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Purely by coincidence, the last time I posted a life update here was on June 22^nd, 2021- exactly one year ago today (as of writing).

I should probably update more often, but honestly, the last two years have simultaneously seemed to last a lifetime, and also feel like they didn’t even happen.

Two and a half years, I should say.

Somehow 2022 is already halfway over?

Anyway, there have been some major changes going on for us this past year.

I don’t know where to start, but I guess I will start with this:

The last two Christmases have really kind of sucked.

My brother-in-law James passed away on Dec. 11, 2020, unexpectedly at the age of 33. It was a devastating loss of an incredible guy, that has left a forever void in our family.

Christmas was exactly two weeks later, and while we all pulled it together for the kids, it was a very rough time for our family.

Then, of course, I found out I was pregnant with Zoe a few weeks later in late January 2021. So I spent most of my year pregnant/postpartum. Everyone knows that time just moves the absolute slowest it possibly can when you’re pregnant.

Christmas of 2021 was shadowed a bit by the fact that we had to move out of our rental quite suddenly, with nowhere to go.

It just so happened that Eddie’s aunt and uncle’s home had been sitting empty for about a year, his aunt had passed away in Dec. 2020 and his uncle at the time was living with his daughter. He has since passed away, sadly.

We decided to take on the challenge of renovating their house, which is what we have been up to for the last 6 months.

Here are some before photos

 

 

They had lived in this home since the early ‘70s, and it seems, never threw a single thing away!

We ended up filling TWO 30-yard dumpsters, and still had things left over.

After the clean-out was finished, we hired a cleaning crew to come in and do a deep clean to get the house prepped for the renovation.

This process took about 3 months. After that, we were able to get in there and actually start renovating.

The house is a 1930’s beauty, that is incredibly solid and luckily did not need any major work to the bones.

One of the first things we did was paint, and to this day we still haven’t finished all the painting.

Every room needed to be painted, and the house is pretty big with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, an office, and a bonus room in the front.

The entire downstairs is repainted, as well as one bedroom upstairs, the office, and the downstairs bathroom.

The rest of the painting will finish after we move in.

We did completely gut the downstairs bathroom, having to replace the floor, the shower, the sink, and the toilet.

The kitchen cabinets were in excellent shape for their age, almost pristine actually. We just wanted to change up the color because as you can see here…they were a little loud for our taste.

The counters were in good shape as well, we just bought a refinishing kit since there was some discoloration and they were plain white.

Throughout the home are all original hardwood floors, except the kitchen and bathrooms. The kitchen floor was covered up with laminate, and it was not in good shape anymore so we ended up installing a new floor in the kitchen.

The kitchen and downstairs bathroom were our biggest projects, and we seemed to run into every issue we possibly could along the way.

We wasted money on a commercial floor sander with the intention of refinishing the hardwood, only to find out that there was an electrical issue that wouldn’t allow us to pull enough power to run the sander.

The electrical issue, it turns out, was caused by pipes from the upstairs bathroom LEAKING INTO THE BREAKER BOX IN THE BASEMENT!

Then the furnace decided to stop working. In the dead of winter.

We ended up having to tear out a big portion of one of the walls in the kitchen to access the leaking pipe and replace it. Which then of course meant we had to replace that drywall.

It was an absolute fiasco.

But the fiasco did not end there, because of course it didn’t.

Once we got the kitchen and plumbing issue all sorted out and finished, we got started on the downstairs bathroom.

How hard could it be to install a few things and replace the floor tiles?

It turns out, it could be a real pain in the ass.

First, while installing the new toilet, Eddie accidentally broke the tank. Like full-on cracked it in half. And of course, they do not sell the tank separately for the model we had, so we had to buy a whole new toilet.

Then, the shower we purchased was significantly larger than the one that was there previously. It is a corner stand-up shower, and we got it on sale for a really good price so we didn’t really stop to think we should actually measure the space. Big dummies.

The shower we bought fits in the bathroom just fine, but we had to do a lot of re-configuring behind the shower before we were able to actually install it.

Basically, we had to frame out a whole new area, larger than the previous framework, to fit the new shower. That took a week or so in itself.

Then, we ran into some plumbing issues that needed to be fixed before we could install the shower.

The plumbing took a few days to figure out, but we figured it out! We haven’t hired any professionals to come in, because Eddie is not only very handy, he actually has a lot of experience with building/renovating homes.

As if there were any more problems to be had in this bathroom, the sink was too big!

This is a downstairs bathroom, that is located off of the office. It is not very big at all, just big enough for the corner shower, toilet and a small sink.

Well, the sink we bought was way too wide to fit in between the shower and toilet.

As of writing, we are planning to move in next week. We currently have working toilets upstairs and downstairs, zero working bathroom sinks, (but a gorgeous brand new kitchen sink), and zero working showers or bathtubs.

So it is going to be interesting! Our downstairs shower will be fully up and functioning before we move in, and the babies will get sink baths for a little while until we fix the upstairs plumbing. (nothing major, it will only take a few hours to do)

We are planning to install the sink that was too big for downstairs in the upstairs bath, and buy a smaller one for downstairs.

I don’t think I am even covering half of it in this post, but it has been a big undertaking, to say the least.

During Reno

 

 

We are truly so grateful and excited to start our lives in our new house.

It really is a beautiful home, and I know our kids will be so happy here.

They have a really big yard, with lots of privacy and acres of woods to explore.

This house is considerably larger than our old rental, so we are all excited to have more space. We definitely outgrew the rental several years ago!

Besides the renovation and move, we have just been up to the same old same.

Zoe is now 9 months old, Asher is 3 and Harper is 8. They will be 1, 4, and 9 in September.

The older kids are 14. Teenagers…yay!

I’m excited to start working on my blog again, after 8 months. I actually would have been working on it sooner, but my laptop charger went missing in the move and I just recently found it buried in a box in my MIL’s basement.

I can’t wait to share photos of the house when it’s all finished. We have done some major work and I can’t wait to show it off!

It has been so much fun getting to design a home that we love.

Next update in a year? See you then.

Kidding, now that I have my laptop charger I plan to publish new posts every Tuesday and Friday! 

XO, M