March 2019 Part 2: The Renovations ~ We're the Baldwin's!

Brian originally planned on taking a few days off to help while my mom and stepdad were here, but between a coworker being out, busy season, and the fact that he had to fly to Miami and back in one day for a business meeting and was out of the office that whole day, he was totally swamped. It all worked out and he wound up only taking off 2.5 hours the whole time they were here, and that was while the concrete was delivered and poured!

So, on to the actual renovations...

I've been posting some photos on my instagram stories and I got so many questions about what we're actually doing. We currently have three bedrooms and one bathroom in our humble little home. One bedroom and the bathroom face our generously sized backyard, so we got the permits to extend that bedroom in back to create a master suite. The bedroom will double in size, plus a walk-in closet and master bathroom will be added, making the house 3 bedroom/2 bath... aka much more valuable for resale purposes and much more desirable for us while we remain here.

To begin, we had to rip out the tub and toilet from our existing bathroom, jackhammer through the concrete floor and out the back of the house to the backyard, and install the new plumbing for the new bathroom to the current bathroom plumbing. Once that was inspected, we re-concreted the floor, hole, and wall, reinstalled the tub and toilet, and tiled the shower walls in the tub. We used to have a window in that bathroom, but since it's going to be up against another bathroom in the future, we had to enclose the window casing and tile over that, which left more room at the top to repaint. *I'm still in the process of repainting the walls so for now I don't have an updated finished bathroom pic.*

On the outside, we had to dig the trenches for the footers, install the new plumbing, and have both of those inspected. We had three tons of gravel delivered and had to arrange it in the middle of the slab where the concrete is going to raise it up, and save us a little money on concrete (the most expensive part). All the steel and rebar was placed, and everything was inspected before we finally were able to have the concrete delivered and poured. Luckily that was the easiest part. The concrete truck showed up with a pump truck, which had a 150 ft hose that led to the back slab and as the concrete mixing truck poured the cement into the pump truck, the pump truck driver ran the hose and poured the cement. All my stepdad and Brian had to do was smooth it out!

There have been a lot of steps I wasn't expecting along this inspection process, like the fact that I would have to hire a surveyor to come out and do a tie-in survey before we could start building vertically on the cement. I have to take that tie-in survey to the permit office and get it approved before we can go any further, so that's on my "to do soon" list. I'm definitely learning a lot during this whole ordeal, and I'm grateful for the free labor my stepdad is willing to provide! We have been so blessed. We're hoping my parents can come back to help some more in the next few months, preferably before baby boy arrives so that we have more room in our humble abode ;).

When I type it all out here, it feels like not that much was accomplished, but between the inspections, gravel delivery, concrete delivery, survey, and millions of calls to the permit office to set things up with the right people, it feels like SUCH an accomplishment. I'm kind of amazed at all the things Brian and I have tackled in the short amount of time we've been together. It makes me proud to have him as my partner-in-crime in this life, and grateful for someone who is as motivated and inspired as I am!

Backyard before the storm...

Our hideous before photo of our bathroom. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the rust and black off the floor and shower tiles.. we learned it was because the drywall behind it was never properly waterproofed before it was tiled and was molding......