Seeking validation

Are you good at making decisions or bad at making decisions?

I used to be good. In fact I felt like it was one of my strengths. Whether it came from some sort of inner clarity or ability to prioritize, I often felt like I was pretty good at reaching a decision and then accepting whatever the outcome was. I didn't over think but I also didn't act carelessly. And I have no regrets.

But it has gotten harder for me. Maybe the stakes have gotten higher. Maybe the cost has gotten higher. Maybe the anxiety to get it right has gotten higher. I don't really know.

So what do I do - I ask for advice. I seek validation. From everybody. Yesterday I felt like I wanted to ask the woman making my chai how she felt about track lighting. I mean seriously.

What is happening right now with this project haus is that the sheer quantity of decisions needed has sky-rocketed into the thousands. And all are connected and all cost money and all have ramifications for the future. And many don't lead to immediate satisfaction because in making one decision you create ten new decisions that need to be addressed. And there are two of us who have equal say.

And yes, these are cosmically unimportant decisions. The are humanitarily (which isn't even a word but it should be) unimportant decisions. The location of the shower head in bath #3 is universally not important. But if the decision is not thought out, it will affect someone's shower experience potentially everyday. Again, not hugely important but important. And holding that can take over your brain and your heart and your whole body. No wonder people saying remodeling/building a house is so taxing on a relationship.

But we had said we wanted to do it differently. We had said we would not let this house cause a divide or extra pain - because it is just a house. It is just a house. It is just a house. Please forgive the repetition, I needed to write that for me just now. It is just a house.

It is just a house.

Windows and One Fancy Door

Our windows are here...

A new kind of date night

We need to start doing something fun.

Decisions

Vacation, then home, then Tahoe, then Christmas, then back home. And then boom.

We landed in decision making madness.

All those decisions that were floating patiently somewhere in the future suddenly bolted into the present moment and exploded onto my to-do list.

All in one day, I started with plumbing fixtures...

then got distracted with tile for the shower floors….

then got derailed by the size and necessity of a cold air return at the top of the stairs for the new upstairs furnace…

and then had to approve the new location of the old cold air return which meant deciding between the cheaper location and the right location which meant cutting a few beams and floor joists in the crawl space…

and finally landing in appliances at Home Depot after 2 hours of research with my husband over the weekend while our kids were with their uncle (thank you Robin). And happy to say that the 2 hours of research basically landed us back to the place where we started, which was this LG set.

Can you say HVAC and sub-floor?

You gotta love it when you overhear sub-contractors telling your contractor that "Things look really good in here - should make our job easy!"

And in goes the first heating ducts!

Stairs!!!!!

I was gone for 3 weeks. And knew things would look different. But I didn't know that when I opened the front door that we would have NEW STAIRS!

Living in 700 sq. feet

This is what it looks like - living in 700 sq ft.

One bathroom, one bedroom, 1 set of bunk-beds, 1 bed in the living room, 1 desk, 1 very hacked together breakfast nook.

But we're doing it. And we're doing it well.

And we'd do it all over again.

It went up.

I was expecting jubilation and fanfare and merriment.

Instead I got, "It went up."

Indeed, the floor went up. It went up 6 inches plus some.

We have level floors!!!

Do you understand we don't have a 6 inch slope in the living room anymore and the only thing that cracked was a small bit of the plaster in the two downstairs bedrooms! Do you know how many discussions we have had with people in the last 2 years about whether to do this or not? Do you know that we significantly changed the scope of this phase of construction? Did you know that up until 2 weeks ago we weren't planning on leveling the floors? Did you know that last week 3 guys spent all their work hours separating our house into 3 different sections so only the section that was sloping would move today? Do you you know we weren't sure if this would work? This is huge news.

But for the 6 men who patiently and knowingly raised it this morning, it was just another day at the office.

The space under the house looks like some medieval catacomb or abandoned mine. These structures are massive. Sort of like a giant's game of Jenga.

And it is these structures which are now holding our raised floor in place and will continue to do so until the new walls are sound. The house will then slowly and gently be let down again.

Outside, the very dainty posts and jacks in comparison did all the work. 

All of that, just to get this...

DIY Curb Appeal

Am starting to think the orange cones and temporary power pole could actually be the latest trend in home design. Call it something like industrial chic.

Joking aside, we need to address the curb appeal of this house. It has none. No, it's worse than none - it has negative curb appeal if that is even possible. The plywood arches, the 2-tone brown, the glassed in porch, the 20 feet tall columns that are holding up the stairs. It's all so bad and it's so bad that it is blinding us to the potential.

One day I can see it and then the next day I can't. It's the transitions to the back yard and to the main entrance that seem to weigh the most heavily - so of course we should design to meet those needs. But working with what you have can often be so much harder than starting from scratch, so instead of paying our architect to come up with new iterations that we may or may not like, we took to paper and pencil. Well, my husband took to paper and pencil.

And the boys played.

And I took it all in, trying to digest it all.

This is how we designed everything in Phase 1 - I should just trust this will unfold the same way.

Demo: Chimney + Fireplace

BEFORE…

and then AFTER…

BEFORE...

and then AFTER...

All gone.

Demo: Feeling 24+ yards of debris lighter

It is surreal to be walking through our house in it's current state. In a matter of 4 days, it has been stripped of drywall, tile, brick, carpet, wood paneling, outdated electrical, paint and one mummified rat.

Other than the 40 year old rodent, some panty hose and a few domino pieces, the excavation of our house has not yielded any hidden cash or other treasure. But it also hasn't yielded any really really horrible issues - which I will take as a hidden treasure over a pot of gold any day. But demo isn't done and the few minutely horrible issues that we did find haven't been completely unearthed yet, so I might need to retract my current positive attitude next week once we meet with the architect and structural engineer. We expected this.

For now, what stands is the skeleton of potential that we somehow have believed in since the Sunday afternoon in September 2011 when I first walked into the Open House. Our ideas are moving from the page and our heads into 3D and I can say that I am almost giddy. And I don't get giddy. As K would say "It's for real life, mom." Oh yes it is.

The effect of removing 24+ yards of debris (measured in the 7 cubic yard space of the debris trailer) is immediately palpable. As my friend Heather said as she walked through, "The heaviness is gone." And that is exactly how it feels.

There is more heavy tile to sledge out and concrete to jack hammer and debris to carry down our endless stairs but the end of this phase is near.

Before...

After...

Before...

After...

Before…

After...

Remove as few walls as possible

I found notes and drawings from one of our early design meetings.

Bullet point #1:

Remove as few walls as possible

I sort of had to laugh out loud because basically there are very few walls still standing. 

Or so it seems from this vantage point.