An Addition

When renovations wind down, it is easy to see how much has been accomplished and fall into a sense of complacency. We have a full working bathroom, our kitchen is fully functional and 96% finished, we have two finished bedrooms, and finally have a table and chairs in the dining room. Sure, a couple of our kitchen drawers need a carpenter’s love, but these are the rooms that we spend time in and they look great. This nearly-finished house has soothed our renovation-weary hearts, and during our much deserved break from contractors we forgot that our home still needs some help.

Tiling the master shower is finally underway!

We have been living in one of our two finished bedrooms since we made our final move into Southmore last March, and have been using our master suite as a storage room for these last nine months. In the spring, when I would walk by the room, I envisioned it as a finished space and longed for it’s completion. Our kitchen cabinets were built in May and painted in July, and I wondered how much longer we would have to wait to move into the master bedroom. I don’t know when, but at some point during the summer I stopped wondering when we would change rooms and became content where I was. The contentment was a good thing because it relieved much of the stress associated with the snail’s pace of a renovation, but it also put a stop to the pestering of contractors and subcontractors to start the next phase.

For those who don’t yet know, we are expecting a son at the end of March 2017. Our approaching addition to the family has given us a sense of urgency again, and we have a new deadline to finish everything. Whether or not we are able to stick to this deadline is a question I cannot answer yet, but his one feels more real than any of the dozens of other deadlines we have made over the last two years. In the last few weeks we have made great progresses to our dormant renovation, progresses that will allow us to move in to our master bedroom with (hopefully) plenty of time to turn our guest bedroom across the hall into a nursery. Our master shower is now tiled, and we were finally able to coax the plumbers into our backyard to trench for and install a new sewer line. We borrowed a friend’s consumer reports account to choose and order toilets for our remaining bathrooms, and gave those toilet dimensions to the shower glass company so that they would know where to install our new door so as to not get in anything’s way. The glass company will arrive this morning, and hopefully finish within a week. 

Home renovations aren't always glitz and glamour. Here we have a new sewer line being installed - something I never thought I would get excited about.

We still have a list of a dozen or more tasks to finish, but it seems much more manageable than the hundreds of tasks we started with. We are moving again toward progress, and perhaps this time we will finally accomplish our goals.