Author: Kaylan

I realize that we moved into the basement, then we went silent, but I am here to catch everyone up!

After we moved into the basement, the painters and a few other contractors came through and did their final work and we were able to move upstairs without furniture, but we at least had real mattresses on the floor.

We were originally supposed to close on that Friday, but I got a call on Wednesday or Thursday that the lender had requested a “desk review” of our loan and appraisal. We live in a very interesting area where there are large lots with everything from mobile homes to mansions. Getting an accurate appraisal is hard, so it wasn’t a surprise that they wanted it all reviewed. A neighboring house also sold for $300K while we were doing our remodel and so I am guessing this showing up in the comps threw everything for a loop. It’s a modular home and not a good comp for our property.

We also ran into a few problems with insurance. My agent called to review some other things with me and I said, “It’s exciting to have the house done!” to which he responded, “What? You are done?” I have no idea what exactly happened, but it sounds like the lender worked with someone at the insurance company, but not our agent. The insurance policy they had put together was not correct as it did not cover our out buildings, only the main house. The delay in closing at least gave us time to fix this issue- which actually still wasn’t fixed because last week I had to make another payment of $80 because they still screwed it up. I have no idea why some of this is so hard.

We decided not to move in furniture until we actually signed documents. I did take the opportunity to get us completely out of the trailer. It was VERY therapeutic and so nice to know I didn’t have to go back in there for anything. The closing happened on Tuesday, January 15th, EXACTLY 7 months from when we closed on the initial loan. 7 months we survived without a real house!

Closing went smoothly. I got a call a week later that one of the documents was incorrect, but fortunately it was an easy fix. Again, this just didn’t seem normal to have so many weird issues on both loans.

My parents came out the following weekend and we were able to find and set-up beds and get the kids dressers set-up. It was great to have some help and extra sets of hands. We haven’t fully moved in, we are slowly working through it. I thought I would be super anxious to get everything in and in its place, but the opposite is true. After not living with any of our stuff for 7 months, it’s amazing how I don’t feel attached to most of it at all. It’s making unpacking extra hard and we’ve gotten rid of a lot of things we originally kept. The speed of moving in is not helped by the two tiny toddlers that are NOT helpful, but man they are cute.

The kids LOVE the new house. They especially like running around in circles. Trixie is in her big girl bed and seems to be doing very well considering we moved her straight from a crib to a bed. She was lonely the first few nights, but now seems to be able to go to bed well on her own. Some nights she gets out of bed, drags her step to turn on the lights, and empties her bookcase on the floor to look at all her books, but if you go in and put her back in bed she usually settles.

Darwin is still lonely. He was sleeping very well in the trailer, but seems to wake up most nights now and comes in our room. I think it’s just weird for him to wake up alone in a big bed in a big room, but I don’t mind the cuddles.

They also love that they can eat at the kitchen counter and watch mom and dad in the kitchen. I’m getting used to keeping a big house decently clean with tiny sticky hands on everything.

Once we got the basics in, we got terribly sick. We’ve slowed our pace immensely, but it’s very nice to be sick in a real house with real beds rather than the trailer. We’re still recovering, but today is really the first day in a week in a half I feel like I am getting better.

We still have a few issues. First is the yard, it’s on hold until the spring and a total mess. Second, the basement. The foundation isn’t leaking, but our drain started backing up at the bottom of the stairs. We ended up coming to an agreement with the builder that I held back part of their fee until these issues are taking care of and we are satisfied. They ended up cutting out the drain at the bottom of the stairs and putting in a much larger one. This project is mostly done, but still needs some new concrete. Things have been mostly frozen here in the last few weeks, so we’ll know more about the foundation leak and if it’s an issue as it gets warner. Third, cabinets. They need to fix a lot of issues on our cabinets and seem to have gone silent. It should be easy fixes once they get the parts, but frustrating it is taking so long.

