Leaving California and Our DIY Home Renovation Journey

I’m back! Miss me? A LOT has happened in the last 2 years. A LOT! Which is why I’ve been MIA from here indefinitely.

• I had a baby.
• He was premature, so I wanted to give him 100% of me, always. Hence, no time for Bizi Bee (blog or shop)
• We packed up 10 months later and moved across the country (from California to Michigan)
• We bought a new house that needed work to make it perfect. Do it yourself home renovation time!
• I got pregnant with baby #2.
• We renovated said house ourselves as I continued to get bigger and bigger with baby #2 (while still chasing around baby #1)
  • The picture above is me, 23 weeks pregnant, painting the living room brick.

It was a crazy time. Are we crazy for taking all this on at once? You bet ya! But craziness always makes for the best stories, right? So here I am, almost to my due date with baby #2*, and you’d think I’d be resting right? Wrong.

* I wrote this post in July 2018, and am just getting around to posting it now (oops!) Ryder dude is now 6.5 months old and THANK GOODNESS we are further away from all the DIY renovation craziness.

Travis and I finished most of our do it yourself home renovation about a month ago (just in time to celebrate Tucker’s 2nd birthday) and I’ve been itching to blog about it all. I’m telling you, this was the biggest labor of love and we are so happy with the results. But now that it’s done would I do it again? NO! Would I recommend others to do it yourself? NOPE!

Well, let me just take a step back. I would recommend doing work yourself, but I’d want you to read all my posts about what we did, how we did it, and how much time and planning goes into it before you make your decision.

Firstly, we had a toddler. A very young, energetic toddler that was just starting to walk and wanted to explore every inch of our new house. Could we have waited until he was a bit older and we were a bit more settled to renovate? Sure! But our mindset was this: do it once and get it over with.

We wanted to be able to live in our perfect house for as long as possible and not deal with the headache of moving everything in, making it nice, and then ripping out room by room “when we had time”. Because, let’s face it, if we waited until the perfect time we’d be living in our house as we bought it for 15 years.

Could we have hired outside help to get things done much faster? Sure. And I wish we could have. In an ideal world, everyone would have all the help they need and never have to do much themselves. But in the world I live in- the one called REALITY – labor costs are most often MORE than the costs of the raw materials themselves. So even with the investment in tools, time, etc, we were doing our do it yourself home renovation for about ⅓ of what it would have cost us to hire the jobs out. And in the end, that alone was worth it.

Tucker “helping” – all day everyday

So we dealt with the curious toddler as best we could. We dealt with the constant mess as best we could. And we dealt with having half unpacked boxes sitting in our basement for a year; not being able to find half of our belongings when we needed/wanted them. And to top it off, we dealt with working only during “off hours” on the house.

While contractors can work anytime of the day, Travis has a full time job running Kibin and I have a full time job running after our spirited toddler and energetic puppy – none of which will wait patiently while we work on home renovation projects. So with our busy lives, we were limited to only working on the house when Travis was off work and Tucker was asleep; so from 7-11pm EVERY NIGHT.

And if you’re reading this and you know how exhausting it is to take care of a toddler, imagine doing so 7 days a week, 12 hours a day (minus the 1-2 hours for nap time), and THEN continuing manual labor well into the evening hours. Sleep. Wake up, and repeat. This pattern went on for 10 months… 8 of which I was pregnant. Call me crazy because I definitely know I am. These reasons alone are why I would never recommend doing and entire do it yourself remodel. Especially at this point in life. With kids. UGH!

I do think it would be more fun and something I would be into if it were my full time job, or my kids were grown and had their own lives. But for now, I’ll stick to relishing in my own handiwork, bragging about what we did ourselves, and knowing that this will be our last DIY project for a long, long time. But I’m not going to say ever because, well, like I said – I’m crazy 😉

Why the Heck are You Leaving California?

Travis and I decided to make the big move from California to Michigan for 2 main reasons. Firstly, was to give our family a better life. California is the most expensive state in the US to live in, and we lived in the most expensive area (the San Francisco Bay) in the state. Yes, we were living in a beautiful home (townhouse) that I was lucky enough to buy before real estate got too crazy up there, but it was still only 1550 sq ft on an 1850 sq ft lot. Poor dog and kid had barely a patch of grass to play on outside.

