Journals

5 things that should not go well together… 

Renovations, kids, pregnancy, holidays, and messy people. See how we are dealing with it all while living in less than 800 SF of our home during a large renovation. 

The technical stuff… What are we doing to our 1915 2 bed 1bath craftsman style home…? We will be adding about 650 square feet and a detached office in the backyard. The house addition will include the rip out and remodel of a new kitchen stepping down into new living area about the size of the cut down tree, deck and rock area on the right in the picture below. Where you see the wall of windows on the left … we will have a new hallway filled with storage cupboards and a laundry closet, a new bathroom that will hang over into the driveway space, and a doorway to our new modest sized bedroom. Extras things we have had to do and will be doing during this remodel  are, leveling and adding footings under existing house, re framing old kitchen floor, adding new roof to entire house, new electrical to existing house, (currently old knob and tube)  stucco entire house ( we wish we could afford siding…) 2 new front windows if we can afford it, and new porch window framing and railing… 

If you want to follow along daily… head over and watch my Instagram stories… @jennbartellkids or view my highlight reel named “remodel” to see all the way back to the very beginning… 

It may be because this has been a dream of ours since we purchased this house in 2009… but we have not been put out too much by not having a kitchen sink, a dishwasher, an oven, or a stove….  The temperatures of the house have been mostly dealt with since finding 3 space heaters that do the job pretty well while our central heat is non existent. The kids have been great. Never complaining about anything house related… they do make sure to tell us every time we say things like, “go throw that away in the kitchen garbage…” that “we don’t have a kitchen…” but other than that, they have been champs. Justin and I have been pushing through… not without  little disagreements  here and there… but we are getting the decisions made and compromising sometimes. He is super generous and lets me have my way on a lot of things. Him having a design background and me thinking I know what I want because I saw it on pinterest can sometimes bring us head to head on a simple decision like a faucet color. haha. At least Its just the little things that bring it on. 

 I feel so lucky to have had a very simple pregnancy so far. We were already scheduled to start this project in Sept and expected to be done in March when we found out in 3 months before starting we were pregnant with our third baby.  Justin always says I’m pretty much the same person while pregnant and he wouldn’t know what to do if I was an emotional wreck like I am supposed to be… but I am giving all credit to the pregnancy gods…I have no idea what I have done in life to deserve three very simple pregnancies and almost feel guilty saying so. I had started at a lower weight than I had been for awhile this pregnancy.  Maybe that has made this one extra easy… ?? I had been eating Keto to try and get back in shape for about 4 months before becoming pregnant. I felt great and have continued trying to eat mostly Keto but slipping often the closer we get to the end. All I want is sweets and of course they are very easy to find from Halloween to Christmas…

We wanted to make sure the kids are getting the same Christmas experience as they are used to… so, yes… we got our tree and all of our decorations out. (We don’t keep a ton of Christmas decor so that made it a little easier to bring out) The tree is in the dinning room / our makeshift kitchen. Its a little tight but I don’t think I could go all of December without a little Christmas magic in our house. The backdrop for our tree is a plywood wall where there was once a wall dividing our dining room and kitchen. On the other side of that plywood is a lot of cold winter air, a couple of tarps and all the construction. We have been cooking with only a microwave and toaster but went ahead and added a good size toaster oven recently so we can make cookies for Santa.  

We are starting to see the addition taking shape… its exciting! The rooms are mapped out, slab is poured, and framing is starting this week. We have been delayed a little with all the Sacramento rain… but hoping framing goes quick so we can get a roof on before the rain comes back! 

Until next time. Lots of materials to choose and kitchen planning to get done in the next month… Wish us luck!