House Makeover Project of a Busy Mom

FREE Storage Solutions When Renovating

Posted by Maiken Jepsen On 12:02 PM 0 comments

One of the major questions that come up when you’re renovating is where to store all your accumulated stuff.

We all have seen those nice problem solving commercials on TV telling you can rent a space for monthly charges. We even considered a pod that would store our items on our property. When all the costs are added up it was about $130.00 per month for three months, the cost would be $390.00 plus pod removal fee.

Image and I got my quote from pods.com

I told hubby wow you could get a nice new tool for that money, and he agreed so we got 120 boxes and I started to pack our items down, he stored our items in the basement as well as we gave up our garage for the months and parked our cars in the driveway instead.

On a side note: I got my hubby to pack the garage since he is stronger and can lift things and not afraid to break a leg. Our garage was packed all the way to the ceiling!

Extra Tip: Make sure you place your lawn mover or what ever tools you need in the next several months at the front so they are easy to access when you need them.

Tips on getting free boxes to pack your items down:

Ask your local grocery store for unused boxes, some stores have them stacked up by the register you can freely take (these are the grocery stores where you have to pay for your grocery bags).
Ask relatives to help you out with boxes or even provide storage for your items if you don’t have a garage or basement or attic space.
In our case we got all over boxes for free at a local restaurant, they where happy to get rid of them, we where during them a favor and we saved money ($70.00 at the minimum) plus we helped out the environment by recycling…gotta love that!

In conclusion we saved $390+$70= $460.00 for a little inconvenience of not using our garage, not bad.

boxes, packing, pod, save, storage | |

Picking Out the Perfect Laminated Floors for Our Make-Over

Posted by Maiken Jepsen On 9:50 PM 0 comments

Today was an exciting day for us; we finally got to get out of the house to pick our floors. From the beginning I always wanted laminated hardwood floors for the ease of cleaning and we thought it was the perfect choice for the kids rooms.

The store we ordered our floors from was Crest Carpets and we got a fantastic deal, which made my day for sure!

As you can see the deal was very hard to pass by at

Here are my tips for picking out your perfect laminated floors.

Ask other laminated floor owners what brand and what store they bought their floors from, (if possible go see the floors). In our case, my parents and contractor both recommended the Quick Step brand and the store.

Pick a color that will compliment your wall color as well as your furniture choice

In our case we have real hardwood floors throughout the rest of the house so we wanted a laminated floor that would fit with our existing floor.

Ask the sales person if they have any specials going on, that is what I did in my case which ended up saving us $1.07sq FT. Ok this might not seem much at first but when you add it all up that is a total savings of $607.47.

We decided on the French Oak color by Quick Step, I really liked the store sample and as you can see in the picture below (a sneak peak) of the finished floor.

Be advice that it can take up to 7 days before you can receive your order just in case the store doesn’t have your color choice in stock.

I hope these tips will help you out for picking the perfect laminated floors for your project.

floor, French oak, laminated floors | |

Activity Ideas to do with your kids during house renovation

Posted by Maiken Jepsen On 10:31 PM 0 comments

Activity Ideas to do with your kids during house renovation.

We schedule for our renovation during my daughter’s summer vacation. As a result we spend most of our summer outside enjoying our backyard.

Do to we could not leave our property during construction, we had to make short one day trips. We utilized this negative fact that we could not go anywhere this summer and turned it into a positive experience, to get to know our (tri-state) area better.

The hardest part was to schedule our departure to when the contractor would show up so we could let him/them in. Eventually we had to give a spare key for our longer trips so he could let himself in. I hated this idea but I didn’t want to be a prison to my own home. Ok so I am a little tense about it but you would be to if you had your house broken into before, like I did when I used to live alone during the late 1990’s.

TIP: Start utilizing what you have!

Our main focus was to make the backyard into a fun kid’s zone. At this point I wanted to make this renovating process as smooth as possible for my kids, nothing is worse than grouchy kids that complain about everything.

Here is what we added to your yard:

Tire swing
Wood Play Swing Set
Soccer Net
Basket Ball Net

The real fun was the Jeep 4 wheelers; I had one when I was a kid (foot operated) so it would only be fair to pass this enjoyable toy down to my kids. Could you image if you had this technology back when we where kids!

Pssst..here is a secret for you! I did try it out; an adult can fit into these new Jeep 4 wheelers if it’s a two seater, It’s tricky to ride but it is soooo much fun! I caught my hubby ridding it around the yard, I was shocked that it didn’t break down, so I had to try it as well, OMG they have so much speed.

