Home Reno Update No. 1

Well, it’s officially been a week (maybe two?! I can’t keep up with days anymore!) since we became the owners of our little yellow fixer upper. I’m feeling all the feels today! We drove up to the house after closing and weren’t really sure where to start (the overwhelm hit hard!) but this week we’ve managed to make a lot of progress and it’s slowly starting to look like ours.

*If you came here for the before pics and don’t care to hear about our fixer- upper woes, scroll on down to the bottom for those! 😉

I won’t sugarcoat anything, this week has been a challenge! I blame pregnancy hormones but I’m a bit all over the place when it comes to emotions this week. I can go from “what have we done?!?!!” to “omg this place is going to be AMAZING!” in a matter of minutes. If anyone ever needed a “keep calm and carry on” poster on the wall, it’s your girl. Truly I need to post my “deep breaths and baby steps” motto all over the house on sticky notes.

Our closing was pushed back a week which means we didn’t accomplish nearly as much as we wanted to in May but we’ve put in long hours this week to make up for it. *Please note: when I say “we” in reference to renovating I’m almost always referring to Pearce, his parents, or a contractor/sub – not my pregnant self! I provide design ideas, run all the errands (ACE hardware is my new favorite hangout!) and make sure everyone stays hyrdated and well fed!

Before we get too deep into this renovation I thought it would be fun to share a few before photos so you can see where we’re starting from! I can’t wait to look back at these one day to see how far we’ve come!

CHANGES MADE SO FAR:

Lots of demo – baseboards, closets, etc. We found a bit of mold behind the baseboards in what will be our master bedroom which was… scary. Our inspector came over and tested the area for us. His findings? The mold is not living and is easy peasy to take care of! Phew! Now we’re moving on to addressing the leak in the garage ceiling that we discovered this morning…

Pearce redid the garage floors with a fancy looking epoxy. It looks amazing and now the space is ready for workouts, kids to play in, and storing all the things that won’t fit inside our tiny house.

Prepped cabinets for paint! This was super tedious but I’m convinced it will be worth it!

Removed lots and lots of plants. Other than the big trees, two pretty hydrangea bushes and the best smelling Jasmine, we’re planning to completely redo the existing landscaping. Chopping away at some of our least favorite plants (with a machete of course!) was so satisfying!

Pearce and our amazing handyman Ray (plus a few other helpers along the way!) installed new floors throughout. Well, it’s alllllmost done! What a difference it made! Goodbye tile!!! Despite saying I would never choose dark wood again, we ended up going with a super classic darker hardwood look and I’m so glad we did! I originally sought out to find something lighter but in the end I wanted a more traditional look. Too many of the light wood samples leaned yellow or white once we brought them into our home. Another surprise was choosing a vinyl plank instead of the engineered wood we planned on and had used in our last house. After tons of research, Pearce found a vinyl plank option I liked that would also make install much quicker and easier to float on top of the existing tile. Not ripping out the existing tile saved us so much time and money. It’s also a lot less messy!! PTL!

We selected paint colors (will share those in another post once the second coat is up on the walls!) and with lots of help, got the first coat up on almost all of the walls! Sadly this pregnant lady can’t help out with any painting projects due to the nationwide shortage of paint masks…

We met lots of neighbors that stopped by and welcomed us to the neighborhood! Sweet neighbors brought us brownies, fresh shrimp (shrimping is a big deal around here!), and offered to help in any way they can. We bought the house for the neighborhood so the warm welcome has been so sweet!