Living in a Construction Zone

"Sawing logs" has a different meaning for us now. Each morning our sleep and snoring is interrupted by buzzing saws and slamming hammers. It is just one of the perks of living in the middle of a daily remodeling construction/destruction zone. 

We were able to move out of the rental home and into our basement, while we finish the rest of the house.  It has been good to be home, even in such a tight living space. 

However, there is still so much work to be done, including a lot of plumbing that involves the basement area. So, the contractor, the electrician, and the plumbers, are becoming our new family. Sometimes I see them downstairs, before I make my first trip to the bathroom in the morning. I don't know how many times I open the door to my room and find someone standing outside it, unexpectedly. 

Good times. 

Let's just say, I have been living WAY outside of my comfort zone lately! 

Luckily, David is home all day too while he works, so that helps a lot. He has stepped in on lots of things and helped with the construction. Today he is out with the electrician running wires and being his grunt man. He is not afraid of hard work and learning new things. Of course, there is NO WAY I would ever consider doing a project like this without him and his abilities. I did not know when I married him that he had such awesome building and construction skills! Talk about a perk! 

Anyway, let's just get right to the pictures, shall we? 

This is our new basement room. It is operating as our kitchen for now, but I will be be taking it over as something else, once we move back upstairs. It is such a cool space. I LOVE it! 

I especially love the track lighting, and the wall color. (The color is Silvermist) 

A reminder of what the room used to be... I mean, seriously!! WHAT A DIFFERENCE! It does not feel anything like it used to. We had a vision of taking all the "scary" out of this room, and, after a LOT of work... it is glorious instead of gross! Hooray! 

The room is not finished yet. We have new windows and an exterior door coming too. But it is working wonderfully for us as our kitchen now. 

In the meantime David covered the window area so that the insulation and other things wouldn't be exposed., he built some wood trim to hide all of it. 

I actually love how it turned out. We will get new windows and then put trim on the outside of the window too. 

We used a door from upstairs for our new closet/pantry, and once we cleaned it off, I realized the yellow color looks kind of great along with the Silvermist color on the walls. 

Our new cabinets for downstairs are simple and pretty. 

We have a plastic barrier to block off the upstairs construction. It is about to get really messy up there once they start the drywall process. 

We all share the downstairs bathroom. It has a really nice shower, that I have really enjoyed using, except for when the workers are surrounding me during the day. That is a little unnerving. I often have to ask and verify that we have water working before I get in. I have been greeted by workers many times as I step out of the bathroom. Awkward. 

We have set up our room and a living area in the downstairs family room. It is interesting to live in such a cave like room. I love living upstairs in the light, but honestly, there is something comforting about being in a basement. I think it might be because I grew up living in the basement as a child, in Alaska. 

Here are some pics from the process of putting together the new room downstairs...

We opted to go with a darker ceiling, and it looks great! 

All the rooms have been ripped open, for various reasons. We have been insulating the house like crazy! Last year we had frozen pipes. We are hoping to remedy that problem. 

The boys room was ripped open too... 

It was exciting when the drywall went up. I cannot wait until drywall goes in upstairs!!!! SOON! 

The new plumbing is in a different area in the home, and in a place where it is being rebuilt in a way that makes sense. 

The copper pipes are actually really pretty! We will drywall and paint the rest of this room to take as much "scary" out of the room as we can. It is just a storage room, but still... no one wants to step into dark creepy rooms with exposed lath and plaster. 

We had to find another way to heat some areas of the home, since the radiators just didn't work well in some spaces, like the upstairs bedrooms and the kitchen. So, we are doing hydronic heated flooring. We had to find a way to tie in our existing radiant heat to new options. To think all of this started because a tree crushed through our roof. Crazy! 

This is what the hydronic flooring looks like before putting down the other materials. 

Here is the floor covered and ready for the Slate tile that will go in the kitchen. 

Our master bedroom. I cannot wait to see it complete! I love our new little sitting area with all the windows. 

Our house in the dumpster... 

This was once our bedroom. It will be the baby's room. I love the light that comes into this room. 

We are trying to figure out what to do with the fireplace in our room. It has been painted a few times. We stripped some of the paint off, but found that the bricks aren't that pretty. (You can see the layer between the chimney brick and the painted brick. 

We might just repaint it white and create a new mantle. 

The original brick just isn't quite "pretty." 

We have new stairs! 

This is a big deal! Now they are not so creepy steep! 

The fireplace chimney in the stairwell... 

I love that we will have a new hallway at the top of the stairs, and it goes out to our balcony. 

Doing one thing, like remodeling JUST a kitchen, would be fun. Doing the WHOLE HOUSE has been another event entirely. I would be excited about small things like picking countertops and flooring, instead it is all becoming so vast in scope that the desire to just finish is starting to take over. 

The contractor, the designer, and David, the other contractor. ;) 

We are trying to pick paint colors for the interior and the exterior.... SO many choices! 

Our front room looks like this... 

Paint samples everywhere! 

Picking the exterior paint for our home is a real trick. There is so much trim and unique features that it feels like a lot of pressure to get it right. 

We keep trying different shades, mostly of green. Green is the final answer for the base... now we just need to pick our trim colors. 

This home remodeling process has been such a ginormous undertaking. It was not meant to become such a big project, but what happens when things are opened up in such a way it becomes now... or never. And so, there are lots of "now" things getting done. 

David and I are for sure approaching the decision fatigue stage. Lots of things are happening daily, lots of work is getting done, and lots of choices need to be made. Insulation is happening this week, and hopefully drywall next week... and from there, more interesting and exciting things should be happening. 

I do look forward to seeing REAL progress, the kind of progress that looks like we are moving in the right direction of putting things back together. The home has been in the upstairs "gutted" stage for so long it feels normal to only have half a house. 

It is coming. It is coming soon. 

I was hoping to be done in time for school to start, but that is not going to happen. 

We might have a home for the holidays. 

Maybe. Hopefully. 

For now, we are living it up in the basement, in the middle of the destruction zone. I am grateful to live in such a beautiful area, so I can go out into nature everyday. It has saved my sanity. 

Johnathan has started making screaming noises that sound like the drills above our heads. That's a fun bonus. 

One day, some day... there will be peace and quiet at home once more. 

I am getting so used to living in the dark basement, I am not sure I will know what to do upstairs in the light!