A Day in the Life of a Renovator

We are by no means DIY all the way kind of renovators. I have no patience for that, and Sergey has absolutely no desire to go to any home renovation extremes, such as tiling a bathroom (contrary to the impression you might get from this blog).

And yet, we are still constantly doing, deciding, and figuring out the details. And that, is no piece of cake. A day might start something like this: wake up at 6 am and have a meeting of sorts to discuss what Sergey needed to tell contractors, such as where we wanted the light to be positioned in the bathroom, which piece of molding to use for the window, how deep the recessed shelves should be, which pieces of tile to use for recessed shower shelf etc, etc. I go to work at 7:30 and Sergey stays home until the guys to show up, oh I would say at least once a week.

At 6:30 pm we reconvene at home, and after grabbing a quick dinner/snack and a few minutes of the Olympics we are off to take care of the to-do list. On a typical night, that might entail painting.

Exhibit A – Rustoleum primer for tin panels; Exhibit B – lime wash for the brick; Exhibit C – Tin panels are almost done, but reinforcement needed.

Or today, we have moved on to cleaning the small room which has been the staging grounds for construction materials, to a somewhat useable bedroom (why you ask, well so friends/ family can visit — little do they know whats in store for them!)

Oh and now that the bathroom is nearing its completion, time to take care of things which will not be replaced in there, such as door and window molding with 500 gazillion layers of paint. I am not shooting for perfect, just an A- or a good enough, so I only spent about 1.5 hours on one sideĀ  of the door molding (more on that process in a separate post)

Oh its 11 pm? Well I still have to shower and write up this cute little post about renovating.

Speaking of showering, its certainly nice to have a working bathtub, but a combination of short on time and just plain not caring, has led us to shower with a makeshift shower curtain. Yep, two contractor bags held together by tape and three shower rings.

But its really not that bad. In fact its exciting too. Particularly if you think of it “this will be a once in a lifetime kind of experience. ” That’s why cataloging it all on a blog, so you won’t forget and accidentally decide to do it again at some point in your life is essential.

Its currently 1 am, and I must get some sleep before another “day in the life of renovator”