Bare Essentials

 

Here we are! Its all started! The house is empty, down to the very bare walls. All that is left is what they need to connect the new addition. It feels very real all of the sudden, nothing on the walls, nothing in the rooms, no small pitter patter of feet or giggles from bedrooms. Its just the shell of a home now.

That part makes me sad. 

Because once it was my home.

and I know, I know , I know. It still is. But it doesn't feel like it right now. I'm still in this weird home purgatory for a bit. I wish I knew how to relieve myself of the little spots of hurt that happen when you leave your house so I could eclipse it with the happiness of the new house. 

But I'm not there yet. I know I will be, when I see the beautiful new house, but for now, I'm still totally attached.

Change is hard folks.

So here are some photos of the before formal demo period, but after all is stripped down to the bare essentials.

 Lori's room/ aka the play room/ aka the spare or guest bedroom

 The basement living room. This is all of our own hard work. Its hardest to watch this part disapear.

 The other side of the living room.  Lots of Drew's handwork in this space.

 The ominous stairs that have to be moved because they are so out of code.  I fell down these stairs holding Owen when he was a newborn. Drew fell down them earlier this year, our old nanny got a concussion by hitting her head on the header at the bottom step and almost no one is able to naturally not have to duck when you walked down them. I can honestly say good riddance to these!

 The kitchen! Its a bit bigger without the cabinets.

 The other side of the kitchen. Bye bye red. You were fun while you lasted!

 The main floor bathroom. You can't see it in this shot, but there is an old blue bathtub behind the door that I can't wait to have removed. The wainscotting in here was quaint at first, but then I started to realize all of the gross paint blobs, rifts and the improper application. I love wainscotting, when done correctly. This was a nightmare. Bye bye!

 Collin's old room. Which actually looks pretty nice here. Not too bad. Except for that it isn't insulated at all and ice forms below each window inside the room in the winter. It is sad that we'll lose the original hard wood floors though, even if they were beat up. They had lots of character.

 More of Collin's room. This room is more dear to me. We brought him home to this room when he was born.

 Owen's room, which before Owen was a spare bedroom and before that was a guest room. IT is fairly cute still, but with all of the lovely ice problems in Collin's room. I'm also excited to get rid of the tiny closets.

 The hallway. With a toilet. Cramped. Difficult to see where the kids were. Tiny. Just way too tight and small for our growing family.

 Our bedroom, upstairs. Here it looks huge. I guess it kind of was huge. Except that we didn't have a door at all and 1/2 of it was halvies walls so you couldn't do much on the sides. It was nice though in terms of space. Except for the lack of closets. Oh it was horrible! No CLOSET!

 The other side of our room.

 The living room with the weird corner window and non-functional front door. This room, when we moved in used to be my favorite room because it was the first room that got "real furniture", it made me feel like we were adults way back in 2004 or so....

 More living room, and the stove, which we finally just sold (Hooray!)

 Between the kitchen and living room on the main floor.

 The hallway from the other direction...

 Outside. Nothing too different here yet except all of the landscaping is gone.

 The garage, sans the loads of stuff. It felt like Drew was packing this up FOREVER. There was A LOT of stuff in there.

So now we're here. Ready for the next step. Demo. The real deal, folks. No going back now.