111. Renovating an Old House: Expectations vs Reality (With 5 Kids 😅)

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Welcome to the Go Get Great Podcast, the perfect spot for aspiring entrepreneurs and ambitious small Business Owners. I'm Brittany, your host, an online marketing strategist and mom of 5. Here you'll discover how to start or scale your small business with practical marketing and business strategies that even the busiest entrepreneurs can implement. But we don't just stop at business insight because we know that what you do when you're not wearing your entrepreneur hat is just as important to the success of your business. As a fellow mom, I understand the importance of having a space for real talk where we share the relatable messy moments of balancing motherhood and a business. So let's dive in and start your journey from good to great. All right, welcome back to another episode of the Go Get Great podcast. Today I am joined by my partner Grayson. I have brought my live-in podcast guest back today, and what are we talking about? Our home renovation. Yeah, you guys have been asking oodles and oodles of questions, and it's what we've been loving sharing about on social media lately. So I thought it would be a good idea to be able to like talk about it in some detail that's not a 60-second Instagram story. And also to get Grayson's side of things because he's the one that does 99% of the work and, uh, he's been very absent because he doesn't have time to be on social media. So, um, I asked ChatGPT to give us a few, uh, topic ideas because there is just so much that we could talk about. It would literally be a 17-hour conversation. So I wanted to try and structure it a little bit better for us. Um, so some of the first things that we're just going to go over, if you're curious about why we purchased this house in the first place, there is an episode that I will link in the show notes because I don't remember the number that talks about why we sold our last house and how we came to purchase this one. Actually, I think there's two of them. There's one that talks about the why we sold and then another one, I think it's called One Decision Away, that talks more about why we wanted, and by we, I mean I, why I wanted to move out of the city into a country, bigger property, all those wonderful things. So that, that crosses off a couple of ChatGPT's questions. Uh, I do like this one: what was our original vision for this house? Because man, I feel like that has changed a lot in the last 10 months. I don't know, I mean, I think we're kind of close to where I thought we would— yeah— go for. I mean, I didn't think we would have like heat pumps or whatever, but that's true, that was an unexpected and Slightly frustrating surprise. And then I don't know, 'cause I thought they would like raise the floors and stuff, but we just re-leveled them. Mm-hmm. But like, that's like more technical. Like I think we kind of ended up maybe like, I didn't expect to have like dark floors or something. That's kind of, that's true. That's true. So if you have seen our last two renovation properties, which really I should document in a blog post because that would be a lot easier than making people sift through Instagram story highlights. I'll work on that, guys, in my non-existent free time. Um, so our first house was in London, and I went very colorful with it, and we painted it mostly teal with like— it was juniper berry is the color. I'm amazed you remember that because I didn't, and I picked the color. Uh, but it was like a very tealy, almost dark green color, and we had like wood— well, we had wooden floors, we had laminate floors, but it was more of like the gray family. Yeah, I can't really remember those ones. I remember our kitchen floor because we had like vinyl tiles. Oh yeah, it was dark gray and they were awful. To be fair, they were probably fine and we just didn't— the floor was probably completely unlevel. They were very hard to put in though. It was very easy to break the edges. We've learned a lot since that renovation, guys. Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later. Um, But yeah, we had a very dark colored floor in the kitchen, but like white countertops. And then we had like dark gray counters, like granite counters. I thought we had a dark gray countertop. Yeah. Countertop. You said white countertop a second ago. Sorry. White cabinets. Yeah. Dark gray countertops. Um, yeah. So that was a very, very colorful, but like it didn't feel colorful. No. I mean, it was, I think it was cuz it was so dark too. Yeah. And the floor, I think the floor does a lot in the, cuz if it's gray, I think it kind of just ruins the vibe. So it was an aesthetic. Gray countertops and white counters. Yeah. So it was an aesthetic and like the bedrooms were nothing super fancy. I think we ended up painting Talia's room pink cuz she was a girl and then ours was probably gray. Did we even paint it pink? I don't even know. I feel like we just painted every, every— maybe her room was gray too. Yeah, it's possible. I don't remember. I remember her room not being done before we had her, and I was in the hospital having a panic attack that John was supposed to be there painting that day, and then he didn't show up. Anyway, uh, so that was a vibe. And then we sold that one, and then we purchased our second house, which was our last one in St. Thomas. And I basically made it look like a model home, and it was just gray. We had an accent wall, and we had— that was it. The island was, was navy, the same color as the accent wall. And then that was it. The floor was like grayish brown and the walls were all gray. Mm-hmm. Or white. They were gray or white. Yeah. We painted the bathrooms white. The, the kid's room at the time, the girl's room was pink and I put a flower mural on that. Mm-hmm. But that was like the only personality in the whole house. I mean, it was super boring. It's just, it's kind of boring. I mean, like these walls aren't— Okay. But to be fair, I feel like this is probably a temporary paint color because I was too afraid to