The day had come. It was time. Our main floor remodel was underway.
Documenting November 2021-January 2022 progress.
To see where we started, I made sure to capture some before photos. Take a look:
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| Kitchen nook (U-shaped wall separating the front entryway from the kitchen) |
Our first-draft timeline:
•Hardwood floors laid mid-January
•Cabinets installed early February
•Countertops late February
•Move back upstairs in March
I spent several weeks packing up every nook and cranny of this space. I miraculously found homes for it all in the basement. We parted ways with a couple of pieces from the house, including sending our sofa set to my parents' house and the family heirloom piano to James's parents' house.
The two closet doors in the photo above lead to our laundry room, back door, and basement stairs.
James is a man's man. He likes to build things with his own hands and appreciates things done well. So he was an obvious first choice when deciding who was going to do our renovation. We did decide early on that there were a few things that were worth hiring out - mudding, hardwood floors, custom cabinetry, and window installation. James was more than happy to delegate some of those jobs that would take us more time and energy that what it was worth. We also knew that there was a deadline. Once farming season starts up, any unfinished projects may have to get pushed to next winter, so we're hoping to avoid that as best as we can.
With James doing 90% of the project on his own, we were able to expand the budget in other areas. We were able to invest in real hardwood that would last generations. It allowed us to pick higher quality countertops and nicer faucets and fixtures. We saved a lot of money doing it ourselves and it will really make this house feel home, knowing that we put in the blood, sweat, and tears to make it beautiful.
We officially started on November 10. Day 0 and Day 1 of the remodel consisted of moving the final appliances out of the kitchen and getting everything settled in the basement. Macklin didn't love all of the change and followed us around yelling, "No! Mine!" every time we removed something else. We also had other random projects to do like installing a filtered water spout into our schoolroom sink, so that we'd have convenient drinking water throughout the process. The next thing we did was install baby locks on all of the basement cabinets since they were now storing a lot more breakables and cleaning supplies.
We've been calling this room our apartment. It's our kitchen, dining room, and schoolroom all wrapped up into this cute little space. I don't know what I had in mind when I designed this room in 2017, but my goodness, I don't think I could have foreseen what a blessing it would be to us. It functions as a perfect space for homeschooling, something that was a million miles from my radar 5 years ago. And it has doubled as a great home away from home (or more like home within our home) while our main floor is torn up.
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| Day 1 |
That brings us to the really exciting stuff. DEMO!
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| Day 2 |
Cabinets were tore out. Walls from the kitchen nook were opened up. It was amazing to see how much of a difference it made being able to look through the rooms.
We've had so many incredible helpers! My dad likes to tear stuff out, but not put it back together, so he got in on all the demo work.
For reference- I count total number of days living in construction. So Day 13 doesn't necessarily mean 13 days of work, but 13 calendar days. James and I took bets on how long this project would take and I'm thinking we're both really wrong at this point.
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| Day 5 |
The most bittersweet moment was pulling down the old ceiling and exposing the attic. It looked remarkable. The room felt like it had expanded and I couldn't get my heart away from the thought of vaulting the ceilings. That was a hard no from the general contractor. AKA James. And rightfully so. It would have added loads of time, money and stress to an already long, expensive, and detailed remodel. I begged him to finish the beam work in the attic quickly, so we could cover it back up and I could grieve in peace.
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| Remodel Day 6 |
Oh man, Remodel Day 8. The day that the new header beam went in was a doozy. We grabbed all of our shortest friends and had them come help lift an extremely long, heavy metal beam into our attic. The noises that came out of grown men was unlike anything I've ever heard. I was really really trying not to giggle, but it was a sight to see. I learned what actually happens when Joanna Gaines simply says, "Just put in a beam."
I offered cinnamon rolls and coffee for their troubles, but maybe I should have also gifted them chiropractor appointments and a massage. That's bunch of good friends, right there.
Once the beams were placed in the attic, we could take out the rest of the studs from the kitchen nook. Now it was completely open!
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| Day 12 |
Look at that beautiful beam. Is there anything prettier than not needing support poles? I don't think so.
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| Day 13 |
Then the new sheetrock for the kitchen ceiling started going up. James was also working on a lot of electrical at this point.
