Casa de Szerlip: Our First Big Project

It took us nearly three months, but we just finished up our first big project in the house. When we purchased the house in January of 2015 one of the big projects we wanted to undertake was removing the built-in's from the second bedroom and the outside atrium area. They weren't bad built-in's but they didn't fit the decor or setup that Jenn and I wanted for either of those areas. It restricted our options for the rooms and took up more space then we would have ever wanted. 

The built-in desk in the second bedroom

The first step (after delaying the project for a couple of months) was to get a handyman. I found one on Angie's List (Vincent Smith) and had him come out to take out the built-ins. He brought a painter with him to then to clean up the mess. The project went really smooth, it took Vince around 4 hours or so to take out both built-in's and then another 3 hours to paint. Jake was down for the day and he even helped remove some of the built-in's. 

The project completed way under budget, I mean substantially under budget. And then reality struck. The handyman would take out the built-ins but he wouldn't haul them away. So we then had to hire a junk removal place to pick up a full atrium worth of built-in's. Our atrium looked like a junk yard for a few minutes. That sadly took our project from under budget to literally hitting the budget we set aside from the project. 

Our Atrium is Full of Built-In's

Luckily everything went super smooth and we now have a huge atrium for our brand new ping pong table (more on that soon), and a second bedroom that at some point I can make my video game room. Both areas look a lot more open and allow us versatility to use the spaces for different things. I'll have pictures on the two areas and their remodel in future posts. The good news is we're finally making progress on our house and trying to make it our home. We've got more work to do in 2015, but this was a great first step.