Catching up - Our progress over the last 4 months

I haven't posted in a while - mainly because summer is always crazy for us. But throw in the complete overhaul of turning a 2 car garage into a gorgeous living room and the complete gutting of our kitchen and remodeling the rooms it abuts, and you have negative time left.
When I last posted, we had just finished the office addition and moved in, and we had started transforming the garage into our new living room. Considering how long it took us to finish the addition (new construction + permits, inspections and therefore, extra time), it took almost no time to get the living room all but finished.
BEFORE:














AFTER:














Not bad, eh? Here is another angle:
BEFORE:














AFTER:














Next time: I will start posting about the kithen demo.

All moved in!

Well, we ended up getting the final inspection, phew! I suppose the room in question could be a bedroom, and in some cases it will be treated as such, but come on...why should a family of 3 with a home office need to get a whole new septic system because of some stupid technicality?

Anyway, the final inspection marked the entire project from start to finish at 1 year, 1 month and 1 day! We had projected about 9 months, so this was a bit too long for our liking...

But we're all moved into the office, save some needed decor, but that isn't priority with a new living room space in the works (we don't waste time moving from one project to the next and I don't mind spending 1 year, 1 month and 1 day on the minute details - it takes time to make a space your own!)

Here are a couple of shots:

Starting Before Finishing

It's our motto! Even though we will likely be able to move into our new office this weekend, it is contingent upon whether the drywall finisher is done by then and we've been able to paint. That is the hope. But, in the meantime, my husband began ripping out the old ceiling in the old garage last night. This room will become our new living room when it is done. We already installed radiant heat under the new sub floor, and soon we will be able to erect the walls for the closets and enclosures before doing more drywalling. It keeps us going...

Looking To Move In

It has been just over a year (1 year and 6 days, to be exact) since we broke ground on our new addition. Since my husband and I (but mostly my husband) have done 80% of the work, it has taken much longer than we initially projected. Travel, work, socializing and the like seems to squeeze in between stages of construction and renovation. Oh, and inspections. We are fortunate to know people in the world of HVAC, plumbing and electric, so having those parts covered were big money savers. My husband did almost all the plumbing himself; his father is an electrical engineer and did all of our wiring; a good friend of ours owns an HVAC company who did most of our heating and A/C work (although he and my husband did a lot of the busy work themselves after hours). Knowing all of these people in the industry also led us to great contacts for other parts of the job - the 20% we contracted out (drywall finisher, carpenters (who framed the addition after the slabs were poured), and siding contractors). So, had it not been for us doing most of the work, we would have paid LOTS more and it would have been done probably last fall. But I am fine with how it has turned out. We made a lot of design changes along the way, as well as some mistakes. I can't wait to post the final outcome.