I am finally able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It has been a crazy past couple weeks but I am happy to report we are coming out on the other side. Its all starting to come together and actually feels like a home instead of a hollow box.

Eric had to go out of town for a family wedding last week, he wouldn’t have missed it and I wouldn’t have wanted him to. However, I am beyond grateful to my mom for flying out to help me with Vivienne and keeping my sanity amongst the chaos. Honestly, although it was a hectic 3 days for Eric traveling, I think it was good for him to get a break and not think about the house. He was able to visit with family and regroup before coming home to more renovations.

He has busted his butt literally all week. He works all day and then after works he starts on the projects around the house he needs to get done. First and foremost I wanted him to complete the living room and kitchen so we can have some normalcy back in our lives. We have been having take out for the past 3 weeks, and I beyond over it.

In this short week, he was able to complete the flooring in both the kitchen and living room. Cabinets are pretty much done, there just needs to be some touch ups here and there. Overall, they are ready for me to start putting things away. Appliances are being delivered on Saturday morning, and countertops will be delivered this weekend or Monday, Tuesday. Eric says he wants to have the bottom level of the house completely floored and trim sprayed so he can put it all back on during the week.

We were able to take a break yesterday and go to the pumpkin patch to have some family fun. It was just what we needed. I won’t even start on how bummed I am that I haven’t been able to watch Hocus Pocus whilst eating some freshly baked pumpkin something. There is always next year, and don’t think I won’t sneak all that in after Halloween!

I plan to get Vivi's room set up this weekend, so we can go back to our normal routines with her. Tonight, we will bring in the living room furniture and hopefully after Vivi has gone to bed be able to sit for a few minutes and enjoy some wine.

When we came into this project, we said all along we just wanted to get the bottom level completed and slowly work on the upstairs. The only things we have done to the upstairs so far are new carpet in 2 bedrooms and stairs. The master bedroom and hallway are getting wood floors. The laundry room appliances are installed and we went with a white marble tile in there. I wanted it to very clean and fresh.

Next, is getting into all the details of decorating and really bringing this whole vision together. Wish us luck and I will be back in couple days for more updates!

It has been very overwhelming over here in so many different ways. Two days ago I started having minor panic attacks because it felt like nothing was getting completed. I am very much a person who needs to complete a checklist before moving on to the next project. Well, during a renovation, that is just not possible. You have to have different projects going at the same time knowing it will come together in the end.

I am a mom though and trying to go about our daily life while this is all going on is a little “cray cray”! I thought I had moved past the panic attack from a couple days ago but today it was in full swing. It just seemed like I couldn’t get a break today. I had to take 5 min to myself and just breathe.

When I came back from my “little” breakdown. I realized we are “in between” things really coming together. You have to tear everything down before you can build it back up and the part in between well that is what we are dealing with right now.

Eric’s goal for this weekend was to get the kitchen completely ready for the cabinet refinishers to come and spray. He pulled off old existing wood that was under the old counter, built a shelf for wine above where the refriegerator is going to go, and ripped out the old backsplash, among many other tedious things. When he was ripping out the backsplash he realized he would have to rip out the drywall too and just replace it. It ended up being a blessing in disguise though because he was able to find a water line so we could put in the pot filler we wanted above the stove. Mama was excited about that!

So much other headway was made today and I can finally see everything coming together! Laundry room tile was layed and washer and dryer installed. Kitchen is now prepared for countertops that should arrive within the next week or so.

In order for you guys to picture the kitchen here is what we are going with:
-white subway tiles with a light grey grout for backsplash
-white carrara marble countertops
-white cabinets with oil rubbed bronze pulls, the island will be black with brass pulls
-farmhouse sink
-polished chrome country kitchen faucet

To see it all finally come together is going to be amazing!

