Another Update

We officially made it though our first week of living in construction and another week of living in our house without a kitchen. Whew. We ate dinner at home 5 nights this week - congratulations to me for creative thinking on how to cook something (semi) healthy without a stove or oven (or sink for clean-up).

Anyway, it's raining again. Yuck. The lake has receded about a foot (from its high of 3.4 feet over flood stage) - we're getting there! As long as it doesn't go back up with the rain this week we might have a chance of getting the lake house open before Memorial Day. We've had a good weekend in spite of the weather - out to dinner with cousin, bowling with friends and supper club :)

They made lots of progress this week! I'll explain with pictures.

The wall is down! I love the feeling of more space in the kitchen. Love it love it.

Unfortunately, the demo work in the kitchen took an unexpected toll on the bathroom wall upstairs.

All new electrical wiring is completed in the kitchen which meant it had to go down to the studs and the attic had to be exposed...

New insulation has been put on the exterior wall to help at least this one room be more energy efficient :)

Including up against the roof.

Our plans are being kept in a highly secured location :)

The new living room window is in! It's flat and the old was a bay window. It'll be SO much easier to arrange furniture this way.

Remember the before picture? I guess it didn't really look all that bad but only the tiny panel on the far left side actually opened and it was over 50 years old (meaning - not efficient for keeping the heat INSIDE in winter).

What else?

We have to add a new electrical panel for the kitchen (and just because the house has such old electrical that the existing box really isn't sufficient and none of the outlets are grounded - meaning they only have 2 prongs instead of 3). SO - since we're into saving money around here - we (Matt) had to dig a trench outside from the old box over to where the next box will go in for the wiring to be buried underground.

Did I mention it has to be 2 feet deep?

Spring is really here - finally finally!

Remember this photo from about a month ago?

Here is the view out the kitchen window now that things are green and I added a bit of new mulch.

We have some colorful blooming things in the yard as well!

On a last happy note...my sweet sister sent me flowers just because she's nice like that! Aren't they beautiful?

Hope you had a great weekend!

xoxo

Decisions, Decisions

Have I already stated that I am a terrible decision maker? I've always hated to make decisions - most of you know that already. I need time and I have to carefully evaluate all the options. Once I make a decision, I second and then third guess myself. Renovating decisions are pushing me to the edge. Just so you have some insight into why I'm going crazy - I'll give you a glimpse of what I had to decide on today.

1. Stain color?

We decided on red oak floors (after much deliberation). I've always been a fan of dark hardwood floors. That means we'd need to stain ours. Our builder is NOT a fan of staining. I got some samples today of the type of stain I'm considering (a VT all natural product) and painted them on a piece of our scrap wood.

Which would you choose?

Natural...

A medium golden oak....The darker part has 2 coats applied.

Or full strength golden oak...

How about when compared to my current floors upstairs?

I must admit I'm swaying towards the more natural color...

2. Wall color for the kitchen and dining room/den

My mom taught me this trick. I bought sample of the colors I think I like the most (after getting recommendations from my mother in law and comparing all those via paint chips). I painted the samples onto a piece of cardboard. I then put the cardboard in the room and looked at it from multiple angles at different times of day to make sure I liked it.

The green is for the kitchen and beige is for the dining room/den. The white is my trim color.

Hmmmm...(and a sneak peak of the newly removed wall)

3. I had to decide between rounded outlets and square ones. I also had to decide if I want them to be ivory, white, or beige. ??????? I had no clue so I went with square ivory.

4. I had to pick a new bathtub. This decision was made worse by the fact that lots of $$ is involved. I'm going with a cheaper option simply because we're already over budget on this project and this was an unexpected purchase. I went to look at it in the bath showroom this afternoon to make sure I could live with it.

5. Under cabinet lighting. How many and where? Did I want them on a switch? Which one?

6. Kitchen sink. They need to know before they cut the countertops. Double bowl or single? Stainless or cast iron? Rounded or square?

7. Pendant lights. How many? Placement? I received some great advice on the Pottery Barn pendants I was thinking about (they're always looking dusty). I found some others that I loved but they are SOLD OUT until September! Ug. I'm thinking of these instead but am afraid they won't give enough light.

I like these as well.

Yikes. I'll spare you the rest. Any advice for a struggling decision maker??

xoxo

Guest Room

Hello friends - thought I'd write a more positive post today. While my mom was here we worked hard on house projects. One big accomplishment was painting the guest room. It took 3 days because we had to paint the ceiling, walls, and trim. Yikes. At least it gave us something to do while it was raining outside.

A reminder of how it looked before...All the trim in this house is painted a creamy pinkish/yellow color and the walls that aren't covered in wallpaper are a faded creamy color as well. Ug. Is that a 50s thing or just an old house thing? I'm slowly working my way through and painting the trim a color called White Dove (by suggestion from my mother in law - I love it).

