Friday, September 7, 2012

Project Update: Month 2

It's already been TWO months since we purchased the house and started our renovation. AHHH! Here's what we've been up to for the last month:



 

 
 
 
Things have been ticking along but the next month will really start to show to show forward progress. We worked on removing the ceilings from the first floor, set up plenty of appointments, caught a show in Wichita Falls and then had a birthday celebration in Chicago.

General Project Update
Schedule: Behind (but that's what happens when you take two weekends off, am I right?) We'll catch up, eventually.

Budget: It's hard to say at this point. I am working on the 2nd draw request and this one is a doozy. Most of our money goes out the door during this portion of the project (new roof, HVAC, insulation, cabinets, et cetera, et cetera). The real tell will be the third and final draw and the finishing touches of the house.


Paul's Update
Exhaustion Level: Extreme, but it's leveled off in the past week since I really haven't spent much time at the house.

Stress Level: Higher than it used to be... maybe partially due to Christa's level of stress being high. :)

Overall Feeling: Tired of not being able to relax all the time... ready to get moving on building things and putting things together. Demolition is only fun for a few days and then it gets boring. I'm a builder, not a deconstruction expert. Excited to see some progress though with 80% of the demolition done; the big things are gone and it's starting to look like the space we want it to be.

Looking Back: I would have budgeted more time, and maybe money, for demolition when we created the schedule and budget. I would have scheduled the dumpsters for a long time and then called for a pick up if we were done early; instead I had to hurriedly call for an extension on the second dumpster because I didn't schedule enough time.

Looking Forward: Excited to have HVAC installation and the roof replacement start next week, as well as electric and plumbing fixes. Ready to get to work doing some framing and other labor to make it feel like we're really moving forward.


Christa's Update
Exhaustion Level:  High. Not from physical labor but the amount of things I've got going on. At some point, the stress level begins to affect the physical level and as it turns out I'm there.

Stress Level: High. The house is moving along and while it stresses me out, I have a big, expensive test to take at the end of September that is really making me sweat.

Overall Feeling: Nervous.

Looking Back: More pre-planning. Paul's a planner for goodness sakes. While we felt like we we're crossing our i's and dotting our t's we missed some commas and semi-colons. Not really missed them, just didn't get them in the right places. I'm used to doing a lot of work upfront (and not so rushed) so that the construction portion flows like a machine (at least on my end). That hasn't been the case. We we're in such a hurry to make sure the house was ours, we rushed through our planning stage. We're not hurting because of it necessarily, we're just not benefiting. If I could go back, I'd tell myself to chill out, do the proper planning on the front end and if that meant losing the house, then maybe it wasn't meant to be.

Looking Forward: While house systems and a roof installation is neat and it's what I was looking forward to last month, I'm getting excited to see our new cabinets. I placed the order last month and they should be arriving in the next two-three weeks. Green kitchen. Ah! 

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