We will be making a lot of progess next week, carpet will be installed and cabinets done. Wood floors will also start to go down. Can I just say that my husband is amazing and I love him for everything he does for this family. He was only able to take off a couple days for the move and some of the tear out, the rest he has done after he gets off work each night. I have to also give a huge THANK YOU to my brother as well for flying out here and helping us out the past couple weeks, there is no way this all could of gotten done without him.

I can honestly say I have been going over the details of this house from the moment we put in an offer. I would stay up each night not able to sleep thinking about faucets, countertops, hardware, flooring and everything else you could imagine!

Its so exciting to see our vision happening before our eyes. Our previous house I would say was “Industrial French Country”…lots of reclaimed wood, iron accents, edison bulbs, greys.

This was previous house:

I feel like that was all before having a family, that was us before baby, and now we want everything to be cozy and functional!
Today, we went and picked out our slab of marble for the countertops. We have gone with a white Carrara Marble countertop, and white subway tiles with light grey grout as the backsplash. We kept going back and forth with whether to do quartzite, or marble, but in the end we fell in love with the marble.

We are making sure to have it sealed so that it doesnt stain and honestly if a mishap happens, we will just buff it out and reseal. Life is about so much more, then "crying over spilled milk”, or in that case “stained marble”!

This whole process of moving and packing/renovating is stressful but little blessings pop up here and there reminding me what life is all about. For instance today, Vivi was wanting to run all around the marble place, getting bored because lets face it to a baby there is nothing fun about picking out Marble slabs. However, for the first time instead of calling me “Mama”, out of nowhere she called me “Mommy”. So, all today it has been “Mommy” this and “Mommy” that! Talk about melting my heart, and in those moments all is right!

We are on "Day 3" of renovations to our new house and to say the house is tore up is an understatement. Am I crazy you ask, to do this with a toddler? Maybe. But will it all be worth it in the end? I hope so!

Let me start out by saying that everything all happened so fast! We found a house we loved, we walked in and we knew we were home. We listed our house immediately, and we sold in 11 days! Everything has gone so seamlessly as if it all were supposed to happen this way.

The craziest part was when we were living in LA a few years ago while we were in escrow on our previous house, I had a dream. I remember it vividly. I remember it was a lazy Sunday and my husband and I were laying in bed and our kids were running around playing. I felt such happiness from this dream. I remember waking up and thinking that bedroom looked nothing like the bedroom in the house we were buying…... Flash forward to 2015, our new bedroom is “THAT” bedroom. Its like the mothership was calling us home or in this case a “ spanish style” ship which is actually a house and for perks it has a built in BBQ and a jacuzzi! (Score!)

We knew buying this house all the changes we wanted to make. My husband has a construction background and he grew up building houses with his dad. To him this is something he has done a million times ,but to me, this is my first time being able to do exactly what we want to a house. It has been so much fun picking everything out and being able to start from scratch making it all our own. As well as being completely overwhelming….Did I mention I have an 18 mos. old that is already entering her “terrible” two’s?!!!

When we were looking at houses a few things I knew I wanted were:

-tons of windows for natural light

-Nice open floorplan that would be great for entertaining

-Fireplace, Driveway and Yard ( so my daughter could have a place to play while I was making dinner)

-Formal dining room to host Holidays

-all bedrooms on upper level so we could be close to our babies

….and last but not least

-a kitchen with solid wood shaker style cabinets that could be refinished and plenty of room to cook

My husband warned me that doing these changes to a house is a lot of work and in the beginning it will look crazy but you have to realize it will all come together. Well, right now we are in the “crazy” stage!

We have ripped out the floors, fireplace mantle and built in. We have torn out old appliances and next is counters and back splash. On the positive side the painters have finished today, and all of the tile on the first floor is ripped out! On the negative side the house is not liveable but guess what we have to move in 2 days. We were lucky enough to be able to do a rent back for 15 days so we could have a few days of overlap while we were doing the initial tear out. Well, those 15 days are gonna up on Tuesday!…AHHHHH!

We have so much work ahead of us but please follow me along this journey. It will definitely be crazy, and it will definitely be fun.