THE EPIC, COSMIC, SPECTACULAR REMODEL BEFORE AND AFTER POST!

I Was Wrong! 

I had a whole bunch of 'before' pictures. I just hadn't posted them when we started the project. 

When we started the project, I remember the two contractors saying confidently that this was a straightforward job and they should be able to knock it out in about a month. Well we are here at 4 and a quarter months and we're still not all the way finished. BUT, we are still going to do our before and after post because most of what's left is pretty small stuff. 

Living Room - Before

Living Room - After

Lounge and Library - Before

 Lounge and Library - After

 

 Front Bedroom - Before

 Front Bedroom - After

 (Sorry - Either a very bad picture because of bright back lighting or an astral plane image)

Oops - Somehow forgot to take 'Before' pictures of the Master Bedroom so only 'After' ones

Master Bath - Before

Master Bath - After

Small Bathroom - Before

Small Bathroom - After (including disco mirror and cosmic Japanese style toilet)

Small Upstairs Office - Before

Small Upstairs Office - After Man Tower Transformation

Large Upstairs Office - Before

 Large Upstairs Office - After (aka Eldership Bridge)

 Upstairs Exercise Room - Before

 Former Upstairs Exercise Room - After (use still to be determined)

 Other parts of house that were transformed but for which there are no 'Before' pictures

Three Cheers for the Impresario of our Remodel

WIFE!

Do You Remember The Remodel?

Do you remember that project that totally dominated the postings on this blog from February through early May? Wondering what happened? Assuming it was all an illusion and magically disappeared? 

Somehow in the Brouhaha of violent attacks on Wife's foot and trying to get back to normal on our return from Sweden, we kind of have just settled in without actually having an 'official end' to the project. One of the problems is there are still a number of small things that have not been completed. So if the job is 93% done, and it has been very frustrating getting those responsible to finish these last pieces. So, in fact, it isn't done. Another issue is Wife has declared that until we do all the final decoration (throw rugs, additional paintings, getting existing paintings up, etc.) completed the job is not 'DONE'.  

Now the problem with this is 'scope creep'. This is the fact that Wife Always has another idea of how to improve the beauty of the Towers. In this scenario the Remodel is actually never done! It's just a steady state of existence. 

Despite this at least three times I've started to take pictures to show the 'almost' finished product for a 'before' and 'after' post. Then I've been confronted with having done a piss poor job of taking 'before' pictures. I took a couple sad pictures of the bathrooms and COMPLETELY forgot about the flooring and painting which were major components of the job. 

SO. I've reconciled myself that I will only be able to show 'after' photos and have committed myself to doing so this weekend.

Remodel At D+75 - The (not quite) Finished Product

Maybe you thought we forgot all about the remodel? After all the agony of March and April, now this radio silence. Well, as you will notice from the post title, it has been almost three weeks since my last post. Over this period of time, very little has actually happened. We had a hiatus of work while #1 and 1.2 were here. Then the contractor thought they were here for a longer period of time. Once we coordinated schedules, Wife and I decided we were done with chaos and since work was going to have be done in our bedrooms, and all the bathrooms, we suggested that they wait until we were in Sweden to do the rest of the work.

In fact, the majority of the work has been done. While I'm not ready to do the official 'before and after' post, I will give you a quick tour of the changes.

 

Coming Soon. To A Blog Post Near You.

Scenes of our home remodel completed!

Today Wife and I moved ourselves out of our temporary quarters in the Tower back down into the house proper. All our things, back into bedroom drawers and closets, into our two (mostly) redone bathrooms. Tonight we will sleep in real beds, not on air mattresses for the first time for almost two months.  

There are actually a number of things that still need to be done before we can call this project finished. AND we are blessed that we have #1 and 1,1 coming into town tonight just to help their old de-I and Wife put in our garden. (Sometimes you just have to play that 'we're old folks' card).

So pictures will be coming.  

Remodel At D+55, Disco

 We are taking reservations now for the bathroom

Remodel At D+52, Pressing Towards The Finish

In keeping with our skiing motif from the last few posts (odd as I've never skied in my life!), we are making our way down the last part of the race. We have our weight over our skis, putting all our momentum forward and increasing our speed to the max. You can hear the crowd cheering and ringing their cow bells.

