“WE HAVE TO MOVE BACK HOME A MONTH EARLY” AND OTHER THINGS HOMEOWNERS SAY THAT MAKE CONTRACTORS SHUDDER.
PART FIVE.
Woof! Who else is still stuffed from Thanksgiving?! I hope you all had a special few days surrounded by your favorite people.
I took this opportunity (family in town) to ask my mom to help me clean my dreamy but impossible to clean Urban Electric smokebell pendants in our kitchen. To give you a mental image of what this entailed, there was a duvet cover covering our kitchen island, and Neil acted as a safety net. I’m not sure if I was more concerned about protecting the pendants, or our kitchen counters (read last week’s post for context).
Before buying anything breakable that will hang from high heights, I highly recommend you ask yourself, “How will I clean this?” You’ll thank me one day. Our electrician asked me this question after he finished hanging them.
We hosted Thanksgiving in our NEW DINING ROOM (with our framed “Grey Lady”), which was so great to finally be able to do. I only consumed one bottle of wine while kids played on/with/around our glass wall and sliding door. It survived, and so did I.
This feels like an appropriate segue because I left off last week with the install of the glass wall and sliding door, conceptualized by me, and designed and built by Simon from Surfside Glass and our builder, Julius Pasys, owner of LithCon Inc.
Sometime in May, I had to break the news to our builder that we had to move home about a month early; June instead of July. (The photo below is approximately what move in day looked like downstairs.) In hindsight, I should have delivered that news with a six-pack of beer.
The bad news was that the second floor had to be move in ready about four weeks early. The silver lining (for everyone else) was that Neil and I (and our old pup) could be relegated to the second floor while the first floor was finished.
Timing is everything for a renovation, and I especially saw that towards the end. Painters had to finish (upstairs) so everything could dry and the floor protective paper could be removed (omg the floors were soooo good when I finally got to see them). The shower tile had to be finished so we could actually shower. The post-construction crew needed to clean so the furniture could be delivered – and if you’re an inexperienced first time renovator like me, you maaaay do a couple of those final steps out of order. Lesson learned: cleaning before furniture delivery.
Living through a renovation for a month or so was like glamping. Outdoor shower? Check. Eating off of disposable dinnerware? Check. Look both ways to ensure no one is around before you pee? Double check.
A significant benefit of living through the last 4-6 weeks of a renovation (timeline is extending as we wait for our kitchen counters) is we had the shortest punch list in the history of punch lists.
As rooms were painted and built-ins completed (swoon, I can’t wait to share photos of these), up went towel hooks, mudroom cubby hardware, doorstops, and all of the other stuff I’ve heard you normally have to chase. And in an odd turn of events, our dog was in such sensory overload that she grew to be friendly at the age of 13 years old.
Unless I’ve missed something massive, next week will be the final reveal! Our architect, Matthew MacEachern of Emeritus, did a photo shoot at the house, and I’m so excited to share some of the photos with you.
Next post: The final reveal, and major thank yous.