house on tonja.

phew.

life....

you crazy.

If any of you follow me on insta or facebook you know that we offically bought, moved into, and are currently in the process of renovating our house!  It has been quite the past couple months, to say the very least. I have been so extremely exhausted, in the best way.  There is something that is so satisfying of being exhausted from working hard at a worth while goal. It's secretly one of my favorite feelings.  Probs why I became a runner. We're pretty good at getting ourselves to that exhausted state.

Speaking of running...it has been SUFFERING.

circled are my weekly mileage totals...got worse and worse as the renovations went on!

This past month I ran as many miles as I did in one week when I was training for Boston (though I was running 65 miles a week back then). Luckily, I hadn't really taken a solid break from running all year, so in a way it was a good thing. Besides, I just haven't had any extra time or energy to run on top of renovating.  I don't know how you builders do it...it's hard work! We have learned a TON though.  Here is a list of what we have done...

-Demolition (taken out a wall & 1200+ sq. feet of flooring & baseboards)
-Tiled 2 bathrooms
-Laid wood flooring
-Put carpet in in a closet
-PAINTED (by myself I painted almost our whole house. Some places needed 3 coats of paint too because of all the crazy colors. went through 6 gallons of paint)
-Rerouted wires and spliced wires
-Put in new drywall
-Put on baseboards & window casing
-Fixed a dishwasher
-Moved a water line
-And then did little things like changed light bulbs and outlet covers.

Needless to say it's been a wild few weeks.  We are at a point where things are slowing down and we can actually relax. We still have some big plans for this place (aka the kitchen) but our budget and bodies need a break! (p.s. why do kitchen renos have to cost a billion dollars??? Probably will be saving for a while for that one *sigh*)

As tiring as it has been and at time frustrating, I am super proud of what we have done.  Not only the renovations themselves, but we have stayed under our $5,000 budget.  Which was hard to do at times! I think I said everyday that I was just going to call someone and have them do it all! But we held out and did pretty much everything ourselves with the help of my cousins and Nate's sister and her family (we did hire a electrician to help with rerouting the wires...didn't want our house to burn down!).

The reason we have been so gun-ho about doing renovations (besides my dream to become the next Joanna Gains) is because we learned from our first house that we bought that they are SO worth it. Not only does it make living in your house more enjoyable, it is a great investment if you are ever planning to sell.  We bought a little 1100 sq foot townhouse in Cedar City 2.5 year ago.  We really didn't put a ton of money into it, but we painted, put in new flooring, painted the kitchen cabinets, put in some new light fixtures, and just cleaned and cleaned. 2.5 years later we sold it for $27,000 more than we owed on it. I'm seriously not trying to brag...just saying that if you have the means to buy a fixer upper/fix up your current house...DO IT! It's a way good investment. And if you ever need help on how to do it (especially on a budget) don't hesitate to talk to me!! Seriously, Nate and I have spent HOURS doing our research and have learned a lot on what is the best things to update and how to do it on a little budget.

ANYWAY. We aren't quite done enough to post some before and after pictures...but we are close!  Stay tuned for a 'before & after' post.  Until then...here are some pictures of the work in progress...

master bathroom - tiling in progress

after the grouting was done!

the upstairs bathroom

upstairs bathroom after the grouting

demoing the wall

those 4 wires on the right were the BIGGEST headache. hence when we eventually called an electrician to come and reroute them!

no wires & new floor!

baseboards!

pulled up linoleum and a sub floor just to find more linoleum underneath....uhhhhh

whoever put in the subfloor under the top layer of linoleum went INSANE with the staple gun...there were stables every inch! This is a piece I pulled out...this is probably not even half of the stables that were on that board...the rest of them stayed in the ground.

ripping out all of the floors

'some' of the samples we got when deciding what floors to put in...like I said...we spent HOURS researching!

 Well, there it is so far. I only wish I had all the monies in the world to decorate. I'm going to be redoing some of our furniture to try and all match, but for now, we'll make do with what we have! Like I mentioned, I'll do a post in a week or two that is before and after shots and more of the whole house.

#staytuned

P.S. here is a list of the products we used:

Wood Floor: http://www.lowes.com/pd_391693-30029-D2669_0__?productId=3698568

Tile (this one but a lighter color): http://www.lowes.com/pd_446992-1813-1095284_1z0wdw2Z1z10w2mZ1z11oi5__?productId=4616438&pl=1

Paint: http://www.lowes.com/pd_636697-678-HGSW3457_0__?productId=50388978

Baseboards: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Fypon-1-in-x-96-in-x-2-1-8-in-Polyurethane-Flat-Trim-Base-Moulding-FLT102-8/203279592