Contractor Meeting

Last night we met with a contractor who can do the project in October!! He was recommended to us by one of the first two that we met with and we are super impressed! We really liked him and he has tons of experience. So, we may be doing our project this fall after all! Of course, we have to wait for his bid and if it is way more than the contractor that can do it in the spring then, obviously, we wait. We are hopeful though!
He invited us to come up and check out his house, which he recently built. He wants to show us the windows and siding he put on the house because he really recommends it and it is a better price than what we were thinking of going with. We are going to take a drive up tomorrow night to take a look!

Fingers Crossed!!!  

What is to come...

 

The plan for the new exterior

 

 

This is the space we are currently living in...

 

 

 

This is the space we will soon have to fill...

 

 

It can't come soon enough!

 

 

 

 

Before and Afters

Looking through our old pictures has been quite a trip. Now I realize even more why we are so anxious to see an end!

Here is the outside of our house, although this actually looks better before than it does now! We have moved around some windows and now have Tyvec instead of shingles in a few spots on the outside of the house, but it was one of those things where it didn't make sense to spend the money on the outside knowing it was going to be replaced soon.

I realized when moving into the house I really didn't take many pictures. I think it was because I was 9 months pregnant and right after we moved in, I had this cute subject to take pictures of...

Olivia July 2006

 Here is the original kitchen. Don't be jealous, but I still have that tiny refridgerator! Things that drive me crazy about this house, that is right up there on my list, but that is a post for another day!

 

Try to fit a weeks worth of food for 4 people in that fridge...
The tiny stove is gone, but with it went one of the big cabinets

Now, this picture makes you all want to run to the fabric store to duplicate this stunning look! What makes this even better is our bed is behind it. Yes, people, that is our bedroom. But, look there is a chandelier in it...so romantic :)

 

Of course, when we realized that the second floor was not happening anytime soon, the first thing to happen was a permanent wall there! Voila, Olivia got another cute bedroom and finally so did we!

 We also replaced this eyesore of a railing and the floor in the entryway. Mike built a beadboard half wall and we layed hardwood floor.

We painted this white, but I couldn't find a picture of it finished

 

Oh yeah and throw in a backyard renovation in 2008!! A toddlers dream backyard

Finally, 2010 we bring down almost all the walls in the house.

First we worked on Olivia's room. We had to make it ready for two children. She had huge bay windows on either end of her room. We took them both out.

Back wall before

Back wall after

 

Front wall before

 Front wall after

 Daddy's little helper...had to add this one!

Now the rest of the house!

 Looking from kids bedroom

Again from the kids bedroom

Walls going back up! I look at these pictures and can't believe that I lived in this mess and remember, I was also pregnant with Owen during this project! UGHHH...

 

 

 Our bedroom after

 

Looking from the kids bedroom after we swapped out the carpet for hardwood.

 

The final step was a big one, and this was to give us more space in the entryway, but also to prepare for the second floor. The stairs that will eventually go up, will stack above these new stairs.

 

Stairs Before

 

 Stairs After

 

 

I will update you on pictures of how the house looks now, in another post. Yes, there are MORE changes! Now you can probably imagine why I am so anxious to get more space and finally feel settled into our home!

 

 

 

What I have realized...

While going through pictures to give you some before and afters, I realized that I move around my furniture ALOT!

With all of the renovations, and just trying to make our space work, my living room and kitchen have had many different kinds of furniture and it has been in every location imaginable :) I knew that I had done tons of different things to try to make our space work, but boy, looking through the pictures in chronological order was actually quite comical!

I also paint ALOT...pictures to come!

Timing

We were hoping to start this project in the next couple of months. Once we have a contractor who is approved by the mortgage company and the appraisal of our plans is done, we can close on the loan within 45 days. So give or take, we should have been able to start in October or November latest. BUT....we have had two contractors come over so far and neither are able to do the project until the spring. It is great that they have business, but BIG bummer for us!!
Now decisions have to be made....the two contractors that came over are definitely our top picks. They come highly recommended, we have seen their work to verify and we really like them both...but it means waiting...we have done a lot of waiting! Do we wait until spring? There are pluses and minuses

Positive

• More planning time
• In our own house for Christmas
• No disruption at the beginning of the school year for Olivia
• I can start buying decor and small things little by little over the next few months
• More time to save money

Negative

• Interest rates could increase before the spring
• Having the outside of our house look like an eye sore for 7 more months
• Busting the seams out of our tiny little house for 7 more months....
• 7 months seems like a long time when we are ready to do it now??!!

