The Renovation That Wasn’t Meant to Happen

I love a good renovation. Most people find the planning process tedious but I love it. What materials will we need? Have I booked the skip bins sydney for the right dates? Will we need to hire a plumber or electrician? It’s really fun! I especially love one room renovations. Want to know what I don’t love? Water leaks. Water leaks and multi room renovations that I had no intention of ever doing.

Here’s the scene. It was May 2018 and a hail storm rolled through town. In the grand scheme of hail storms it was mild. Pea/small marble sized but wind driven. The damage was minor, but there nonetheless, and we even managed to get damage to our car so we had to invest in PDR dent removal so we could get that straightened out and move on with our home renovation without the worry of car fixing costs. Fast forward to April/May 2019 and we get our shingles replaced. Ahhhh they were beautiful. We went from a dark rust/brown shingle to a chocolate/black pebbled architectural style shingle. It’s tough to tell in the pic below, but it made such a difference! 

Now let’s fast forward 1 more time to May 2020. A crazy rainstorm comes rolling through from the East sending sheet rain down, soaking everything it hits. Sunny skies follow the down pour and that’s when we notice it, water is leaking through the ceiling drywall in our garage. What. The. What. We cut into the ceiling and you could see a steady stream of water running down the stud in the wall from the second story, onto the rafters and into the garage. It took us a bit to figure out where the hell it was originating from though. Eric got on the roof and checked out the shingles but they were all in place with nothing missing. It wasn’t until awhile later that I noticed near the top of the wall was completely saturated. And not from being pommeled with rain. It looked like it was soaked from the inside out.

We later found out that the flashing was not tacked down at all in that area causing it to displace over time. When the heavy rain came, it hit the wall and ran down under the shingles and down the wall rather than being diverted onto the shingles, thus saturating the stucco from the inside out.

Bored yet? I promise it gets better. The small-ish leak led to drywall being cut out of our family room, Ellie’s room and the ceiling in the garage. The tear-out also included the carpet throughout our entire second story, something that I dreaded the thought of. The discussion of buying a new carpet has been on hold for a long while, to be honest! I think the carpet cleaning services (similar to the Torrance carpet cleaning one) in the vicinity have done a fabulous job of keeping our carpets clean – good enough to keep this decision on the back burner!

One idea led to another and we figured that if the carpet was getting replaced, we should seize the opportunity to paint the rooms on our to-do list while it was just subfloor. This would include our bedroom, the main bath & our master bath & the hallway/stairwell. And might as well throw another coat on Tucks room to freshen it up, just for good measure. Oh and did I mention the ceilings? Figured the ceilings needed a refresher too because, well, why not?

Needless to say, there are a lot of changes to share! We’re about 90% done everything we are wanting to do for this phase of the renovation. There are just some small decor changes we want to make and then we can officially call it COMPLETE! Such a sweet word. So in the coming days, I’ll be sharing each room along with a breakdown of what we did and what the cost was. Small renovations can be affordable and while also making a big impact! And although it all may seem daunting in the beginning and as your painting your 4th ceiling questioning whether it’s in fact worth it, know that IT IS.