On to the interior

Whew, after one sole entry, I am already exhausted with the blog responsibilities...I am thinking of blog content with everything I do now..."Should I bring a camera to our friend's bday party today?", "Do I want to blog about my upcoming weekend with old friends...better bring the camera", "Should I go back to the very beginning of our renovation project or just start from the present?"...ITS EXHAUSTING!...like a monthly status report for work, or better yet, for those like me who kept a diary when we were young. I always felt the need to catch the invisible entity of "the diary" up on my life in-between my 6 month disappearances from writing...so much so that I became too tired to actually write about what I originally intended to, geesh...pure exhaustion I tell ya. Anyhoo, I have learned from my past mistakes and decided to start from the present with the renovation...with the inclusion of past tid-bits only when relevant. (man - I am already growing weary.) With that said...

...after three years of tearing out plaster/lathe, restoring old windows, enlarging and framing in a master suite, demo-ing existing bathrooms and a kitchenette, dealing with knob-and-tube electric (in some cases with live wires dangerously dangling from bedroom ceilings)...we hired a contractor for the major bathroom work...VERY EXCITING! We are adding a bath upstairs for the previously mentioned master suite, a half and full bath downstairs, as well as the addition of a mudroom in the formally used pantry.

We are hoping once these major portions are completed we can move out of what we like to call our "life room". I am sure anyone who has undergone what we are executing is intimately familiar with this room. It consists of your bed, television, couch, a place for bills, phone chargers, computer and anything else you might deem "essential" to daily living. This room is the homeowners' only saving grace in the house, a place where construction is NOT ALLOWED, the only place that is somewhat clean and organized, the only place where electric is readily flowing, the only space where one can escape the chaos surrounding them...this room is what we call the "life room".

(BEFORE Pics: Downstairs Full Bath)

As you can see from the above diagram, the 1st floor bath is pretty tight. We are extending the length of the bath into what used to the "kitchenette" for the addition of a luxurious jacuzzi tub, the old "kitchenette" space is being repurposed into a smaller much needed half bath, and the back pantry area will be a new mudroom...finally time to move the laundry out of the kitchen and into a more convenient space...needless to say, reinforced flooring, so our our entire house doesn't shake-n-roll during the spin cycle.)

Okay, I'm a novice in formatting pics in blogs, it just took me 2 hours to put in those 3 pictures...I am not kidding. I will have to wait until tomorrow before revealing our decorating and redesign photos...(see, like I said earlier, utter exhaustion.)

I leave you with this simple diy-er's conundrum (provided by one of Pj's recent rants), "How can one take a piece of carpentry off, sand it and when one goes to put the darn thing back in its original place, HOW CAN IT BE TOO LONG?" One of life's little mysteries.