I'm not dead, I promise. I just haven't worked on any car stuff (recreationally anyway) in months. But that doesn't mean I haven't been working. As you know, we recently bought an old house. Houses tend to be a bit more expensive than cars. For the price of a base model Ferrari you can have a house with a 1992 Chevy Celebrity interior (complete with jammed windows and that faint scent of cat urine). So of course, that's what we did.
Much like I browse the craigslist CTO section out of pure instinct, Jen does the same for interior design blogs. Well, she might have a slightly less addictive tendencies than me, but interior design is definitely her thing. She's wanted to do an old house remodel for a long time, so that was part of the deal with moving to Michigan. It's been a wild ride. We decided to gut the kitchen and both bathrooms, and repaint all the other rooms, in addition to replacing a basement wall that was bowing inward. We hired someone to to most of the work (don't worry though, my part of the work has taken ever weekend since we started), and he did pretty good work but went way over budget so we let him go and I get to do the downstairs bathroom by myself. We also had unpleasant interactions with the city building inspector who, on occasion, forgets the purpose of his job and uses it to fulfill his authoritarian urges.
Anyway, I'm not going to tell that whole story or show everything that has been done. If you want more of the story and design theory, follow us on Instagram at instagram.com/heythereoldsid. I'm just checking in on my blog because it has been feeling neglected (and Jen is out of town so I'm blogging to entertain myself).
To say that the change in our kitchen is drastic would be an understatement. I'll leave the captions off so you can play a fun game of "which is the before picture".
The kitchen is not completely done, there are about a hundred finishing touches we have to do, including a new door. We are pretty thrilled with it though. The old kitchen was cramped, designed to be as cheap as possible, and maybe just a little dated. The new kitchen is a really nice place to be and for a 10x12 kitchen, is incredibly functional.
While I've been busy building the house, Jen has been busy building a kid.
That's right, in June we will be having a little boy. Hopefully this means that in a couple years I have a garage helper!