The vast majority of the painting and flooring is complete (with some minor final touch-ups required), Starting the middle of last week and into next week they are putting in all of the plumbing fixtures, hardware, mirrors, lighting, etc. We keep hitting hiccups like finding one of the two toilets was broken upon opening its packaging. We've even set a date for our movers to come back to put the house together (May 4).

Given how nothing actually happens as it was planned, we will see how it all rolls out.

One Semi-Functional Bathroom

One Bathroom in Need of a Toilet

Remodel At D+48, Light At The End Of The Tunnel

You will remember 8 days ago we were descending the Black Diamond Trail of Remodel Chaos where all the careful choreography of the remodel had been thrown out the window due to the lack of enough carpet to finish our job and the piling of bedroom furniture in the bathroom where work needed to be done. Since that time we have been living with painters (I mean like they might as well be sleeping here), with major disruption to our life schedules (insert here appropriate tragic well-to-do, over-entitled people's sob story music). 

But today, the carpet people showed up (5 hours later than we were told) and the carpet was laid, furniture moved back, carpet measured and cut for the stairs, both bathrooms now ready for final work. The painters have finished the vast majority of the work until they get to the finishing touches toward the end. Our contractor is coming out tomorrow to start figuring out how we complete the job.

Current Status

The main living areas are still filled with furniture and will be until the very end of the project. But at least everything is painted.

 But things are looking better and better in the sleeping areas of the house.

 And the upstairs is pretty much done as well.

 

The Discovery In Plain Sight

The remodeling project has made most of the downstairs unusable. The bedrooms and major bathrooms won't be ready until the project is almost complete. Our public rooms (living room, library, lounge, New Mexico/dining room, & kitchen) are mostly filled with furniture and all in unusable states to allow for the flooring and painting. This resulted in Wife and I creating temporary bedrooms on the second story using air mattresses. 

Honestly, once we figured out how to deal with the heat sink properties of the air mattress, they have not been uncomfortable to sleep in. We were able to get Wife's chair and TV set up in the living room relatively quickly, so she has had a place to relax. The only place I have to go in the evening is back up stairs where my card table desk and chair are set up in my temporary bedroom. 

I go up here in the evening and do what I always do, work on my writing and watch YouTube. Which has led to an interesting realization. It is really cool up here! The evening light, the views, the air flow. It's wonderful.

I know you are scratching your head. How could this be a realization? You've had this space for 15 years and you use it virtually every day. Why is this a surprise to you?

The answer comes from our daily life habit and the design of our furniture. We have always visualized the upstairs space as our office. We come up in the morning and we spend most of our day here. In the evening we go down, have dinner and retire to our 'special comfortable chairs' for evening chilling. There really isn't anywhere to sit and relax. 

Now that I've had this epiphany, and we are looking moving furniture around upstairs, I am advocating for creating upstairs the kind of comfortable seating we have downstairs. It never ceases to amaze me the opportunities for new experiences if you are open to them. Even ones that have been in plain sight all along.

Remodel At D+42, Painting Blitzkrieg

As promised, the painters arrived first thing Monday morning. Despite the situation with the Master bedroom and bath, most of the house is in pretty good order for painting. There are some rooms where some furniture needs to be moved. This painting company owner insists his people not move things (evidently issues with customers in the past). But the actual guy running the painting crew (there are three all together) seems to be taking a more lenient approach. 

Nonetheless they have dived into the work and even in a single day have made great progress. They said they wanted to start at 7:30am this morning and we'll see how much more they can get done. Were it not for the moving and the Master Suite issues, I am sure they could have knocked this out by the end of the week.

Remodel at D+40, On The Other Side Of The Hump - The Black Diamond Trail Descent Of Chaos!!!!!

We are definitely on the way toward completion...just not in any nice smooth, well-planned manner. I don't ski but my friends who do note that the Black Diamond Trails are the steepest, fastest, most difficult. It feels like that's what happened in our project. 

Just this weekend all this took place.

• We are pressing our various contractors to get things done because we will have granddaughter 2.2 staying with us in two weeks.
• This means everyone is working all weekend to get the hardwood floor and carpeting done. 
• Wife is going nuts trying to pick out the paint colors because painting is supposed to start on Monday (today).
• It is critical that the bathrooms be painted first so they can be finished with the final plumbing and electrical installation. 
• On Sunday they are installing the last of the carpeting in the bedrooms. But they don't ask us where we want the furniture. They put it against the walls as it was but not the way it needs to be for the painters.
• And they announce there is not enough carpet ordered to do the master bedroom. They depart.
• We inspect. All the furniture from the bedroom as been stuffed into the master bathroom meaning that there is no way to paint there. Painting on hold.
  