make a lasting decision on color. I didn't— my problem is I feel like any flat color, like Like, I think gray, I guess, is the most boring color you could possibly pick. But like, any— I feel like if you pick any color and don't do an accent wall, it's gonna look boring. Yeah, well, we'll worry about that later. Right now we're working on functionality, not accent colors. But Talia was very adamant that we were not allowed to paint the house gray at all. No, it's a cold color, Mommy. It's yucky. It's not the exact words, but that was more or less the sentiment of it. I'm like, Okay, you're gonna be a designer when you get bigger. And then she would go to Grandma's house and she's like, Grandma, why did you paint your walls gray? Gray's such a cold color. I'm like, okay, here we go. I didn't think your walls were gray though. I thought they were like beige. Downstairs they're gray though, aren't they? Yeah, and then up into half of the living room. Yep, because I told her she should paint her walls gray because that was trendy when she did it 5 years ago. Yeah, so our vision for this house has been a little different than the last two in the sense that we decided to go with darker colored floors. I surprised myself with painting the trim dark. That was a new development. I'm still on the fence about it because we've only seen it in one room. So I'm curious to see how it looks with the bigger, older style trim in our main areas. That's what Grayson's going to work on later today when we're done recording this podcast. I'm excited. Yeah, we kind of, we kind of thought it would look a little weird with the walls being light, but then if we paint the trim white, it would be like lighter and then like the lightest and then dark on the ground. It's almost like zebra stripes. Yeah, that would be weird. So right now our wall color, you can see it in the background if you're watching this on YouTube, um, it, it's called Oatmeal. That's the color, but it's basically like oatmeal, to be honest. It's the color, I guess. Um, it's like a light cream, and I wanted something neutral for the main areas So like the dining room and the living room, technically we've— and the workout room. Well, laundry room. I was like, because we needed to paint it and I panicked and I was like, we'll just do it all the same color for now and then I'll probably choose other colors later. But we have yellow in the kitchen, which you can actually kind of see in the video too. Um, and then the bathroom. So like basically our design style for this house is to try and keep with some of the older country-esque like themes, vibes. Thank you, that's the word. So we have like— I don't know if we have country-esque in here, but we definitely have like, uh, the original style of the house. I would definitely say that we're not there yet, but I have ideas and visions, and it mostly— I think the country vibe— we're mostly just replacing our light fixtures, which we can't do right now. The country vibe will come more when we do like some of the decorative stuff. Yeah. When we put floating shelves or like if we put some of those like fake beams or whatever on the ceiling. Yeah, I did kind of want to do that in the kitchen. I almost want to do it in here. Oh, eh, maybe. I don't know. We'll revisit. I see a lot of stuff about them and I think they look good, so. Yeah. So that's kind of the vibe and vision for the house. And we've got like a green bathroom with the old style trim and then we have like a floral wallpaper with it and like the clawfoot bathtub, which I feel like works. I feel like the bathroom is the only one we've kind of nailed the vibe on so far. I think it looks really good. It just sucks because we have a lot of our clean stuff stored in there. So it doesn't— it's not like fully— yeah, I can't even really— I— we haven't even actually done a final reveal of the bathroom yet, A, because it's not done, which I talked about in a different podcast episode. Um, but we'll get around to that eventually. But you can't really see it right now because it's full of stuff because we have no cabinets, surfaces, anything anywhere in the house. Kind of everywhere is full of stuff is the problem. Oh yeah, because we're trying to live in half of a house right now. Oh, there's no storage yet. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that's the vision for this house. What did we think renovating would look like versus what it's actually become? This is pretty much, pretty much dead on exactly what I thought we were going to have to do. It's just taking a lot longer. I guess the only thing was the plumbing that I didn't think we would have to replace all of. Yeah, that was not in the plans or the budget at all. Thank you so much, insurance company, for forcing us to redo all of that. Yeah. I mean, we kind of had to do a lot anyways though. Like, we moved the tub, um, in the bathroom where we moved laundry. We did not move the tub in the bathroom. Yeah, the— well, the— are the pipes not in a different spot? No. Oh, but all the pipes are on the outside of the walls. It'd be like if there was a pipe running across the ceiling, like over here or something. Yes, we had to— we had to put all of the pipes in the walls, but we didn't actually move anything. Kitchen sink still in the same spot. The upstairs bathroom, we had to move the pipes because— That's true, because we did decide not to replace its clawfoot tub and we're going to put a tile shower in. And the double vanity. So they're kind of different. I guess. Yes. So slight adjustments upstairs, but everything else has been pretty, pretty similar. And then the only other thing was there were barn boards under all the plaster that I guess I didn't— Oh, shit. That was why it took so long to demo the house because we're like, okay, plaster, cool, cool. But then there was plaster and then there was barn boards and then I feel like there was something else in front of it. It was the blow-in insulation. So we kind of had to, mm-hmm. And then we had to like rebuild a lot of the corners because the barn boards went behind the wall and it doesn't really work for drywall. Mm-hmm. And then we had the issue with the floor and had to completely redesign the entire layout of the second floor. That was fun. Well, I mean, we didn't have to. No, but we did need to fix it. Uh-huh. That, that was— I mean, somehow though, that ended up being a not very long project and a not very expensive project. It was— no, it was, and it was a stressful project because that was why we ended up bringing in the structural engineers. We didn't bring in a structural engineer. Well, I'm sorry. