Some Before Photos

I have spent the last couple of weeks hammering out a contract with our contractor. We really should have done this months ago, but the contractor works with my office a lot and it never seemed critically important to get something signed until, like, right about when the elevator company insisted on a downpayment before they would tell us how deep the elevator pit really needed to be.

Anyway, it turns out that working on a contract with a lawyer makes for really boring news.

This weekend we had a quickie one-day garage sale at the house to clear out a bunch of tools and materials from the basement. We were facing spending several weekdays getting the stuff to donation places and possibly paying to have some of it taken away, so holding a garage sale and acting like very poor negotiators saved us time and money, and made me kind of feel like Tom Sawyer as people paid me to take away our stuff.

With that over, I went around the house to take some pictures. Yes, there's still way too much stuff in the house. It's like it just breeds. We move five carloads of stuff to the garage of the rental house, and come back and it's as if nothing has moved or changed.

I took photos from points where there will be significant changes during the renovation, so I could go back and re-take them as work proceeds. Here are some of them:

The dining room, soon to become the kitchen. The door to the side porch is moving around to the hallway, and this will be where our stove wall will be.

The library, facing the back of the house. When we are done, there will be a door here opening to the new dining room. And built-in bookcases all around the room. The organ might still be there.

The front parlour, facing forward. Actually this picture just came out well considering the daylight. This room is not changing too much, but it will get a new floor.

This is going to be one of the biggest changes. This is in the kitchen, facing the back yard. It will be the dining room, with the back wall taken out and the old bathroom and laundry room opened up. Almost nothing of what is here will remain. Thank goodness.

Goodbye, crappy bathroom. When we moved in it was all that green colour in the shower. I repainted it the week before our wedding because the green made me look sick and I did not need that, but could not reach into the shower with the brush.

I will miss my lovely orchid shower wall which has been disassembled and moved to the rental house, but I will make another one.

Not all the pictures came out particularly well, and some of them somehow make the place look MORE cluttered with stuff, but I did try to take at least one photo from each point that will show significant changes. I'll spare you those photos until we have something to compare them too.

I'm looking forward to getting this contract signed and getting work underway. It's been a long time coming.

posted by ayse on 04/03/16