Before + During ... thoughts on renovating

So, as I write this we are two months into renovating our downstairs living and dinning rooms, staircase, and hallway upstairs. This is mostly a diy project and labor of love and sacrifice done by my husband.

Here's a little back story in case you know little about us and the house we bought 5 years ago. We had been apartment living for the first 3 years of our marriage. We started looking at houses and had been house shopping for over a year, with only a handful of houses being even close enough for us to consider buying. We wanted something older, something with character, something we could make our own and had a great neighborhood or surrounding land. We eventually came to walk through our house. Great, quiet neighborhood, old 1870's house, next to a rail trail, part of an old general store, historical, big front porch, yard, etc. Seemed awesome, seemed in our price range, seemed like a lot of work, but we're ambitious people, right? Well, then we got our home inspection report with over 100 pages of things that needed "fixing".  How ambitious were we???? We talked about it, talked to other people, prayed about it... and took a giant leap of faith when saying yes to it. A month later we were moving into a house that most sane people would have gutted first, renovated and then moved into.

We didn't really have that option financially, so we decided to tackle one big project, slowly at a time. But it wasn't so slowly. Upon our first year in moving in we replaced the roof on our own, heating system ( we converted to an outdoor wood boiler), and began gutting our kitchen and laundry room. We replaced 9 old windows. We cleaned out the basement, made a staircase into a closet, and cleaned out the old store stockroom. Major, major projects! Even the day we moved in we had to redo some major plumbing problems.
Every project back then and even more recently has thrown us a million curve balls, cost lots of extra money and stretched our patience to the max. ( My son and I have not been living there, only these last two months of renovations, because of all the mess )

Why do all this for a house? Great question! People asked us that before we even bought it. We have since asked ourselves that as well. The answer is, our Love for this house. We truly love it's bones,  it's location, it's ability to help us open a cafe one day ( remember it's bottom half is an old general store attached to the living space) and see it as a long term investment. This was never going to be a house we flipped, a first home, if you will. We really saw ourselves making it into our dream home, raising our family here and growing old in this house. I still see it, the vision is getting clearer and clearer with each new project we finish.

As of right now, we have about a  95% finished kitchen and laundry room of my dreams ( pictures, I promise, once they are done), our son's room which is finished, a completely redone, rewired and plumbed basement and hope to complete the above mentioned renovations in month or two. That's not even mentioning our yard and how much we've taken it back from the jungle that was once overtaking (almost) all of it.

Right now as we are in the middle of getting things done, it's hard to keep remembering some days why we are doing this, when things fall apart, people let you down, everything takes twice as long as you had planned, it's really tough. I won't sugar coat it, it makes you want to cry and scream and be the crabbiest version of yourself. Throw in being 7 months pregnant for me and changing jobs during the middle of it for my husband. It's been one big roller coaster ride this summer. One that just never wants to let us off. So I'm taking this time to reflect and be thankful for all that we have accomplished this last 5 years. To keep looking ahead to toward the progress.

  We had lived for a while with things that made life hard in this house:

- no overhead light or light switches ( one in the kitchen, dining room and hallway, that's it)
- limited outlets and none in the bathroom
- a downstairs toilet that was literally a toilet in a closet, so small you couldn't even properly shut the door.
- keeping our house at 58 degrees that first winter and still buying oil every month
- leaking roofs and showers
- the only carpet being in the bathroom
- plaster literally crumbling off our ceilings into big piles on the floor
- a ridiculously wet basement
- a live hornets nest in our walls

 ^^ and those are just some of the hardest things about the house. All of which have all been fixed now. Hallelujah! So as we plow though painting, trim and redoing our stairs we remind ourselves that it will get done, it will take longer than we thought and it will be Beautiful.

