It's Finally Finished!

 

The house remodel that we finished almost three years ago is officially finished!  I wanted to get a new dining room table for the new dining room and I couldn't pick a chandelier until I found the right table, so now that the chandelier is hung and the table finally arrived (I ordered it back in February), the Great Remodel of 2022 is finally finished!  Just in time to start the next project which is remodeling a bathroom and repairing the ceiling in my laundry room.  Yes, the laundry room that was also part of the Great Remodel has a huge hole in the ceiling due to the bathroom above it.  Leaking showers cause so much damage!  But the new bathroom is going to be beautiful!

Out with the old!

Let's be real.  This old table never looked this good or this clean.  This table is used primarily for storing Amazon deliveries. 

The Remodel! Before and After Pictures

I'm finally ready to revisit that dark place in my life that I've tried to mentally box up and never think about again.  The remodel was pretty terrible, just like everyone said it would be.  I tried to be optimistic and embrace the suck.  But I was unprepared for how extra chaotic it made our already-chaotic lives feel.  Also, I wish I had taken "before" pictures.  Things just started happening and I didn't realize how much you need to see the before shots so you can appreciate the after.  I actually pulled up kitchen photos from when we bought our house back in 2015 so those are definitely not a very good representation of reality since the house was staged to look spotless, shiny, and bright.  Think dark, dated, and falling apart.  Here goes....

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After!

We reconfigured the whole kitchen with the help of an architect.  We moved the kitchen sink, added a giant island so we could actually walk from the sink directly to the table which makes cleanup so much easier, moved the fridge, replaced all the cabinets (still waiting on the island to be finished) added fresh paint, and redid the hardwood floors throughout the entire house.

Kitchen Before

This picture is a bad picture that shows the "junk desk" behind the island and the small door leading into the dining room.  Not pictured just to the right are the double folding doors to my small closet pantry. 

Kitchen After!

From here you can see the butler pantry we added, the new location for the fridge, and behind the fridge is the doorway to my walk-in pantry.  Basically the dining room was so big we put a pantry in it and I still have a dining room left.

Dining Room Before

Dining Room After!

This room still needs a new dining room table and a chandelier but I'm so sick of the whole thing that I have no desire to make any more decisions and no money to spend anyway. We are still waiting on the barn door (thank you Covid backorders) to go over the pantry entrance so pretend like you can't see all the food in there.

The Butler Pantry just outside of the pantry.  It's in the walkway between the dining and kitchen.

The pantry that I love!  And no, I will never get matching containers for all the food.  Who has time to dump cereal into matching Tupperware?  Not me.  

Laundry Room Before 

(no, my laundry room wasn't always this bad, just in the chaos of summer)

Laundry Room After! 

You should be able to hear an angelic chorus on this one.  We took out a weird wall, moved all the plumbing to stack the washer and dryer, removed the cabinets that were falling apart and added a place for coats, jackets, and shoes, and replaced the dark slate tile with pretty gray tile that doesn't show the dirt.  We are still waiting on cabinet doors but whatever.  I can use this space and it looks so pretty!

I love that the boys can kick off their shoes into their own little cubby space.  Sone day I'll put baskets in the cubbies but then they'd never put their shoes away so for now, this works.

Bathroom Before
This is the only picture of the tiny ensuite in Marcus's bedroom.  The plumbing gave us issues for years and eventually the boys stopped using this bathroom entirely for almost a year before we finally gutted it.  It's a tiny space so it's hard to get pictures of it but now it looks white and clean and masculine.

Bathroom After!

We ripped out the cabinets so we could make the shower bigger and now it's actually worth using.  Our houseguests will be so happy because this is what they will use when they come.

Bathroom After! 

I love the cement sink.

Family Room Before

Family Room After! 

This family room off the kitchen never really worked for us and we never really used it.  I hated the dark, deep builtins and there wasn't room for a big TV.  Now the whole space is so much brighter and we have a big wall for a big TV that I'm waiting for Ethan to mount. 

Family Room Before

After

So that's the house!  I love it, as long as I don't think about what it took to get us to this point--like the driveway was always full of trucks, the house was full of people and noise, my bedroom was filled with boxes and furniture, and dust was everywhere!  The workers usually turned off the furnace so dust wouldn't spread throughout the house so by the time the boys got home from school, it was usually sixty degrees inside.  Our refrigerator was out in the garage so anytime I needed to get stuff to make for dinner, I had to go out through the front door and run across the driveway and into the garage.  Usually in the rain.  Everything cost more than expected and then some.  And everything took much longer than expected.  Mostly because the cabinet guys were way backed up which is why my island still isn't finished and I'm still missing cupboard doors.  But I can use everything and that's what matters!  So come visit!!

