchen would feel
But by the next day everything was carted out to the garage
Part of our renovation was to install canned lights. Rerouting all the electrical was tricky and then there was an issue that they didn't line up the new lights with the existing light over the sink. Huge issue that took a few days to sort through and finally come up with a solution.
By this time we decided to scrap the idea of painting old cabinets (would cost $2,000+) and buy new cabinets. This meant that we could work and island into the design. Here is the support for the island.
A view from the family room all the way through the kitchen into the dining room
Josie has been such a trooper through this whole process. We are dealing with renovations from 8am until we pick kids up from school at 3pm. This means her nap time is usually in a stroller or in the ergo. No down time for this little peanut.
