Behind The Scenes Of Renovating

So yesterday I told you all about our renovation, which started in earnest yesterday! Today, I'm going to share some of what kept us busy in the months leading up to the reno. First, we started by decluttering a lot and slowly starting to pack up the playroom, the first area of the house to be worked on.

When you have to pack up, and store, almost everything in your house, you realize how much stuff you don't need. This was one of many car loads full going to the thrift store in September and October.

  

One Saturday while Dave was at synagogue I went in search of a storage unit. To give Dave an idea of sizes, I asked the storage unit employee to take pictures of me in the units. I felt a little creeped out walking into the units and asking him to take pictures! But these photos definitely helped give a sense of the size of them.

 

There has been a lot of yard work related to this. I wanted to keep my peonies and the chives so I had to find places for all of them as the addition will be built over this bed.

 

I moved my lily bed to the garage so the lilies would get more sun but also so we could move some shade loving plants to by the fence.

 

The most frustrating thing we have to do is put a new basement window on the front of the house. This meant that the entire front bed above had to move. This was a pain, and I was dreading it. We set aside Thanksgiving Monday as "move all these plants" day.

 

We put two of the hydrangeas along the fence (where the lilies used to be) and divided one of the hostas and planted it along the side of the house. (Yes, the basement window you see in the picture on the right has to be closed in and they have to make a new one of the front of the house. Don't ask me why...) 

  

Dave dug a new spot for the big hydrangea and we moved it. I was dreading moving this but it went fairly well. Thank goodness for the Chariot and Rachel who helped pull it out.

 

  

The front bed is empty. Next, we have to cut the big trunk of ivy and pull all the ivy attached to it off the house so they can put the window in. I'm avoiding that task until they're ready to cut the window. sigh.

 

They put in marks for some helical piles (a type of foundation thing) they had to install. Dave moved all the cement blocks from the side of the garage to the back of the garage. Additionally, they had to cut off part of our back step for one of the piles so we had to stop using our back door.

 

We cleared more out of the playroom, took quite a bit of furniture to the thrift store, and turned our front entry (which we rarely use) into our main entry. It's a little crowded but it works. And yes, it's spilling into the living room!

 

We had been told they were hoping to start working on the playroom but last week the team came for a final meeting. The weather has been quite rainy here so they said, "If you can clear out your basement by Monday (four days away), if it's rainy we could start inside and not be delayed any longer." We had thought we had until mid-December to clear out the basement so had been using it as a storage area. Above is how the basement looked on Wednesday night!

 

We worked hard on Thursday night and this past weekend and we got it done! Thanks to our neighbours who offered to store all our boxes (and helped us move them to their house) and a good friend who helped us move stuff for two hours on Sunday afternoon. On the left is everything which needs to be moved hanging out in the playroom. On the right is the last load of laundry hanging in the basement on Sunday morning!

Here is some stuff in our storage unit and here is our office full of empty boxes. After all, we still have a few rooms to pack up -- mainly the kitchen and Rachel's room.

Two last random "preparing for renovation" pictures. Left: our pantry is now in our dining room; Right: hanging the last load of laundry on the line before the reno starts. They have to saw off a bit of the clothesline but I'll still have most of it when everything is done! Whoooo hooooo!!!

 

So that is everything we were working on in September and October that I didn't share as it was happening. While the reno is happening I think I'll try to give an update about once a week. Thanks for coming along on this ride with us!