Update on our Home Renovation

Happy Friday!  I wanted to share some photos from our home renovation.  As you may recall, we purchased a house in August 2018.  Great bones, and exactly the location I wanted, but it needed some updating.

We began work on the house at the end of November 2018. 

We started in the basement, which had a lot of issues.

It was wet -- like pools of water.  Part of the floor was dirt.  The stairs were falling down.  There was huge pipe sticking up out of the ground.  The floor was uneven.  And then we discovered...the foundation was crumbling.  So, we had to put in a new foundation wall.  The crew built the framing for it...

...and then poured it from above, through the kitchen floor.

As soon as the basement began to come together...

...two things happened:  (1) The main water line to the house burst due to the cold.  It was originally put in in 1931, so at least it happened (a) when someone was in the house and (b) before the basement was finished.  When Spring comes and the ground thaws, we'll have the front lawn and the sidewalk dug up to put in a new water line.

And (2) the crew began demo on the rest of the house.  

They carefully removed and saved all of the beautiful wood doors and trim to put back into the house later.

There were definitely days that left me hyperventilating about having paid for a pile of rubble.  Or for having paid people to turn a house into a pile of rubble.

But opening up the house and bringing it down to the studs has definitely changed my feelings about the design of the house going forward.  It's amazing how plastic a house actually is.  For instance:

Should the wall go back up between the kitchen and the dining room?!

(The answer is no, as it turns out.)

Today -- mid-February -- the house is down to the studs. The floors are mostly gone.  You can see from the first floor into the third floor attic and it just looks like a big pile of sticks. 

My contractor says it will be a six month period of putting it all back together again.

This is a scary and exciting adventure.  My first house.  My first renovation.  I guess I'm a "go big or go home" kind of gal!

Thanks for stopping by!