Gates Reno

When you title a renovation blog post “Our Renovation is Back from the Dead!” you’re just asking for trouble. To quote Toby from West Wing, “You want to tempt the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing?” Well, that’s the way to do it.

In my last post, from about a year and a half ago, I detailed how, since we were almost out of money, we were going to do some small projects on the garden level – put in a back door, finish the wood floors, install the tile floors in the kitchen and bathroom, and paint. And all of those things did happen – a year after I wrote that post.

We’re a case study in what happens to a reno when a tenuous funding plan meets a completely crappy economy. It took us a year to come up with the money to do those “small” projects, but after living with a completely unusable garden floor for three years, it really felt like we had accomplished something. Once the floors were done and the walls were painted, I decided I couldn’t stand using our disgusting little 2nd-floor kitchen any longer. Even though we had no money to actually get a kitchen built on the garden floor, we decided to set up a make-shift kitchen on the garden floor as best we could – anything would be better than the buggy, mousy, disgusting kitchen we were using. Since the plumbing and electrical were done (the stuff inside the walls, anyway) it wasn’t that hard – I got the whole thing done for about $800 in two days while the rest of the family was out of town.

We bought a stand-alone sink from IKEA for $300, and used some big IKEA wardrobes we already owned for storing dishes and food. We used an old folding table for our giant microwave, coffee maker, and toaster (it’s buckled in the middle, but has held up under the weight for the past four months). Not ideal – no counterspace, except for the tiny bit connected to the sink – but so much better than what we had before. We’re now living on three of our four floors; our master bedroom on the second floor can finally be used as such, now that the dining room table is on the garden level. The buggy, mousy old kitchen is closed off, waiting for the far-off day when it becomes our master bathroom.

Progress. Not the kind of progress I had hoped for at this point, but I’ll take it.

Up next: Catching Up with the Small Projects

Amy also blogs at Selfish Mom.