Nest Building

Well.. Here we are again in the midst of a major renovation project.

First a little history. We live in a 120 year old farm house and the last renovation was to completely gut and replace our upstairs bathroom.. My husband is an absolute wonder when it comes to designing and project managing so it turned out totally fabulous. We were able to re-use some elements of the house. For example, the cast-iron floor grates were recycled to provide airflow for the bubbler tub. Before we did that, we drywalled the back bedroom and turned it into our office and craft room. The plan, at least from my point of view, was not to drywall but just to remove the old wallpaper and apply a clean coat of paint on top of the old horse-hair plaster.. That definitely did not work out! By the time I'd removed four coats of wallpaper, I'd discovered that the walls had been damaged and patched - - - by applying plaster to the hole right OVER TOP of the wallpaper!! Being the kind of person that I am - extremely tenacious (my husband says stubborn) - I persevered until at long last, the ceiling nearly came down on my head. I finally had to admit defeat and we carried on to complete the drywall - over top of the plaster. We were able to add receptacles by pulling off the baseboards and running new wiring along the floor and fishing the wire up from the basement beside the old chimney. End result? Beautiful new walls, and LOTS of receptacles!

Now for the current reno! The first renos taught us some lessons! If I were to start all over again, here is the order in which I would do things:

1. empty the entire upstairs
2. gut the walls to the studs
3. update the wiring
4. insulate
5. drywall
6. paint
7. pull old linoleum from the wide pine floors, strip and refinish
8. apply new baseboards and trim

We've made the mistake of doing things backwards.. We had cellulose insulation blown into the walls from the inside this past winter which means we can't remove the old plaster.. and we've already stripped and refinished all but one of the floors so now we are drywalling the last three rooms! Praise God! We were referred to a christian drywall contractor! He and his sons have been doing an exemplary job and we should see the end of it by the end of next week! At least the drywall part of it will be done. We will still need to paint, trim and refinish the remaining pine floor, but after five years of this we will finally be done with the upstairs and will have a haven in which to retreat!

We are already working on the planning for the next project. Stay tuned for details on the "Kitchen Reno". It'll be huge because right now we have two kitchens.. Yup, you read correctly.. TWO kitchens.. One was the "help" kitchen for when the farmworkers came in to eat and the other was the "family" kitchen. This will actually make the transition easier because we can design, build, and finish the new kitchen and then go about de-commissioning and demolishing the other one. We'll be turning it into a formal dining room and hopefully be able to install a nice gas fireplace as well - that is if finances allow.. If not... well it'll just wait until we can.

Remember - God is good! He is always there for those who believe and trust in His love and care.