How are you guys? I’m pretty good. An easy weekend around here. I’m sitting on the couch with a pup on my feet. Other than the nervous barking at strangers, he’s kept up with being a really good dog. We’re happy about that for sure. Anyway, I thought I should give you a little update on our home and life lately.

I know I had mentioned that we came back to find our home in a much sadder condition than we had hoped. We have finally cleaned up and organized it, and other than the leftover stains and very sad couches, it looks mostly put together. We’re about to start going room by room on minor fixer up tasks too. Nothing crazy— because honestly, I don’t feel like spending a bunch of money to “update” our house (thoughts on that later?). But you know, little things like moving art around, maybe painting a few walls,  etc. Cool.

When I got pregnant I was like, I’m totally going to go back to the house and remodel the bathroom— I’m giving my self a bathtub! But then a miscarriage came and the realities of laziness set in, and I was like, “nah the guest bathroom definitely does it’s job, we’re good”. Alex is really wanting to remodel the kitchen and I just keep going back and forth on it for sure.

While having an *updated* kitchen is a great idea, it’s also very pricey and time-consuming. Not to mention no amount of remodeling is going to bring proper light into the kitchen anyway (the only thing I truly care about in there). How I see it is: we have a working stove, a space to prep things, a machine to keep things cold, and running water. So we’re good. We’re certainly not lacking with our kitchen. So I don’t know… maybe we’ll do it, maybe we wont, I’m just not sure. I’d rather spend the money elsewhere. If anything, I do want to try to install light tubes in the kitchen to see if we can bring some more light in there.

Anyway, the other thing that is happening (the thing I came to post about): water damage. I was so overwhelmed by this when we first discovered it… but now I’m feeling like,  *well, let’s just see what happens and go from there*. When we were cleaning up our space and looking at the repairs we’d have to do, Alex noticed a soft spot on the wall, just to the left of the chalk board. Alex said, “I don’t know what this is, but I want to get in there”. I told him, “by all means, knock some of the wall down, see whats happening.” Well, we pulled up the baseboard and found water damage running all along the entire wall of that hallway space.

We called in a water damage guy and he started testing the walls and the floors and it turns out that we have a high amount of moisture and wetness all along that side of the house. We got some major water damage going on over here. It’s been about two weeks since we’ve discovered it and we’re still waiting to hear back from the insurance on what the next steps are. But it seems like our home is going to go through a bigger renovation than planned. The walls and bathroom will need to get entirely knocked down to find and fix the leak. The floors will have to come up to– water sitting under there + Florida’s high humidity is molds favorite place. You better believe that I’m not taking any chances.

Any bigger home projects I did want to do, will mostly be on hold, because everything is so uncertain on how much will have to get demolished in this water leak process. We have no idea where the leak is coming from– but the water guy seems to think the bathroom for sure (not the roof or the AC unit — which is right next to the bathroom). Speaking of the AC unit, that also crashed on us this week— another 1,000$ spent to fix a metal box pumping air.

So we’re been spending time outside, fixing up the backyard and around the house, and trying tp pretend this big ol’ elephant in the room does not exist. You know, making the best out of the other spaces of our yard while we can. It was a super bummer and slightly anxiety thing when we discovered everything, but now it’s just a patience learning waiting game.

And I mean, it’s not all bad. I guess, without planning, I will be getting a new bathroom after all. We can see how easy or difficult the process is, before fully diving into the kitchen. I’m going to go ahead and guess that it makes me not want to do the kitchen at all, haha. And I mean, I did totally want to re-do my floors one day, so I guess that’s good too! Well, is it re-doing if you’re just pulling up whats there and bringing back to life whats underneath? We have terrazzo in most of our home… hopefully it’s in good shape and we can just bring that back to life. If not, I have no idea what our flooring option will be.

It definitely was not fun trying to get home and readjust from eight months away only to find some major water damage happening, but it could be worse… a hell of a lot worse. Our house could have flooded while we were on the other side of the world… or the damage could have gone completely into our living room… (or into the kitchen, but maybe that would have been a good thing? haha). Or a million other things could have happened. So this is just one thing that needs to be fixed… in time.

Until that happens, we’ll still be here and there, trying to make this place a home.

Good times on life’s ups and downs right? I hope you guys had a great weekend! Alex went back to work last week— but has today (Sunday) off so we’re having Indian dinner together. Tomorrow Marlowe starts a week of camp and Alex and I will conquer small daytime projects around the home. It should be a good week. Cheers friends!

7 Comments

  1. When it rains, it pours. No pun intended. We’ve always rented so when it comes to bigger projects or repairs our landlord takes care of it. But even just the little stuff we cover on our own can be time consuming. And pricey. So, it’s such a bummer that you came home to a lot of repairs/updating needing to be done. Thankfully the water damage was caught early though! Silver lining, right? Good luck with all of the updates/repairs! And here’s to having a great rest of the week.

  2. I remember when our home hit 20 years everything started to go, some water damage, furnace/airconditioner, even kitchen on and on. Water damage is the worse you don’t need Mold at all! Also, so sad how people treated your home. New kitchen was my favorite update/remodel. Good luck with everything just take it day by day.

    • ugh its hard! even if you plan and save for “just in case situations” it’s like, well damn, I wasn’t wanting this right now, haha. We had a mold test and he said our air quality is clean– so if everything gets done quick enough, we should be in the clear for mold safety 🙁 <3<3 thank you thank you!

  3. Awe 🙁 I’m sorry about your home. It’s good that you’re keeping positive spirits about it. I know that’s not easy. Sounds like your making a house a home again, with all the repairs and the new doggie 🙂

    ~Laurali Star

    http://www.girlynaturelovers.com

  4. Why don’t you try a roof skylight over the kitchen? It will bring more light!

    • I WISH! I’d put one in each room if we could! Unfortunately we can’t due to hurricanes here. We can’t be covered with hurricane insurance if we install a skylight 🙁