Here's my mom in the finished room :) - the only picture I took of her the whole trip - boo!

Still no pictures hung and the frames you see are the only ones I could find for now, but it looks better for sure.

We used the same color as in our house in VA - Wedgewood Gray by Benjamin Moore. We tried a different shade and it reminded me too much of Tar Heel blue! I like this one and I'm on decision overload with the rest of the house so I ended up going with something that already worked before. I think it's interesting how the same color can look so different depending on the room it's in....much more blue in our new room.

The sun is shining again today - hooray! I'm off to enjoy it while it's here.

An update

So. Let me first say that renovating an old house is not for the faint of heart. Neither is spring in Vermont but more on that later. If you're considering buying an older home...at this point in time my advice would be...Don't. Or at least don't try to renovate it because you're always going to find something you don't want to.

I guess this is another keeping it real posts so if the last one made you sad (sorry Liz) then you might want to skip reading today. Don't worry - we'll be fine and when I think of all those affected by the tornadoes down south and all sorts of other issues I continue to count my blessings.

Anyway - I guess I'll start with this.

What the hell is that plastic doing hanging in the lovely pink/black bath you might ask? There's a story there.

Construction started today. I returned this afternoon from a quick trip to Canada to look at countertops (still weird I'm closer to Canada than VA) when our wonderful and amazingly kind builder called up to me...

Ted: Chelsea?
Me: Yes - hi! How'd it go today?
Ted: Not so good.
Me: Oh. OK.
Ted: Come down here to the kitchen. I'd like to show you something.
Me: OK. (Thinking - $*&!)

I walk through the new entrance to our kitchen.

Notice the progress they've made. Hooray!

Think - wait...where's the fridge?

He directs my attention to this wall.

Points to the dark spot and says, "This is water leaking out of the upstairs tub."

Again, I think %&*!, Matt will NOT be happy about this. To make a long and boring story short, we now have to replace the pink beauty upstairs. It's ok - it's only $$ right?

So now you're probably thinking - well you can't use your bathroom, why not move to the lake house?

That's right. It's still flooding around here. The good news? We FINALLY have sunshine this week so the water will hopefully go down at some point. The sun is wonderful, but the rains plus snow melt over the past month have caused devastating flooding in the Champlain Valley. This is the type of warning I continue to see on my Weather App on the iphone. The level has actually gone down to 102.9 now with the 2 days of sunshine we had this weekend. Hallelujah.

THE FLOOD WARNING CONTINUES FOR THE LAKE CHAMPLAIN AT ROUSES POINT. * AT 11:00 AM FRIDAY THE STAGE WAS 103.1 FEET. * FLOOD STAGE IS 100.0 FEET. * RECORD FLOODING IS OCCURRING AND RECORD FLOODING IS FORECAST. * FORECAST...LAKE CHAMPLAIN WILL CONTINUE RISING. ADDITIONAL RISES MAY BE POSSIBLE THEREAFTER. * IMPACT...AT 103.0 FEET...THERE WILL BE EXTENSIVE SEVERE SHORELINE FLOODING.

The following pictures belong to a neighbor and were taken last week out near my parent's camp. Their house is fine but so many aren't.









Matt would rather move to the lake even though we will have to take a boat across each time we want to go anywhere. I think my vote is for staying here in the construction. What would you do?

That's it for now. Fingers crossed the sun stays and the water subsides.

xoxo

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful and amazing Mom and Mother in law!

I am so lucky to have your love and support and I am so wishing I could be with you today!





xoxoxoxo

LOVE YOU BOTH!!!!!

Progress

We have made some progress on the house. Mom and I worked in the yard and removed almost all of those damn acorns as well as the leaves. We spent the last 3 days painting the guest room (I'll post pics soon). Matt scraped the outside windowsill (painfully) and re-painted and it looks great.

The carpet is up and the wood is here!

Oh I love it. It's 4 1/4" red oak. I'll post on my decision making process at some point.

It's currently resting in the house and accommodating to the temperature/humidity. That's why it's so important to get the basement under control.

The kitchen is out!

Hooray! It took 3 guys about 5 hours to get it all out. They took EVERYTHING. Including the kitchen sink. Hehe. No kidding - they took cabinets, counters, oven, stove, and hood. Whew. Then they gave me $500. Oh happy day.

This is all that's left.

My poor Mom. We have no kitchen. She was hoping to stay here a few days and then get out to the lake. I already told you about why we can't get to the lake. We're stuck with this as our new kitchen breakfast area.

What else?

Our room is painted. I like it. We still need to hang pictures, window treatments, etc. but here is a sneak peak.

Spring is finally starting to arrive.

Whew. We're making progress. One step at a time.