project recap – april 2026 – third story(ies)

Phase One – A is for April and Appliances and ALL the Emotions

We will never, ever catch up on our sleep.

I know a lot happened in March, but I was unprepared for what April was bringing.

Full on spring soccer – practices and games – and just a general uptick in activities for all of us.
We used to have a pretty straightforward tax season, but in year four of firm ownership we’re on our third year / third accountant for taxes – so we have been drowning in paperwork and endless emails from them.
I haven’t been able to really talk about this much as it was happening – but M is nearing the end of a 3+ month stint of grand jury duty. Not a simple one-case service, but a three month, three days a week commitment which has wreaked havoc on our afternoon schedules and has added a significant amount of additional “work” hours on top of his already heavy work-workloads and house-workloads. And since he’s had this inflexibility every Tuesday – Thursday, I’m usually the person working at home while all the subs have come back through so that he can maximize time in the office where he can. Still, he’s never missed a game or event or slacked off on anything. We just give up sleep.
Pre-Construction paperwork for the second phase of the project – I’ve been solo-ing on this as well, and it occupies most of my evenings and weekends and involves so. many. emails.

These monthly recaps in February and March and now April – I look at the photos and I am not sure how this is getting done. But somehow it is, so let’s get into it!

At the start of the month we got to remove the temporary bracing for the floating shelves and finally see the completed marble installation. The installers used a two-part epoxy adhesive system around each of the steel supports that are now hidden in the floating shelves. It has a 24-hour set time, so they braced everything before they left and I let them sit for two days before carefully removing them. At this point we could really see how well this was all coming together, which made waiting another two weeks for the electrician to return pretty hard.

In the meantime, the front garden was exploding in color and I celebrated another trip around the sun on April 7th. I had hoped to make my own birthday cake to celebrate, but we were still another week away from having power to the appliances. So I put my energy into flower cutting and arranging. Natural light is a game changer. I gravitate towards the kitchen now, and it’s difficult to leave once I’m in there.

Our plumber returned to finish the gas line connection at the range, and we continued to enjoy playing with our new sinks. M got busy on completing the pantry finishes, and worked out some mockups for the outside corners of the refrigerator bump out. I ordered more paint samples for the walls, and we mutually agreed that we didn’t want to use the cabinet color (or even a lighter version of it) on the pantry wainscoting. We wanted some contrast with the white walls and brick, and the white shelving to come, but we couldn’t get excited about most neutrals either.

Our electrician was back on the thirteenth, and he made a lot of progress on the remaining items in the house. He added a floor outlet in the dining room under the future credenza that will power a hidden projector and a small table lamp. He installed transformers for the basement stair lights and the under shelf lighting, and completed the ceiling fan installation upstairs with a replacement receiver. He installed the outlet boxes for the two disposals and the dishwasher, and most importantly – he installed the 240v plug to the back of the range and powered up everything in the kitchen. One by one, each appliance lit up and started to work.

I had harbored this fear for a long time that we would get to this point of the project and none of the appliances would actually work. To walk into the kitchen and see the displays on the fridge light up and register the temperatures in the unit – and then start to automatically lower the temperatures to 38 and 0 degrees and start making ice?!?!? I was absolutely giddy with delight. The clock on the range lit up, and I finally thought – maybe this is really happening.

Later that night, M and I decided to move the range into place. He had already installed the anti-tip device, and he zip-tied the gas and power lines in place. One by one I pulled the thick pads out from under each leg, and very carefully we moved it into place. My other secret fear was that the range wouldn’t actually fit. I knew we had constantly checked dimensions and clearances when installing the cabinets, and the stone guys had been very careful and confirmed dimensions every step of the way as they installed. But I was still nervous. We slid the range in with no issue, and we adjusted it to square it and get an even 1/16th of an inch on each side! After that, M adjusted the legs until the range was just a hair higher than the adjacent stone. He had a special floor jack ready just for this task. (Of course.)

After the range was in place, we moved out the floor protection and M grabbed the vacuum. I went to plug it in and immediately burst into tears. I could not stop crying. We just stood for a while in the kitchen holding onto each other. We have had many moments along the way when we’ve finished a particularly challenging component of this project, but I’m pretty sure installing the range is the biggest one. There was an incredible amount of work and stress involved in getting us to this moment. I described it that evening as feeling like I had gotten a piece of myself back again. I have really, really missed cooking and baking for myself and for others.

