Welcome to my lessons learned from remodeling journal. I thought it would be fun to share our remodeling journey week by week. I hope you can learn something by what we learn and more importantly by what we mess up.
Lessons learned from remodeling: beware the pit of despair.
I can’t imagine anyone who has done a remodeling hasn’t fallen into the pit of despair at least once during the process. I’m in free fall as I type with no bottom in sight.
Objectively there’s no reason this should be the week as it’s no better or worse than any of the ones before. I found some amazing deals on high end tile at ReStore for our bathroom on Monday. Today I go back in armed with every document the permit inspector could ever ask for so we should be good to go on the basement next week. And tomorrow we’re holding a yard sale to monetize a bit of this crap lying around.
So what’s the problem?
Well, it’s a perfect storm of minutae colliding with my usual winter meltdown. Anyone who lives in the Mid-Atlantic knows that we go for stretches in winter without seeing the sun that can last weeks. We are in one now. We haven’t seen a lick of snow, just this drizzly gray junk.
Deal Dad knows my mood is setting in when he sees this emerge from the bottom of the closet:
Harbinger of things to come.
He then judges how bad things are by the “snuggie radius”: how far from the house will I travel in this fashion travesty? So far I haven’t ventured out but it’s a matter of days before the Vinylmation snuggie makes it to 7-Eleven.
Lessons learned from remodeling: you really need the escape hatch
In a normal year this is the time Deal Dad opens the escape hatch in the form of a weekend of childcare and a budget of whatever miles I have lying around. The rule is “just don’t spend any cash”. In years past I escaped to Florida, Mexico City, and London (accidentally, I was aiming for Paris) at the very time I needed it.
This year the escape hatch is closed. The reason is not so much financial- as I mentioned the trip doesn’t cost cash- as that I just need to be here every minute of every day. Because I’m pregnant with remodeling. In a house that is completely torn apart and packed but where not a nail has been hammered.
If anything in any room were in progress I would at least be able to lean into the forward motion. However all I see around me is chaos for chaos’ sake. I have a pretty low bar when it comes to organization- heck I used to store Amazon pallets in my living room- but this is beyond the pale.
My living room is stacked eight deep with laminate to go into the basement. Deal Girl’s clothes and dresser are in our room- because it will be her room. But we are still in our room because what will be our room is still currently Deal Kid’s room. Deal Kid is still in his room because his room will be in the basement which is not yet a bedroom because the permit inspector declined our egress window permit. Which doesn’t matter because the basement isn’t completely packed up anyway even though I trip over a box every time I try to get to the washing machine.
And deeper and deeper and deeper I fall…
Please tell me this gets better. Even if it isn’t true.
The Deal Mommy is a proud member of the Saverocity network.
I’ll confess to being ever so slightly disappointed… The picture led me to think that Dia’s house had an actual, literal pit of despair discovered during remodeling… which would be kind of cool.
It may yet come.
I’m so sorry. It is awful, others have been through it, and you will find your way out, eventually. There are some things you can lean into now: decisions. Later, decision fatigue may be so severe that you can’t decide what you like on your pizza, let alone what hardware you need on cabinets, which garbage disposal you want, or how far above the cooktop your exhaust hood should sit. Take a look at some detailed reveals and see if you know all the blanks which you’ll eventually need to fill in. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/kitchbath
Great idea. Thanks.
(And I’ll climb out soon. Pits aren’t my normal state of being.)