Remodeling Nightmares

This is our current project, my craft room, after ripping up carpet, stripping off some UGLY old-lady floral wallpaper and painting.

One of my favorite things to do is decorate. I am avoiding working on my current project, as I type this post: a craft room which is taking me over 3 months to do! (Possibly because I’m really SO GOOD at being a procrastinator?) Or maybe my pace slowed down when I went back to work in August. I want to just take my time on this room since it’s my baby. It is going to be hot pink and lime green. I know, teenager right? Well I want it to be bright and cheery. I have used a Pottery Barn rug as my inspiration.  I will be finished with it in the next few weeks (if my daughter will come and help me….she’s a master of organization…I know…how did she get into my family, right?!) when I’m all done with it  I’ll post all about it.

We layed this laminate plank snap down wood flooring from Costco. It is so easy and looks really great when it’s done.

But in the meantime, I just close the door and go fix up some other area of the house. We have slowly been remodeling the entire house, starting more than a year ago on the kitchen redo. I cannot tell you what a mess it is to do demolition on a 40 year old house. I had no idea that dust and crud would be literally in every nook and cranny of our home, in our clothes, and our orifices. My nose had snotty dust in it for weeks! It was hard to sleep because psychologically you think you are breathing in insulation or something cancer causing! It is the worst part of remodeling hands down! But  I don’t  have lots of photographic evidence. I would not want to go back there again. It was before my blogging days so I didn’t document the before pics very well. Just a few times I thought something was funny. Just imagine a huge dusty mess….everywhere..and piles of furniture in the center of each room.  It was just so completely awful. My advice?  Move to a new house if you have the choice.

Cute Mr. Moss tiling the floors. He always has a smile on his face… He worked half a day at his business and then worked for me the other half most of the summer…I’m a real slave driver it seems….hmmmm…

I think the 2nd worst part of remodeling is having people “drop in” to see your progress. Here I am in the ugliest fat lady shorts and painty t-shirt you can even imagine being caught dead in, all sweaty with clods of snotty soot and drywall bits hanging from my nose, hair and neck. I’m covered in swabs of black paint from my face to my ankles, and I’ve got an electric sander in one hand and my painter’s hat covering my dirty, unwashed hair, and the place looks literally like a bomb has gone off. The stuff that used to live in the kitchen is all piled high in all the surrounding rooms. And my husband invites somebody at the door to come see what we are doing!!! Argh! Are you KIDDING ME? Is it too late to run and hide somewhere?Why don’t you just ask me to pull my pants down for all to see? That’s about how humiliating it is.



Yucky Yucky floors when we ripped up stuff you don’t wanna go there!


I still wonder what people thought. My poor future daughter-in-law saw the progress as Devin would come home to pick up this or that in preparation for his August wedding in St. Louis. And I would just die of embarrassment that she saw such a mess. We’d be standing there all gritty with a cold piece of pizza in one hand and an icy Coke in the other hand. Or else we were sweaty dogs standing on ladders in the middle of it, ceiling fans and cd player all rockin on high,   paintbrush or hammer in hand. It was like…well….kinda redneck city….real hillbillies.



We sold an old wood burning stove  on KSL.com for a few hundred bucks. It took 4 heavy  cowboy dudes from Woodruff, Utah to get it out the door! Fireplace is next…


The 3rd worst thing about remodeling is making all the decisions. As you can see I was deciding between brown and yellow paint on this wall above. The yellow won out. You actually get so sick of choices you need to make that you may start just asking each other to just choose anything. I have heard that from lots of friends of mine who remodeled. The more decisions you can make ahead of time where you are not pressured, and have time to compare prices and styles, the better. Once you are into demolition mode, the decisions almost have to be made already, or you start to get stressed out. Make all the plans first, know what you want, then decide and order.

I didn’t know you could LOVE appliances like this! LOVE LG frontloaders with STEAM!

Don’t wait and rush out to stores and think it will all be easy. That’s what we did with fixtures and appliances, thinking it would be a breeze. It wasn’t. But we did get lucky buying appliances at Best Buy. We shopped Sears, Home Depot and Lowe’s. Lowe’s was second best in my opinion. They had real good deals too, but Best Buy had better customer service hands down. We kept going back to the same guy for microwave, fridge, stove at Best Buy and our dishwasher at Lowe’s. When it was time to get the washer and dryer we chose Best Buy again and got top of the line LG front loaders in red for half off. They had one little dent on the side that wouldn’t show anyway. Gotta love a bargain.



Here is our ceiling we raised. Yay for us! It was super hard work. John put the pendant lights up our boys helped us put all the cabinets up  in a day. EZ to do. I painted….and painted…and painted…



When most of the project finally got finished, like lots of do-it-yourselfers, we quit just short of getting completely done. You just somehow lose your will to go on. Your best is kind of good enough. We still haven’t put on the top crown moldings on the cabinets and we have only painted half of the ceiling white. And we have not put the knobs on all the new cabinets and drawers, although they are chosen and paid for.

 But for all intents and purposes, the kitchen is done. Just don’t look up. 🙂 More on our remodeling to come….