At Last...

Remember our prediction that the final inspection would come on June 8th?  Weeeeellll, that didn't happen.  But a week later, this did.

Yes, that would be us carpeting the street in front of our house:).  Although it looked super different in the bright sunlight, it was PERFECT once installed inside.  Aiden and Liam would have posed for a picture attesting to this, except I couldn't get them to sit still...

They were so happy to be in their room at LAST!  And we were thrilled to get the carpet in because the very next day... we moved the contents of our storage unit into the new house!  To keep the kids out of the way, we baby gated them in their new room and threw boxes of toys in to them every 20 minutes.

When that grew old, I took them over for a swim in the 100 degree weather while Itay continued the move...

And at the end of the day, we were in!  Well, at least our STUFF was in:).  We were most definitely not ready to be habitating with two small children in this precarious situation.

The next week was spent trying to plow through that pile of boxes, and supervising the final coat of exterior paint...

putting in a comically pretty mailbox slot...

And setting up at least a few of our domestic areas so we could FINALLY get in the house!  

By Friday, we were ready.  

And yet, the work is not done.  Saturday saw a crew clearing the back patio and leveling the yard to prep it for a deck and lawn!!! Theoretically in the next few weeks!

I am so excited to finally have my stuff back.  I really forgot how much I missed all my kitchen gadgets!  We enjoyed our first family dinner with our first house guests, Uncle Sam and Aunt Sara...

We are home.

AT LAST.

In the Final Stretch...

Well, it's official... we are rounding the final bend in the remodel road...

...and not a moment too soon.  Although we have all weathered our journey remarkably well (and by all, I refer to myself, Itay, our children, but especially my poor in-laws who were unwittingly duped into housing us for a year instead of 6 weeks), we are all ready for some "normalcy."

Happily, that is expected to come in the next few weeks, as we wrap up final decisions and watch the finishing touches applied to our long-awaited dream house!

Our countertops turned out amazing. 

And we have water in the house once again, which is awesome, especially since our plumbing fixtures are so lovely!

We finalized all our lighting decisions.  I am fairly sure no one will walk into any of the bedrooms and say "Whoa, that is a killer ceiling light fixture!" But I love the dining room pendant drum shade we chose from Crate and Barrel, and think someone just might give us that reaction at one point or another:).

 The outdoor lights are super cute too.

And most excitingly... we are 75% towards hardwood floor completion!  They look STUNNING, if I can be a bit modest.  Perhaps my dear husband's WEEKS of deliberating over the hardwood choice were worth it... but I will never admit that.

Our final inspection is scheduled for this Friday, June 8.  I am still very skeptical about that date, especially given the amazing ability of our contractor to treat every one of our to-do tasks like a first draft.  I am not sure if there is anything that has been done in the last few months that was right the first time.  Sigh.  And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why some contractors give such dramatically lower bids than others!  Happily, that drama is just a few weeks away from being a funny memory:).

I. Can't. Wait!!!!!

Decisions, decisions...

The last few weeks have seen a lot of little progress and a LOT of big decisions... We spent a lovely family day at a granite showroom a few weeks ago deciding on countertops...

Aiden and Liam are truly amazing little remodel troopers.  They sat nicely coloring and doing puzzles and (mostly) gently checking out tile displays while we arrived at a big decision... manufactured quartz for both the bathroom...

And the kitchen countertops.  Here Itay inspects our giant slab of "Newquay" from Cambrian.  In just a few days, this will live in our kitchen!

Last weekend we agonized over some of our final decisions - paint and tile.  We spent several hours staring at these walls trying to determine a paint color...

And this one, trying to determine the optimal tile size...

And finally we settled on this lovely color!

No, not really, that is just the stucco primer lending a rosy hue to our back wall.  Although I must say, it has a certain charm, if the "Barbie" look was what we were going for:)

In the end we actually decided on Bleached Burl from Kelley Moore for most of the interior walls.  The exterior will be Ironwood, and all will be accented by Swiss Coffee.  When I stopped by last night, this amazing progress shot awaited me...