There are small things now that we have moved in that we’ve noticed, but there really isn’t a lot. We’ll keep a list and the builder will come through in a few months to do some of the work as warranty work.

We’ve also been working with the city to get our bond back for the trailer. They need to come out and do an inspection to confirm it is no longer connected to utilities for us to get that money back.

It’s weird how in just a few short weeks, this house now feels like the new normal. I don’t have any good photos of the house and frankly, that’s because it’s still mostly a disaster, but here are some photos I do have of the kids and furniture. As things get more organized, I’ll get some more finished pics. Darwin was apparently too busy for any of my pictures.

TL;DR We are in!

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Last night, I woke up at about 1:30am because I heard the water in the trailer thaw out and start running again. I never really fell back asleep as I anxiously tossed and turned thinking about the house and listened to a mix of rain and snow hit the trailer. The kids woke up early and I was exhausted, but there is a certain mentality of sprinting to the finish right now that has us on auto-pilot.

I blew the GFCI with the toaster making breakfast. Right before nap time, it happened again, but this time the reset didn’t work. After some exploration, it turns out the fence guys hit our power line earlier in the week, but it probably didn’t become an issue until the weather hit today. Our power wasn’t coming back on and we aren’t sure exactly how long the batteries will last.

New plan, we are all asleep in one bedroom of the new house. Not exactly how I envisioned our first night, but I love this little family of mine. We contemplated our options of packing up and going to a hotel or Mike’s parents, but the thought of packing up the kids to unpack then repack and unpack was just too much.

After living in a trailer for 7 months, we’ll make this work for a week!

Darwin says he loves the new house. Trixie is exhausted and already asleep in her pack n play.

I haven’t posted pictures in a while because a lot of the changes happening are so minor that pictures don’t really show the work going on. Instead, below are a few video walkthroughs if you have 15-20 minutes to listen to me carry on about the house.

We did our “final” walkthrough with the contractor on Friday although we’ve been in pretty good communication throughout this process, so none of the issues were really news to them. The list of items left is not long. There are a few drywall issues, lots of paint that either needs to be done or touched up, the fencing that needs to be fixed, cabinets that need to be replaced, and the whole house needs a good scrub.

We agreed on Friday that the best thing to do is close next Friday, January 11th. That will be just shy of 7 months of construction chaos. When we moved out here Trixie wasn’t walking which seems so weird.

There are still a few issues that must wait until spring such as painting the exterior doors and landscaping because it’s just been too cold. We haven’t been over freezing in a little over a week.

We’ve been showering, doing laundry, and doing dishes in the new house which is good because the trailer’s water is frozen and has been since New Year’s. The weather is supposed to warm up this weekend and this week and we are hoping to get water back and for them to be able to put in fence posts, but time will tell.

I am looking forward to everyone and everything being in one building and not having to go outside for virtually everything. I am also looking forward to having a garage back for our cars.

The cleaners were supposed to be here today to do a good construction cleaning of the house, but we haven’t seen them yet, so the house is pretty dirty in these videos. Enjoy!

We forgot to post about our 6-month trailer-versary, but trust me, it was unremarkable and we probably ate take out or something that can be microwaved since the fridge is still out. I cannot believe we have been at this for 6 months, and I am really hoping we don’t make it 7 months.

We are on the home stretch. There are small annoying things left to get taken care of throughout the house. We have a laundry list of electrical issues and finish items. The appliances are all in and (mostly) working. The contractors are scheduled to do their inspection with the city on Thursday. They know they are going to fail on a couple of items they are intentionally leaving because they can’t get the contractors back to do them right until after the holiday, but they figure this will get us a full list of everything that needs to be done and it should save us time as the contractors all make their (hopefully) last visits.

Yesterday they drilled cabinet hardware and mis-drilled one of the cabinet drawers. Ugh. We are also still waiting for the replacement facing for the microwave that was scratched when the oven door broke. We were also home last night when the lender’s inspector came through to verify work. He said he was officially done after this and we wouldn’t see him again. The end is near!

