A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how my husband and I came to buy our future home. It is a charming Mid-Cambridge condo in a fantastic location, gets gorgeous light, and has great bones. It also currently looks like old Swiss cheese -- full of holes and covered in dust.
This is the classic it-has-to-get-worse-before-it-can-get-better stage. I've been here before and I can see past it, but it's definitely not my favorite part of the renovation process.
Beyond the mess, we're dealing with a lot of glitches, delays and monkeywrenches, which doesn't bode well for us being able to move in by the end of February when we have to be out of our current home. A sampling of what we've run into so far:
The layout we'd planned the current phase of our renovation around involved removing an awkward corner fireplace, which turned out to be a much bigger deal than anyone thought, so we had to go back to the (literal) drawing board and come up with a whole new design.
Our bright idea to bring a subpanel into the unit so we don't have to run down four flights to the basement anytime we need to flip a circuit turned into rewiring the whole place when the apparent newer wiring turned out to be connected--in a very spider-webby sort of way--to old BX. Removing this and a handful of scary-looking junction boxes buried within the walls is why we now have so many holes everywhere AND why an estimated 4-day project is now going into week two.
During the MassSave audit we did to qualify for discounted insulation, faulty testing equipment led to an incorrectly high CO reading from our furnace exhaust, so we lost two weeks in the process while that got sorted. Still hoping we can somehow squeeze the insulation in before our move since they will be drilling MORE holes in our walls and stirring up MORE dust, which will be a lot harder to deal with when the place is filled with furniture.
The above-mentioned electrical project expansion led us to have to reschedule our floors being refinished -- twice! Thankfully our flooring guy has been extremely patient but we have yet to secure a new spot in his calendar.
It's been two weeks and we are still waiting for our permit for the bathroom remodel, so that project is on hold (argh!!) Did I mention there is only one bathroom in the condo and we are supposed to be living there in 37 days?
The above items are just the larger ones we've been dealing with -- there have been many smaller annoyances, and I'm quite sure there will be more. BUT! My mantra for the year is "que sera, sera" so... let's see how that goes ;)