That's the view from Aiden and Liam's room into the master bedroom... I think the wall color is the perfect warm gray contrast to our shiny white moldings and baseboards.  It is looking amazing... and more and more like a house that people will actually someday live in!  Amazing to think!

Springing forward!

I left for 5 days for a quick Spring Break roadtrip and came back to this:



A real live kitchen is taking shape!!!! It is so light and airy, we are soooo happy with how it's turning out...

More big visual progress came in the way of the bathroom tile completion!


And the stucco guys worked their magic on the gaping holes in the sides of the house, and of course the family room "addition":


It is beyond exciting to see the actual house taking shape. The next few weeks will get us super close to move-in, with doors and moldings scheduled to be installed next week, painting following that, and flooring installation at the end of the month.

Still... I think this will be the hardest leg of our loooooong remodel journey, as the light has started to shine at the end of the tunnel... but... it's.... still... so... far... away... I am just absolutely spent on patience with our living situation. I won't complain, because the good fortune that has fallen on my family is sooooo appreciated, but man! This year has been a challenging one. Little house, you will be deeply loved very soon:).

I think this might be the "fun" part?

I am trying not to get my hopes up. But after this weekend, I feel like things are reeeeeaaallly moving. Case in point: Saturday included meetings with our painter and our engineer, visits to the interior door, tile, countertop, and appliance stores, and a good 2-hour session of opening up the kitchen cabinets, which I have to say was WAY better than Christmas for me this year:).

On the painting front, we are going to go with "smooth" textures, as half our walls are new anyway so they're pretty smooth as it is. This is saving us a bunch of $$, as long as it works, so we are thrilled. Now we just have to decide on some colors...

The engineer discovered what had been causing our floors to be un-level in one corner of the living room and came up with a prescription to fix it in like 2 hours - on a Saturday. He is awesome.

We decided on our interior doors, which wasn't hard, as they are basic one-panel shaker style. We're still thinking about garage and front doors...

We pretty much decided on our tile and countertop for the bathroom...


Nice and neutral, with a fun little accent.

We may have narrowed our kitchen countertop choices down to two...


or


Both are manufactured quartz, which has many of the pros of stone but with less maintenance (yes, please!) and a wider variety of color choices. I say we MAY have narrowed it down because I know my dear husband too well... and I have a sneaking suspicion I will not get away with a quick decision - we were in and out of the store in 20 minutes with the final two contenders. There MUST be a catch somewhere...;)

And like I mentioned, we opened up the cabinets. They are gorgeous - so fresh and shiny white, which looks amazing next to our rich espresso colored hardwood choice. And even though they're not custom, we did opt for some super cool options, like this tiered silverware drawer, which has me feeling super high class...


The funnest moment came when we opened up the corner piece that will be the transition between the family room and kitchen and put it in place just to see what we have in store for us...


It made us remember that even though everything feels so airy and open right now, when we start getting furniture in it will fill in fast! We will have to work on editing our stuff as we reintroduce it to the house:).

Sunday found Itay under the house in the crawl space during a hail storm. He is my new favorite person for overcoming his fears of dirt and dark and spiders and all the other creepiness that I personally associate with crawl spaces. As a result of his bravery, he and our handyman supreme were able to fix our un-level subfloor so it is ready for the hardwood floor installation sometime in the next week or so! My heroes!

Meanwhile, back at Savta and Saba's house, Aiden was hard at work himself, adding some colorful flair to our plans, and then turning them into a sleeping bag...


None of the Tassas escape the hard work of the remodel;)!

Marching on...

Although I have been warned the next few weeks could feel like the project slows down, I still feel like we have made a lot of progress from the first before pics, so here's a glimpse of the house as of mid-March...

The family room...


View from family room back into kitchen/living room...


Kitchen...


Dining nook...


Hall bathroom...


Master bedroom...


And boys playing with hoses and soccer balls while I snap pictures of the progress...



Coming up in the next few weeks... texture and paint and kitchen cabinets and wood floors - oh my!

Drywall!