Since it’s Christmas and I am at a real computer, you even got pictures in a gallery! Darwin asked me last week if Santa was going to bring him a Christmas tree. I felt terrible, so we put one up in the house today super last minute so that we can at least open presents in there tomorrow. He saw it and said, “It’s perfect! It even has a star!” My heart melted into a puddle.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, I am thankful for all of you and this crazy family adventure of mine. Enjoy your holiday!

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This week someone who just recently learned about this adventure asked me, “Why the hell are you living in the trailer?” The simple answer is money.

If you know me well, you know that when we started getting serious about this renovation, we talked about logistics. If we moved out of the house, where would we go? What do we do with our pets? Our goats? We looked at some rentals online and quickly realized we’d be paying $2,000+ per month for rent on a house if we wanted someplace that would allow the pets. Then, we’d have to be at the house every day to check on the goats and feed them. And finding anyplace that would be flexible with a 6-9 month window was nearly impossible. It just didn’t make sense, even if we lived with family and skipped the rent. 

At some point last spring, one of us brought up the idea of living in a trailer. I think it was me. Probably as a joke, but then it started to make sense. Mike is a teacher and over the summer we could spend a lot of time at his parent’s lake house. We could pay ourselves rent and just bank the money to help with the house. And we would be here all the time so none of the animals would be displaced other than the cats that officially got kicked out of the house. These same cats that never want to come inside when I want them to, not complain about not being allowed inside during construction. Go figure. 

We went to the RV show because we started wondering if we could really do this and, if so, how big of a trailer did we need? We knew we didn’t want anything new because depreciation on a new RV would be compounded by the fact that we weren’t interested in keeping this trailer after the renovation. We realized that 30 feet and a separate bunk room were really the requirements to make this work after letting Darwin jump around in all the RVs. It gave us enough size without being too large (read expensive) and it also gave us a separate room for the kids so that we had some way to manage babies and toddlers sleeping as Trixie was still waking up 2-3 times a night.

We went to the local RV dealerships and quickly found this trailer. I wasn’t sold on it initially because it was a little more than we wanted to spend, but after watching used listings for a few weeks we realized it was pretty reasonable. I do a lot of automotive advertising so I have a great appreciation for the desperation that comes on the last day of the month when it comes to selling vehicles. We played our cards well and walked out with a great deal on the trailer.

I don’t think anyone thought we’d really do it, much less last this long, and tell people it was still the smart decision, but it was! I can’t wait to sell this thing and spend my rent money on a new leather sofa. 

Let’s talk about something lovely, this backsplash. It’s only partially done, but I am in love. And I am super proud of it coming together because I wanted to do something special, but I didn’t want to spend $15 sq. ft. I searched high and low for grey beveled subway tile that wasn’t glass and initially wanted to do a herringbone pattern, but seeing all the outlets in place made me realize it was a bad idea so I switched it up to this basket weave style today. I’m excited to see it grouted and finished around the edges and I think it will go great with the wall color.

Lots of things are going right and getting done, but it is really hard not to focus on all the stuff that isn’t.

This week started off which the electricians dropping the double oven on Tuesday and the result was not only a shattered oven door, but scraped up cabinets. 

Fortunately, there is a trim piece under the over that hides a large portion of it, but we are still waiting to figure out exactly what to do on the rest of it. The irony is that this is the same cabinet we found sitting in water a few weeks ago, the cursed cabinet!

This week all the lights went in and it’s so nice to have lights and electricity in the house! There was some confusion about what went where and a few missing lights, but it was all sorted out. 

Carpet also went in in the basement. It’s a very neutral brown. I don’t really like carpet, but downstairs it seems like a necessary evil. With the lights and the carpet, you can see the basement living room in all its glory. I do not really like the river rock wall down there, but we left it because some people love it. And I was concerned about it costing me a million dollars to have it removed- those rocks are huge! It goes well with the wood burning stove and it’s cozy. I picked up some leather sofas on FB Marketplace that are in great shape for down there and I am actually really looking forward to getting that space put back together because we’ve never really decorated down there. Taking out some of the wood actually modernized it a little, too. 

