We are remodeling our house. Now when I say remodeling, I don’t mean putting in another bathroom or changing our kitchen counters, I mean demolishing 1900 sq feet of a 3000 sq ft home. Knocking it mostly down and slowly putting it back together.

We bought an old farmhouse on 2.5 acres from a trust who disclosed nothing. The contract disclosures were bare. We took a leap of faith and fell into a money pit. Not to be confused with the money tree that we have long tried to grow. It’s a swirling vortex that we just keep throwing our salaries into.

We have no air conditioner ( we live in Southern California ) and the only heat in the winter  is a sad little gas wall heater and whatever logs we cut to burn in a big cast iron fireplace. The new addition will rectify this.

Our house was mostly made up of rooms with no permits. When they wanted a room, they built a room and definitely not to the building code. Some switches are reversed, upside down or just hidden. The more we demolish the more of a disaster we find we bought.
“Hey honey , I need a sewing room ”
” No problem dear I’ll have that up in a jiffy. Over on the neighbors side of the fence do ya? ”
That poor wee couple that were the previous owners died within 10 days of each other aged 90. God rest their souls ( please don’t haunt me).

Our neighbor is a cantankerous old bastard that sucks the life from my soul with his mean spirit , and if he was gasping his last breath I’d step over him.
What I mean to say is that he is difficult to live next to.
He made it his life’s mission to complain and try to bully us into changing the house despite us only moving in 6 months before and unaware of the problems he had with the previous owners.

We decided to take the correct measures to appease him and stop the city chasing us and decided to move a few feet over on our side of the fence.
This is no mean feat apparently and involves major changes to every room in the house.

We started this adventure in February of this year and it’s now the beginning of August. Only now are we getting permits and starting to lay foundations. Tens of thousands of dollars already and we are living in a home with plyboard for walls.

I’m told 6-9 months for completion but I’m not buying that story. Drawing up the plans took 3-4 months , many changes and squabbles with a designer who told me he didn’t like my choice of a blue house so changed it to brown and was very upset when I asked him to change it back. Most of our ideas were met with a smirk and an ‘I’ll show them’ attitude. A battle of the wills for sure.

Our builder is a friend ,and trustworthy…but I’m still not believing the timeline… only time will tell.

Remodeling is not for the faint of heart.