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. But that was for under the house. Well, it was both. They looked at the beams between the first and second floor. Yeah, but then they kind of just told us useless information. So, well, that's a separate conversation. The project itself didn't take very long and didn't cost very much. Well, it kind of did because by the time we decided that we wanted to bring in a second opinion on that, then we had to find a company, which took time, and then it took them a while to come out and do it. And then it took them like 8 bloody weeks to get us the report back. And I didn't want to do anything until we got the report back. So I feel like that was most of the summer. That was July and August, and we were basically just waiting on them to give us information. I mean, we were pulling out plaster. You were still demoing a little bit, but like, we couldn't proceed with the big projects of the renovation until that was done. So it didn't really feel like we accomplished anything significant over the summer. That was my frustration. I don't know, I feel like it was absolutely an absolute inferno in here when I was working, so we must have done something in the summer. That's true. But like, also, I was still working, so like, it's not like I was here all the time. That is true. I kind of forgot that you had a job and still have a job. So that's, that's why we didn't get most of the stuff done. But when we actually did started doing the project, it was like 2 days or something, maybe like 4 total. Yeah, it didn't take us very long once we actually, you know, figured out what we were doing and then talked to different people to actually figure out what we were doing. Uh, what's been the biggest surprise so far? It's got to be the pipes. It's gotta be the plumbing. Yeah, also the like plumbers themselves have been something. And then, and then all of the pipes freezing after we redid all of them. Yeah, that's probably the most annoying part. That was unkind. I don't know if you could call it a surprise because we literally asked about it and they were like, no, that shouldn't happen. And then it did. I jinxed it by asking about it. Shouldn't have done that. I think the biggest surprise for me, because again, I handle 1% of renovations, 1%. It's like just moving stuff or telling me what to do. Pretty much. I'm quality control. Um, but the one project that I did do, and I wanted to stab needles in my eyes for, and was pulling the nails out. No, but that did suck too. You did do that. But that wasn't a surprise. The surprise was how incredibly difficult and frustrating it is to install wallpaper. Oh yeah, yeah, that was annoying. Oh, I don't think I'm ever doing that again. I was looking at it, I was like, yeah, we probably should have painted it. There's like no reason. It's like, it's— I think it probably just looks slightly worse than if you painted it, right? Because the lines exist. Having done murals before, I feel like I probably could have painted it. And we actually had this discussion, we talked about it in great detail before we actually purchased the wallpaper because the wallpaper was expensive and we didn't want to invest in it. But I thought it would look really nice. And my concern with just hand painting the floral pattern onto the wall in the bathroom was that I was worried that my flowers would start a certain size and either get larger or smaller as I went around the room, and then it would look funny. So we talked about different ways around that, like buying, um, a projector and projecting like a picture of the flowers on. But then Grayson didn't know that that would work very well because as we rotated the projector, then the image would alter size on the— and I was like, and like the angles of the wall and stuff. I was actually just thinking about it. It was like we could have just made one flower-like stencil. I was— yeah, like an acrylic stencil or something where you just like put the paint in it because it was all basically one color. It was white and gold, right? And that's pretty much it. And then you have to paint the wall flat color. But yeah, because it's just about a stencil. I have seen people paint with stencils and it looks tedious, but considering the fact of the size, like if we literally just wanted to emulate the wallpaper that we chose, the flower and leaf patterns were large that I don't think it would have been as bad. But I've seen people that are like taping stencils that are like 3 inches by 3 inches on a wall a gajillion times, and I was like, that doesn't sound fun. Like, since it's white though, you can almost get it on the wall and then just go with white over all of it, and then you could just put the gold. Yeah, but I would have— no, I would have painted— I would have painted the walls a color and then stenciled the flowers on white. