Portland, Oregon / 11.5.17

From the day my friend, her friends, and four pickup trucks came to take our old furniture away (Day 1 of our remodel) a lot of good things have happened.  Today is Day 36 / 5 weeks and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I cannot stress enough the importance of choosing a good general contractor to keep the ball rolling.  Your G.C. should be experienced, highly communicative, organized, and thorough.  Think “if all goes to pot will this person step up for me?”  Hopefully that won’t be the case, but you want a competent person in charge if things start going sideways.  My designer and G.C. is Taryn Emerson Interiors.

Previous posts have shown the embarrassing before pictures at my house and demo days.  Thes remodeling pictures below are fun to look at as you can see big improvements happening every few days.

Day #17 Goodbye hideous peach tile and tan fireplace

For thirteen years I have cursed our peach floor tile.  It was hard to choose new furniture or paint colors because we had to consider our current flooring.  So dated, but such a bear to take on too.  Seeing my new beautiful floor tile was a wonderful day for me!  Our fireplace was updated too with new marble tile.

Day #19 Expanding the island so that it seats four people, not two

Our old island was awkward since it seated two people, but we are a family of four.  Expanding the island was must-do during this remodel.

Days #19 – 27 Painting every wall, kitchen cabinet, and trim

This was crazy as once you start with the kitchen walls you end up in the other rooms, up the stairs, and pretty soon you hit the third floor.  There was no natural break to stop so we kept going straight up the house.  I am glad though as we had dated tan colors throughout.  Our designer chose a pretty, cool shade of gray.  It was nice to also paint the trim as it was dinged up a bit.

I have so much respect for painters.  They have a hard job, prepping stinks, the paint fumes are strong, and their days are long.  Big kudos to our wonderful painters!

Day #32 The Good Stuff is Coming!

Once the hard work was done (demo, new flooring, paint throughout) it was time to see some pretty things.  Seeing the quartz countertops was really fun.  We replaced our countertops in the kitchen, laundry room, and formal dining room.

Day #34 Gorgeous backsplash

Even though I saw the designers project renderings and tile samples I was still wowed when the backsplash started going up.  It was prettier in real life than I could’ve imagined.

Next post, tomorrow is Day 35 and the next few weeks to the finish line should zoom by.  Please keep posted!