Fun fact- it was on this very night that I found out I was pregnant again. I was standing right here in this room, nauseous as ever, when it finally dawned on me that maybe it wasn't the stomach flu. I took a test and came right back out to James, in this room, at this state of construction mess, and told him I was pregnant. Then I looked around at the chaos of our house and just laughed.
We planned out all of the kitchen outlets and switches, trying to get it right. I guess we'll find out in a few months how well we did.
Trevin helped run the shop vac when we cut out drywall. It saved us from some dust, but not all of it!
We decided to take out the little wall that bordered our entry built-in. (This wall was just to the left of the yellow level in the picture below.) This allowed for more light to shine through from the front door into the space. We also lengthened our hallway wall that would come alongside of our fridge. (This wall is to the right of the shop vac hose on the photo below.)
We have two pantries - one had a diagonal entrance to the left of our fridge, and the other was at the start of the hallway, opening into the hall. So they're basically right across from each other. We squared off the diagonal door to build out the fridge wall and moved the pantry entrance to the hallway. This pantry lost just a little bit of space because we bumped the kitchen wall back into the pantry in order for our standard sized fridge to be flush with our countertops. For the other pantry, we decided to rotate it 90 degrees and have it open into the kitchen instead of into the hallway. You can see both pantry doorways more clearly in the photo below.
On Day 17, we decided to change our front door. Originally we had talked about adding a window next to the door and leaving the door as is, but after we tore out the rest of the entryway, we knew we wanted to change it. The door has to come out at some point anyway, because we needed to build this subfloor up to meet the one in the living room. We decided on a new front door package so we could center the door and have sidelites to let in more light since this is our only south-facing "window" in our main living area.
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| Day 17 |
Sheetrock started going back up after a couple weeks. This part of the project felt like it was flying. Things changed and happened SO fast.
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| Day 19 |
Then it was time for spray insulation on the kitchen wall after we had all of the plumbing and electrical set.
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| Day 20 |
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| Day 21 |
Laundry room demo started 3 weeks into the project. It was nice to have this room untouched for the first stage of the remodel, but there was a lot to do here!
When we were planning this remodel, we weren't sure if we were going to include this part of the house. The laundry room, bathroom, and office were certainly in need of an update, but we didn't know how much we wanted to bite off. When we decided to do real hardwood floors, we knew we would want them to run into the office and laundry room, so it made much more sense to do it all now. Plus, we had walls that were going up and others that were coming down, so it would have really complicated it when patching it all together in another renovation.
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| Office |
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| Day 27 |
I knew that I really wanted to be able to close off the laundry room. It has always been open for the world to see, which actually made me keep it pretty clean, but I wanted to have the option to close it when I needed to. No one wants to see baskets of dirty laundry when they walk by. We decided to pull out the half-wall, which had previously created the hallway to the bathroom and office. We then built a new wall that would extend from our living room/kitchen area. We'll have a large sliding door that will give us the ability to close off the room, without having to deal with a door swinging into the walkway or taking up needed space in the laundry room. I'll fill you in on the other structure changes to this room as the pictures show them.
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| Day 27 |
Our drywall finisher had some time available, so we rushed to get all of the walls ready for him. That meant new kitchen drywall went up quick and the final walls came out and went up!
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| Day 27 |
A new opening was cut from our living room into the hallway. The bathroom door is visible on the left side of the opening, and the office door would be next to that at the end of the hallway. So basically we cut the hallway in half - continued using the left half of the hall to get to the bathroom and office, but the right half of the hall now becomes part of the laundry room.
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| Day 28 |
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| Day 30 |
Taping and mudding work began! Half of our ceilings were stamped, while the other half was new drywall. We were planning on scraping the old ceilings ourselves and giving everything a smooth finish, but our drywall finisher took one look at them and said he could do it. We very happily agreed.
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| Day 34 |
Look at that cutie nook inside our shortened hallway! I have some big plans for that small space. I don't know why, but some spots tell you what to do with them, and this was one of them. As soon as we closed off the laundry room, I just stood in the hallway and stared at this little space, and I knew exactly what it would become. Check back later in the project, because I think it will be worth it.
Arches are the way to my heart. I personally believe every doorway should be arched or have a transom window. That should be the norm. But probably not realistic for us in this house and at this stage, so we compromised on a couple really really special arches going into really really special spots.
