Our house is little. Our living room is miniature. Our kids are big. We could sell and move, but we really love our location, the kids love their schools, they love the neighborhood, and Michael and I love our very small mortgage. In an effort to make our home more livable, we hired a contractor, Christian, to make our living room 8 feet deeper, with a two-foot bay at the end. Despite numerous setbacks, lots of conversations with the city, including discovering the city owns half our front yard, building finally started.
We had everything carefully budgeted, but realized we needed to make some changes to the electrical. With the lights we wanted to install and the extra outlets, electrical alone was going to cost an additional $2,800! There went our budget. I called my brother who has experience running electrical and he said, "Do it yourself, electrical is easy." Our contractor said, "I bet you could do it. Electrical is easy." The guy at Home Depot, a retired electrician of 40 years, said, "You can do it. Electrical is easy." Even my neighbor, who is a current electrician said, "Why don't you do it yourself? Electrical is easy." While visions of news articles blaming faulty electrical wiring as the cause of a catastrophic house fire ran through my head, we started running electrical. Ethan had the dubious pleasure of dragging wire through the rafters, while Michael with some direction from my lovely brother, started wiring outlets and switches. I drilled holes, ran wire, and wired lights, but mostly I just drove back and forth to Home Depot. We are incapable of actually buying everything we need at one time.
With a little help, a lot of questions, and some time spent on YouTube, we managed to get most of the electrical installed within a week of working evenings. A big thank you to Joseph for spending a couple of those evenings with us, lending tools, guidance, and making sure we did not fry anything.
$400 later, and with more trips than I can remember to Home Depot and Grover's, we managed to make everything work, and install all our wants. We even managed to pass our electrical inspections on the first try! That means we are not actually going to burn the house down. While I would never tell anyone that electrical is easy, it was doable. And that's almost the same thing.
Our fancy new pendant lights over the kitchen counter. I'm not sure if we will keep these globes, but they were cheap, easily available at Home Depot, and I was past making hard decisions. The bright spots are three of the six dimmable, flush mounted, LED lights we also installed.
Our roughed in light switch, with dimmer! It works and now, a few weeks later, looks much more respectable.
Our contractor made every effort to build the new front of the house before knocking down the inside wall. Here is the front of the house, just before the living room became one room.
I pulled out the Sharpies and let the kids and visitors draw on the soon-to-be-demolished walls to their hearts' content. The art lasted about a week before it was time to demolish.
When it was time for the dividing wall to come down, the kids looked at me with big eyes and asked if they could help take the wall down. Christian had no objections, and Ethan happily started kicking holes in the wall. The spray insulation and framing you can see through the window frame is the bones of the new living room.
Libby started kicking the wall and our contractor leaned in the window to hand her a hammer. He suggested she might do more damage with it.
They also let Sam use a hammer. I really enjoyed working with our contractor. He is young and energetic, and just seemed happy to be building things.
Ethan also had to punch the wall. Christian popped his head in once again to check on the damage the kids were doing. He reminded Ethan to check for studs before punching things, and then left him to it.
As the rest of the wall came down, my kids just sat like this. I think they spent most of the afternoon watching the wall come down with the same intensity they reserve for Netflix.
The build is currently 98% done, and I will post pictures soon!
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