Remodel Progress

Ok, yes, I used it, the “r” word – remodel. We bought a house that was “already updated and didn’t need a thing”, but nonetheless we always like to “do a few little custom touches” ourselves and…I admit it. When there’s a cement truck in your driveway, you’re probably getting some serious work done.

Which is exactly why one of our neighbors called the city and reported us. We got a surprise visit from an inspector followed by a notice of violation in the mail.

Ooops. I was once a city planner, I should know better than failing to pull a permit, right? Yeah, but we trusted our contractor who didn’t think we needed a permit. And he was partially right; our project was completely within code. There were no wavers or variances needed (and nothing any neighbors could do about it; it was completely within our rights) but the city still wanted some paperwork.

It wasn’t a big deal. John went down to the planning department with some measurements and sketches and the required $35 to get our stamp of approval. However, their computers were down. So I went back the next day and got it done. The only really weird thing was we were required to email the city’s list of HOA’s ourselves, out of our own personal email. Public notification is very common for projects of all sorts, but in my experience it’s always the government agency (i.e. the City of Albuquerque), not the private party, doing the notification.

The purpose of this project is to slightly extend (toward the street) the two side yards. The left side of the house is where we park the boat and van, and we wanted to replace the gate with one further out, in order to accommodate the length of the van and boat. That required extending the wall by a few feet.

The right-hand side yard is off the bedrooms, where we are creating a courtyard. The new courtyard will be accessed from a new door in the master bedroom.

When we’re done, will will have three yard spaces: the main backyard, a southern exposure side yard where the dogs play, and a courtyard off the master bedroom.

I like to have a separate space for the dogs because we like to eat our meals outside in the summer, and I don’t like to eat where the dogs do their business – phew! Kai in particular is ill mannered and will pee on my patio when he thinks I’m not looking. So the dogs aren’t allowed in the main backyard that’s off the kitchen.

Plus, most of the year in New Mexico is quite cool, so we wanted a usable south facing yard. The sunny south yard will be much more pleasant than the shaded backyard during the fall, winter, and spring.

We added a cement pad for furniture so we can sit with the dogs outside and throw Kira’s ball.

And we’re creating planting areas. So far we’ve planted one shade tree and I have a small fig tree waiting to go in.

We now have the south yard set up with a hammock and umbrella, and next year we’re going to build a pergola there. Meanwhile, we play ball with Kira every night. It’s the lazy ball game – we lay in the hammock while tossing her the ball!

Whatcha doing mom? Aren’t we gonna play ball?

On the other side of the south yard fence we’re creating a courtyard off the master bedroom. Not only will it be a sweet little quiet spot, it will provide privacy from inside the master bedroom. Where we once had a window looking out at the neighbor’s garbage cans and the street, we now look at the inside of our new courtyard.

Old view from the bedroom:

Here’s the outline of the new wall for the master bedroom courtyard (we took the low wall down).

Here it is again, with the low dividing wall removed.

New view from the bedroom: right now the new corner is just a boring block wall, but by next year I’ll have flowering vines and things, just you wait and see.

The new door from the bedroom into the courtyard is going where the low wall was.

I bought the wrong door (for 4″ jamb rather than 6″ jamb), so here we’re returning it.

We go to the hardware stores so often, I feel like I could just grab an employee smock and start helping customers.

Here’s John planting trees in the main backyard. Here he’s frantically trying to get them in the ground and on a drip system before our recent trip to Boise.

We’re also doing indoor work. This is an interior door where there was just an open doorway. It will add some privacy to the living room that we are making into an office.

Here it is with the plastic removed. We’re still missing door handles (on order) and don’t look at all those bins and boxes piled in the middle of the office, lol.

Here we’re installing overhead light/fans in the bedrooms. There were no lights at all in the bedrooms, so we had to add the wiring, which required cutting into the drywall.

Now there are overhead lights/fans in all three bedrooms.

There was no storage in the master bathroom (no drawers, no shelves, no towel racks, no nothing except two hooks and the wasteland under the sink), so we added two big beautiful medicine cabinets.

The picture doesn’t do them justice. Mirrors are hard to photograph (I wasn’t into doing selfies this morning).

Those two little robe hooks you see reflected in the mirror are the only “storage” the bathroom came with. I’m going to remove those and add both shelving and towel racks.

And so the list goes on.