Day 550: A Confessional Update

Confession: It is, in fact, day 668 as I sit down to write this. It's November and we've just tumbled out of daylight savings time back to standard time. The sun may be shining like it's mid-July but the puffs of breath and crunching leaves under our feet don't lie. Sadly, somewhere between plumbing and HVAC, the blog found itself in the unfortunate position of being a chore rather than a fun hobby. Go figure: when the work really gets going and the house transformation starts to show in a big way, we find ourselves swirling in a whirlpool of trips across the country, starting new jobs, and having 428 different contractors on speed dial. So while I've failed at goal #1 of the blog (keeping family and friend updated on most recent goings-on), I can at least stay true to goal #2 (creating a diary of sorts for our future enjoyment). For your benefit, this means the next few posts will be more photo heavy and less wordy since many of those minor details I love to delve into are lost in the cloud of sawdust. So without further ado, let's start finishing those sentences I began writing 4 months ago!

When I'm chatting with someone about fixing up an old house, the idea that "you always find more work once you tear up the walls" comes up often. Little did I know that also applies to putting walls together again too. As I alluded to in our last update, we are knee deep in the vortex of scope creep so it seemed a good time to revisit all the different pieces of the reno and finally show you the kitchen design we landed on.

Let's be honest, this whole thing would have been easier if we had hired Joe Schmoe General Contractor Ltd and asked them to take us from a fully gutted kitchen to gleaming countertops and shiny new knobs. But we didn't buy a project house for the "easy" of it all. For all of the fellow visual learners out there, here's a glimpse at all the things we bumped into along the way down the very deep rabbit hole known as a kitchen renovation.

The last time we showed you a plan of the kitchen, we were living in a hotel having been banished from our home for two weeks. It had the range against the back wall with a U-shaped cabinet/countertop design. Once the wall came down and we had some time to play with tables and boxes in the space, we realized that the previous plan which essentially had an island in the kitchen was ambitious. After much deliberation, we finally landed on a design that's pretty much what we envisioned when we first moved in: a peninsula in place of the old kitchen-dining room wall.

Finally, some proof that we are, in fact, picking up tools and not spending all our time making Gantt charts and calling contractors. As part of project we're turning the back bedroom into our primary living space so let's try to make it presentable by covering the giant cracks in the walls with drywall mud and paint, we learned that it's certainly been some time since the plaster walls last saw daylight. Here's what I found when peeling back the floral wallpaper:

Feb 1975. Bert.

Apparently a month before my parents were married, Albert Farwell was giving the back bedroom of the Farwell Manor a little facelift. I wonder if he knew just how long those pink and purple flowers would live on these walls...