The contractor moved in!

Every photo during this stage was horrific! You can see his trailer in the background.

We chose to use a company that was doing ongoing large construction jobs with large crews in our small town. They are based out of a larger city, but were here fairly long term for the large job they were on.

Their crews like to have side work to do on the weekends and the contractor bid out the job and said they could get it done in ample time as they have large crews that can sweep through on the weekends and basically complete a phase of the remodel in two days when it would normally take several days if not weeks. This sounded perfect for us! We had a baby on the way and our current house was now under contract. Better to get this house done sooner rather than later!

The contractor coined one of his “up and coming” hands to be the general contractor over our specific job. He had never done this before but the contractor said he was very talented, had a good eye and was more than ready to lead a project like this. I’m all about giving people opportunities to prove themselves and move up in their career - we were excited and ready for him (we will call him J.) to get started!

Can you spot the pup?

J had a travel trailer and a dog and asked if they could camp out on our lot so that he could be here and work in the evenings. Of course, we said absolutely! It was a win, win for all involved! He could keep an eye on our property and be here to oversee the others that come in and work.

He found a cozy little spot for his camper and we already had sewer and electricity hookups. It was like it was meant to be! He hung an American flag, set up his tools and got to work!

Yep! That's our bathroom! Terrifying.

First stop, ripping a hole into our bathroom floor. It had water damage and he needed access to the pipes underneath. This was the best way to do it. He also got to work scraping this awful sticky stuff that was once holding the carpet down to the beautiful original wood floors that we planned to expose. There were just a few final demo touches to tend to before he could get started on re-building our home.

Things were off to a good start! Within a week we were ready to start putting everything back together!