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| Day 36 |
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| Day 40 |
Fun fact - our old basement (schoolroom and storage room) was not originally connected to our new basement. When we remodeled the basements we connected the two with a hallway. (You can see a few pictures of that process on one of my old posts. Please do us both a favor and don't spend very much time in my past. There are big down sides to 20-year-old Megan leaving permanent words on the internet.) Anyway! The only access to the old basement, before we dug the hallway, was this trap door floor in my pantry. We have rarely used it since finishing the basement, mostly because I always had boxes, coolers, or groceries stacked, but it also wasn't the most convenient system. Honestly, we used these stairs way more during our remodel than we ever had before that. Regardless, we decided it was time to close them up for good and make more permanent room in the pantry and in the storage room below.
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A moment of silence for our basement flooding
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So thankful to everyone that came our our rescue that night and the days following. I have no words for the situation other than chaos. Everything was ripped up and pulled out and shoved into any spot left in our pre-demoed house. It was bizarre and a blur and we were just so exhausted by the end of it.
Between the flood, Christmas, and the stomach flu (yeah, I can't make this up,) we finally got back to the remodel of our upstairs 10 days later.
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| Day 50 |
We were so happy to see the carpet go! It wasn't in the greatest shape before the remodel, but it really went downhill as it collected every ounce of construction dust.
We were desperate to get lights up on the main floor. It was so dark and really hard to work on anything that required precision - a lot of work lights in use all the time. Our drywall finisher did a brilliant job on our ceilings and we were able to get them primed and painted within a few days, it only cost us some sore arms and shoulders. We spent a couple days mapping out the recessed lighting, trying to get our spacing just right.
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| Day 54 |
The main floor was dark, but it was also COLD. The ceiling couldn't get re-insulated until after the lights were in, so that was another reason we busted it to get the ceiling finished. Once the lights went in, he was able to re-insulate in the attic and then the house stayed much warmer.
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| Day 55 |
James wired and wired and wired lights and I started putting paint on the walls. Things were moving at a quick pace again! Until they weren't.
We found out that our wood floors that were supposed to be installed in mid-January, would be pushed back about a month. We expected to have some hiccups along the way, but this was a big blow because so much was riding on getting the floors done. It did give James some breathing room to wrap up some of the project on his own time, but I'm pretty confident this will delay the entire timeline and March isn't sounding so promising any longer. At this point, there's no real ending in sight, but I'm not overwhelmed by it. We're used to living in the mess and in our little basement apartment. So be it as long as we need. It's just life and I really have no reason to complain.
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| Day 56 |
I spent some long hours and days priming and painting every surface. James helped roll the ceiling, thankfully, which saved my pregnant body quite a bit of strain. It felt so good to get lights, heat, and color back into the space. It instantly felt so much warmer (mood wise) once the walls were painted.
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| Day 57 |
Then it was time to start redesigning our fireplace. We've gone back and forth on this piece for a long time. Like years. Lots of ideas and lots of opinions about those ideas. This brick is sentimental in this Huenefeld family house. We wanted a way to update the fireplace without having to ruin the brick work. We finally figured out a solution. I'm excited to share more about it as the project progresses!
Gotta keep a little suspense, right?
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| Day 61 |
After feeling like so much was coming together, it was time to rip up some subfloor to level the floors. It felt a little like a step backwards, but it's something that really needed to happen. School was difficult on the days that James was working on the subfloor. It was insanely loud, but we managed!
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| Day 69 |
As you get further along in a project like this, you realize you've made some mistakes along the way. One being that we put our pot filler plumbing in the wrong spot. We both met that realization with a big sigh. A little drywall was torn back out to fix the plumbing, and then more taping and mudding.
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| Day 71 |
More plumbing work had to be done to get the last piece of subfloor down. Now we have one flat surface throughout.
The next thing on the to-do was laying hardwood floor inside of our larger pantry. The bedroom hallway and three of the bedrooms have original hardwood. The same hardwood was run into the entryway. We pulled up the entryway wood so that we can lay the new wood floor in that space to match the rest of the kitchen/dining/living room areas. This pantry opens up into the bedroom hallway, so we patched in the original wood floor that was in the entryway. This will get sanded and stained to match the rest of the original wood.
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| Day 72 |
And that's where we are today. I truly feel like we're at a mid-point of the renovation. We've come a long way, but we've got a long way to go.
So much of this post was structural changes. I'm giddy thinking about showing you more of the design in the upcoming months!
Tearing down and building back, growing on the farm...
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