#rittenhouserenovations on Instagram for more photos

progress

I just wanted to remember this photo, so that when the floor is all done and looking lovely, I remember all the hard work it took to get there! Jason ripped out the kitchen floor/ sub-floor ( pictured above ) and then put in a new sub-floor. In the next week or two we should have a new kitchen and laundry room floor!  We also removed the door between the two rooms and need to redo the door frame, but until we do I'm enjoying the exposed brick.

words on renovating

 I've been wanting to do an update on our renovations for some time now, but most of them are half or getting finished projects. And while that can get me down at times, I thought I'd suck up my pride and do a little house update, because who doesn't need a little comic relief from seeing my fridge wide open in my dinning room ( with three layers of peeling wallpaper that we wait to touch because we aren't at the dinning room phase of renovations yet) while my toddler colors and thinks we are crazy. Today we got everything out of the kitchen that touches the floor, so that Jason can rip it out and that we can finally get a new floor put in our kitchen/ laundry room (pictured below)

 kitchen floor that needs to get ripped up

 This is soon to be our powder room. We decided to keep the brick wall exposed to keep some of the rich charm of our old home.

 Dining room/ kitchen for the next couple of weeks?????

 These are some well written words that struck a cord with me as we are doing the same! A fantastic renovating blog that keeps me inspired! We are the "other" strategy all the way!

It seems to me that there are only a couple of general strategies to choose from when undertaking a major renovation. The first is to just bite the bullet and do it all at once, often before even moving in, usually with lots of assistance from trained professionals. Any walls that need to come down have the chance to come down, systems get upgraded in one comprehensive effort, and then everything gets put back together, painted, decorated, and BOOM…that’s it.
Then there’s the other strategy, whereby one chips away at things piecemeal for a matter of years, never with enough time or money, living endlessly in a state of chaos and destruction that hints only vaguely of progress. In an effort to avoid going completely insane, one might try to keep things contained to, say, a single room, only moving onto the next thing when that space feels more or less completed. -manhattan nest

A corner of our kitchen: before & after

For anyone not familiar with our living situation, we bought an old house/ general store fixer upper, 3 years ago. You can read more about that here and here. It's been a slow, but starting to be, rewarding process. I love a good before and after transformation! At this point there hasn't been a whole lot of after. 

We are mostly in the middle of many things. In the middle is a hard place to be sometimes. Definitely not as bad as the beginning when your desperately replacing broken plumbing, leaking roofs, replacing old drafty windows, adding LOTS of insulation to try and keep a big old house warm at all costs, replacing our heating system and re-supporting the sagging parts of our house in the basement. Yes we are so glad that we have those parts behind us. So in these "middle times" I've been doing my best to spruce up corners that are waiting to be finished or are mostly finished. Our kitchen being one of them!

We are mostly finished. It just needs some tile flooring and back splash, a new oven, shelves and doors for the pantry and some under cabinet lighting.

This part of the kitchen, this wall, I'm happy to feel like it's finished!

baby room: before and after

here we are... many months later, a few coats of paint, lots of love and labor ( thanks to jason) we have a finished baby room. if you know anything about our house... well this is a very special thing for us. we tackle about 5 projects at a time usually and it's hard to see progress in that. so this  room really means a lot to both of us. a project complete. start to finish. once the "work" was done i had a lot of fun putting the finishing touches on it! some of my favorites being our baby pictures hanging on the wall above the changing table, embroidery done by my mom, the bird mobile i made out of recycled fabric from my grandmother and artwork pulled out of old children's encyclopedias. 

hope you enjoyed a piece of our nest.

at our home...

 so those room shots are the bear cubs room! to the untrained eye it doesn't look like much, but it is,  and is continuing to be. 4 new( safe) outlets, an overhead light and switch (soon to be fan and light), trim, and prep for painting. hopefully in the next month or so, i will have a mostly finished room for the showing!

chips loves when we make the bed. it's his favorite activity. he hides out under the covers for quite some time. who can blame him, i think its most comfy too!

