Renovation Reality: Part II

You would think I was prepared for this renovation after years of watching HGTV and DIY network shows, and planning, down to the paint color what I wanted. But in reality, renovations are decision upon decision upon decision, and for a Libra, that's the innermost circle of Hell for me. Especially when every decision comes with a price tag.

Bye bye small, dark, and outdated kitchen!

We are now switching our old dining room and kitchen. So the above room is now going to be out formal dining room area, and this expansive space is going to be our new kitchen. My fears have begun to overtake my excitement because of the nightmare we found beneath the shoddy construction work of the original builder, who I shall call DumbAss Construction.

Of course, we have to fix the problems first:

Water damage to the structure and floors from no flashing, and generally fix all carpentry mistakes and oversights made by DumbAss Construction, who built this thing all wrong the first time.

Replace damaged, missing, and all around inadequate insulation. No wonder this room was an ice box in winter! We could see daylight between the original house walls and the addition. R-11 insulation with huge gaps in some areas, and huge gaps between the garage wall and addition wall. You can see through these spaces right into our unheated garage. It was an open invitation for mice, insects and cold air.

Spray for carpenter ants, wasps, and any other creepy critter that can get through the massive gaps in the wall to the garage.

Oh yeah, widen space to open it up, but most importantly add a support beam between the old kitchen and the addition (we are all very thankful that it didn't just collapse in the 10 years we've lived here).

Sister the ceiling joists so that we don't fall through our "attic bedroom" that wasn't properly finished by, you guessed it, DumbAss Construction.

Level the massively uneven floor between the addition and the kitchen (DumbAss Construction just laid plywood across the space between the rooms, making an incline of about 1/4-1/2 inch. Talk about dumb ass construction!)