We’re also trying to get our washer and dryer in. It’s a VERY tight fit and we can’t get the dryer vent to not kink when we push it back. We finally gave up tonight. I want to do laundry at home SO BADLY, but it’s just so hard to do even simple projects in the house right now because we have no good place to put the kids. The house is full of hazards for the kids and we have about 30 seconds at a time to do something before one of them is doing something they shouldn’t like “just sweeping” the glass shards off the floor. I finally just told Mike to give up and we’ll try again tomorrow because we were both getting a little frustrated. The counter over the washer/dryer is going to be so nice, but man it makes installing them very hard. We were planning to reuse our washer/dryer, but got a crazy good deal on new ones, but as a result it wasn’t part of the bid and therefor it’s on us. 

In other news, the basement is still flooding on every warm day and the contractor told me this afternoon that they are doing to excavate the foundation from the outside and access. This means out yard will once again be destroyed, so maybe it’s a good thing that the landscaping didn’t get done. I am super relieved, however, that they are just biting the bullet and digging it out. This isn’t normal. 

The biggest news of the week was that Christmas in the new house just isn’t going to happen. While I wasn’t terribly surprised, it’s still pretty disappointing. Back in November, they told us January and we were okay with that, but then they moved it up. I wish they hadn’t. We might have made it, but our main project manager contractor went out of town for a few weeks and as a result, things just didn’t go as smoothly as they were as he’d been our main contact and knew about a lot of the details and preferences. 

Our new date is mid-January. Another month of trailer living.

I’ve had some people ask if we can move back in before they are officially done and we can’t because the house has not passed inspection to be liveable and it is also not insured as a dwelling. It would also just slow everything down to be working around us. 

TL;DR We have another month to go, but finishes are looking great!

This week started off with me feeling terrible. I wasn’t sure exactly what was wrong with me. Mike suggested stress and I told him to stop talking.

While laying in bed Monday afternoon trying to half work and half rest, Mike came in and said he  went downstairs and noticed a disturbing development, the foundation was leaking and showed me this picture. 

He may have been right about that whole stress thing. We called the contractors and they were surprisingly unconcerned. They think it’s a drainage problem because the new gutters which are ironically now keeping the roof from leaking in through the basement door are draining in that spot upstairs and likely leaking through the foundation. We still don’t have a straight answer on whether or not we need to rip out the wall or not. It’s on the list.

That’s what life has basically come down to at this point, a list. Our list has everything big a small small on it that still requires attention before we move in. Our main contractor hasn’t been around so now I’m freaking out a little that all the conversations about the little things, like reusing the garbage disposal, bathroom mirrors we already have, which knobs and pulls go where, etc. all need to be communicated again.

This afternoon our plan is to basically lay everything out that we have in each room. Their goal is still to be done by the 20th, but then we will still need inspections and a closing.

A few developments outside include new window well covers and ladders. When I was little the neighbors house burned down and then when I got older I because the Vice Chair of Disaster Services for the Red Cross so I am weird and crazy about things like this, but with good reason. The back stairs are also done. We were allowed to grandfather in our existing steps that are not to code, but our new steps needed to  have a larger landing. They were worried that if we did them in cement they would be too heavy, so we settled on Trex. It’s not my favorite to have them not match, but it’s just the nature of a remodel.

Inside, the granite went in. I got home at 11pm on Friday night and went inside to visit it. That is how much I love it. Mike and I got super lucky that we looked early because we found a stone that looks expensive, but was in our budget. The kitchen is 6cm on the edges and it’s amazing. These pictures don’t even do it justice.

The only three things that are really causing me heartburn right now are the granite in the basement bathroom where they didn’t center the sink, the squeaky floors in our master because of damaged si flooring, and this foundation issue. You know, minor issues. Ha!