we took a short bike ride the other day. it was nice to get out again. i've only gotten out a few times to ride this season and may only get a few more times before giving birth... so i'm trying to relish in those moments.

that's whats been going on lately... in the near future i hope to plant the flowers i recently got, wash the rest of the windows, take many walks on the trail, go to a craft bazaar with my sister, make some more wipes and burp cloths, and savor these moments with jason, while its just the two of us a little longer.

one last fall post

 happy belated thanksgiving! we had a lovely thanksgiving with both of our families. extending into the weekend, were we saw about 10 wild turkeys strolling about.

 right before the holiday we got our wood burner fired up! we are now heating our house and water with just wood! we are beyond happy about this. the temperature inside these days is cozy- very warm ( just because we can)

lots of other exciting things happening. more to be shared in the next little while!

another update, being, we took down our falling down ceilings in the living room and dining room. we also demoed our attic, put up more insulation, got a new back door, leveled the floor in the laundry room and hung up some more gutters outside. it  has been a very productive season for us. jason being responsible for pretty much all of it!

squirreling away for winter

 we have been busy in these parts, preparing for winter. this year we hope to have a little warmer winter indoors. having an old house means lots of drafts and loss of heat. we our doing our best to remedy that by installing an outdoor wood boiler, insulating  wherever we can and hoping for a better outcome. other little things have included planting a whole bunch of bulbs for a beautiful spring display. bringing some plants indoors. the oxalis pictured above and bringing the amaryllis out of hibernation so it can bring some blooming cheer to the winter months. its also made me want to plant more bulbs in pots to have indoors. i love the blooms all year round!

 jason working on our wood shed  behind the garage!

snapshots from the home interior

hello september. i'm glad your here. augsust was so busy. most of my reason for not updating till now. progress is being made on the home front. a lot of construction going on in the kitchen and laundry rooms. the few room that are able to be unpacked and lived in are starting to get some love. hanging pictures, organizing stuff, a plant here and there. the above is our kitchen. more pictures to come, but we are pleased with the progress so far.

i've been meaning to share this photo (above). our friend, kate , has used our house on occasion for band photoshoots and other projects she's been working on. she's an amazing photographer. our house is full of textures and she just happens to compile them into some beautiful artwork.

pantry progress

we are renovating our kitchen. by renovating i mean ripping out a lot of stuff, while trying to keep what we like and make it look nice in the process. the pantry is one of those projects of keeping it and trying to make it look nice. jason has been hard at work on it. painting, sanding through layers of paint and lining it with paneling to make it look nice. there is a bottom part too. we just need to finish cutting shelves for it. glass doors are in the works for the pantry as well. this is just a little progress, in what seems like an ever ongoing project.

gratitudes

yesterday was a snow day! the wonderful sort of day where you wake up with mounds of snow and more coming down to watch out your window. today is the same sort of day. on these cold snowy days we have experienced some extra kindness. neighbors stopping by to help plow our very large driveway. our fuel  oil delivery guy just stopping by, because he was in the area, to see if we needed more fuel... and we did.

also thankful for this old beautiful kerosene heater. keeping our pipes from freezing in the laundry room and cozying up our living room.

and here is progress. a primed pantry, awaiting more paint and some wainscoting. small things are happening in these winter months.

tales from my week

we are in project mode around here. we've finished tidying up the flower beds as best as we can this year. we have begun working on our kitchen. not a total rehab, just a little face lift until we have have the resources to go all out on it. i'm very excited to see how far some drywall, paint and a new floor will go. i've been sowing more. i made some presents for my niece's birthday,recently.also i have had some pillows sitting in my sowing area for some time. so with a new burst of creative energy, i worked up a pattern on my own for some slipcover pillow cases. pillows for out swing and new outdoor chairs. light yellow, the kind that bounce a little!

i also got spend an afternoon with my girls ( sister and nieces) at saint peter's village. a quaint town not to far from either of us. we enjoyed an exploration of the surrounding forest and a little bolder picnic.