And here are some of the pictures during the process...

This is Marcus's room/bathroom during the process.  Poor kid spent his last six months at home living in a construction zone.

This is the front room where we ended up storing all our stuff.  This meant the boys got 4 months off of piano lessons because they couldn't get to the piano and there was too much construction noise anyway.

We painted everything --walls, ceilings, trim, doors. We are still waiting for the painters to come back and paint all the doors.  We replaced all the canned lights with better, brighter lights, and added a lot more too.  The biggest change for me is how much brighter my house is and that's a big deal when you live in dark, rainy Washington.

Spring Happenings

I'm interrupting this string of posts about Marcus to remind you that there are other people in our family.  It turns out when you have a senior, the world seems to revolve around them and it does!  All the end-of-year events seemed to pale in comparison to all the graduation events that I haven't even posted about, but here are a few things that happened behind the scenes.

Henry still naps, even on the floor.  It's the best two hours of my day!

This is the living room and the first room you see when you walk into our house.  I tried hard to keep it mostly untouched but after a few weeks it became the dumping ground for all the artwork and furniture that we couldn't fit in my bedroom.  It meant the only room on the first floor we could be in was the crowded den full of food, tables, and computers.  It's been torture as predicted.

Landon sang a solo in the final choir concert.  He loves choir and I love that he loves it.

The dryer has been in the garage for a couple months but we finally hit the point in the remodel where both appliances were unplugged.  Luckily I found a pretty great laundromat to get us through a rough ten days.  Laundromats aren't all bad except for the $30 it cost to get everything clean.

Henry even had a good time in the play area

Henry discovered the funnest thing to do with his friends.  Takes about two seconds to create the mess and ten minutes to put the couch all back together.  Love it. 

The REMODEL

We are living in the depths of Hell.  Our house is mostly torn up and we are still living in it because hotel life isn't convenient or cheap.  Some days it's not that bad.  Other days it's terrible!  If you ask my boys, they'd tell you how horrible it is but don't believe them.  They aren't the ones trying to make dinner on a hotplate in the den or washing dishes in a tiny bathroom sink.  

The den now serves as our kitchen and dining room. I even have a mini fridge so we don't have to go out the front door, through the rain, and into the garage to get milk or ketchup.  

I've been working with an architect for almost a year to get our plans just right, then found a general contractor, and finally got the ball rolling on this huge project.  Unfortunately this all hit right in the peak of busy lacrosse season and right after we gave a huge chunk of our hard-earned money to the government.  So I'm stressed and frazzled in ways I've never known before.  But the craziness is becoming normal so we are building up our tolerance for hard things, I guess.

This is the dining room and new pantry

my kitchen

The laundry room, although currently the dryer is in the garage where we will continue to use it throughout the remainder of the project.

This is Marcus's bedroom.  He crawls through the blue taped off area to get to his bed and dresser.  The bathroom that is completely gutted, is on the right.  He is allowed to complain about this living situation!

The kitchen, dining room, laundry room, and Marcus's bathroom upstairs, have all been gutted and the family room will soon be mostly gutted.  The architect and I worked and worked to find a way to get me a better laundry room/mud room and a walk-in pantry.  We miraculously made this happen by splitting the dining room in half and added a butler pantry and pantry.  We are putting in an island big enough for the whole family to sit at and I will finally be able to walk from the kitchen table directly to the kitchen sink without walking all the way around the big circular counter top.   I'm so excited for my new appliances!  I thought I'd save big money by ordering cheaper brands but after seeing what was available and knowing how much I love to make food and entertain, I couldn't resist.  I bought a Thermador range with double ovens and a big Sub-Zero refrigerator.  It's going to be amazing but for now, it's just the worst.  Lots of noise all day long, and it's always cold because the workers turn off the heat to keep the dust contained.  There is still dust everywhere but whatever.  My head hurts from making too many decisions and I can't even handle that everything is so expensive.  I've started encouraging Randy to work on Saturdays.  He thinks I'm joking.  I am not.

To make matters worse, Barb moved.  The best neighbor to call when you're in a bind moved to Utah.  Le weep!  Don't worry, she hadn't even been gone 24-hours when I found myself racing on the Ebike up to the high school to take Marcus's car so I could pick up Landon from lacrosse practice because Marcus lost the keys to my van.  If Barb had been here I could've borrowed her car instead of looking like a fool as I rode around the high school parking lot looking for the car while all the other lacrosse parents were arriving for the lacrosse game and doing double takes at the crazy lady on the Ebike.  I was embarrassed for myself.