Tribulations of a small reno project

The center of our home happens to be the hallway. As our remodeler Christopher said, "your hall has nine freakin' doorways." This includes three closets but more importantly, access to the bathroom, living room, dining room, master bedroom and family room and the upstairs. It is not even that big a hallway but when it is under a reno, it created a chain reaction of chaos for weeks.

Before: Old door, striped
walls,tile floor, bench

It all started with the front door. The drafty wood door we had was original to the house and it also had two sidelights with single pane glass. Every winter the cold hallway and frosty sidelights reminded us that it had to be changed, weatherstripping could not correct all its issues. It had to go and that meant the built-in hall seat that adjoined the one sidelight would have to be torn out as well. Of course this would now leave a portion of the hall with no flooring. The rest of the hallway had big white ceramic tile that I never cared for, so all the flooring had to come out.

The day the door was installed I hadn't been feeling well but I thought I was fine in helping carry the door frame and sidelights from the garage to the door opening. Christopher said to tilt back so we could clear the garage door. Wham, that is when vertigo hit, spinning my world around so that I momentarily blacked out, dropping and falling on a sidelight, bruising my chin. I panicked, I thought I had broken the new door we had waited on for eight weeks. Turned out, door was undamaged, got installed, however I did give Christopher a scare.

Next was the two weeks of waiting in disarray until Christopher could come back and install the wood flooring in the hallway. The day the baseboards, chair rails, tile flooring and the linoleum that was underneath came out, I asked if we shouldn't try to confine the dust, no, it wouldn't be that messy. Wrong, there was a layer of gray grout dust throughout the house. Then there was all the spackle, mudding and sanding where the chair rail had been. Now, white dust over the gray. I'm still cleaning.

After: New door, wood floor and walls

As soon as the wood floors were installed, Tim and I started painting baseboards before Christopher installed them. We also had to sand and prime over the striped walls I had painted when we first moved in. Now I know not to paint stripes unless one plans to keep them a long time. Finally the walls got painted and the baseboard went in. There are still areas of existing trim that need repainting and a new ceiling light fixture to be installed but for now, the job is complete. We (or should I say Christopher) decided to table the crown molding until next year.

I'm happy it's done. As always, Christopher did a great job. I had pondered over choices for the door and sidelights, flooring, paint colors and trim. We have remodeled everywhere in this home and property but this was a project that was in your face all the time—the center of this home. In the end, it was definitely worth it. During this period of reno, Superstorm Sandy hit the east coast. I can't even imagine the angst of recovering from a natural disaster like that. From that perspective, it makes this little project seem really petty. Back to cleaning.