The phrase "remodeling is not for the weak" is no understatement!  I am happy to say that the first phase of our remodeling adventures is done.  What was supposed to be a week long project started in late October and just finished up this month!



In the beginning there was our basement, a finished space where our family room and studio room is located.  It is half of our living space.  And it had yucky carpet that I have been wanting to rip out for a very looooooong time!



Then there was the discovery of the asbestos tile in one room- not a great discovery but we found an excellent local abatement company that had it removed in 1 day!

And then there was probably worst part of the whole project.  The first sub contracted company was a nightmare.  What was often communicated was not what happened.  To simple things like taping off and plastic sealing the stairway so tons of concrete dust did not come upstair and cover my main living space, to not grinding and prepping the floors correctly, to not protecting the walls and doors from the stain, to not finishing filling in cracks completely, to sealing in debris into the floor, and leaving a huge mess with a undesirable color and horrible sealant finish and refusing to come back and look at.  It was evident this person had not done something like this before and bit off more than they could handle.  Unlucky for us!






I am still shocked by the experience.  Luckily we have a good contractor that arranged for a new company to come in and examine the mess to determine how to fix it.  Unfortunately that meant grinding all of that had been stained and sealed and starting over from scratch.  So that is what we did and were really happy with the new company who talked us through the process, our options, and as a bonus we met a pretty amazing person in our community.

We now have a really fun and unique stained concrete floor, fresh new paint, rebuilt stair treads and a fresh new living room space for our family.  I just have to share some pictures!