Home Body: 2020, The Year Things Got Weird

By 2020, we had lived in our house about 7 years. We had done a lot of living in the house in that time, raising 2 young kids, and enjoying lots of time with friends and family in the area. We knew we were done having kids, and we had saved enough to move on to phase 2 of our home renovations. We had consulted with a few contractors on the structural integrity of our home to be sure our 1910 house was structurally stable enough to invest in. I really didn't want to throw a lot of money and work into the house and then it ended up falling down because it was too old and crumbly! We had planned on starting from the ground up, supporting the foundation where needed and insulating the house better in the crawl space areas that weren't basement. We also consulted with a contractor on how we would like to remodel the living spaces of our house including the kitchen. 

I strongly recommend living in your house several years to know exactly what you need and want out of your house before you decide to add on or remodel! The ideas we started with right after we moved in morphed several times before we actually started the construction phases of our remodel. Originally, I had wanted a two-story edition that included a garage and a second story living space for the kids. 1910 houses don't have garages. Eventually, we settled on two small additions to our home including a master bath with walk-in closet, laundry and office space, and then a mudroom on the other end of our house because all country homes need a mudroom. We planned to repurpose some rooms in our existing home so that we finally got a dining room and the kitchen would be created in a different area in the house.

I was to the point where I almost couldn't stand living in the house in its current state because we were growing out of the home quickly and I was tired of cleaning the old dingy linoleum and white homemade kitchen cabinets that had been in the house when we moved in. I was so looking forward to starting to work with the contractors on our remodel. 

Dirt work done to pour concrete for our support wall

Enter March of 2020... Suddenly we could not get a hold of anyone to work on our home. The contractors we had talked to said they wouldn't be able to start for at least a year, and we found ourselves a lot less busy than we were in the past even though we both were still able to go to our full-time jobs on most days of the week. 

Support wall poured

 

Not wanting to wait another minute, my husband casually suggested that he start on the projects we were developing in our minds and then call in the experts when we needed help. I reluctantly agreed, knowing my husband had no training in construction, but had learned a lot working alongside his dad and my dad on phase one of our projects. 

So we started with, in my opinion, some super boring stuff! We had to reinforce one of the walls in our basement. This required some digging and some steel beams and a second wall of concrete that helped anchor the basement as it had started to shift inward. We rented and borrowed all kinds of equipment to get the digging accomplished! Thank goodness the concrete guys would still bring out concrete during the pandemic! 

Steel beams to support a wall in our basement

After the existing basement wall was secured, we poured footings for the new additions on each side of our house and ripped off our front porch

Looking out the front door of our house once the front porch was torn off

. 

Handsome husband alert! Welding support beams under our living room and front porch area

My husband had to build some kind of support structure to go under our existing living room and front porch area and then we insulated all the crawl space areas of our existing home and the new additions with spray foam. I found out my husband is obsessed with spray foam and thinks it is the best thing ever! 

Our new mudroom area started

Spray foam under all the new additions and crawl spaces

We also had to get the plumbing and water to the new edition done before we could build on top of it. Then we could finally start doing things that were visible above ground which included building the floors of the new additions.

Floor going on top of foundation for our master bath area