So it's been a while since I posted on this (and all of my) blogs, but it's a new year, a new decade, and low and behold, there is construction afoot at our house again! We had close to 9 years of peace and quiet without significant projects on the house. This relative calm was due to many factors including increased travel, planning for projects elsewhere (more on that later), and the fact that we were pretty happy with our living situation after remodeling the kitchen, our living room, our master bathroom, and the bedrooms. The guest bath, drafty windows in the main floor, and old, ugly front door just haven't been priorities.
A little over a year ago we realized if we ever wanted the bulk of these "non-exciting" projects done, we may need to forego the DIY route and hire someone. Researching and interviewing some contractors, we finally met one who seemed to "get us". He was busy with projects for over 6-months but we were not exactly in a hurry. Months and months of planning and permits ensued. Then when we got the final estimate for everything, including all the great add-on ideas the contractor and we had, the budget was 2x our original budget. We had to scale back and eliminate some of the work, a lot of the work, actually. Most of the steel-work had to go. The deck and "Juliet balcony" were nixed. The little bathroom would have to wait. The redesigned stairs were out. The floor would have to be done later. Another month or two went by.
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| Pile of bricks from the fireplace |
Then, all of sudden, there were workers showing up at our house at 7:30am! A couple weeks later, windows arrived in the carport. They made quick work of things, putting in new windows, building up walls, putting up custom-made cedar siding. Then we started adding on a few more things. Maybe the brick fireplace could be replaced with a gas model? And here we are, the workers on break over the holidays, and waiting for our gas fireplace to come in. The bricks from our old fireplace were removed prior to this, but it really was a huge pile of bricks in the carport for a while!
While I feel like we are not only cheating by hiring a contractor, but also by blogging on my DIY blog about a project we are not doing ourself, I am hoping to get back in the habit of writing a little now and again and this is a decent way to begin. Also, we will have some projects of our own to complete once the workers are done here. It may be a good point of comparison between professionals and ourselves.
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