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- Well – I guess you could say that the whole “new roof and new siding” project has really spring-boarded us into the new year and we’re already up to our eyeballs in another major renovation project!
(I guess the roof and siding was “Phase 2” – “Phase 1” was enclosing our front porch and creating our entryway plus getting new windows. So, that puts us squarely in “Phase 3”!)
Our DINING ROOM is getting a complete renovation!
Over the course of the last week, we’ve (slowly but surely) worked on clearing the room out. We’re really good at playing Tetris, as we’ve had to fit everything from our dining room into the rest of our house (which means mainly into the living room). We’ve gotten rid of stuff, we’ve given stuff away, we’ve re-arranged and re-arranged and re-arranged to make it all work. And, it’s not exactly “comfortable”, but it works.
On Tuesday, Derrick officially took down the walls. There was paneling, Styrofoam, lath and plaster – layer upon layer of mess. We actually made incredible progress that night and not only got all of the walls ripped down, but we got it all cleaned up and carted out to our dumpster too.
We did our best to block off the dining room from the rest of the house, but no matter what we did, dust and dirt STILL went everywhere. I woke up Wednesday morning with a thick layer of DUST over my ENTIRE kitchen. My counters, cupboards, dishes, sink, coffee – everything was coated. I had to scrub the entire kitchen down. I mopped the floor three times. It was simply awful. And in the end, it took me about 6 hours to get everything clean again.
By mid-day Wednesday, I was over the thought of renovating our dining room. Yes, it needed it and yes, the end result would be “worth it”, but in that moment I was OVER IT. I did not sign up for all of this extra stuff.
But, you know, once this train starts rumbling down the tracks, there is no stopping it. So, we are pressing forward.
Since Wednesday we have further taken down the fireplace (we found 3 postcards behind the fireplace from the early 1900’s), we’ve ripped up the floor, we’ve pulled out the built in china cabinet (and found way more space than we were expecting – we’re still re-grouping and trying to figure out what we want to do with that), and my Dad came over to help rework some of the electrical stuff. Today’s task cleaning up a little more and insulating the room. There is still a few small tasks that need to get done, but we’re just about ready for Derrick’s parents to come in on Wednesday to help us put the room back together (new dry wall, new flooring, new ceiling).
And I’ve recovered from the whole 6-hour-kitchen-cleaning-fiasco. Mostly. I’m still going slightly crazy at (temporarily) losing 30% of my main floor living space and having everything stuffed into our living room – but we’re making it happen (and by this time next week, we should be almost ready to start moving things back. I can’t wait. - I blogged what is always one of my favorite blog posts of the year this week – the Abby’s Saturday bloopers from the previous year! If you missed it, go check it out: HERE!
- I also finished up our December “Abbey Archives” film (it’s the highlights of our “daily life” over the course of the month). It took me longer to put together than any other monthly film, but that’s just because December is always so packed to the brim with STUFF! Most of my monthly films are between 10-12 minutes long – and December tips the scales at 19 minutes! Oh well, it’s worth it to be a little long, because it’s so full of fun.
And with that – I now have TWO complete years of monthly films of our family doing daily life. You can literally sit down and watch our entire year – both 2021 and 2022 now – end to end like a movie. Is that not the coolest thing ever? I am so proud of myself for this project and it just becomes more and more precious as time goes on.
If you want to watch our December film, it’s here – and if you’d like to watch the last 2 years of films I’ve made of our family, you can watch all of those over on my YouTube channel! - Did you know you can listen to audio books via an app called “Libby” for FREE through your library? I know I’ve heard of it before, but for whatever reason had never checked it out until this week – it’s awesome! It’s limited (probably 50% of the books I typed in to look for are not available on the app) but I still found stuff! You do have to “check books out” just like at a library, so I did get on the waiting list for some books I’ve been wanting to read, but I was able to access immediately some kids books that Braelynn and Leander have been LOVING listening to! They’ve become quite obsessed and well – me too!
- I’ve been slowly working on one of my other favorite annual blog posts – the “behind the scenes” post! I plan to publish it this coming week!
[…] parents are here!After we completely ripped apart our dining room last week – Derrick’s Dad is here to put it back together this week! That includes new drywall, new […]
[…] in case you’ve missed the updates over the last few weeks – we kickstarted the new year by gutting our dining room! It was this whole process to tear all of the walls, remove the fireplace and the built-in china […]