Well when we got our tax refund this year we were talking about what we wanted to do with it. Normally, we'd split it 60/40 (Larry makes more than me and he's the reason we get a good refund so he gets a bigger chunk of it). However, we were talking and decided it might be better if we just each took a bit of it and then put the rest to something that goes for the whole household (like vacations or a house project). We talked about finishing the basement, but we didn't feel we had enough to cover that this year. We knew we weren't going to be taking any vacations this year (not with a newborn/4 very young kids) so we started talking about the built in project I had in mind. We then started talking about what we'd like to do with our mud room (I had been talking for a while about putting a cabinet in there to hold our cleaning supplies and then adding in a bench with shoe storage and a shelf). Then I thought about how nice it would be to fix up our pantry. Our shelves are falling apart in there and I remember in an open house we saw a pantry that had cabinets along the bottom and shelves on the top half and how nice that would be to have.
So after deciding what we'd like to do I did some measuring and drawing up plans and started contacting some people. Unfortunately, finding people who would call me back was really hard (I still don't understand this). Some said the project was too big for them, some didn't call me back at all, and then we had one who said they could give us a quote, but it was a small project for them so they didn't seem enthusiastic about it. I was kind of shocked. We started this process well before Pierce was born so that we could get it done quickly, but apparently I was dreaming! Haha.
Luckily, the one who said it was a small project came to give us a quote and came in about what I budgeted/figured it would cost. He also said it would only take them a few days to a week to complete (which shocked me, I thought it would take weeks to finish). I tried to get a couple more people to give quotes, but only one other responded and he said it would take him 12 weeks to finish and was about 4K more than the other guy so I figured we'd just move ahead with the first one.
We paid our deposit, signed the contract and then had to wait. He wanted to wait till the cabinet doors could be closer to completed before putting the shelves in. We made a plan that I'd stay upstairs with Pierce since I didn't need my boob out with strangers and he has still been good at napping on me so I went up with snacks, my water, my tablet and planner while they worked on the shelves. The first day the demo was RIGHT under our room and he just slept through the most insane noise I've ever heard. We really lucked out with how well he sleeps through noise, I just can't rave about it enough haha. Honestly, I loved having an excuse to be upstairs and cuddle during the work. I got lots of good snacks and got to watch some good shows and movies...can't complain about that haha.
They just finished the work this week and I have to say, the pantry is a bit different than I expected (I didn't plan on having a counter area, but now that I'm used to it I actually really like it). The mud room is probably my least favorite of the three, but only because the cabinet has a wall in the middle that makes it so our cleaning stuff doesn't fit as well as I had hoped, but I'm sure I can finagle it a bit to figure it out. Once we hung up our hooks for our jackets/bags and put shoes in the slots it looked much better. Our shelves, cabinets, and bench in the front room is my absolute favorite of all of them! Larry put the books and games in while I held Pierce and I just absolutely love seeing it just how I imagined. I will say we went from having games on one side and books on the other to adding lower cabinets for games and having books on the upper shelves. We made the bench a hollow cabinet bench for more storage so we have TONS of it and I'm so happy!
Overall I'm so excited we were able to get these project done this year, it was so unexpected, but I'm so happy with them and how our house looks. Hopefully, the basement will be coming in the next few years, but I'm also playing around with doing some exterior projects...possibly? Haha.
No comments:
Post a Comment