September 10th, 2021

So this is in the front yard now.  And no, it's not a new lawn ornament.  This means that the reno project has begun!  Woo and Hoo!  Very Exciting!

It'll be awhile before it's done so I won't bother you daily, or weekly (or even monthly) with updates but I thought, since I mentioned it in an earlier post, you might like to at least see the beginning.  And at some day in the future, the end product.

Ok, bear in mind here that our house is just a little one story beach bungalow built way back in the early 60's .  And apparently in that era, nobody gave two craps or a hoot about how the back of a house looked. They focused any design style on the front.  And I completely agree that the front of our house with it's cute little courtyard is adorable.  Perhaps they assumed (thought one should never) that there was no point in fiddling with the back since most people are going to put in a patio and a pool anyway at some point.   

 But the thing is, with our house, for some reason, nobody did.    I'm not positive exactly how many people owned this house before us.  I know there were at least three.  And for whatever reason, none of those three cared enough to bother doing anything in the back of the house.  To be fair, we've lived here for 5 years now and we haven't either.  It's on the list, but there are other, more important, things we had to get out of the way first.  Like  replacing all of the plumbing.  Updating the HVAC.  Reno-ing the kitchen and bathrooms.  Stuff like that.   It's a process guys.  

At any rate, this is what the back of our house looked like before reno began:

The part that's being reno-ed is from the left side of the turquoise thing to the right.  That turquoise thing, by the way, is a hurricane shade. It's a VERY heavy weight canvas that ties down to prevent window destruction via hurricane.  The reason we have it down, however, was to prevent leaks around the windows every time it rains.    Which was just Delightful. (insert sarcasm here)  Here's a better look at  just the reno project portion of the house.

This is the part that is being worked on.  You might notice a strange thing to the right of the door.  This is how we knew the house was sinking.  It clearly indicated that there were no footings (no footings!!??)

Stucco doesn't normally buckle like that.  Tim filled the hole with spray foam for the interim just to keep the outside, outside.  So you see it wasn't just a leaky roof that might require a few tiles or shingles replaced.  Nope.  The entire room has to be torn down so that they can put in a foundation and start over.  sigh.

But hey, it is what it is. And right now what it is is a construction zone.  And the back of our home currently resembles a haunted house.  You doubt me? Here's a few pictures to illustrate.

What A Mess!  But it's like cleaning out the garage. Before you can make it better, first you have to make it worse. 

With the current state of things in the contracting world, shortages  of product, shortage of tradespeople, delays for every conceivable reason and a few inconceivable ones,  we are honestly not positive when it will be done.  But at some point, it will be.  Like I said, it's a process.  And at some point  it will be finished and then it will all have been worthwhile.

Have A Great Weekend!  Hugs all 'round.