Decisions, Decisions....Although looking at the lists it really seems like a no-brainer! Looks like waiting until the spring probably beats just being impatient excited for some more space!

In the meantime, I have been scouring Pinterest, the Internet, magazines and stores looking for inspiration for how I want to decorate the upstairs once it is finished. We both seem to be into a traditional, classic, oceanside feel. Not sure that is really a type, but we are going to try to put it all together! I am thinking a blue master bedroom!

The History...

May 2006. 9 months pregnant with Olivia, ready to go out on maternity leave. We own 2 houses...

We have come a long way since that day, but it has been a long road! I am going to see what I can dig up for pictures of the many faces this house has had but for now I will give you a little history!

When we bought this house we still owned a house in Westbrook, which we continued to own for almost a year after we bought this one. We intended on putting a second floor on this house shortly after moving in, but financially we were sunk with two mortgages, two sets of bills and two houses to upkeep, not to mention the renovation we had to do on the other house to sell it. So we had to make this one bedroom house work.

There was one official bedroom, one was in the basement, but not something I would use as a bedroom. Instead, we made the bedroom, Olivia's room so that she could have a door and we put a curtain (AKA the sheet) up across the archway that seperated the dining room and living room and made that our bedroom. We joked about it a lot, and at this point expected the one bedroom thing to be temporary! As time goes on and we realize the second floor is going to have to wait, we decide to do a bit of renovations to the house to make it work in the meantime.

In the fall of 2007,  we put a permanent wall up across the dining room (and when I say we, I mean Mike!) and moved Olivia into that room. It was a good sized room, but narrow so her furniture fit better. We took her old room. We also took down a really unstable railing around the staircase to the basement and built a halfwall there so that we could put a gate on the stairway and not worry about Olivia with the stairs,  and laid some new flooring in the entry.

Fastforward a few more years, still not ready to put the second floor on, but in desperate need of some space and some cosmetic work or I was going to go crazy! So we start to move some things around to where they will eventually be going and do some temporary/cheap cosmetic work to get through. During this renovation I am pregnant with Owen and basically we bring down most of the walls in the house. We moved the basement stairs to the side of the house, removed a sliding glass door in the back of the house, moved the bedroom and a hallway, painted all the rooms and laid new flooring everywhere.

Then Owen is born...and two bedrooms just isn't enough....
Our bedroom is very small, barely fits the bed and side tables, so add a bassinet and we are packed, a crib? Forget it. So as Owen is starting to grow out of his little bassinet (he was no peanut, he was born at 9lbs 9oz) we realize he needs the crib and it is time to move him in with his sister. NIGHTMARE. Owen wasn't sleeping through the night (who am I kidding? he still doesn't sleep through the night) and Olivia started to realize that she could run the show because after he went to bed, we weren't going to be able to put our foot down on her going to sleep in order to not wake him up. There are some funny and not so funny stories from this time period and thinking back on them now still make me laugh or shudder remembering. So up goes a wall in the kids bedroom. We were still not quite ready to the do the whole upstairs, but we couldn't wait another day for 3 bedrooms in this house. In one weekend Mike and my dad, built a wall in the middle of the kids room. It is a long narrow room with windows on both sides, so it works and well! Mike built Olivia a loftbed so that she had room for furniture and to play and Owens room is perfect for a toddler. A bit of normalcy began to come back in the house and we move on.

July 2012 and we are moving up!! We are starting  the process for having our upstairs put on...FINALLY. It has taken 6 years but we are ready and we can't wait! We are doing lots of research on what we want in the house and have noticed all the, do it yourself and renovation blogs out there. Mike suggested the other night that I start a blog about our renovation and I thought why not? If nothing else we will have a great documentation of this new adventure for the Litchers! If someone else also enjoys reading it, even better!!