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So like, you— you— we had the wall already painted. You just put it on and then just go quickly over with white. It wouldn't even be— well, no, because then you wouldn't get crisp lines. What were you saying in your flowers? Because I would have painted the wall gray because it's a gray background with the white flowers on top. So then the wall would be gray, so then you need the crisp lines. So you can't really just like splash paint on the stencil. No, no, but I mean like you put it in the, like, the space of the stencil, but since it's all white, you can kind of just go over it really quickly. Yes. Anyway, there are other ways around it, and I don't think that I would ever wallpaper again, mostly because of the frustration, but also because of the expense of it. Like, I think we spent almost $500 wallpapering. I mean, our bathroom is larger than most, but I thought it was like $200-something. No, no, because how much was it per bat? It was like $60, I thought. Uh, yeah, and we needed 4 of them. I think it was more than $60, and we got ours on sale too. But then you also have to factor in the glue, and then there was the wallpaper primer, and then we had to buy special wallpapering tools to use with it too. I was like, I think we are definitely at least at $400, if not above, um, which feels like a lot for a small space like that when I could have got out and bought 2 quarts and a couple paintbrushes and maybe even a stencil and it would have been like $100 and it might have looked better. Yeah. Um, also the big issue with the wallpaper in the bathroom is that as much as we redid the walls in there, we didn't redo all of them, and then the corners looked a little funky in certain spots. Also, the ceiling's not level and it bugs my eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Except we, we reused the, the 2x4s that were already there. Yeah. And they like, so if you put the level on it, it's level on the end, but they start higher on the one side and then they kind of like swoop and then they're lower on the, on the one side. So you put it on, you're like, it's perfectly level all the way across, but you would have to level it both ways and they were already bent, so you would have to redo. You have to get new 2x4s, and we weren't doing this. So that's been my biggest surprise with the renovation because the wallpaper was my project, and also I'm the one that does the budgeting and shopping, and I wasn't expecting it to be that expensive to wallpaper. Because I see so many people wallpaper, where do they have the funds for this? Also, I think peel and stick would have been easier than what we got, but I don't know. I feel like marginally, I feel like it would have been easier, but I don't think it would have looked any better at all. That's true. Like, I think there still would have been bubbles. It still would have been annoying to— the only thing it saves us having to paint the backs, basically. Anyway, so that was my big surprise. Um, I'm looking at the list of questions to see what I might want to ask Grayson next. I don't think we're going to talk about this, but this is an interesting thing to think about. If someone walked into our house on day one, what would they have seen? A completely different house than what they are looking at today. Actually, if you would like to see what our house looked like on day one, go check my Instagram account because I just posted a reel about it asking people to guess how much the house was, and the entire reel was pictures and video clips from the day we got the keys to the house. So you can see that. And then if you'd like to see what it looks like now, you check out my stories because usually I'm somewhere doing something in the house. Uh, yeah, so we're doing the whole thing, so she looks very different. I do think like the The biggest thing probably would have been the unlevel floors. Yeah. Because you could see them. Like you could just, I mean, was there, there was a carpet in here, right? Definitely with the carpet off, it was like really obvious. With carpet on, you could feel it walking. I was going to say you could feel it when you're walking. That was, I think, one of my mom's biggest complaints about the house and concerns about it was the flooring and how unlevel the house was. And she thought it was just going to like collapse and implode on us. Yeah. She has a special kind of imagination. Um, I think just kind of like the other, the other thing that people would have really noticed was it wasn't neglect really, but it wasn't upkept just because of the age of the previous homeowner. It was like the whole second floor I think was where it was like they didn't— and the bathroom, like you could tell it was very dated. Yeah. Well, and they like clearly had just stopped using the second floor. So it was just kind of a disaster. But like, even like, you're— from, from someone who sold two houses and understands kind of the, the concept of staging a house, first impressions really matter. And like, when you first walk in the front door of this house, what you saw was paint peeling off of the metal attachments on the living room ceiling. I feel like that would have been really hard though to, to just deal with real quick. You either take all of those metal things down and then you have to redo an entire ceiling because there's no drywall under it. I get that. Or you sand them all and then you can't really live in the house while that's going on, and they can't do it themselves. But they weren't, because she would have already passed away. Well, sure, but then, then someone else has to spend money. Yeah, on a house that they didn't know. Um, anyway, she passed away natural causes, not in the house, just in case you're wondering. Um, yeah, so I I think the house maybe didn't make a very good first impression, but the beautiful thing about that was it probably turned away other buyers, which made it easier for us to get the house. Um, and also I see past that. Like, there's just— like, we'd go through the house and my mom would be like, did you see that in the house? And I'm like, no. And it's not that I'm not looking for things like that. It's just that I know they're either things that I can fix and I've mentally already redesigned it in my head, or it's just of such trivial insignificance because I know we can fix it that it just didn't trigger my registry. There's not, there's not a whole lot of things that could be wrong with the house that we couldn't, that would make it cost more to fix than we already have spent, to be honest. Like, we would probably have less, um, we probably would have bought less like decorative things by now to fix some of those other things. But, but like, still, okay, so