And then, when we started to research activities to sign Tucker up for, and preschools to enroll him in, we immediately became overwhelmed. Both Travis and I agreed it was in our family’s best interest for me to stay at home to raise our children. However, with the surmounting costs of adding extra people to our family, plus the already outrageous cost of our mortgage and all that goes along with it, we began to think me staying at home with the kiddos wasn’t feasible.

Secondly, to top things off, we were quickly outgrowing our 1550 sq ft space. Toys were taking over our small living room, and with the amount of things you need for an infant/toddler, storage became an issue. We couldn’t imagine bringing another kid into the mix with what little space we had. And upgrading to a bigger house in California was going to easily cost us twice what we paid for our current home. Needless to say, we couldn’t live the life we wanted where we were. So the easiest solution was to move where we could have the live we wanted for ourselves and our children.

Do It Yourself Home Renovation – WHY?

Travis is originally from Michigan, where the cost of living is significantly lower than in California, so we both decided that would be a great place for us to move. But as any married couple knows, it takes a lot of compromise to agree on big decisions.

Travis wanted lots and lots of land, and to be secluded (just like how he grew up).

I, on the other hand, like a wholesome neighborhood feel- with excellent public schools. And I like to be nearby to lots of activities, shopping, nightlife, and most importantly, an airport to make it easy for family and friends to visit.

What we both agreed on is that we needed much more space in our home than what we previously had, a larger yard for our family to play in, and that it be nice and updated (just like the home we were leaving behind in California).

Luckily, we stumbled upon an area that was in close proximity to Detroit (Troy, MI), but far enough away so as not to feel like we’re on top of everything. And we found a house that checked most of our boxes:

• Large Footprint (3000 sq ft on a .43 acre lot – with a 1250 sq ft basement)
• Private, secluded backyard that could be fenced in for privacy
• Cute neighborhood with young children in an amazing school district
• Within our financial budget

It was a gem! However, although the inside of the house was well kept, it was dated. Not 1970’s original dated, but more like 1990s sponge paint, oak floors and cabinetry, and colored tile work that just weren’t our taste. Nothing that we couldn’t fix ourselves, right? We were willing to make it our own, with the updated finishes we had envisioned for our forever home. So in order to get out of moving limbo and get our lives started, we bought the house and got immediately to work. Do it yourself home renovation, here we go!

What Did We Actually Do Ourselves?

Well this post is already getting lengthy, so I won’t be able to detail each room here for you. But over the next few weeks (or let’s be real, probably months because I’m a lot slower than I used to be on here), I’ll be sharing with you all the ins and outs to each room of our do it yourself home remodel. Below is just a quick list of some of the projects we tackled ourselves:

• Installing all new hardwood floors throughout the entire home (and ripping out the old ones)
• Designing and installing new kitchen and laundry room cabinets
• Removing, redesigning, and reinstalling stairs, stair treads, and stair banisters
• Redesigning guest bathroom and installing new tile, tub, vanity, and fixtures
• Installing all new light fixtures throughout home
• Removing, reinstalling, caulking, and painting all floor moldings and door trim
• Adding wainscoting to walls where wanted
• Removing old wood paneling from walls
• Adding rustic wall boards to certain walls
• Sanding and painting all window moldings
• Sanding and painting all walls
• Installing and tiling new fireplace surround
• Removing and reinstalling all closet doors (and removing a closet entirely to create a mud room nook for our entry)
• Re-Landscaping our entire backyard (we had help with this one)

This is all I can remember at the moment. I am 9 months pregnant, after all. I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff, and there are for sure some things on our wish list that we haven’t tackled yet (more recessed lighting, finishing our basement, and re-designing our outdoor deck area are just a few of the big wish list items we haven’t gotten to yet). But overall, our house feels like a home again – the home we had envisioned raising our family in. And most importantly, doesn’t kill us financially.

So for now, I’ll just leave you with a few before and after pics to wet your whistle. And as promised, I’ll deliver more posts on each individual room, progress pictures, and more in depth info as to what we did to achieve the desired look for each area of our house. Do it yourself home renovations are not for the weak of heart. I’m glad I just get to blog about it now as I wait for this baby, instead of tiling one more frigging wall!
:-O

Entryway Renovation

 

Living Room Renovation

 

Kitchen Renovation

 

Office Renovation

 

Formal Living/Dining Room Renovation (into Playroom)

   

Master Bedroom Renovation

 

Guest Room Renovation 

Kid’s Room Renovation #1

Kid’s Room Renovation #2

 

Guest Bathroom Renovation