Granite can’t exactly be easily fixed, so we are waiting to see if there is anything they can do on that. The flooring guys are going to take the wood up in our room this week and see if they can remove the squeak. It really isn’t bad, but it just annoys me because it should have been done before, and the foundation issue I don’t even know exactly what to do. We are caught in this battle right now of wanting to be done, but also wanting everything to be done right. 

Oh, and our replacement fridge for the fridge that went out the week we moved out of the house died last night. I’m so annoyed at it and want to know how I pissed off the fridge gods so bad. This means we have the trailer fridge only until we move in because I absolutely refuse to even care about another fridge issue. And this also means I refuse to grocery shop until we move in. You will find me surviving on Club crackers, Cheetos and bottled water.

So, now I will stop complaining and say that we are really lucky to even be doing this and I am so thankful to be staying in this place I love with these people I love. Turns out home is where you park it in some cases. And I’ve learned that Mike and I can do a lot of hard things if we are on the same team. 

TL;DR I think this project is giving me an ulcer. And the house is slowly coming together despite a few pretty big issues we have to figure out. We are grateful and love is where you park it sometimes! 

This week we got floors and cabinets. I have no pics of cabinets because it’s dark, but I do have pictures of the floors. We went with wood tile in the main living space since we do live on a farm and wanted something super easy to clean. We then did wood in the upstairs bedrooms. Below are pics of both. The tile needs to be grouted, but all of the flooring on the main level is seemless transitions and it is so nice after living in a house with way too many flooring choices throughout! Downstairs will be tile and carpet.

We also got gutters, so hopefully no more flooded basements!

I didn’t go to the laundromat this morning, but about an hour ago I decided I should wander through the house and take a few pictures for the blog. Thank goodness that I did because I walked into the basement and discovered the kitchen cabinets sitting in water that had come in through the basement door.

This has been somewhat of a problem in the past because we don’t have gutters on the house right now to move the water away from the stairway, but since the door went in there hasn’t been a problem… until today!

I texted the contractors and ran upstairs to grab Mike. We have both of the kiddos, but managed to move a few things out of the way before I discovered the kids out of the trailer and eating snow in the driveway- all the water in the basement is from this year’s first snow that showed up last night. The kids are still very little and it’s hard to leave them for even a minute as the trailer isn’t terribly child safe and they both know how to unlock the front door. They were just looking for us and nothing will make you feel like a shitty parent like finding your kids outside unattended.

I took them in the trailer and now the contractors showed up to help Mike. They only live about 20 minutes away, fortunately. I’m hoping everything was caught in time that nothing is damaged. Most of it was on the cabinet for the double oven and all the trim laying on the floor behind it as well as an old kitchen cabinet that is also now down there.

While we await news on that mess, here is an update on everything else.

The upstairs is all painted and badly in need of some touch ups, but I really enjoy the color. It’s hard to pick a single color for everything, but I like the choice. The downstairs is all primed and ready for paint. Closets are also all in and bathroom tile is now started in the master and kid’s bath. We were told cabinets would go in Monday, but that means the floors all have to be in and there is simply no way that is going to happen at this point.

Outside, it’s completely painted except the doors. We need gutters and soffit all finished up, too. We got a new bid on fencing and that should be done mid-December. Along with window well covers, sprinklers, the railing around the stairs, it feels impossible to think this is ever going to be truly DONE in less than a month.

We’ve been in the trailer 5 and a half months now. It’s starting to seem extremely small as the kids struggle to share space. Darwin’s 3rd Birthday was this week and he got all sorts of new toys that he wants to play with, but so does his annoying little sister. I don’t really have a place to send him to play in peace. I’m thrilled they’ll have their own rooms soon. They will be thrilled once it happens. And I am certain they will miss each other so much they will end up playing together anyway.

TL; DR Basement flooded under kitchen cabinets, paint done outside, floors and paint in progress upstairs.