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:).