When we started our MASSIVE renovation project for our 1892 home in downtown Denver A YEAR AGO, I had visions of how this would look on the blog.

I had visions of making updates showing the amazing progress, the beautiful finishes, and the HGTV magical reveal.

Pretty much none of that has happened.

In short, the project has been incredibly trying for me and our little Macheesmo family.

We were supposed to move in tomorrow (November 13) and maybe I should’ve realized it was a bad idea to schedule a major life move for Friday the Thirteenth! 😬

Three Prongs of Construction

You always here that there are basically three prongs of construction projects: quality, budget, and schedule.

Before this project, I always thought of them basically in that order of importance.

They are ALL important though and if any one of the prongs slips too far, then the whole thing can topple down.

We were supposed to be moving back into our house in AUGUST. It is now November.

Can you guess which prong has slipped for us?!

I’ve done my best to try to come up with schedules to help our contractor, but we just can’t hit deadlines and the project drags on and on and on.

The Old and The New

Some pieces of our house were built almost 130 years ago. And it shows! There’s lots of old and now there’s lots of new and there’s lots of weirdness in between.

For example, now we have beautiful new floors. I love them. I’m glad we paid extra for them. The match of the style of the house and I couldn’t be happier with them.

My Bathroom Project

This has been one of my little projects during this whole ordeal. I completely gutted and redid our “master” bathroom in our bedroom. It’s the tiniest master bathroom I’ve ever seen, but it’s pretty great for an old house!

I’ve probably spent 100 hours on this bathroom over the last few months and I couldn’t be happier with how it is turning out. Plus, I love our new dark blue bedroom walls. CALM. SERENITY.

Expectations

This project, especially during a pandemic, has been impossibly hard for us. I don’t sleep much anymore thinking about ALL the money we have put into it and all the time.

But, all I can do is step back and try to reset my expectations.

The HGTV reveal is not happening. Walking into a perfectly finished house is not happening.

But, we will finish it. Our family will eventually be there, enjoying meals and laughing together.

I would write more, but my EYES ARE LEAKING.