living through major house renovations with your family!

  I can't believe that we are only a month away from the 1 year anniversary of moving into our lake house fixer upper!  When we purchased this home we knew that it would need some improvements and updates, but we had no idea really HOW many until we actually got in and got started.  Since the day we moved in we have been doing reno's with a few breaks here and there, and all the hard work and the time and effort into making this house our home has been completely worth it.  Not easy, but SO worth it, and actually a lot of fun!  Living in Reno's can definitely be a challenge, and add in kids and dogs and regular life and it becomes even more challenging.  So I thought it might be fun to share my experience of living in reno's with our family for the past 11 months with you, just in case you ever find yourself with a fixer upper ;)

  Right now we are currently doing the last stage of 'big' reno's which include building a brand new bathroom down stairs, and then ripping out and re-doing the upstairs bathroom so it becomes two bathrooms.  A small powder room style bathroom and an ensuite off of our bedroom.  This will be the last large and more intrusive reno that we 'hopefully' have to do for a while.  After that all the other big improvements we want to do are downstairs like the laundry room, and turning the storage room into a second 'living room' and we'd also love to do improvements on the outside of the house as well down the line, but all of those will be more out of the way.  I feel like I am nearing the end of the reno's that really get in the way of our daily life, and that is exciting!  Once those bathroom's are in upstairs (hopefully within the next month), I feel like we can have a bit of a celebration that we made it to 1 year of living in renovations! (insert happy dance!)

  Many people have the option of living somewhere else while they do large renovations, or having the opportunity to 'fix up' a house before you have to actually move into it.  This was not in the budget for our family, so we knew going in we would just have to make it work.  We also knew that we would be doing the bulk of the work ourselves.  With my husband doing the largest amount of labour, and me chipping in whenever I could between homeschooling, and making meals for the fam and grocery shopping and taking care of the kiddos that is ;) we also had some family come the first few months here and there to chip in and help as well, which was great.  

  The renovation we did first was the flooring, since we had to take out and re-do all the flooring on the entire upstairs (it's a bungalow style house, so only a main level and walk out basement with windows) we thought it was best to get this big job done first.  My husband did it room by room, and we did the same vinyl wood plank flooring throughout the entire main level.  We then moved onto the bedrooms so that we could get the kids settled into their spaces, and then our bedroom, building new closets, adding walls where there wasn't a wall, and lot's and lot's of painting (so much white trim! lol) we did a pine ceiling in our living room, septic and landscape work outside, and then came the kitchen....(cue scary music!)

  I have to admit the kitchen was the reno I was dreading the most.  I had all these people saying 'ohhhh your ripping out your kitchen? good luck!' in a bit of a tone...but I tried not to let it get to me!  I knew it would be super messy, and dusty and loud and inconvenient but I also knew it would be worth it!  We lived to tell the tale, and yes it was super messy and dusty and loud and long and inconvenient BUT it also wasn't half as bad or difficult as I was expecting from all these stories I had heard.  The best thing we did was make a 'make shift' kitchen on the other side of our living room, we moved over the fridge, and stove and pantry stuff and table and microwave and coffee maker and we made it so we could still try to prepare meals in somewhat of what we were used to.  Since we were doing the reno ourselves, we also made sure to leave the sink in as long as we could so we weren't without water to wash and clean pretty much the whole time except for maybe a day or two altogether!  We made simple meals, and used the BBQ a lot (YAY it was spring/summer and warm out, so the kids were playing outside a lot during that month also) the thing I missed the most was baking, because I didn't really get a chance to do that while everything was being worked on.

  I think a lot of it is attitude, and patience!  Anytime I started to get a little bit frustrated with all the dust and cleaning and mess, I would just try to remember how thankful I was to be able to put a new kitchen in our house, how awesome is that?  When it seemed like things were taking a bit longer then I expected, I reminded myself that good things take time, and it wasn't going to happen in a day or even a week or month sometimes.  We also made sure to do a little thing called 'moral boosters' about once a week.  This could be anything from putting up a new picture, bringing in a piece of furniture you hadn't seen in a while, rearranging a room around or putting down a new rug.  It just had to be something that in the midst off the reno mess and disarray that gave us a boost and made our house feel like a home again :) it became a thing where I would say 'I think it's time for a morale boost' and my awesome hubby would make it happen.  We also took breaks to get outside in nature as a family very often, and go on a hike, a kayak or swim to break up the work days and to make sure we were still spending good quality family time amidst the crazy.

  As much as we could we tried to let the kids 'help' out too, I put help in quotations because you know it is inevitably a little harder to let kids help, but it's also such a great learning experience for them, and it also helped them to feel a part of everything that was happening and changing in the house.  I did my best to clean up as we went along, and never let a big mess pile up for long, keeping things as clean and organized as possible was my big way of contributing, and it also made me feel good inside (yes I am a bit of a clean freak I'll admit it!) dusting and sweeping is something you can count on doing a lot of during a home reno!

  We also did our best to stay within our budget, meaning if we didn't have the money for something we didn't do it, or if we needed to change up the way we did something to make it more cost effective we also did that too.  We did our best to choose quality products that would hopefully last, as well as doing the labour ourselves, and this helped us stay in a reasonable budget.  We also tried to look at things we already had and see what we could salvage and re-use or re-purpose within the house, and this was helpful in saving money many times along the way!

  Whatever kind of reno's you are doing with your family in tow, look at it as a time to learn and grow and work hard, and you won't be disappointed with your efforts!  Know that it will take time, and patience, and compromise, and maybe a few 'heated' convo's with your hubby (we had our share haha) and also know that when it is complete you will be so glad you stuck with it and made it happen!  You will also be closer as a family and ready to take on the next big thing :)

  What kind of big reno's have you done in your home recently?  What were some ways that you made it easier on your family or helped it to be a more positive experience? Comment down below, I always love to hear your thoughts!

Happy fixing!

-Shelley