we're, we're talking a big game here, but I mean, realistically, we are DIY renovators. We have learned a lot in our past few renovations, um, which which is a topic for another episode. But have you learned anything new? Have you needed to learn anything new to renovate this house that we haven't done previously? Um, I mean, I haven't leveled— we technically built the floor at the, um, Pearl Street, like our first house, where we had to redo the back floor where the laundry was. Yeah, but I haven't like leveled because our— the problem with this house is like It wasn't equally unlevel. Yeah, like if the floor like sags and then comes up and goes down, you can't really like just measure one side and then measure the other side and cut it. And you can't really like measure in certain spots and draw a line. So like I had to like put a laser level down and push the 2x4 on the floor and draw a line across where the line was and then cut it on in the exact same shape, which turned out surprisingly well considering how I did that. Yeah, we really only had that issue in that one spot, and I don't think it had anything to do with you leveling the floor. I really do think that the plywood just wasn't the right thickness. Yeah, we bought plywood from somebody and, uh, he was like a reseller person, so he'd buy in bulk and then sell them. And he put like one slightly thinner sheet of plywood in the stack, um, but it was like weirdly not that far off. Like, I don't even— I didn't even know they made plywood that different, like that little of different. It could have just been cut incorrectly. Yeah, but the flooring just so happened to line up where the two different heights were and it popped the flooring out, so I had to undo all the flooring and fix it. Yeah, that was the issue we had in the dining room. If you've been following along, that was why we were having the floor separation. So Grayson had to pull up a couple rows of flooring. I had to pull out like 10 rows of flooring in 2 rooms. Yeah, only, you know, no big deal. Uh, and then he had to level, like add stuff to make the plywood the proper thickness. To fix it, I put one piece of cardboard of the flooring blocks on it. I mean, there was 3 in a row, but it's only 1 layer thick because when I tried to put 2, it was too tall. So like, oh, very minutely, but like, it's— and I put some wood around the edges so it can't break again. But yeah, it's like weird to see how little things like that can like cause such huge problems because like you'd step on the floor and it'd be like— yeah, because it was just right where the seam was, so the, the bottom one just fell out. There was a visual effect for that, by the way, that you would see in the video. Um, anyway, uh, so yes, I think leveling the floor— and you did a really good job with it too, babe— uh, was definitely a new skill that you had to develop for this house. We have definitely, I'll come back to that in a second, and definitely invested some new tools for this house. We can talk about that in a minute. But I would say another skill that you haven't had to do before, and we did it on a very small scale, but honestly, I think we're probably going to revisit this in the future, is cabinet making. Yeah. Because you had to fix, because we purchased our kitchen from Habitat. Yeah, because I guess I hadn't, did I? I guess I didn't make a cabinet before. You've never made cabinets before. So the kitchen layout that we purchased from Habitat, we knew we were going to have to Tetris it together. And I mean, truthfully speaking, I was very skeptical that this was going to work and Grayson had more confidence in this than I did. And it actually turned out pretty good. But the sink cabinet that we needed was actually in like a corner of the old layout. So we had to like chop this because they were like points. Yeah. So we just cut the edges off and made them flat. And then we had to like put new side panels. I had to actually take the whole thing apart though, because it was behind where we stored all our flooring. So I just took the whole thing apart. Because I had to take it apart anyways. And then he rebuilt the cabinet. And I mean, truthfully speaking, it wasn't that difficult. So aside from the cost of buying the materials to buy cabinets, I think in the future we would probably just make our own. And actually, we were talking about that because the kitchen cabinets— like, we never purchased this kitchen thinking it would be our forever kitchen. It was just meant to be cheap and temporary for us because we knew we needed a kitchen, and a whole kitchen redesign was not in the budget right now. At this point though, I almost feel like redoing only the uppers would make sense because like the lowers kind of cover— they're not bad, but they cover all the space they should cover. They do, and they're not in horrible shape. Like some of the kitchen is not in very good shape at all, like the doors. We need to either sand— we need to take the finishing off and refinish the doors, or we just need to get new doors for the kitchen, one or the other. Um, they're not— yeah, they don't look good, but the cabinets themselves are not horrible. But yeah, we could just redo the uppers. Yeah, because I was thinking about it, I was thinking about it, and I think that's the part that bothers both of us the most because The lowers, I'm honestly surprised we didn't have to put like any spacers between like any of the cabinets at all. Um, and they fit really well, especially on like the stairwell. But I think the uppers, they had certain cabinets associated with them, but then some of the lowers didn't have an upper associated with them where we put them. Yes. And not to mention the sink cabinet was like way wider because it was in a corner, so the uppers didn't always line up 100%. So it would be nice to— They do look a little funny, but also they're super short because they must have had 8-foot ceilings in the last house and the cabinets didn't go to the ceilings in the first place. So it just visually looks weird in my eyes, having come from a