Happy #TBT! (We don’t post baby pics here though, even if Zach and I were both pretty dang cute).
Instead, I’m going to remind everyone of those amazing SkyDancer toys that every little girl wanted in the 90s even though their wings doubled as blades and you would have to explain to the school nurse that the bruise under your eye really was from your doll flying into your face at 25 mph.
And while at first glance this is a video of a SkyDancer doll flying directly into a fire, it also serves as a visual representation of what our home remodel is starting to feel like.
To really paint the picture, I’m also throwing it back to the most memorable quote from both Zach and myself:
If we can get it livable for $15K, I think we should buy it.
– Zach
This kitchen? I can totally save this kitchen.
– Bailey
Isn’t reminiscing so great?! I feel like I’ve really become more in tune with my feelings these days — specifically the feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and what-the-hell-ness?
To add to this sensory experience are an abundance of smells that reside within our house. If you’ve ever been in a vacant house, you know the smell — it’s musty, stale, and a little rotten. But that’s not our house — our house was 15x that, and it hit you like a wall when you walked in. But we figured with some cleaning and fresh air, the smell would go away. In some ways, it did — removing the tile helped, spraying the ceilings with enough fabric softener to make a brick feel like a cotton ball helped, and scraping off the popcorn ceiling brought in the smell of burnt crayons (which really complemented the scent). But even with all the work and demolition, the house still smelled.
Then, one day, we ripped out a single cabinet to get us closer to Zach’s grand vision of a bar, and let me just say, all the smells were smelled that day. Turns out our little mice problem was actually a little bit bigger than we expected (and by little I mean massively larger). I joked about the termites having their last supper supplied by our bathroom frame, but this was like a feast at the Capitol in the Hunger Games, and whatever party the mice were throwing drew a comparably-sized crowd. Under this cabinet, was a solid four inches of attic insulation, rat poo-poo, and house smell.
After that, there was no chance in hell we were keeping those cabinets through the rest of the remodel. Thank goodness for Zach’s parents, Demolition Dale and Tracy (we’re still working on her superhero name), who helped us with all of it. I swear I was just standing there stunned for at least 5 minutes. So Zach and Demolition Dale went to town and ripped out the cabinets one by one, and each cabinet felt like there was more debris than the last, even though I knew it would be under each cabinet. It’s like standing next to a toaster waiting for toast to pop out — you know it’s going to happen and you’re waiting for it, but even when it does you’re still startled.
So our dreams of salvaging the kitchen during the remodel are gone, and I am definitely not mad about it. I’m glad there aren’t any active mice and I’m so glad we found it — which we wouldn’t have if Zach hadn’t wanted the bar so badly. Bars, once again, prove themselves to be great.
The other part of this is that we’ve found the primary hole they were coming in through which is also a relief. Because we know they were in the attic, we’re in the process of ripping out all the insulation and cleaning every inch before we spray in new insulation. And you can bet that our neighbors are going to be smelling Clorox from down the block once I get to cleaning the floors.
We still have two more cabinets to rip out, but this should be our last weekend of demo before we actually start on the remodel part. Next is replacing the siding and hearing from a plumber about our drain lines, which I anticipate being another example of a toaster moment. But I guess we’ll find out soon!
And to leave you with some parting words, I bring to you this quote from Demolition Dale:
There’s no way she wouldn’t have seen these guys running around. Hell, they were probably her pets; she probably had them named. She’d sit down to watch tv and say ‘Oh, hey George. You want a Cheeto?’
Cheers,
Z + B
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