And so it begins (really)

When we shopped for our house, the formal living room looked like this.
Lovely pink faux finish, no? I realize paint would fix this, but the bigger issue was that the small family room behind the faux finish was too small a room to do anything with. And, it has a huge fireplace/hearth. My solution was to knock out the wall between the rooms to have one big room.

This was the same wall on the day of our closing. Jake got all the plaster and paneling off before we moved in to keep the mess down. Great idea, considering we were planning on going gangbusters on our remodel. You know what they say about the best laid plans . . .. suddenly it is February 2008 and we've been living with a stud wall for 16 moths. The funny thing is, no one pays it much attention! And I've gotten away with procrastinating for several reasons, primarily I had to select my new cabinet color before I could choose the flooring before we could actually get the wall ripped out. I'm good at making excuses to put things off :)

Well, yesterday, we began work. The stud wall is actually going to be taken out by a contractor because it is a load bearing wall, but the rest of the paneling is GONE (pay no attention to the gross 45 year old insulation, it's getting replaced)!





The scary part is this now means we will have no fun for several months due to weekends spent working on the house. The list of things to do? Install new windows, take down textured ceiling and put up new sheet rock on ceiling and walls, tile over brick hearth, lay new tile & hardwood floors, install recessed and track lighting, paint & install new hardware kitchen cabinets (paying someone to do that!), install new tile counter top and under mount sink, install glass tile back splash. Of course, that is the list of known work. . . hopefully the list of unexpected jobs that sprout up during work doesn't get too big. Then, of course, we will have to paint, furnish and decorate! The workload and the cash outlay are a little daunting. I am hoping we can finish everything in 3-4 months (a) so I don't go crazy living in a construction zone and (b) so that we are done with the hard work before it is 100 degrees and 90% humidity in the middle of July! Wish us luck, you know, both to finish everything and to do it without killing each other!

And, because it's horribly logical, I hung up my new painting, just as construction is beginning. This is just it's temporary location, but isn't it fabulous? (OK, I know the real depth of the painting isn't going to convey in a photo, but just humor me and tell me it's gorgeous. . . and HUGE! I love that it's so big!)

Hopefully some knitting will get fit in with all the house work, I believe I will need it to keep my sanity. I made good progress on Jake's sock between a lazy Friday night and Saturday morning knitting group. New sweaters are on hold pending KnitPicks order :)

Happy Monday!