house that had, I'm not going to say floor-to-ceiling cabinets, but like kind of. In mine as well. They were really close. I think there was like this much of a gap on the top. Because that was how I designed the kitchen. I did that intentionally knowing that I didn't want to dust above the cabinets. So I was like, we'll just run them to the ceiling. Uh, which worked well. So yeah, maybe we'll just redo the, the uppers and then the lowers can stay, which would be good because I don't want to buy new countertops. Yeah, just looking at the lowers, like, I wouldn't add any more. Like, the only thing is that maybe the pantries, there would be some different location or movement of those, but I think they're pretty good where they are. So we do have to build a fridge cabinet though because there was not. Well, that's, that's not really like a building thing. Well, it is if we put an actual cabinet above it. Yeah, well, we actually have a cabinet. For on top of it. I doubt it will be the right size by the time we get a bigger refrigerator in there. Um, and then just like a couple other things that we're going to do in the kitchen, which is— I would still classify it under carpentry and cabinet building. Um, one of them, like, the kitchen had a stovetop and then they had a wall oven, whereas we have a traditional oven, and then we also added the wall oven because Brittany wanted two ovens, and I love it. I'm so glad. I really like the wall oven, yeah. We use it over the other oven. We do actually. Um, it's less bending. It's like an ergonomic thing for me. Um, but also there's more racks in it, so I just, I find it easier. But that wasn't what I was going to say. But they had, um, what the heck did I just call it? A stovetop. Yeah, right over my head. They had a stovetop, so they had their like pots and pans cabinet with a false front at the top to accommodate for the the underneath mechanics of the stovetop countertop thingy. So we want to, to turn that into an actual drawer because we don't have a stove. We already have the face on it and everything, so all we have to do is build a box and then, and then a handle. Yeah. Um, so we want to do that. And the cabinet— or the kitchen was not a fancy kitchen in the sense that there were like no pull-out drawers and anything other than the pantry. I'm glad the pantry had it at Yeah. So I want to put roll-out drawers in a lot of them. So Grayson's going to be building drawers. Surprise. For the kitchen. Yay! Not surprise. We've talked about this before. You knew that. So that's a skill that we will be developing at some point through this process. Probably not till closer to the end of 2026. It is just making a wooden box. So I— And buying drawer sliders. Like it doesn't sound complex. It's a kind of a little bit hard to do. I hate when that message comes up, especially when I'm in the middle of recording. Anyway, let's hope this doesn't time out. We're getting a notification that I'm out of space on my computer. Um, yeah, so one of the other things I was gonna talk about is the amount of new tools we purchased, because man, did I think that we owned everything before. But every time Grayson goes to the store, he comes back with more stuff that we didn't own. Honestly, we haven't spent too much on new tools, like, okay, like total. Yeah, like I probably spent, like, as far as tool goes though, like, it's just $1,000. Oh, I think it's higher than that. Nope, because I spent $650— no, $750 on that kit, and then we bought the nail gun, which was $200. Okay, but then I'm also going to count the vacuum cleaner in that. Okay, because that's a renovation material. That was it? I think so. Oh, it was more expensive. And you bought Sanders. What do you mean Sanders? Like the hand— oh, the hand sander. That was not expensive. I know that. I think as well. Yeah, but then you also bought the thing for the chimney. Yeah, but that was, that was $50, I want to say, even. Okay, it was so cheap. Less expensive than I thought. That was so cheap that I thought I might actually like die using it, to be honest. But it worked really well, so. Uh-huh. Well, that's good. Okay, so less tool investment than I thought, but it was a lot less considering the quantity of tools that arrived. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, the amount, considering the amount we got. We didn't spend that much money on tools. We were fortunate that we had the basics beforehand. I say that knowing full well that you bought a new drill set, but— Well, it was part of the kit, which is cheaper to buy the kit with the drills than to— And you needed the batteries because he upgraded to DeWalt. All right. And we are back again after technical difficulties and not understanding why my computer has a ridiculous amount of just random operating crap that takes up storage space. Ways. Uh, we were talking about tools, tools, and all the tools that you've purchased and that have magically made their way into our house. Uh, but we are fortunate that in previous renovations we did invest in some of the bigger ones and/or were gifted things or found them at yard sales, like table saw and chop saw. The table saw and the chop saw, easily the, the like two that have— although to be fair, I was looking at some and they're, they're more than, you know, the tools I bought, but wouldn't be Most people overpay for car insurance. Not because they're careless, but because switching feels like too much hassle. