31 Days to a Complete Home Renovation: Day 16

Did you know that in Canada master bathrooms are not called master bathrooms?  They're called ensuites  (pronounced "on-suites").  In Canada they also call a bathroom a washroom.  But because I am American, and I sometimes like to be a rebel, I am going to refer to our master bathroom as our master bathroom.  I thought about master washroom as a compromise.  But it sounds too weird.

Moving on...

After we took all the floors out of the top story of the house, my husband was THRILLED to find that the floor was all rotted out in the area that was to become our master bathroom.  (Which is another GOOD TIP: plan on the unplanned!  You'll spend more money than you think.  You just will.)  

See that black spot in the upper right corner?  Yeah…that's not supposed to be there.

In fact, it wasn't just rotted out, there was a hole:

If you looked down that hole you could see the downstairs bathroom.

So Ryan had to rip out those floors and replace them with new studs and new plywood:

So if you walk away from today with anything it's this: when doing a reno or building a house, always plan on extras.  Unexpected little things always pop up.  Luckily for us, my husband does this for a living so we didn't have to hire anyone or pay for any supplies.  But still…it was a good sobering reminder that everything doesn't go according to our plans.  (Pardon me while I preach for a minute, but sitting here on my desk is Proverbs 16:9 which says, "A man's heart plans his ways but the Lord directs his paths."  That's a good word at any time, but I thought it especially fitting for today's little blog about these unexpected things that pop up.  It's a reminder, at least to me, that I can make all the plans I want (beautiful plans!), but it truly rests in my God's hands as to which path he puts me on and when.)

Alright!  Have a great day.

See y'all tomorrow,

E

31 Days to a Complete Home Renovation: Day 15

I hope you liked the sneak peek picture I posted yesterday.  The "after" pictures are always SO much more fun!  And I will be finishing up the reno this week, in an effort to complete the 31 days in…well, in less than 31 days.  So there'll be plenty more pictures this week! :)

Back to the house mid-renovation.  This was a fun day!  We had the dry wall delivered:

 We also had the back yard slab poured:

Prepping for the pour...

See the concrete truck over there to the left?

 And here she is all done:

That concrete slab is the foundation for our new back deck and it also houses a storage unit.  You'll see in up-coming pictures.  

And here's what it looked like before, just so you can remember along with me:

Tomorrow I'm gonna throw some pictures up of our master bathroom area.  The floor was completely rotted out and had to be replaced.  Surprises like that are always fun, hey?

Speaking of surprises….we find out the gender of baby Friesen in 5 sleeps. (That's our method of count-down in these parts).  AHHH!  Expect a whole other blog on that topic! :)

See ya tomorrow friends,

E

31 Days to a Complete Home Renovation: Day 14…but not.

Y'all.  Y'ALL.  I have been sick.  I mean….thought I was going to die sick.  If you remember in my last couple of 31 days posts I mentioned that I'd been fighting a cold.  Well, that cold decided to return and wreak HAVOC I tell ya.  I ended up on 4 antibiotics and a crazy amount of bed rest.  All in all, it was about 3 weeks from start to finish of this cold turned sinus infection turned horrible migraines.  Did I also mention I'm pregnant?  

Oh man…I was so excited to be sticking to my guns with this 31 days thing.  I was actually doing it every single day, staying up late and writing and feeling like I was actually accomplishing something.  Ya know…for all my millions of followers.  

Actually, it was really just for me.  To set a goal and to achieve it.  Yes, I'm type A.  Yes I like making lists and scratching things off my list.  And this 31 days thing was huge on my list.

But getting sick caused me to do NOTHING.  Literally. My hubs ordered me to bed and took care of {mostly} everything.  But this last week as I've finally felt human again, I've had to catch up on everything else: massive piles of laundry, house cleaning, bills, etc.  The blog came in dead last on the priorities list.

All that to say, I am back!  And I will spend the next couple of days wrapping up the reno.  Stick around…it's gonna be good. See y'all tomorrow!  (and because I like to tempt you to come back…here's a sneak peek of our living room after the reno was complete….)

Xoxo,

E

31 Days to a Complete Home Renovation: Day 13

Confession:  I skipped a couple of days writing!  BUT…it was Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday, and I just couldn't stop everything to write.  And then yesterday my cold decided to come back with a vengeance.  So I am writing through a cloud of tylenol and diclectin.  Forgive me.

Today we are talking about appliances!  

Man-o-man.  WHY in the world are there so many choices when it comes to appliances?  I'm a woman and I like shopping as much as the next lady, but c'mon…sometimes we just need fewer choices to make the whole process easier.  

When we started shopping for appliances I was given the measurements of what sizes I needed from my father-in-law, who designed our kitchen.  The first place we hit up was Boss Wholesale Appliances.  They refurbish high-end appliances like Bosch and they work strictly with new appliances that have been dented/damaged during transport: dishwashers, fridges, etc.  

