After a short delay, the renovation has officially begun!

I’ll be sharing updates about our renovation on the blog (because that’s what I do), so here’s the first one! We’ll be doing this big project in 3 phases: upstairs, downstairs and exterior.

Over the last few weeks we basically packed up the entire upstairs (except the laundry room) and moved it to the dining room and front room downstairs. Then a dumpster was delivered and it was time to get real.

Before the professionals come in, we worked with Hunter’s dad to demo the upstairs. This included a LOT of things:

• Remove all the trim from doors & the floor.
• Take out the cabinets, vanities and mirrors in the bathrooms.
• Remove the toilets (we’re keeping 1 temporary one upstairs for now).
• Chisel out the tile around the jacuzzi tub.
• Remove the fiber glass jacuzzi tub & shower insert from the bathrooms.
• Remove the tile flooring & cement.
• Remove the hardwood floor in the hallway.
• Remove the carpet & nail strips from the master, nursery & man cave. Still have to remove carpet from my office.
• Remove the particle board underlay. This was under the carpet and will be replaced with wood. Still have a few more places to do this.

During 3 days over the holiday weekend, Hunter and his dad (with a little help from me) knocked out that entire list. We now both understand how much manual labor goes into demolition, which is something they gloss over on those HGTV makeover shows.

Before I get too far and the questions pop in your head… Yes, I know I’m pregnant (although I currently feel great in the 2nd trimester), I’m being extremely careful, I took several water breaks, I wore a mask, work gloves, glasses (until they fogged up from humidity) and even had on ear protection. The two of them also constantly checked on me and made sure I was taking breaks. All I really did was fill up my 5 gallon bucket with debris (minus anything with chemicals I wasn’t allowed near) and walk it out to the dumpster. I walked 5 miles in a day without leaving the house! When I couldn’t help, I was on kitty duty and hung out with Cleo in the bedroom where she stayed while we were working.

Ready for some progress pictures?

Talk about a productive & exhausting 4th of July holiday! Luckily, we’re only helping with the demo and that part is basically done upstairs. We also went shopping for bathroom fixtures which is more exciting than you’d think.

Pro tip: If you don’t have any coupons, use hugeoff.com to purchase coupons for Lowe’s or Home Depot before big purchases at those stores. They’re usually only a few bucks and will save you $$$. We bought a coupon for $3 and saved $86 on fixtures this weekend!

Next up: Adding in wood subfloor where it’s missing, the plumber fix up the master and upstairs bathrooms and some framing will happen! That should start this week and we’ll work toward getting to a point where the flooring guys and tile guys can get in there and start getting new floors down.

Now that the upstairs is stripped down to the basics, it’s pretty exciting and you can start to see what our vision is. This is happening!!!!