Then Came the Walls

Happy Fall!  Thanks for stopping by and welcome to my remodel.  We started off our project in August and have been working on the "guts" of our house (plumbing, ducting and electrical) ever since.  So many issues to correct and so many changes to our floor plan happening round here!  Let me just say that I had a pretty solid idea of how I wanted things to look when it's all said and done, but when my contractor started asking me where I wanted light switches and canned lights and such I was baffled.  Oh the hours I've spent researching crazy things like how to calculate the number of recessed lights needed.  My husband and I literally spent hours standing in our stripped down main floor staring at the walls trying to invasion what each little decision would actually look like when finished.  So many things to think of like functionality, usability and how it would look, that I seriously think I injured my brain thinking too hard.

Now with a lot more gray hairs on my head, we are finally getting to make the fun choices like countertop, flooring, cabinets ect.  Finding materials that we like in budget and that have the durability that we need for a family of 5 has been quite the challenge.  My kids have become very comfortable hanging out in warehouses while I check out quartz slabs.  They've begun to expect to hit up different home stores whenever we have a spare hour and therefore the whining has lessened (a bit).  The end cannot come fast enough for us so we are on a mission to finalize our decisions and sit back and let it all unfold.

Here is a little of what has been happening the last week or so.

french doors and windows are in!

fireplace has been installed

we have walls!

drywall and more drywall

ceilings!

Things are moving along and we're getting close to being able to start the countdown of when we can take back our home!  Don't forget to stop by again soon to see what happens next.

~Trisha

A Book In Review: The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

Hello everyone!  I hope you are enjoying the week and hopefully having some great fall weather.  If however you find yourself wondering what to do while you relax in the sunshine or snuggle up on the couch on a rainy day, boy do I have a fantastic idea!  Head down to your local library or bookstore and pick up The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon.

I recently took this book on vacation and finished the whole thing on the airplane.  It was incredibly well written and eye opening on what life has been like for women in Afghanistan.  It is a true account of one woman, her family and community as they fight, behind a veil, to survive when the Taliban take over Afghanistan.  I'm not quite sure what I thought life was like for the women of Afghanistan, but it certainly wasn't what I learned from this book.  Kamila's story is inspiring in so many ways, but most of all is the importance it places on building a better life within our own communities.  Sometimes the only people you can rely on are the ones you see every day.  Her family fought to provide food, safety and shelter for themselves when the men in their lives went in search of work in different countries or recruited, by force, by the Taliban.  Leaving the women on their own, they were forced to be creative in how they could make money to provide for their families without being detected by the Talib enforcers.

I was not disappointed in this book and hope that you will find it as inspiring and eye opening as I did.

~Trisha

Kitchen Creative

source

Happy fall to you!  I know it's been quite awhile since my last post, but I promise my time away has been well spent.  You might remember me mentioning that we are considering doing a large scale remodel to our 1967 home (check out this link for more info).  We are mostly focusing on the main floor of our 2-story home as that's where most of the problems and disfunction is.  We hired an architect and ended up with an amazing layout that knocked our socks off!  Now if only the rest of the process was so simple and easy to get done.  We have gone through a very slow loan process and have spent a great deal of time trying to find the right contractor to make our dreams a reality.

We have met with four different companies that range in their services and prices, of coarse.  You would not believe how expensive a remodel can be!  Okay, maybe most people can believe it, but I was obviously living in dreamland when it came to the budget.  That being said, I'm not giving up my endeavor to see this remodel through...thus begins the quest to save money without sacrificing what I really want.  That may sound pretty impossible but I'm pretty determined to make it happen.  The first thing we did was to decide on the general look & feel we want our space to have.  We live in the Pacific Northwest so we are surrounded by Craftsman style homes and want to incorporate that into the design.  We also love contemporary style touches here and there so a modern layout will be just the ticket!  Here is my kitchen inspiration board that will set the stage for the rest of the main floor design.

Our remodel won't be simple at all.  We will be going down to the studs on this one!  We have to completely change the layout and will basically start from scratch.  We have decided to rent a POD to move all our stuff into while the remodel takes place and continue living upstairs in the midst of the craziness.  I did a little researching on how to live through a major remodel and have gleaned some pretty good tricks.  No matter what, it will be stressful and will take a lot of work and patience to see it through.  We have moved a bunch of toys upstairs to the kids rooms so they can fight off boredom (our playroom was downstairs before) and have set up a mini kitchen area in our master bedroom sitting room.  Luckily my in-laws live in the same neighborhood so I can do laundry and use their oven when needed.

So, lets do this!  After 5 years of waiting, hoping and dreaming we are ready to begin.  

Part 1: DEMO

good-bye wall and hello kitchen!

surprise!  no insulation in any exterior wall

We were definitely surprised to find out we didn't have any insulation in our exterior walls.  No wonder I've been so cold during the winter!  Along with some unpleasant discoveries also came some good ones.  We were expecting to replace all our plumbing to the upstairs and found out we didn't need to do that (money saved!).  It's pretty crazy to see our home in this state but really exciting to see all the potential.  So now that this is really happening, I can go ahead and let myself be excited!  Check back soon to see our progress.  Things are changing by the minute.

~Trisha