Renovations

I've heard lots of stories about home renovations: they always take longer than you think, they always cost more than you think, etc. Well, it's all true!

When we moved into our house it had an unfinished basement. At the time, it didn't seem like that big of a deal. We could finish it the way we wanted and expand our living space. After nearly a year of unpacking and settling in, we decided to tackle the project.

We got a couple of quotes from local contractors that left my mouth gaping. Surely we wouldn't have to pay that much just to finish the basement!?! Well, no. We wouldn't. Because we found Mike. Mike is our neighbour who is very handy and has endless energy! He has quarterbacked this project - putting in countless hours at our house and he has had great ideas and suggestions because he's done this type of thing before. Devin has been helping out - which saves on our cost but he's also learning a ton along the way. A win win!

We started out with a mountain of boxes haphazardly strewn about the entire lower level. We had not unpacked all of Devin's stuff when we had to vacate my house. It was the hottest day of the summer when we moved my stuff so all of my belongings were shoved into the basement for the sake of "getting it done". After that, it seemed like an enormous task each time we went to the basement... a mountain of boxes to make our way through.

Slowly but surely we eliminated some boxes - unpacked for our use, donated to Goodwill, sold on Kijiji or just plain garbage. We still have plenty left to go through, but we at least had a manageable sized mountain to deal with. We moved all of these boxes into our "unfinished" area and Mike got to work on framing some walls. It was amazing to see how quickly things changed in the early stages. It went from a big ole empty room with insulation and vapor barrier to walls with drywall and eventually paint. Then came a bathroom, lighting, flooring and a fireplace!

We are nearly at the finish line and are so excited to have this new space to use as a family. The countless hours of working down there is now about to pay off. Although, it has me holding off on the pending kitchen renovation!