Can you believe that the roof is gone?!? My nerves were pretty shot after day 1. With the second section being so difficult to remove, I was hoping for an easy breezy day 2. (If you didn’t read about day 1, check out this post. It’s pretty wild!) Day 2 The crane got to work bright and early. Being that we are not a “bright & early” family, by the time we rolled in to take a look at things,…
Now that the design phase of our house remodel is finished, we are starting to think about supplies, fixtures, and design elements. Anyone who has built or remodeled a space knows that the amount of decisions can be exhausting. With the square footage in this house, we know we need to be very mindful of the budget. I am going to work extra hard to be sure that the whole project comes in on budget (or even under)! So when…
An architect. An architect? Did we really need one? We’ve done a house remodel before. We could do this ourselves, right? Looking at what we’ve done so far and what we have ahead, there are many decisions to be made on this house remodel project. Whether or not to hire an architect was a rather big decision! I am forever trying to cut costs and find things we can do ourselves. Chris has the same mindset but believed that an…
It’s been hard work cleaning out the house and preparing for this house remodel. We’re to the point that we can start thinking about design! Woo-Hoo! Cabinets, outlets, bathrooms, OH MY! So many things we’ll need to think about. I watched an episode of Dr. Oz last week. He talked about decision-making exhaustion. The number of decisions we make throughout the day correlate to feelings of exhaustion by the end of the day. With the number of decisions we’ll need…
Through this house remodel, Chris and I have had a few things on our “wish list”. We haven’t shared any of them…until now. I’ve got to say, the timing on this particular wish list item could not have been any better. So what is this so-called “wish list” item you ask? An Infrared Sauna! Say What?!? Yes, a Sunlighten Infrared Sauna! An infrared sauna was totally my idea. I deal with an autoimmune thyroid disease and have been reading about…
As we had left off of the last post, we had taken a long shot approach and found a local farmer that was willing to take down the machine shed. After more than a year of cleaning out and cleaning out and cleaning out…we actually get to do some demo work! We cannot begin to explain how excited we were to see something done other than shoveling raccoon infested trash into a dump trailer. After a bit of logistics, the…
Hi guys! This week I’ve made it my mission to organize my photos. Yes, I am crazy! They’re everywhere! We have photos on our regular camera, photos on my phone, photos on Chris’ phone, photos everywhere! Each year I have every good intention to make (drumroll, please) “A Family Yearbook”. Well, gosh darn it, this year is the year! (Do I say that every year?) Anyways, as I flipped through and cleaned out the photos on my phone, I realized…
Knock, Knock. Who’s There? We told you about our plans to take off the second floor in this post. Today we’d like to share with you more about our plans to change where the front door was originally intended to be. As you look from the road up to the house, you can see that the builder had placed the front door to face the road. There really is no logical way for guests to arrive at the front door…
Hi everyone! The heavy snowfall last week kept us from working on the house. But that left time to enjoy the Iowa home show circuit. We started out attending the Des Moines Home Show last weekend and the Waterloo Home Show yesterday. Let’s start with the Des Moines Home & Garden Show: We started the day with anticipation. Right now things are a blank slate, so the possibilities are endless (of course, within budget). It’s been 10 years since we…
As the snow piles up in Iowa, the ability to get work done on the house each weekend gets hard. That’s why we thought it would be a great time to talk about what our plans are once we start construction. As you know, we’re dealing with a house that is much bigger than our needs. So our goal is to make this big house…a little less big. We didn’t make this purchase blindly. Thankfully, before any offer was made…