Ok, I will share a home video with you..

See for yourself they are having so much fun! All I had to worry about was to keep them quiet so our neighbors would not complain.

activity, backyard, house renovation, ideas, kids | |

Attic Renovation Day 4- Insulation installment

Posted by Maiken Jepsen On 9:38 AM 0 comments

Day 4 was an important day for me, I always wanted to make our house more energy efficient, and I was thrilled to get the rooms insulated!

Bedroom 1 which is going to be Selina’s room finally got insulation, the attic had very poor insulation prior to the renovation.

We used to have the A/C cranked up to 70 degrees, now we can get the same coldness result when we set it for 80 degrees. As a result by insulation the rooms (not the crawl space) we save energy by 10 degrees.

Once all the crawl space is insulated I am sure it will improve by additional 5-7 degrees, giving the overall savings of 15 to 17 degrees.

After seeing the room with its exposed bones, the room seems closed in and much smaller, but I am so happy with the insulation and could feel the difference in coldness right away on the main floor.

At that moment I couldn’t be happier, and we are only at day 4.

When we started this project I was told it would take one month to complete, of cause I didn’t believe it I had it set for 2 months in my mind. Let us see who is right about this makeover!

A/C, attic, bedroom 1, day 4, insulation | |

Be Prepared for Minor Screw ups by the Contractor

Posted by Maiken Jepsen On 2:47 AM 0 comments

While demo the floor and putting new boards down for the floor, the contractor drilled holes way to deep, so deep as you can see in the pictures that my daughter’s ceiling was filled with holes and dust where all over her keyboard.

Thank goodness it was minor damage to fix, and it was easy to fill and paint over as well.

I quickly cleaned it up before my daughter would notice the mess on her keyboard.

This would not be his last mistake stay tuned as I reveal more…

ceiling, contractor, holes, mess up, screw up | |

Demolition of Attic Day One

Posted by Maiken Jepsen On 2:28 AM 0 comments

Yeah day one is finally here, we where all so excited.

We decided to start the renovation right before school got out for the summer vacation. We figured the renovation would be over before our vacation was over for the summer.

I took these pictures from my video of Day One:

As you can see there where a lot of tearing out to do. All the old drywall was ripped down as well as the closets. The attic was ripped down to its bones.

Make sure your kids know not to go and play in the demolition area.

TIP: We have a dog so we used a baby gate to block his passage up the stairs, so he would not bother the worker(s). It did take several days before the dog would be used to all this extra traffic inside the house.

Video coming soon…. Just need to edit it first!

attic, day 1, demolition, dog | |

Preparing the Job site for Demolition

Posted by Maiken Jepsen On 2:01 AM 0 comments

As I mention earlier our attic space was used for storage so cleaning out all those boxes of items took some time. It took longer than what I had expected. I gave us amble time to prepare for the big day.

It took about 2 weeks cleaning up the space. We stored our times in boxes and filled up the garage from the floor to the ceiling as well as stacked up boxes in the basement.

We did manage to throw out a lot of items but not nearly enough. Remember during this cleaning up and packing away stage it can be emotional. It’s not far fetch from those reality home improvement shows where the person cries or does not want to get rid of items for the new makeover.

I say do it, throw it out or better yet donate to the less fortunate, you will feel so much better. To not overwhelm myself I packed about 7 to 16 boxes per day. I label the boxes to what the content was inside with a permanent marker for easier retrieval when the time comes.

Packing away boxes really feels like moving, so please prepare yourself more time that you need to pack things away.

I also ripped up the carpet for him and rolled it to the side, I figured the demolition stage would be finished faster.

TIP: If you’re during DIY projects while the contractor is working on your house, make sure you don’t pack away your tools and paint supplies like we did. It was a pain to dig through stuff to find what we needed and it was such a waste of time.

After we had moved everything down from the attic, the contractor asked to use half of our garage, which was impossible at this point since we had packed it to the rims.

I suggested getting a storage Pod container for the duration of his work, but in the end we figured it all out, he could store his tools and supplies upstairs in the attic space.

attic, demolition, job site | |

House Makeover Project of a Busy Mom

FREE Storage Solutions When Renovating

Picking Out the Perfect Laminated Floors for Our Make-Over

Activity Ideas to do with your kids during house renovation

Attic Renovation Day 4- Insulation installment

Be Prepared for Minor Screw ups by the Contractor

Demolition of Attic Day One

Preparing the Job site for Demolition

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