The Domino Effect

Initially there were five major changes we wanted to make to the house:

1. Install a new gas furnace.
2. Remove a closet in the family room.
3. Kitchen makeover (remove a wall, replace the ceiling, counters and flooring)
4. Put a shower in the downstairs bathroom.
5. Build a deck off the loft.

Coming from a family of do-it-yourselvers, any other changes we thought we could do ourselves with a little paint.  I soon learned that this was not to be the case.
Number 1 on the list was easily taken care of.  Unfortunately, the closet (#2 on the list) turned out to be a supporting structure - not an adequate one but some major structural work would have to be done in the family room before it could be removed. Our initial list of must have renovations rapidly grew as we addressed each room in the house (i.e. the domino effect).  New work had to meet new standards. Everything replaced had to be brought up to newer building codes in order to pass inspection.    And of course, once we started to peel back the layers,  we saw things that we needed to address such as a lack of insulation, some knob and tube wiring and so on.
Number 3 on the list could not be done until the entire kitchen floor was replaced literally from the ground up.  Originally built as a summer kitchen it sat about a foot above the ground and the floor joists were completely rotten (not caught on the home inspection).  The ground below needed to be dug deeper and a new concrete foundation poured before any other work could be started.   I realized at this point that I probably wouldn't be able to afford the granite countertops  I had originally planned on having.
Number 4 on the list involved a complete remodeling of the bathroom (new walls, sink, floor, sink, plumbing etc.
Also,the opportunity to make improvements that were not on our initial list but that we would probably want to do in the future were hard to pass up, so we added two more windows in the family room and one in the loft, removed another non-supporting wall from the front room and to my Michael's delight, we removed an old built-in unit in the front room that I insisted we could just paint.
We drew the line at a complete renovation of the upstairs bathroom - a nice idea but costly. We decided to spruce it up ourselves with a new sink, new flooring, painted vanity and mosaic tiles on one wall.  The result was very spa - like. 

Number 5 on our list has been put on hold.  It seemed like a necessity at first but now seems like a frill.