While we were hoping to get most of our appliances from Boss, we were only able to find a fridge that worked with our dimensions.  However, we saved a whole ton of money!  I wasn't overly specific on what kind of fridge I wanted, but we were doing SS and I knew that I loved the french-door style.  I also really, really did NOT want the water-dispenser on the outside.  (We've had the water dispenser feature before and my lovely children seemed to constantly get water on the floor).    We were quoted $2,299.99 for a brand new fridge at a "regular" store.  But at Boss we only paid $1150 for this stainless steel Samsung fridge:

We ordered pretty much everything else from Trail Appliances.  We needed a dishwasher, a gas range, and a microwave (WHY are microwaves SO expensive?!).  All in, we spent $3181 on those 3 appliances that were brand new.  The "splurge" was definitely the dishwasher.  It was only $750 but that was relatively expensive compared to the others I was looking at.  It has the hidden buttons so no kiddos can turn the cycle on or off.  And it also has the stainless steel tub on the inside.  But the MAIN THING is this: my dishwasher can hold THREE 9X13'S.  At the same time.  Did I mention I have 3 boys and a husband who are eating me out of house and home?  To be able to wash that many big things at the same time means 1 thing for me:  no standing at the sink and scrubbing dishes.  The splurge was worth it!!

I am not going to put pictures up of the appliances inside the house.  Yet.

Speaking of the house, let's get back to it, shall we?  

Come back tomorrow!! 

Hope you're feeling better than me!

Elita

31 Days to a Complete Home Renovation: Day 12

So I'm still sick, thanks for asking.  But I'm gonna be ok.  You know why?  Because my husband comes home tonight after being in Guatemala on a missions trip for 10 days. I'm so glad he was able to go and I'm so excited to hear all about what God is doing in the orphanage he worked at.  Selfishly, I am also glad to have my best friend back.  

On to the house!

There were certain things my husband left up to me to pick out.  Actually, pretty much everything.  But, because he's in the building industry, he knows way more than me. Which is super helpful!  We looked through a brochure on front doors (boy are they expensive!) and ended up deciding on one from good 'ol Home Depot.  Here's Ryan installing the front door.  I think this was at about 11pm one night after he'd worked all day on the house.

I liked that the front door sorta matched the style of the garage door. 

Helpful hint:  

Lowe's, Home Depot, Ikea, and Costco got a fair amount of money from us during our renovation.  Listen, this is not our forever house. This house was specifically a flip.  Well, a 2-5 year "flip."  And so we didn't want to spend a fortune on the best of everything.  If you're doing a renovation or a flip house, I would highly suggest getting it settled inside of you that you don't need the best. You just don't.  You won't make money when you spend $1,000 on a custom door rather than $300 on one from Home Depot. I'm just sayin'…

Ok, tomorrow I'll be talking appliances and I'll share where we "splurged" and where we saved (big time!).

Hope you have a great day,

E

31 Days to a Complete Home Renovation: Day 11

Oh y'all.  I'm sick.  Like the throat burning, ears ringing, nose dripping kind of sick.  And I feel like doing just about anything but typing on my computer.  My bed is calling me.  BUT, I am gonna do my best to get my head out of this fog and at least throw some pictures up of our house after the siding and old windows were all taken off.  And as I mentioned, my throat really hurts, so I'm not gonna do much chatting, k?

All of the siding was taken down because…well, because it was gross.  And the windows were all single-pane windows, which means that they provided little-to-no insulation.  We then had to order new ones.

That's my bro-in-law, Jordan.  Hi Jordan! Thanks for giving up a Saturday to work on our house!

There are 3 of my kiddos doing who-knows-what with their cousin.  (Hey Noah! Don't fall out of that window!)

Here's the house after the new double-pane windows were put in and the black-paper stuff (again, that's the official name) was wrapped around the house. She's already looking like less of a dump isn't she?

You may have noticed our new front door…more on that tomorrow. 

Here's the house before, just so you can remember with me:

Ok, it's bed time for me.  (sniffle cough cough)

G'nite,

E

31 Days to a Complete Home Renovation: Day 10

When you buy a house, you always have a list of requirements, right?  Things like: must have 3 or 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a nice sized yard, and a decent kitchen.  Our list was fairly broad, considering that we knew we were going to have buy a lemon and fix it up.  But one thing we knew we had to have: a garage.

If you look back at day 1, you'll notice that there's no garage.  There's a carport.  Have a look:

Ryan took a break from the inside to work on getting the garage all squared-away.  He framed it in first:

That's Ryan's employee, Will, working on our house. Hi Will!

Now it's all wrapped up in the black paper-stuff (that's the technical term for it.)  Actually, my husband is away on a missions trip in Guatemala right now so I can't ask him what the paper is actually called.  But it's necessary, that much I do know.  

After we had it framed in, we ordered a garage.  Which, by the way, was super hard to do!  I had no idea there were so many choices!  Did we want windows?  No windows?  How many windows?  An insulated door or a non-insulated door?  A wooden door or a fiber-glass door?  Ryan, the sweet guy that he is, left it up to me to choose.  So I did.  And, of course I picked the most expensive one: 

Ryan stepped in at this point and said, "ok.  you can choose one on THIS page of the brochure.  This is the cheap page."  Ya know how once you get an idea in your head any other thing looks mediocre?  Yeah.  That stinks.  And it took me a longer time than it should have to pick one out.  But, I have to say, I do like the one we ended up choosing.  Here she is:

I was able to keep the windows that I liked but we opted for a cheaper, fiber-glass option.  It's perfectly fine and achieves the look I wanted without the cost going through the roof.  It's also super quiet, which is handy for those napping kids.

Tomorrow we're gonna take a look at the house after the siding was all taken off! It made an immediate, awesome difference.

See y'all tomorrow!

Elita