a remodeling story

When we purchased our little yellow house over 8 years ago, it came to us very much on the path of being well restored to its original mid-1800s glory after many, many years of being a poorly-cared-for rental property. I never saw it in its roughest condition, as it was already dramatically improved by the time we purchased it and then moved in, but friends tell me it was bad. The man who flipped it and sold it to us did much to restore it.

That's my dear mama on the porch. Family did all the scouting of this house on our behalf and we ended up buying it without ever seeing it in person. We just knew it was the house for us. (The price tag and location helped clinch that!)

But there was yet more to do.

When we purchased the home, about 1700 square feet of the house was livable: fresh paint, new wall-to-wall carpet, functioning bathrooms, new windows. Attached to the main house was an adjacent 200 square feet or so (look on the right hand side in the above photo) that maintained what the house looked like in its *ahem* more recent history. Dog-stained floors, rotting joists, missing windows, no insulation or interior walls, the works. But I am my mother's daughter and I could see the potential in it all.

Our first big house project began in late August of 2008, almost two years exactly after we purchased our home. We had been saving up and now the prize was in sight: a new kitchen and reclaiming the adjoining unfinished/closed off space!

an exterior picture of the unfinished space that became a family room and now is the eat-in/schooling area of the kitchen

the interior of what it looks like today

We love, love, love this room! The kitchen is the heart and soul of a home-- especially a homeschooling family's home.

Then in November of 2010 we began another project, quite by accident. Out of curiosity, Daniel pulled up a section of the wall-to-wall carpet in our dining room and we found, beneath layers of flooring, wide plank New England pine. Unfortunately, it was covered in lead paint and our family had to vacate the premises (Ryan and Danica gracious took us in for almost 6 weeks while we were homeless) while Daniel set about ripping out the rest of the carpet and other various flooring that had piled up over the 100+ previous years, pulling out hundreds of nails, sanding and sanding and sanding, and then oiling the floors.

 no stain necessary on these babies-- age has made them beautiful!

This happened to be the first time I had ever seen our house without a single piece of furniture or even a box of belongings in it. The wheels began to turn and in the process of redoing the floors, we ended up rearranging walls, widening doorways, and the like.

I can get carried away like that.

It was totally worth it, though, and we had some wonderful help from several wonderful friends during the process.

In the spring of 2011 we began thinking about more space. Our 3-bedroom house was technically now a 2-bedroom house thanks to the previous house project, which had meant us giving up our original master bedroom for living space (we were, at this point in time, sleeping in a room on the first floor that was really not a bedroom at all, though I did love it, I must say). At 1900 square feet, it certainly wasn't a tiny home, but the realization that our 5 (at the time) children were all growing rapidly and taking up more and more space was nipping at our heels. I had often wondered about expanding our upstairs to fully extend over the entire downstairs (the upstairs was about 400 square feet less than the main house), but financially we weren't sure it would ever be possible.

We looked at real estate, wondering if moving altogether was the best idea. (It wasn't, we quickly gathered as we suffered major sticker-shock at real estate prices!) We played around with floor plans for our own home. We hemmed and hawed. And no good answer seemed obvious. Long story short, the Lord laid it on my heart so strongly to not fret if another baby was sent our way and Daniel decided to take out a small home improvement loan if necessary in order to gain ourselves more bedrooms.

Lo and behold, absolutely miraculous provision came just days after he first met with a loan officer and before we could ever file any paperwork.

We dove right in and a month later found out that baby #6, our very own Elliot Hale, was on the way.

that became...

this!

 originally, that entire second floor wasn't part of the house-- we added two bedrooms, eliminating our need for the small make-shift bedroom on the first floor entirely (we claimed that room as a family/TV room)

A big bonus of changing the roof line and adding those two extra bedrooms upstairs was that our knee-wall, sloped-ceiling upstairs bathroom could become a full bathroom.

In all, the upstairs expansion project took us over two years from start to finish because Daniel did the bulk of the work himself. We hired out sections of the project at key points (the beginning, middle, and plumbing!) and certainly benefited from the help of generous friends, but most of it fell to him. He kept at it and never gave up, even when it felt grueling and s-l-o-w.

the bathroom before...

 the bathroom after

 one of the new bedrooms, which has become the master due to its larger-than-the-rest closet!

 the "double duty" guest room & nursery

With these rooms added, the entire first floor having been rearranged and the floors redone, the kitchen remodeled, the unfinished adjoining kitchen space reclaimed, and the upstairs bathroom dramatically improved, we were left with one yet untouched nook of the house: the downstairs bathroom.

When we moved in, it was the room that seemed to need the least improvement, but as the years went by we realized that, although on the surface it had seemed perfectly fine, it was as much a victim of rotting floor joists, insufficient insulation and ventilation, poor plumbing and crumbling drywall as the rest of the house.

I have to say that I dragged my feet on this project. The downstairs bathroom is right off our dining room and I just wasn't sure it was a good time to wreck the house by virtue of wrecking the bathroom. (Both Daniel and I were well aware that this bathroom redo would be of the tear-it-down-to-the-studs variety.) Daniel asked me when would be a good time (never) and then proceeded to discover obscene amounts of black mold that I'm pretty sure he planted just to convince me it had to be now.

I told him it had to be quick because I couldn't handle a long, drawn-out project.

The man delivered.

He ripped it out on March 25th and today, one month later, it is more or less finished. Besides one 8-day stretch when he had non-stop meetings, he found time each day to put in a few hours. I don't think he's watched a single baseball or hockey game in a month, I know he didn't do much reading, and he certainly gave up hours of sleep since often those few hours came after returning home from an evening youth meeting or life group or mens group or an elders meeting or a young couples gathering, etc. If I sound like I'm bragging about him, I am. I couldn't have done what he did. I'm not sure many people could.

And he did it for me. For our family.

before:

during:

after:

The hope is that we are now done with major interior projects. We'd still like to add a screened-in porch off the back of the house, build a fence along one part of our property, and a chicken coop is immediately next on the docket (more on that another time), but we think the dust will not fly inside for quite some time now.

Unless, of course, I dream up something new...!