House Reno : October 2023 – May 2024
What that should really say is House Rebuild 🙄
We started the process October 5, 2023. My husband started with ripping off some of the siding so that we could build on a front deck and have storage underneath for all of our things to be stored during the renovations.
Then, we got a call from our contractor, one of my husbands good friends, and he said because of the snow/rain that was forecasted, his current plans had changed for another project and he was ready to start tearing down our house in two days. We had TWO days to empty our house, completely. We weren’t ready, I remember sitting on the couch watching TV when my husband told me and just thinking…I didn’t know that at that moment, it was the last time I’d sit on my couch in the living room for the next year+. But, we did it…it was so much work…and so freaking cold and stressful and just ALL of the things.
Once we got it cleaned out, the demo started…we had moved in to my in-laws, two cats, and a dog, sleeping on two twin-size mattresses on the floor. Demo started inside, removing all of the walls, insulation, etc. That’s when we realized we were going to have some major problems. And it only got worse when we started removing the rest of the siding. Completely. Rotted. Out. (We bought the house in 2019 and knew it wasn’t in the best shape…but we had NO idea it was a total mess underneath.) These are dated November 2nd, 2023.
Once everything was off…that’s when we realized we had to started pulling down walls…walls that we were hoping we were just going to build on to and reinforce…there wasn’t ever a Plan B! Below are pictures from November 5-7th, 2023.
Seeing the house like this was SO discouraging…and it was taking so much longer every week because of the snow and rain…with our “house” just wide open. The beams were getting placed so that we could actually start building the second floor and make a race to get a roof on and it covered before winter hit. This was the progress and state of our house when I first left to go back to the US. November 8-18th, 2023.
I was SO sad that I was having to leave as soon as things were starting to pick up around the house. It was a LOT taller than we had imagined it being…but living on the lake in the mountains and having previously had no real view from inside our house before, the view was the whole reason, well and the added space for a master bedroom, bathroom, bar and additional storage/sleeping space, why we decided on building an addition.
We waited FOREVERRRRR for our custom windows…we kept hearing for a couple months (they were supposed to have been delivered in October…) that they were on their way, just finishing production, etc. They finally showed up and my husband and the contractor got them installed January, 29, 2024, and the last few with the completed insulation is from March, 2024.
To date, we’ve been able to salvage our bathroom that we upgraded like 2 months before starting this whole process. Ideally…we would have waited until everything was finished, but we didn’t know it was going to be such a huge undertaking. The pipes also burst and our expensive rain water showerhead and handle are scrap which is really sad…but in the grand scheme of things and costs…it’s just another thing that’s going to have to be replaced.
This picture is from when I came to visit in May, 2024.
I’ll be updating more tomorrow in another post to try and keep them more timely and the entries shorter. It’s crazy to look back at how far we’ve come…but it’s also hard to think about how much further we have to go, yet. Determined to end this on a positive note though, so here’s some good, major progress tomorrow!