Our First Home Renovation: Thirty-Five Day Check-In

It’s been thirty-five days since we closed on the house. Thirty-five days. That doesn’t sound like much. And it’s not really. We’ve got a never-ending to-do list and it’s only been a month.

However, when I look back at what we have accomplished so far, I realize that we’ve done more in a little over a month than some people do in a year.

So, for those of you who are just joining in on the fun or for those of you who would like a little refresher, I thought I’d look back at the last month and recap what we’ve updated, changed or removed altogether.

Updates on the House: February and March

We scraped the ceilings. It took approximately one extremely long day to scrape the entire first floor. We learned that water is our friend, putty scrapers are a gift from heaven and you will definitely feel it in your shoulders the next day.

 

We removed the wall separating the mother-in-law apartment from the main house. Banking on being able to remove this wall without any problems was one of the main reasons we decided on this house. And boy did we luck out because the wall wasn’t load bearing. We now have this huge area to play with and make our own.

 

We removed four invasive trees and trimmed back the brush around the lakefront. I wish I knew what the purple snake-looking, extra-large peapod trees were, but I don’t. All I know is that they had to go.

 

We painted the kitchen. Okay, okay. It isn’t completely done yet. However, the majority of the cabinets have been painted and the kitchen island is completely done, so it kind of counts as a February/March project, right?

We tore down two outside ramps and built new stairs. One had rotted wood and the other had a completely rusted over metal staircase. Needless to say, they had to go. What makes this even more exciting? We were able to build the new stairs with the leftover (non-rotted) wood – free 99 is the best way to go.

 

We built a fence. I haven’t posted this yet, but the Saturday before Easter was a fun-filled day outside in the freezing rain building a fence. Thank goodness for family and thank goodness for power tools. Pictures of the fence will be coming later in the week!

Not too bad for thirty-five days.

It’s nice to be able to look back and see what we’ve done; it puts things into perspective when we’re sitting around the table making our to-do lists and adding to the endless amount of projects we have to get through. The two-seconds it takes to cross of the to-do list item fills me with such pride and accomplishment, yet it’s so fleeting because I immediately add seven more items. Thus, the never-ending list of projects.

With that, here’s to the next thirty-some days and that ever-growing to-do list.

All our best,