• 2.2 contacts us. She's not coming. She's going to stay in Spain. 
• Our contractor comes today and tells us the painters are starting Tuesday (tomorrow) as we are on the schedule and if we don't start, the delay will be too long. 
• We're not sure when the final bedroom will finally get its carpet and they still need to do the stairs.

Stress, yes. Am I living in a poverty in an undeveloped country with no way out? No. And it is all looking pretty awesome I have to say. 

Hats off to Wife, design mastermind!

Remodel At D-37, Over The Hump!

After 5 days in exile in an Airbnb, the crews doing the flooring succeeded in getting the hardwood hallway to the upstairs done as well as ALL the upstairs carpeting. Marcos, the hardwood guy (who I like a lot) is doing the living room and the library in stages so we will have access to the kitchen and garage. 

 The bedrooms downstairs are the last major parts to be redone with new carpet. We are discussing punting on doing most of the painting because Wife cannot get her head around the color selection with all the chaos and not seeing the finished flooring product. We most likely will only paint the bathrooms downstairs so they can finish the electrical and plumbing there and the library because we have to put the bookshelves back together to reclaim the kitchen and New Mexico room.

There is an end in sight.

 

Remodel at D+34, Gulp!

We have been through quite a few remodels and the current one in many ways is no where near as big a job as others we've done (adding the second story, adding on to and redesigning our kitchen. However, in those cases we were able to stay in our house during the work. The second story was built on top of the first and they only broke through and connected them at the very end. When we added on to the kitchen, we were disrupted in terms of eating but could continue living in the rest of the house. But with this job, taking up 70% of all the flooring at once! Well, I will show you these videos and you can have your own opinion.

 

On a more uplifting note, the bathroom vanity tops and sinks are in

Remodel at D+32 - Let The Craziness Begin

Now starts the time of complete chaos. The vast majority of the flooring of the house will be replaced this week. Then the entire house will be repainted. During this the bathrooms will be completed somehow with all the fixtures, plumbing and electric done.

For the floor to be done, everything must be moved out in a way to allow them to move furniture quickly. For the painting, everything must come off the walls. We've moved to another Airbnb for five days this week. We had movers in on Sunday to box up everything and get it out of the way.

 

  

Remodel at D+30 Plus Special #2 Update

Things are picking up pace. The bathroom tile person finished days earlier than expected. This allowed our GC to get the vanity cabinets installed and the vanity countertops measured. We're hoping to get them installed next week. He also had a carpenter do work on closet shelves Wife had designed. The flooring people will be starting on Monday. They expect to take the whole week. 

Wife and I have rented a place since there seems no way we can be in the house given the need for the hardwood part to set before one walks on it. Given the way our house is laid out, there is no way we can get from the upstairs where we currently reside to our kitchen or our garage without going over the new surface. We talked about bringing dried rations to last us for three days and just staying upstairs but ultimately decided that cheap though we may be, that was a bit too much.

 

 Talk About Gifts That Stand The Test Of Time

 

Made a soup for lunch using the Somen Noodles gifted to us when the #2 clan camped out in ABQ during an early Covid evacuation from (Ukraine?). As Wife is not an Asian food fan (she tolerates my making it - I love it), and I don't think somen is my favorite noodle, it takes a while to get through 3 pounds. But I think we are about 75% of the way done. Maybe I can make some for 2.2 when she visits us to check out NM schools in a couple of weeks?

Remodel at D+24

The tile work is moving along at its own pace. We've been told by our GC and the Flooring people that the specific installer assigned to us is a real quality guy. He goes slow but he does things right. We met with both the GC and the Flooring people and finally got our battle plan in order. While we had quite a bit of time to begin with, we now have 2.2 visiting us to look at schools here (an longer story I will write about later). So having a house where we can actually put her up would be desirable. 

Next week they will finish the bathroom tiling. Then on April 7 doing all the floors will start. We decided the only way we could expedite the floor work was for us to move out of the house again. So we'll be gone for 5 days. Then on the 14th they will start the painting, which hopefully can get done in a week. Now sometime in all this, the new bathroom vanity, toilets, shower fixtures, mirrors, & lighting all have to be installed. It's going to be interesting to see if this can get done in time for 2.2's arrival on April 22.

And here is the week of work in pictures