Progress!

For most of the renovations, I’m going to try to tackle things myself. But, for Phase 0, time is of the essence before I move in, so there’s no time to dilly-dally or watch 3842304820394 YouTube videos. So, hired-help it is!

I talked to the listing agent who had sold me the house, and found out he’d sold another townhouse on the same street a few years back that had similar work done to what I wanted. He gave me the contact information for the contractor, who’s mother lives in my neighborhood as well (i.e., he’s a low flight-risk).

The first order of business was to level-out the sunken living room and update the hardwood floors that were just a tad orange. Originally, that meant refinishing, but upon consultation with the new contractor, that particular type of flooring wasn’t going to handle the requisite patching well, so we decided to replace the floors with a similar model instead. (And this would have been hard to do once there was furniture in there.)

After that, switch out the chandelier, paint the walls and ceiling, and remove the giant mirrors – or keep them and use the dining room as a ballet studio? No, remove them.

Here’s where we’re working today, for reference:

Paint

Paint-wise, it all started with Farrow & Ball’s “Peignoir”, a lavender-y light gray:

I love F&B and all their inspiration pics, but upon pricing-out a full repaint of the interior, it would have been almost $5,000 just for materials. Considering I had originally budgeted about $2,000 for paint and labor, that plan was scrapped pretty quickly. Since I did still want high-quality paint that would last for however long I live here (so I don’t have to repaint!), I went with Sherwin-Williams Emerald paint. From there, I found a color collection I liked, which was a collab with West Elm:

I picked a couple colors to focus on, and the handy graphic designer I happen to be related to came to the store with me to make some final tweaks – here’s where we landed for the overall scheme:

Angora will be my Peignoir dupe!

A whole house of this paint will be around $2,000, and instead of hiring people to do it, I’ll tackle it myself, over time.

By the way, giant mirrors like the ones I had are secured to the wall using tar goopy enough to kill a dinosaur, so once they were gone, a fair amount of scraping, peeling, sanding, spackling, sanding, spackling, spackling, and more spackling is required. Luckily, I have pink spackle and I never ever get tired of it!

(I ended up taking the swirlygig thing off the bottom.)

Also seems like a good time to mention that almost all the outlets in this house are getting replaced, from the 80s “light almond” tone … to white. Thanks to my Dad for tackling the first kajillion outlets, picking me up a fancy new tool set (so I can do the rest?), and also hanging multiple chandeliers at varying heights and then rehanging them at various other heights!

Putting it Together

The flooring work only took about a week start-to-finish for my contractor’s merry band. While they weren’t around, my fam and I started painting:

Above: The inaugural open can of paint, my Dad before spending the next twelve decades switching out outlet covers, and my lil sis with some sophisticated painting equipment. Not pictured: Mom!

And here’s the before, during, and after:

Ooohhhhh! Check out this cool slider feature:

Another view of the finished product:

Really happy with how this project came out. Off to a great start!

$$$

And lastly, for the debits …

Budget remaining (out of $50,000): $41,901