A Little Lake Story: March 2012

Our remodeling project is completed! Oh, there's still lots of exterior work that needs to get done (new deck, new patio, new driveway, plenty of landscaping), but the house itself is finished!

Since the kitchen, dining and living rooms are essentially one big open space, I'm going to highlight them together. Before we started this project all three of these rooms were basically in the same spot, just smaller and uglier. So we enlarged the kitchen by relocating the entryway and invading that space. We also enlarged the dining room by knocking out a closet we didn't need. Then added a second patio door and a second window which brought in more outside light to brighten it all up.

We've completed installing the new hardwood floors, painting the new walls and installing and painting the trim. All work that Brian took on, which a little help from me. Now we finally have our furniture in place and can start enjoying all of the blood, sweat and tears we put into this!

To refresh our memories, let's also look back to where we started.

This weekend my dear friend Amanda, who by the way just celebrated her 10 and a half year wedding anniversary (yay!), asked me why I hadn't been posting house updates to the blog lately. I told her it was because I'm boycotting the blog until the house is done.

Which got me thinking. Why is it so difficult to live through a home renovation? Here are some of the obvious, most noticeable reasons:

You wake up at 6am on weekends actually grateful to hear the sounds of your walls being knocked down. This from a non-morning person.
In addition to brushing your teeth in the morning, you now need to wipe the drywall dust off your shoes before heading into work.
You honestly have no idea where your mittens are or whether you even have mittens anymore when there's a big snowstorm (good thing we didn't get much snow this year...)
You buy a brand new vacuum that picks up the dust from the floor and are actually so excited that you consider blogging about it. Sad day...
You wake up in the morning with sore, aching muscles. Not because you went to the gym, but because you were up the past 4 nights in a row painting. This is your new workout.

There are so many others. But looking even deeper is this notion that change is painful. And though I'm a huge advocate for change and in a way have built a career based on change, it's still hard. It would have been much easier to keep that old kitchen wall. But instead we knocked it down. Because underneath it was a rotting floor that needed to be replaced. And in its place is now beautiful new cabinetry that will be enjoyed for years to come - enjoyed in a way that the old kitchen couldn't have been.

And isn't that just like life? It would be a whole lot easier to stay the way we are - with the habits and lifestyles we've gotten comfortable with. But sometimes God sees a "rotting floor" in our lives or sees potential we often don't understand. We just have to find the courage to pick up the sledgehammer and knock down that wall in our life we really don't need anymore. Might be surprised how much work it will take, how long it will last and how dusty it can be. In the end though, you'll find something better than what you started with.

May this be my challange to you. I certainly wouldn't advise everyone to renovate their homes, in fact at this point I'm strangely opposed to home renovations (ask me again in 6 months though). But is there something in your life that needs to be gutted?

With that in mind I have some pics of the transformation to share! First up, handrails for the stairs: