Welcome to the saga of the renovation of my forever home. If you haven’t already, please see The Beginning – Exterior and The Beginning – Interior.

This will give you an idea of what the house looked like on the exterior and the interior before I bought it. I have broken the renovation down into different parts and right now I couldn’t tell you how many parts there will be in this series, but it’ll take you to when I moved in.

Of course a house is never done so I will keep you updated as I complete projects in my home.

When I started my reno, I began with ordering a porta-potty and I thought to myself, “this is getting real” but in a good way. I had always wanted to renovate a home and the day was finally here. I closed on the house and now I had to deal with the consequences of my actions. Time to woman-up!

The contractors and I came together and decided that we would start with getting a new front door so that the home would be secure. You could have probably kicked in the previous one.

I went to the Habitat Restore and several vintage places to see if I could source a door, but ended up going to a wholesale door company and bought one. I wanted glass but didn’t want the whole door to be glass. I would have felt too exposed so I settled on one that had eight panes at the top. It let in the light just enough.

We took out the old door and replaced it with the new one along with new trim and I loved it! I bought the door hardware from Home Depot in antique bronze.

Then, we moved on to any repairs to the outside. The dumpster arrived and I thought “this is getting really real”. Also, the porch posts and railings had to be rebuilt.

The back door had to be replaced and the railing was not up to code so they had to tear it out and build a new one. The door would eventually be replaced with one that had windows on the upper half.

The left side of the house had damaged siding, but before they could start we had to test for lead paint as houses built before 1978 usually had lead in the paint. My house was built in 1950, so they definitely had to do a lead abatement. After that was done, they could start the repairs.

The next item on the list was to tear down the deck on the side of the house. I didn’t take a picture of the torn down deck, but if you want to see what it looked like when the deck was up, check out my previous blog post on The Beginning – Exterior.

At some point I took off the shutters, since one was missing and I decided they made the house look too traditional. On to the paint. I originally wanted a black house but I chickened out. Then I wanted charcoal and I chickened out on that too. I don’t regret it too much.

I settled for a mid-tone gray on the trim and went a little lighter on the house. We added gutters since there weren’t any and painted them the same color as the trim. I know if you checked out my first post, you might think I painted it the same color, but trust me, the original color was a gray/blue.

The outside was a bumpy ride, but we made it through. From the lead testing and abatement, to the water damage on the left side of the house which was more involved than we thought, there were the requisite twists and turns of a renovation and I loved it!

This was what I had been dreaming of for years. How naive I was. I would eat my words as we got into the heart of the interior. As I’m remembering this, I can only laugh now.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever been through a renovation and just how crazy it was because I know it was. It’s not for the faint of heart.

Until the next post, smooches.