In my last post, I shared the first 4 days of the major renovation we are doing in our home. I’m calling it a kitchen reno, but really it encompasses all of the usable living space in the main part of the house.
We knew when we bought this house that all of the walls between the living room, kitchen and dining room would have to come down. (We confirmed that the walls were not load-bearing!) The house literally was a bunch of tiny rooms which made us feel very disconnected and caused a ton of shadows and dark spaces. While I enjoy a bit of alone time (I am an introvert!) I really hated being closed off from everyone during meal prep & clean up. It also made having company really awkward. No one was sure of where to gather.
But, with a few days of seriously hard work, we have opened up the space and made it much more of a gathering space. Even without stools around the island, we still all gather around it for our various projects. And, since it’s large enough, we really can do several things at once on the island (it’s more like a continent…)
Let’s pick up with day 5…
The kids and I had a field trip scheduled this day with our homeschool group, so we left Nathan at home to continue working while we had fun! He made an entryway bookshelf complete with outlets and light switches that function (many of the original outlets and switches did not work when we moved in. Nathan spent about 2 days in the attic bringing the electrical up to a working code!) I don’t have pictures for this day, since I wasn’t at home…
When we returned, I got back to painting. I covered up my hair & eyes since I’m a very messy painter. A huge dollop of paint got in my eye on day 4, and it burned!!
I finished painting the ceiling and did the touch-ups.
Day 6- Nathan installed the island and added plenty of outlets to this area. The microwave will be housed in the island cabinets so he added the proper GFCI outlets for this. I added the covers to the recessed lights and caught up on laundry!
Day 7- The island top was installed and Nathan started on flooring. I snuck out pretty early to go grocery shopping, and made plenty of yummy things when I returned. We are still doing the sugar detox, so most of our meals must be homemade. During the first few days of the reno, we ate meals that I had cooked in advanced and reheated.
Day 8- We have completely exhausted ourselves and the project has come to a temporary halt. Nathan went out to sell a rehab motorcycle he had worked on last year (with moving, the selling had to be postponed!!) The children and I went to town to run a few errands. We ate a few times, and hung out around the island… And, I caught up on blogging and picture editing.
We are also beginning to realize that our timeline was a bit extreme, although necessary. Nathan will head back to work on Monday which means whatever isn’t finished by Sunday evening will have to wait until the next weekend. We should at least have the flooring done in the living room so that room can be returned to “normal.”
Stay tuned for the BIG reveal!!