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If I’m being honest, it’s really much more than that. This kitchen renovation was first starting to gain some traction in our brains in 2013 / 2014. In conjunction with those thoughts, we were starting to put together the broader scope for this renovation that would incorporate all of the ideas that we had planned for this house in the first decade and a half that we had owned it. We thew everything into the mix, and bid the project in 2016. Turns out “everything” was “too much”, and we worked for another few years to save more money and refine the design to still meet all of our objectives but not outprice ourselves in our neighborhood. By late 2018 we had a better, tighter design, and we spent most of 2019 jumping through all of the hurdles of zoning, conditional use hearings, and obtaining notarized variances from neighbors. Further delays in late 2019 stalled us again when the house next to us was foreclosed on and switched bank ownership a dozen times before going to auction, which meant we had to start over with neighbor approvals. We got permit approval and finally bid the project in early 2020, set to start in late March… and then we all know what late March 2020 looked like in the world. Another pause, this time a global one.

2020 / 2021 we tackled some pieces on our own to stay sane, and the front garden renovation was the highlight. Zero regrets there. By late 2022 we had regrouped and started cleaning out and packing up. We brought in subs to reroute utilities in the basement, and then started reframing the first floor to accommodate a new stair to the basement. 2023 was full of tree removal, dirt moving and hauling, and concrete pours every month or so. We trashed our yard and the yards around us. We spent a nice chunk of those savings, and worked around the clock to keep our neighbors happy. We celebrated M turning 50 and a three-year-belated 20th anniversary trip that didn’t happen during the pandemic, and went into October feeling energized and ready.

Our efforts to keep one neighbor placated worked… until it didn’t, and after a fairly tense summer we were finally on track for our last two weekends of full yard restoration work in November. That neighbor changed their mind out of the blue about the agreed upon restoration efforts and asked us to stop work immediately. With everything now in storage, we bought a small Christmas tree and installed it in our front garden instead.

2024 was supposed to be the year we finished the first phase of the project. Instead, we spent most of our extra time in the spring strategizing with a lawyer friend, and we quickly pivoted to finishing ALL outdoor work that touches the perimeter of our property and put everything else on hold. We had initially planned to finish the work in the main house completely and then start designing the rear garden before completing the carriage house. Now we had to quickly design the kind of fence we wanted – and because we never seem to do anything simple, basic, or easy – the design and coordination and execution of the fence consumed us for the entire summer and late into the fall. Stress and tension also consumed us.

Appliances arrived and had to be stored in our already limited floor space. Building supplies filled any open spots. We stopped work on the addition and tried to weatherproof it as best we could.

fake smile – i was perpetually stressed and worn down – i struggled to eat well or turn my brain off to sleep well

The fence construction dominated the last half of 2024. I think everyone thought we were nuts to pause work on the house, but not many people knew what was going on. Neither of us anticipated how much time the fence would take. Now that we’re almost two years removed from it, I’m really glad we followed through on the design and extensive prep work because the finished product is exquisite. Once we started there wasn’t really an option to speed things up. The only way through the work was to do the work.

We resigned ourselves to another holiday season without space to enjoy the traditions that we love. Another holiday, another outdoor Christmas tree. We had no space to host visitors, and rarely had any.

Then came 2025, which was a year of so many family milestones – and each of them required letting go of what we thought they might look like and accepting what they actually looked like. I struggled with both the letting go and the accepting. We worked very, very hard and it still felt very, very slow. Yet another holiday season passed – this time we didn’t even bother with an outdoor tree. We just hunkered down and worked and worked and worked.

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Saying that the Monday evening we completed the range install was an emotional one is really such an understatement. From 2013 to 2026 is a serious stretch of time, but we’re still here.

When I look back at my blog posts here, my last update on the project was in February of 2023 when we paid for the removal of our neighbor’s tree along our property line. (With approval, of course, and with our dollars.) In August of that year I posted a finalized dining room design – I had so many hours of standing and sanding a zillion fence boards to think about things, and I really honed in on that design challenge. After that I only posted about my holiday cards – in 2023, 2024, 2025. I shared updates on my private IG account to keep close friends and family in the loop which helped – one of my favorite things to do is talk about renovation projects. Outside of those connections it was a pretty lonely and stressful time.

2026 already feels different. Writing here is part of that. The appliances are out of the living room, and now the dining room banquette can shift sides and we can sit on the couch again and access the bookshelves. We looked at the colors on the outside of our house and tried out a color in the pantry that is a lighter version of the accent color in our cornice that works so well with the greens out there. It’s the perfect not-quite-neutral in the pantry. The transom is trimmed out and everything is painted in the pantry, so we are ready to extend the new flooring into that space. We’ve installed the dishwasher and the final cabinet adjustments are being made. I’m always bringing in fresh flowers and imagining all the new places to put them.

After so many, many months of feeling like we were just moving in place, now it feels like each new step opens up something new.