Remodeling Our Brick Ranch: The Grunt Work

I knew it going into it, but nothing became more clear during the multi-week workfest, than the fact that what they show on HGTV is a sincere underestimate of reality.

It took us a solid two weeks before we had things ripped out (flooring, kitchen cabinets, the bathtub, baseboards, etc…), walls and holes patched and repaired, and things cleaned up before we could even paint. I think paint is like the first thing after a quick 5 second snippet of demo work on those TV shows :P.

We also had a small army working on the house, AND those two weeks are not even including the days of work involved in cutting down the bamboo, and bringing in a backhoe to dig up the roots and the clutter of overgrown bushes and trees, and what ended up being half of our poor little yard.

This obviously isn’t everything, but here is “short” list of what we had on the agenda: demo of kitchen and both bathrooms, removal of old flooring (which involved two days of rolling around on a little stool chiseling not one, but two sets of carpet staples out of the subfloor), removal of soffit in kitchen, removal of baseboards, removal of interior doors and exterior storm doors, ripping out the baseboard heat and installing an HVAC system, removal of ceiling in basement, pressure washing of basement and exterior, placement of backer board for tile in bathroom, replacement plumbing for shower in bathroom, replacement of bathroom fixtures (tub, toilets, vanities and sinks), repair and patching of holes in interior walls, sheet rocking over wood paneling in living room, framing of new sheetrock, painting of interior, repair to textured ceiling in kitchen, replacement of flooring and baseboards, replacement of sockets and light switches, replacement of windows, painting of window trim interior and exterior, stuccoing of retaining wall, dirt placement and grading, replacement of kitchen cabinets and appliances, replacement of light fixtures, replacement of interior doors and door hardware…

I’ll just stop there. All I know is, we made 5,781,462 trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot. Most days someone was at the house by 7:30am and we often didn’t leave until 8:00pm or later. All together I think we had a over 11 family members and a few friends who rotated through working the entire time. And we ended up filling three of the biggest dumpsters available. I’m certain that we accomplished what usually takes 3-4 months in a matter of 3 weeks.

Progress photos…