Remodel Mondays – 5 things to do during a home remodel

No project would be complete without a review of what went well, and what didn’t go so… smoothly. Here are my recommendations for what to do during a full-on remodel project.


1. Move out. If you possibly can, get the heck out of there. It speeds up the timeline, keeps you out of the workers’ hair, and keeps your stuff from getting covered with a thick layer of construction dust. (And no matter what you do, you can never really get rid of that dust!) We were lucky to have an “apartment” to move into, unfinished as it was.

Remodel Mondays – Before and after

The official remodel project is finished. (Just ask the bank and our insurance company.) I’m still working on the “minor” things, like curtains, and door mats, and where the stuff should go on the wall, and really where the furniture should end up.

The change from the old house to the new really is pretty dramatic. Let’s take a tour!

You’ve already seen most of the new house, like my new office and the master bedroom. Maybe when I get things organized the way I really want, I’ll show off my closets. For now, the closets are holding all of the “I don’t know what to do with this yet” stuff. Not pretty.

And speaking of not pretty, here was my office in the old house. This room was originally a garage that was made part of the house before we bought it. We pulled up the carpet and installed laminate flooring, but never did anything about the paneling on the walls. (ick) Because it was a garage, it was sunken down 3 steps from the rest of the house.

Remodel Mondays – Master bedroom

The master bedroom was one of the first rooms we put together. It still needs a few decorating touches, but it’s getting close.


I love the blue accent wall against the soft gray of the other walls. Would you believe this is a queen-size bed? This room is so big it dwarfs our large furniture.

Remodel Mondays – Home office

The new house has been fabulous. It has been a lot of work to move back in and get everything settled, but I’ve been loving the job.

The first rooms we really moved into were the kitchen, the master bedroom, and my home office. My office is on the front corner of the new addition. It is the only “bedroom” on the front of the house with two windows. And it gets a great cross breeze!

Remodel Mondays – Settling into the kitchen

We’ve been living in our new house for over a month already! It still doesn’t quite seem “normal” – it’s so different from the old house, I sometimes can barely believe that it is ours! (Well, ours and the bank’s…)



After almost six weeks, I am finally feeling like we are pretty well settled in. If nothing else, the house looks “lived in” now…

We set up our fish tank set in the hallway next to the kitchen. This is also where three of the four cats get fed. We only have one fish in that tank right now… he is the lonely trooper who survived the move to the apartment and back. We need to get him some new friends now that the tank is in it’s final place.

Where did it go?

May, that is.

Seriously? It’s the end of May already? And I’ve only blogged four times (including this post)?!

Oy. So much for weekly Remodel Mondays. Or weekly anything.

I feel like all I have been doing this month is unpacking/cleaning, finishing small projects at the house, laundry, and working on a paper I’m trying to finish up from my PhD research.

And, really, who wants to hear about any of that?

The remodel part of the house project was really neat… it was easy to photograph and to see changes from week to week. But now? Once the dresser is moved in, it’s just 7 loads of laundry, and then all the clothes are put away. Nothing to photograph except the dresser (that looks the same) and the empty boxes lying around.

Well, unless I happen to catch the laundry room in the middle of things… Load number 5 of the day is clean and folded, there’s laundry going in both the washer and dryer right now, and two more baskets of dirty clothes on the shelf. Yikes!

Why so much laundry? We’ve had a bunch of clothes and linens stored in the garage in various kinds of plastic tubs for 6 months. Technically, they’re clean, but they’re just a little bit icky. So, laundry room to the rescue!

(Oh, side note? Febreze Set & Refresh are amazing to keep the cat litter smell down in this little room. That, and Fresh Step Multi-Cat litter. The type of cat litter really does make a difference!)

We’re at the awkward stage of the home remodel where it feels like I’m putting in a lot of time and energy for not a lot of visible progress. But, when I open up that closet and see the full shelves, there’s my feeling of accomplishment! I guess.

Seriously, though, we’re to the touch-up-the-paint and treat-the-cedar-posts part of the remodel/move in. Projects that take a lot of sweat equity but really don’t photograph that well in an impressive before/after shoot.

Most days, I feel like I just want to curl up on the couch with my Kindle Fire and read. I’ll admit it… I read the entire Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. I loved it, and I hated it… I loved to hate it…

And then I did more laundry. And took a nap.

 

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Remodel Mondays – Work in progress

We’ve been moved in for three weeks, and we’re still in the process of getting cleaned up, unpacked, and settled in. I almost wish we had waited another week to move in so the little projects could really get finished, and I had some time to get the construction mess cleaned up. I have vacuumed and mopped these floors a million times since we moved in, and there’s always more mess to clean up!

So… still in progress… and quite a bit cluttered, for now… The eat-in kitchen with the china cabinet and the breakfast bar.

Remodel Mondays – Outside ambiance

So I’m not quite ready to post before and after photos, but I will, I promise. We’ve had a few people over to see the new house, and they don’t recognize it at all!

Moving in has been a bit crazy… There are still a few odds and ends of things that need to get finished, and we’re living in the middle of it.

One of the things I really didn’t like about the old house is that there was no good outdoor space to hang out. We live on the top of a hill, and we have great views, but we had nowhere to sit and enjoy them. One of the major changes with this remodel were two giant porches.

