Nor'easter Renovation
The kitchen renovation is still in the ugly phase. My "new" kitchen in the parlor is less than desirable but we are in fact still eating food made from home, minus a few trips to the local pub. The process so far is going almost as anticipated. We did expect the few extra projects that would happen because one project always spills into another. Our added project was the staircase. We had carpet on the staircase and it always bugged me. My husband, Tom, and I always prefer the original old parts of the house to the updates so we decided to take the stairway back to the original wood.
Off came the carpet and about ten thousand staples. It was rough. I mean it was really rough. The paint looked older than the house and some of the risers were severely cracked and one was chipped. That chip looks so sad like the chip on a front tooth. One riser was in fact a shelf. Don't ask because we have no answers except that we are not responsible. That fiasco is from the previous owners. So for the past week Erick, the painter & not Eric the contractor, has been steadily working away. This weekend we have hopes of finishing the treads.
In the very first week of the renovation we had a storm. It was a typical Nor'easter with a twist. We experienced 60-80 mph gusts and torrential rain, about 4 inches to be exact. That is completely not normal. We lost power which seems logical enough with those winds, but we lost it for three days. Some folks still don't have power a week later, and we had another storm yesterday with wet heavy snow. So we tore out the kitchen in torrential rain, crazy wind, and no power. However, that did give us something to do while our basement filled with water. We had some great friends with generators, or lucky enough to still have power, take pity on us. They fed us, warmed us, and offered warm showers. Although we stuck with the luke warm water still in our tank. Our good friends, the Barry's, let us borrow an inverter so we could hook up our sump pump and pump the eight inches of water out of our lower basement. Thank Goodness for friends. We were fortunate we only lost a small refrigerator and a sneaker or two. So now we are back on target for the renovation.
The stairs already look great and they aren't even finished. Paint is an amazing tool to save, preserve, invigorate. What a difference even after only one coat. The color is the darker shade that will be in the kitchen, it is fact not the same color as the wall. I am looking for a very simple runner that I can install myself, and by myself I mean Tom. I've found a great company that does simple cotton rugs for stairs but I'm not completely sold. I will be slow about that enjoying the new pristine stairway.
Already our home is now feeling like the antique that it is. Oddly enough the new kitchen to be will feel more appropriate to the age of the house than the old one we gutted. Our forever home is slowly becoming the gem we always knew it to be. It's just taken a ton of planning, about a year to be exact, weighing of priorities, and patience. One thing I know from owning old houses is you cannot really live in them without being connected and loving them.
