When we set the house back down last fall, more than one person said, “The worst is over!” I would raise my eyebrows, because yes, for sure, that was a big weird disruption, but the house we have always lived in remained pretty much intact in all of the meaningful ways. No longer.

 

  
   
This project requires the existing bathroom to become a hallway connecting new stairs to the new space. The existing kitchen will become our upstairs bathroom. The living room becomes a bedroom. As you might imagine, the dramatic transitions are in those highly used and utterly essential rooms with plumbing.

The hope is that we won’t have to give up the old kitchen and bathroom upstairs until there is something functional enough down in the new space to get by. The reality might be a little different.

Walls were removed today that make privacy a stretchier concept while in the old (and currently only) bathroom, and I think we might be putting a toilet in our kitchen this week, because that’s where it goes. Given the option between a toilet in the kitchen and a porta-potty, I’ll take the flusher over modesty. 

It seems wise in any major remodel to withhold judgment about what the actual “worst” is. In the meantime, I am grateful for a sense of humor and some flexibility around my hopes and expectations.