It was ten years ago this week that we first took hammer and pry bar to plaster and started the renovation on the inn.  Want to take a little walk down memory lane with me and revisit the project?

It was a daunting task; we had two sets of walls to remove on each side of the house, including plaster, lath, vertical supports and, on one side of the house, a bunch of brick.  The plaster dust was horrid and I remember that the combination of dust mask and goggles made my glasses fog up something awful, but not wearing the protective gear was worse.

We worked from about 8 a.m. to dusk seven days a week that winter, and on into spring.  My dad, who lives two hours away, drove out every weekend for six months and put in two days of work to help out.  That extra pair of hands was an enormous help, especially when hanging sheetrock.  In addition to my dad we had a team of plumbers and an electrician to handle those trades and I found someone to hang the wallpaper in the bathrooms.  A couple of friends came out and gave us the gift of a few days of work, mostly painting, and towards the very end I did hire someone local to help with the interior painting and another local person to scrape & repaint the front facade of the house.  Other than that, my husband & I did all the work ourselves.

Our goal was to try to open by Memorial Day weekend but we knew there was a good chance we wouldn’t be ready by then so we didn’t actually take any reservations for that weekend, figuring that if by some miracle we were ready for guests we’d find some somehow.  It turned out to be a good call.  We had a ton of work to do, mostly by ourselves, and there was no way we could have made that deadline.  We did somehow manage to get open in late June and went right into the busy season… that first year is something of a blur to me.

Want to know what we got done in those seven months?  As best as I can remember, here’s the list:

• demolished walls on 2nd floor necessary to create new bathrooms
• built platforms for the new bathrooms to sit on (helps accommodate the plumbing without cutting through structural joists)
• removed the clawfoot tub from the existing bathroom, gutted that bathroom including the flooring, installed new floor joists, created new door opening
• plumbing & new fixtures for three new bathrooms on 2nd floor, considerable new plumbing for the old bathroom
• framed, insulated & sheetrocked new walls for bathrooms
• purchase, hang, trim & paint new doors for 3 bathrooms
• installed beadboard, trim & wallpaper in all four bathrooms
• installed new furnace & hot water heater for house, new duct work for 2nd floor bedrooms, new programmable thermostat
• installed exhaust fans & dropped ceilings in all 4 bathrooms
• tiled all 4 bathroom floors, built & installed steps to raised bathrooms
• installed new sheetrock ceilings in one bedroom and a small back hallway
• installed ceiling fans & medallions in all 4 bedrooms
• caulked & painted every wall & ceiling on 2nd floor
• had substantial rewiring done throughout the house
• gutted & entirely re-did the bathroom in the apartment including new plumbing & fixtures and a new tile floor
• repainted apartment
• gutted third floor (personal living space), expanded bathroom, moved tub & installed a new sink – this all involved a certain amount of wall building as well
• painted entire 3rd floor, had carpet installed
• removed loft bed from what was to become my office/laundry/storage room on the first floor, installed desk & shelves
• moved washer, purchased and installed a dryer
• purchased & installed two new base cabinets in kitchen to replace existing, added an extra high shelf along 2 walls of the kitchen
• installed new medallions and ceiling fans in living & dining rooms
• painted living room, dining room, foyer and entry hall on first floor
• new sheetrock & blocking in the 1st floor half-bath to support sink, repainted half-bath
• carpeted main staircase
• installed new pass-through counter on first floor, added trim, caulked & painted pass-through
• various outdoor projects to clean up property and rehab some of the lawn
• repainted entire interior of cottage, removed ceiling fans (they were too low to be legal) and installed light fixtures in 3 bedrooms

That was the renovation.  We also had to purchase some new furniture, set up rooms and hang art.  All our stuff from Brooklyn had to be unpacked & put away – especially for the kitchen – and our computers had to get set up.

We were lucky enough to have my mother-in-law’s house ten minutes away to stay in so we didn’t have to live in a construction site.  That very likely saved our sanity.  When it got too dark to work (we had a lot of the wiring ripped out so limited ability to plug in work lights) we’d go back to the other house, shower, feed ourselves and hit the computers.  A brochure and website had to be designed, mailings sent out, guest management programs had to be researched, additional phone lines had to be ordered, bed & bath linens, window treatments and curtain rods had to be researched, purchased and installed, same with soaps & other amenities for the bathrooms.  Dishes, flatware, glasses and serving pieces for the dining room had to be decided upon and ordered.  New bank accounts had to be opened and a credit card processing account set up.  Breakfast recipes had to be created or adapted.

Somehow it all got done, but ten years later I’ll be damned if I know how.

Related posts:

1. Green Travel
2. May Already?
3. I know I’m early but…
4. Four Questions
5. Busy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 1:36 pm and is filed under being in business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.