It looks like the Francis family is finally getting ready to end a big chapter of our lives. We bought our house just over three years ago and we are finally wrapping up the remodel. We started this project thinking a fixer upper would be some fun family project to tackle. We were so wrong!

Our original plan for this house was to completely gut it and replace EVERYTHING. We started in the back of the house and did gut and replace everything. The back studio had been “finished” with plywood. The closet in it had been framed in on top of indoor/outdoor carpet and the plywood had been put up with both nails and screws so that was fun to take out. The back studio is a room that we’ve used as an office/photo studio and we’ve loved the space since it was finished.

Before
After

The bedrooms had a lot of weird quirks that we removed and reworked to make them more functional. We stripped everything down to studs and started all over.

Boys’ room before
Just missing the window trim.
Our bedroom before
Almost finished
Before
Before
Just needing trim

After completely redoing the bedrooms and bathroom, we got comfortable in the house and decided that we would take a breather before we finished the kitchen and living room. That breather turned into almost three years. 😬 We are finally getting ourselves back into gear and getting the house finished so we can sell it. We’ve decided to do less on the living room and kitchen than we had originally planned. We are going with the “polish the turd” strategy this time around.

We scraped the popcorn ceilings, did knockdown on the ceilings and walls that were already textured, replaced all of the trim, replaced the flooring, and painted. The kitchen needed so much updating that we didn’t feel like it was worth our time and money to totally redo like we’d originally wanted to. We touched up some paint in there and replaced the flooring.

If I ever meet the man who invented popcorn ceilings or the woman who wanted it put in this house…
Someday I’m going to publish a book of photos of this butt crack.

Of course, our kids have been super helpful through this whole process and I’m not sure how we’d be getting anything done without them.

Seriously though, our kids have done really well adapting to all of the chaos around them recently. We are going back and forth from the house to the RV. Ellie’s ballet classes have been virtual for the last few weeks so I’m sure her instructor is wondering what is going on around here. We’ve had a lot of meals on the floor, a few late night meals in pajamas on my bed, and we’ve moved sleeping arrangements a few times. Our most recent sleeping arrangement had Granville sleeping in the hallway outside of Ellie’s bedroom. One night we heard him talking some serious smack to Ellie. We heard his sweet little voice get deep and mean as he said “Even when I was a baby and we would fight, I could kick your can!”

Most of our house is packed up already. I keep realizing that of all of our stuff that we’ve packed up, I’ve missed almost none of it so I’m thinking about getting rid of everything. 🤷🏻‍♀️

We are so excited to get this house sold and find a home to settle down in for a long time. It’s going to be bitter sweet to sell a house that is finally finished without getting to live in it and enjoy it. We are afraid if we stayed in it for awhile our kids would destroy it though. If you guys know anyone looking for a house in Silver Lake, send them our way!