When we first started talking about renovating my parents’ house, our circumstances were quite different. There were no plans to expand our family and everyone would have their own room. Given those facts, I felt sure we could finish the entire thing in 6-9 months. Clearly, I was suffering from temporary insanity.
The hardest part about finishing the girls’ rooms has been working around naps and bedtime. Before the time changed, Polly was in bed at 6 o’clock every night and we could only work on “quiet projects.” Guess what? There aren’t actually any projects that are quiet. Not a single one. I honestly thought we’d have the whole thing painted and ready for carpet in a few weekends and we’re currently sitting at a few months. More than anything, this has taught us to really scale our expectations where this renovation is concerned. While the downstairs projects shouldn’t be as difficult to find time for, we have to acknowledge that it’s going to be slow going to update an entire house while working full time jobs and parenting three busy little ladies. My goal of having everything done by Christmas was more than a little lofty.
What we’ve done: Both bedrooms have been painted. We’ve replaced the ceiling fans, electrical outlets, light switches, and cover plates. The doorknobs and hinges have been replaced in Ella’s room. The room at the top of the stairs has been primed and we’ve removed the carpet there, to see what floor prep needed to happen prior to installation.
What we still need to do: I need to finish painting Sophie’s door, so that we can install the new doorknob. Her trim needs a final coat of paint (We used a flat finish as we were painting the walls, but need to add a single coat of semi-gloss before calling it done.) and the mirrored closet doors need to be cleaned and oiled before getting re-hung. We still need to paint the landing (that shouldn’t take more than a few hours) and make a final decision about flooring.
The flooring upstairs threw us for a bit of a loop. We picked out several mid-range carpet samples, but after measuring to get a rough estimate (hello, one thousand square feet), we realized that unless we do very inexpensive (read: ugly) carpet, we’re looking at $4500… ON CARPET. We ordered luxury vinyl plank samples and are seriously considering a faux hardwood floor upstairs instead. It would cost somewhere around $2500, likely never need to be replaced, be so much easier to clean with kiddos, and we could extend it into the bathroom, making the entire second floor a single flooring finish. Josh is a little worried about sound insulation and echo and I’m more concerned about having a different color “wood” upstairs than we will on the first floor. We need to make a decision in the next week, so I’ll report back soon!
One thing we have decided, since realizing how long this entire situation is going to take, is that we’re tired of living with old appliances and don’t want to do that for another year. We hope to wrap the girls rooms up by the end of the month (this is me crossing every finger and toe) and then we’ll be moving right into our biggest project of the year — a brand new kitchen!
