If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen regular updates of what we’re doing in real time, but I wanted to talk about how we’ve adjusted our renovation plans a little. When we moved into Brown Betty, she needed SO MUCH love and still does. We quickly found that there were a few things that needed to be done before other. Things like installing a water filter because we’re on well water that’s hard, leaves lots of stains, and didn’t taste great either. Here’s a probably incomplete list of the things we’ve done so far:

• Master: floored, painted, trim removed + reinstalled, outlets changed: needs finishing touches

• Upstairs Hallway: carpet removed, partially painted, doors primed: needs flooring, doors sprayed, trim painted, walls finished, one outlet removed

• Downstairs: paneling removed and drywall patches started, projector hung: needs drywall + lots of paint

• Miscellaneous: raised garden bed built, crawl space dug out, plumbed, and wired for water filter, fence patched, dryer vent changed, (my beloved) dyson hung, standing desk hung, new appliances ordered + installed

I know there’s more I’m forgetting and there’s been a lot of general cleaning + unpacking that’s taken time, but the point is, we’ve gotten things done. The other point is, we aren’t where I thought we’d be at this point (surprise!). There were a lot of little things that added up to our plans changing. I am no stranger to things going differently than expected when it comes to renovation and I’m very proud of how well I’ve handled it this time.

The one thing I’m most surprised about is the fact that we haven’t addressed the wall we want to take down between the kitchen and the dining room BUT once we moved in and got started on some of the more pressing projects, I realized that it’s just not high on the list. I also started wanting to start allocating resources (time and money) differently than I thought. And removing the wall will cause an avalanche of follow up projects like patching + refinishing floors, replacing kitchen cabinets, moving the guest bath, etc, etc, that we’re not quite mentally prepared for with all of the other things happening at the moment.

SO we’ve changed our plans! Instead of running full steam ahead with wall removal, we’ve decided to create a stopgap plan. Basically, what that means is that instead of taking that wall down now, we’re going to work with what we have now and make the downstairs feel like ours even without the wall removal. What exactly does that entail?

-          Dining room carpet removal + DIY flooring (very excited about this project!)

-          Paint walls + trim

-          See what happens from there

Do you like that list? I’m learning not to make to many major plans in advance. Yes, I know that I’ll want to pretty up the guest bathroom a little if we push off the full reno very long. And there’s a good chance I’m going to want to paint our existing kitchen cabinets. But I’m just going to wait until I get the rest of that stuff done to make any decisions.

I’m very excited to get our house feeling 100% livable even though it’s not going to be the final version. I think given our still very long list of other things to do with the house, this plan seems much less overwhelming. We don’t yet have a timeline for when we’ll take the wall down and start the full mess of projects. For now, we’re just taking it one project at a time and we’re happy to have a home that allows us A LOT of freedom and creativity!