The whirlwind of living through a renovation...
Guys, we are officially IN our new place! It still kind of doesn't feel real, but I'm sure that's because have no kitchen appliances right now and are living out of boxes for the next few weeks while we get new baseboards installed and hopefully get new kitchen cabinets. And paint colors, I need to figure out the paint colors!
When I first started planning this whole thing out... buying a fixer upper, renovating it and selling it, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on everything. I mean, I literally worked on countless renovation projects for a decade in my Architecture life, and now I work in real estate, so between those worlds shouldn't I have all the answers and fewer surprises along the way?
Wellll....The truth is, no matter how many real estate deals or renovations I do, I'm not any more immune to surprises, glitches or curve balls than anyone else... and they are coming at us aplenty these days. I shared the big drama about our purchase, and once we closed, it was a week of more {stressful} waiting because in a condo building you need board approval to do any work. So even though I owned the space, we couldn't start anything until I got the go ahead from management. UGH. The torture. Our place, sitting there empty just begging for us to start... you guys, it was agony. {I may have secretly demo'ed the baseboards and trim while we were waiting, what can I say, I needed to be making some sort of progress.}
And just like during the real estate deal part of this journey, intuitively I knew we would get the approval to start when we needed it, but it didn't come until the last minute so there was considerable stress in the meantime because of course, I'm a silly human who can't just trust her intuition and leave the stress behind yet. Then, a new curveball {so, so many!} I had always planned on refinishing the floors before we moved in, but then I thought we would have time to get settled, unpacked, and really figure out the kitchen and baths before diving into those projects. Boy did I have a rude awakening. Gigi, my {amazing} flooring guy told me that since we were renovating the kitchen and were replacing the appliances anyway, it was better to just get rid of them now so that he could refinish the floors underneath without moving things around and potentially scratching the floors. HUH?! But I need appliances. A girl's gotta eat! Oh, and then he added that I needed to demo at least half of the cabinets so that he could patch the floors underneath, since we were demoing the knee wall that surrounded the cabinets. Whaaaa? {well, he wanted me to demo all of the cabinets but I had to draw the line somewhere!} At first I told him I couldn't live without appliances so he just had to deal with it, but he kept pushing, and since I want everything to be done right, I went for it.
So here I am, typing this blog post in my new place with no appliances for the week. But let me tell you, our floors look AMAZING. And he was right about the appliances and the cabinets so I'm glad I listened, even if it means I'm eating at the Whole Foods salad bar waaay too many times in a row, lol.
Here's a peek at the transformation of the space so far... really just floors and a disappearing kitchen, but it's something!
We are just in the beginning of this renovation, and I knew things wouldn't always go as planned, because they never do, there are always surprises. So in a lot of ways I can go with the flow and it's not a big deal... I actually laughed at myself for my 'too perfect' picture of how this would all go anyway, I mean, if it all went off without a hitch there wouldn't be any good stories, right?!And, as cheesy as it may sound, in the road bumps and curve balls during these past couple of weeks, I've gotten a beautiful reminder of how things can come together magically in just the right way. Sure, everything right now is happening 'just in the nick of time' and I would be so grateful if they would fall into place just a little bit sooner... but magic and serendipity are always happening, and right now I'm realizing that maybe I don't need to obsess about everything being set very early in advance, maybe it can just come together magically at just the right time with no effort. Even better right?!