2023 Year in Review

It's the end of December, and I definitely disappeared a bit after the One Room Challenge ended.  The attic isn't finished, but I'm glad for taking the break for a bit.  It's been a busy year at home!  With the attic and reconfiguring the main floor, we accomplished a lot.  With kids at home, I'm glad for anything we're able to achieve.

The year started slow, as it can, and by the summer, we were in full renovation mode.  With the dining room needing major help, we added in reconfiguring the attic access to round out the huge project... which also meant reworking the kids' bedroom.  The attic, of course, was the focus this summer.   From managing heat loss through our roof to prepping for window restoration, we made more progress upstairs than any other year here.

The Dining Room

I definitely touched on some of what we did in the dining room with the One Room Challenge in the last couple weeks of work (Week 6 and the Final really focused on it), but I never really went over the major shift we made between the dining room and the living room.

This summer, I found a pair of colonnades that fit our house almost perfectly.  It was a struggle to decide how to use these, since I have lofty fireplace plans, but ultimately, we decided to install the colonnades in the rightful spot between the living and dining room.  The room in some ways made the decision for us: the arch between the living and dining rooms had always been cracked, and the paint on the dining room side of the room started delaminating.

Paint Delamination

With paint failure across the arch and the corner of the dining room, we decided to move everyone out for a bit so I could contain the exposed lead on the bare plaster and get the walls correctly repaired.  The paint wasn't the only issue: it turned out the arch wasn't original to the house, so the loose paint was mostly from incompatible material failure.  The arch -after cracking for decades- was starting to come apart.

Six years ago, the spring after we bought the house, we lifted our house around the sinking foundation to help get our structure much closer to level.  While I don't think it was the main cause of the failure of the arch, it didn't help it.  Questionable installation and patch jobs just don't last forever!  So, when it was clear the arch was going, I helped it along.

With the arch out, it was very clear to see where the original cased opening was, and with a very expensive trip to the lumber yard, I collected materials to recreate something similar to what would have been here a century ago.  It's surprisingly natural how the colonnades and stained cased opening look in this room!  

But now, I have a few other things I want to restore to our little center-of-the-house in our dining room: I have a hallway door and a swing kitchen door to put back once these are un-painted, and the other surprise during the delamination of the paint was finding the original height of plate rail.  It's at the same height we installed wainscoting in the kitchen and bathroom, so I'm looking forward to bringing it back.

Here We Come, 2024!

While we still have plans to work on the attic, we have accelerated some of our thoughts working on the basement: with our big kids turning 10 next year, they are looking forward to having their own bedrooms!  So, our first One Room Challenge project -the office- is getting a rework to be the second basement bedroom.  Late in the spring, I'll also have a Year-Over-Year on our solar system too.  So far, we haven't had an electrical payment since starting our system, but I know that will change in January.  I'mm hoping it'll all balance out to net-zero by the time we hit that 1-year mark.

We also added a kitten to mix things up a bit!  The big kids have been asking for a little while, and I gave in.  We love Martin, but I don't love that he can get into the temporary ceilings in the basement!  So, that will need to be a focus as well!  He's definitely shaken things up here, and I'm sure he'll continue well into the new year and beyond.