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side-by-side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit jerry.ai/libsyn today. That's J-E-R-R-Y dot A-I slash L-I-B-S-Y-N. Crazy to have to buy them. Mm-hmm. I think some of the other big investments we made were not necessarily in the way of tools, but I would kind of also classify it as a tool for getting shit done, AKA moving things. And that was purchasing our trailer, our utility trailer, which is probably by far one of the better investments we've made that have been heavily judged by everyone else in my family, despite how much we've used it. Except when it broke. Yeah, that was not fun. But, you know, everything's been breaking for us, so why not? We did at least get it fixed. So there's that. It is functional again after 2 months of sitting as a very expensive, heavy lawn ornament. So, you know, we get there. We just, you know, buy things as we need them and try not to invest in too many things. But yeah, let's move on to another question. I feel like we got heavily derailed by my computer shutting off our video. Um, oh, okay. We talked about this a little bit, but I feel like it deserves a place. Why? It deserves a place in this episode as well because it is on topic for what, what, what is going on? ChatGPT has just decided I needed to revisit stuff that I asked it 3 years ago. Um, kidding, but only kind of. Hmm. Did we set a renovation budget and did we stick to it? Well, aside from the fact that we're not done, I also did just talk about this on social media. But I was curious and I was going to ask you, do you still have the piece of paper that we filled out at the Chinese restaurant that night? No. No? No. I had— well, I think I got rid of that one too, but I had one that I guessed like before we bought the house where I took all the square footage and I like completely guessed a lot of this. Did you put it in the Canva document that's labeled Brittany, don't look at this? No. That's unfortunate. Well, maybe some of the information's in there. I wonder if it's in like a passed a notebook that I may have used. I mean, I can definitely— wrote it down. I can check my wallet, but, but, uh, I'm just— because when we, we came and looked at the house and then we went out to dinner on our way home, that was probably our last date night, honestly, in like February of last year. I mean, it had to have been sort of close because, um, I don't think so. Well, no, because I didn't have any plumbing any HVAC written down at all. I was gonna say, so this was like— our biggest expenses were not included in the original budget. So like, I think I had it at what? I think I had it at like $80 grand of stuff, but that was like flooring, drywall, mud, um, screws, 2x4s, drywall. I already said drywall. Okay, paint. I think in that we also accounted for a new shed, which we haven't built yet. No, I mean, I didn't. New windows. Windows. Yeah. But, uh, it was basically just the like raw construction materials that I was accounting for, like to actually like just do stuff. Trim, trim was in there. Doors were in there. Yeah. And then I think we accounted for $10,000 of unexpected expenses, which we are well above, and then $10,000 of what I would've considered cosmetic renovations. So that would've been like what, coffee bar in dining room plus countertop and floating shelves and, um, you know, vanities. And I don't know that we budgeted for a new kitchen, actually. No, because we had planned on keeping the kitchen. Yeah, so that was another surprise in the renovation when we couldn't do that. Should have looked closer. I mean, we probably could have, but like I don't know. I kind of like what we have better anyways. Yeah. So I don't remember what our specific breakdowns were, but I do vaguely recall that $80,000 was our number, but we brought it up to $100,000 knowing that there would be unexpected stuff and then some other things that aren't, like I said, they're more cosmetic renovations. I remember saying even if we spent $100,000 on this house, it would be cheaper than buying a house of the same value. Yes. Um, so if you're curious about what we spent so far, we are over $100,000 already and we're not done. Did post a reel about that as well. I will link it in the show notes so long as Grayson puts a note in the description. I think a good amount, a good amount of it was almost $40,000 of it. It's like a solid $35,000. So like if you don't account for that, then like we're well within our budget. Oh yeah. Oh, 100%. Uh, so the plumbing was a little over $10,000 for us to do, which again, we did not account for because because when we went through the house, you can't see pipes. Well, we kind of. We counted for some, it must have been something because we definitely knew we were going to move some plumbing. Yeah. Yeah, I think we budgeted $5,000 for plumbing and then technically it came in at more than $10,000. It's just $10,000 of it was financed and some of it we paid for originally. I think it was actually closer to $15,000 because I know we paid for some of it out of the funds that we had from selling our house. Somehow them redoing all the pipes was like way less money than hooking stuff up. Well, I think the first set that we paid for, I think, was $12,000 to $15,000, and that was the water lines. No, no, to redo— to redo the stuff they had to redo, it was like— I remember being like $4,000 or something. Was that where they came back? And then they had to run extra stuff for us, which then added on to the cost. But then it was like when they came to actually like hook up two things, it was so much more. Yeah. Anyway, so we didn't budget the $10,000 to $15,000 for that. And when we purchased the house, not only was it spring and was warm, we weren't paying too much attention. But we did check to see that it had a furnace and it was a newer furnace and like almost brand new air conditioning unit. So we didn't think that we were going to need to be replacing that. Well, we knew, we did know that there was no vents on the second floor. Not until after. No, we knew. No, didn't notice that until after we did our first walkthrough. Like we had already closed on the deal at that point when I walked upstairs and went, why aren't there any registers on the floor? Um, but I feel like I had budgeted something for HVAC though in my like— to the attic, because we knew there wasn't any heating in the attic and we wanted to finish the attic. But I, I— okay, I'm pretty sure it was just for that. Anyway, we did not account for having to put heat pumps in. That came from wanting to try and fix our unlevel floors and people telling us that we needed to contact a crawl space company to come in and assess assess that. And their assessment was that we should have jacks put under the house to prevent it from sagging further. Which then the same company said that we shouldn't put jacks under the house. 