About a month ago, I checked in on our project progress and had a little panic attack moment. It was during the "dark" days - literally dark, as it was the dead of winter, so by 5:30 when I'd roll by the house it would be shadowy and ominous. And figuratively dark, as it was the period where there were no windows, few walls, and holes in the floors of most rooms. My panic crept up as I had this realization.

There is no way we could live in the house like this.

Because up until that moment, I think I had always had a "backup plan" in my mind - if things got truly unbearable with our living situation, if we ran into a financial meltdown crisis, whatever, we could always just move into the house and figure things out later. But that "backup plan" required windows and walls to be a viable option, hence the mini panic attack.

So happily those dark days are lightening up. Literally, the daylight hours are stretching out and the sunshine is abundant. And figuratively, because what brightens a house better than....


Fresh drywall throughout!!!!!

Also, as this picture shows, it is now safe(r) to let Liam's little feet touch the ground of his soon to be home. He is pretty overjoyed about getting to walk around again:).

Big Progress!

When I last wrote, I thought the darkest days of the project were over. I was wrong.


Yes, we were THAT house on the block for the past few weeks - the boarded up window crack house, as Itay affectionately called it. Of course, all our neighbors are excited to see us improving the neighborhood and do not begrudge us the current mess, but it was still very discouraging to visit the house and see gaping holes in every wall. And a blue tarp for a roof. Fortunately by the end of last week, we had arrived at this:


By far the biggest change over the last few weeks has been the family room. It is hard to hide my excitement each time I see another puzzle piece fall into place.






While I've tried to keep the kids clear of the "Toddler Death Trap" that is our house right now, I couldn't resist snapping the pic that you see above. Aiden and Liam have been unbelievably awesome, rolling with everything we've gone through this last year. Liam is really too little to know anything else - I just realized he has now officially been living at his grandparent's house for the majority of his little life. Aiden, however, doesn't miss a thing, though he mostly keeps his thoughts on our confusing living situation to himself. When we went to our storage unit a few weeks ago I asked him if there was anything he'd like. I was sort of kidding, since it had been about six months since we packed his stuff away, and he really hadn't said a thing about missing his toys. Imagine my surprise when he came up with a very specific list: Buzz Lightyear wings, his play barbecue, Woody from Toy Story... even though he hadn't seen any of these items in over half a year, he had not forgotten a thing.

I was reminded again of his hyper awareness when we stopped by the house at the end of last week. For the last month there had been a gaping hole in his bedroom sub-floor where a section of rotted wood had been removed. Last week the crew filled in the hole with new boards. "Hey! They fixed the hole in my floor!" was the first thing Aiden said when we did our walk-through. The next day when the new window was installed, Aiden started jumping and clapping for joy at his window. I have to wonder, has he been visiting our wreck of a house and thinking we are total idiots who are ruining a perfectly nice house under the pretense of "fixing" it? Does he see these holes and windowless openings and think we will be asking him to move into a shanty in the near future? If so, he sure is shouldering that burden well, because he never says anything until he sighs with relief. Too funny.

And now that we ARE seeing some serious forward progress, it is less scary to have the littles there. Here's Liam, hamming it up behind the work fence.


And Aiden taking some measurements and making some notes for our contractor.


We were over there last night checking in with the electrician and the boys were playing in the front yard. I am proud to share a "Mom of the Year" moment: me yelling, "Aiden, watch your brother and make sure he doesn't pick up the broken glass and nails!" as I headed to the back bathroom to consult on electrical outlet placement. To his credit, Aiden was completely successful in the task! But back to the boys playing in the front yard. They were picking up pine cones and throwing them over the work fence... for about a half hour. Entirely contented, and totally focused. I was enchanted, and I needed that moment yesterday, as we suffer through stress and drama with our contractor, stress and drama with our budget, and stress and drama with living with the in-laws (though admittedly, that's lowest on the list). In just a few months, we'll be in our own house, and the boys can throw pine cones for HOURS if they want. And hopefully there won't be TOO many glass shards or nails to get in the way:).

But before that... more decisions... this week: APPLIANCES! We're pretty much set on the GE Cafe line...


So pretty!