Our front porch used to just be a concrete stoop. Now it’s a bit more elaborate.

Remodel Monday – Living in Chaos

Our goal was to sleep in the new house on Wednesday night, April 18. Things weren’t quite as far along as we wanted, so we waited a few days. We did sleep here Friday night, April 20!



Things are still pretty disheveled, and the construction isn’t quite finished yet. But I moved my coffee pot here from the office, which means we are officially living back at home!

One of the walls in the bedroom still needs a little repair and another coat of paint, but we’re sleeping in there!

Remodel Mondays – Finishing Touches

We are getting so close… Most of the major work is done and we are working on the finishing touches for our new house now!



The kitchen is pretty well put together. The (giant) refrigerator is in place and hooked up. I love getting ice water right out of the door! They still need to finish installing the gas stove, but everything else is ready to go!

Remodel Mondays – New Old Floors

From the beginning of this remodel project, one of our goals was to save the original hardwood floors in two rooms of the house. At one point, we weren’t quite sure we were going to make it, but we did salvage those floors!

We pulled up the carpet and refinished the hardwood floor in the living room not too long after we bought the house. (And by “we” here, I totally mean Hubby Doc. I had no part of that project.) This floor was actually in pretty decent shape when we first emptied the house to start the remodel extravaganza.

Remodel Monday – Kitchen cabinets

Okay, this is actually Remodel Tuesday. But yesterday I posted with some of my other Real Farmwives about some great Carhartt gear for the guys. (Did I mention that there is a Carhartt giveaway going on right now?)


The cabinets are here, the cabinets are here! I’m so excited… I’ve been waiting for this part for so long!
I was really nervous when there were two boxes that wouldn’t even fit in the door…

Carhartt for the boys

Er, men.

Last fall, we had a great partnership with Carhartt where the Real Farmwives got to show off some of Carhartt’s new women’s line. Now it’s the guys’ turn… Carhartt partnered with the Real Farmwives again for the men in their life (the Real Farmers? The Real Farmhusbands?) – the guys got a chance to try out some of Carhartt’s spring line early!

And want to know the best news? Carhartt and the Real Farmwives have a giveaway for you! Check out the Real Farmwives website and enter for a chance to win some Carhartt gear for your guy!

Hubby Doc tried out the Astoria Jacket in black. He’ll be the first to tell you that he’s a big guy, and needs a big jacket. We did have a bit of a hard time finding a jacket that was available in the 2X size he was looking for. But, Carhartt came through with this choice.

Even though this March has been unbelievable warm, it still is cool in the mornings and evenings around here. And I may have mentioned before that it gets just a tad windy up on our hill, so the jacket has come in handy on a few occasions. The farm dogs take their pills/treats every night. (They’re such good girls!)

Remodel Mondays – Floors

Oh yes, we’re getting to that point in the remodel… Floors are going down!

We went with a vinyl flooring called Flexitec for a couple of the rooms in the house. We chose the same floor pattern and color to try to keep some of the consistency through the house (and it made for fewer decisions for me!)

We used the Flexitec floor in the mudroom…

Remodel Monday – Drywall finishing

Those of you who know me offline know that I have been painting like a fiend for the last few days (over 25 hours in the last 3 days). But painting isn’t possible until the drywall is finished… So here are a few photos of how the drywall finishing went…

I had never seen one of these cool toys before. This is what they used to get the drywall tape applied to the seams between sheets of drywall.

Remodel Monday – No stone, just siding

We took all the Bedford stone off our house, with the plan to replace it with vinyl siding. That is finally getting done!

It’s not quite finished yet, but it’s getting close. We went with “slate” for the roof color and “Victorian gray” for the siding.

Have I mentioned that the porches are going on at the same time? They are treated lumber porches, with columns wrapped in cedar.

Remodel Mondays – Walls!

Things are starting to move really fast now… They drywall is hung, and that really makes it look and feel like a new house!

This is one of the new bedrooms, the one that will be my office. (I’m taking the one with two windows. The others only have one window.)

Remodel Mondays – Warm and Cozy

Roof? Check. Windows? Check. Insulation? Now we’ve got it!

One major thing we found when we tore the drywall off the inside of the old house was that there was no insulation. Up on top of a windy hill, no wonder the house was drafty! So we insulated. Did we ever!

We put blue board Styrofoam on the outside of the house, and insulated the heck out of the inside.

Here’s the eat-in section of the kitchen.

Remodel Mondays – I can see clearly now

Because we have windows! Whee!

Yes, all of our new windows are in, and I’m so excited! We went with 3 foot wide by 5 foot tall windows in most places, so there is a ton of natural light inside.
This is the eat-in part of the kitchen.The smaller window that you can see to the left is actually in the mudroom. There will be a door between the mudroom and the kitchen. I’m pretty excited to have a room dedicated to just mud. Hubby Doc can really make a mess when he puts his mind to it.

Remodel Monday – Waterproof

It seems like it has taken forever, but we finally have a finished roof, shingles and all!


Last time we saw the roof, it was covered with the moisture barrier, but that was it. This was the second week in January.