6 months later after we have already gone through the process of taking the furnace and all of the ductwork out of the house to accommodate the fact that we would have to remove it so they could do said work. Well, the— And they're the ones that told us we needed to put a heat pump in because they couldn't have the ductwork down there or they wouldn't be able to encapsulate and No, do the stuffy stuff. The bigger problem was to get vents to the second floor, they would have to run a thing up to the attic to add vents into the attic to then put it down into the second floor. Um, there was that as well, which would make the attic unusable. But mostly it was because of the encapsulation too. And then we would have giant ductwork all over our ceiling, which wasn't super appealing. So they're like, I'll get a heat pump, it's like basically the same price. And we were quoted for both, and it was basically the same price. I'm struggling to think that it's as efficient as a furnace. I don't know, but we will see. We don't have a good comparison right now because we never lived in the house last winter. Yeah. Um, yeah, so budget, meh. I personally don't feel that we should have to count the heat pump as an expense because if the furnace crapped out next year after we finished the renovations, we would replace the furnace but not count that as a reno expense. Sense, but Instagram says otherwise, so we've included it for the time being. So according to that, we're over budget. It kind of makes sense too, because if the furnace wasn't, wasn't hot enough for the house in the winter, then we would have had to do more work on the furnace anyway. Um, but yes, so that's the budget topic. Also, we got a quote for adding the HVAC to the second floor, and it was like nearly the same price as just like even with our current furnace. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because they basically wanted to put a second furnace unit in the attic. Yeah, which didn't make sense to me, but whatever. Um, well, no, because I think our furnace was old, so they were switching it. No, they were leaving the one on the main floor and then they were literally just putting a second unit upstairs to do the attic and the second floor. That doesn't even make any sense though, because I know it's way too old. No, it wasn't. It wasn't that old. It is. It has a stack out the top of it. Furnaces don't have that anymore. It was a newer unit that they just was replaced from an older unit, but they left all the older stuff there. But yes, that's another thing we have to take out in the spring. Um, I'm gonna glance over a lot of these budget questions because I feel like we've already talked about it, and also this would just be a very long conversation. But, uh, I do like this question: what renovation decision caused the most stress for us? Kind of, sort of. I don't really know. I mean, like we needed like a better spot to sleep, which was honestly— I think the biggest renovation decision stress just comes in the order that we should do things, because we know that's so annoying. We know that the logical order is rip everything out, then redo plumbing, then redo electrical, and then finish everything. But from a functionality of I didn't want to live at my mom's house anymore perspective, that wasn't really a viable option. So now we're trying to like piecemeal stuff together, and it's making it hard for the contractors, and it's making it hard for us, and it's It's messy. We also can't afford to do whole house projects at the same time. Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah, so it's hard to be like, I mean, like obviously you can't do the electrical later. Yeah. But yeah, we can't, it's not like we could insulate the entire house in one go and then drywall the entire house in one go and then mud the entire house in one go. No, not while also being able to realistically live here. So I think that's the most stressful thing because as much as we know that's the logical order of doing things, we also know that we can't do it in that order. So then we spend a lot toying, going, okay, well, if we do this project now, then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But okay, but then, well, that doesn't really work because then we need to do that. And then honestly, it feels like we spend 90% of our time figuring out what we're going to do and 10% of our time doing it. Yeah, honestly, I think— which is stressful— my best advice for this would be you obviously have to get like all your plumbing, like all the stuff in the walls after you've ripped them out. But then I would go and finish entire rooms one by one. If you need to like live there. If you don't and you can just not be in the house for the entire time you're renovating, then obviously you should do all the drywall as slow or fast as you want and then mud all that drywall and then paint all of it and then do all your flooring and trim and stuff afterwards. But if you have to live in it, I would just start finishing rooms like completely. Well, because the stressful part about that is too, especially by the time you get to like the drywalling phase, If you decided you wanted to go through and mud the whole house, okay, cool beans. A, that's like a 4-day project, but especially for us at the time, we didn't have sufficient heat in the house. It would take like a week and a half for the mud to dry. So it just, it caused a lot of delays, which was stressful. But then even if you could magically, let's say you had a smaller house, less square footage, you could mud the whole house in one day. Well then you've got to give it at least 24 to 48 hours to dry. So then you have 2 days of not doing anything before you can come back and do anything else. Whereas at least if you finish a room at a time, if you're waiting on something to happen in that room, then you can go into a different room and putter around with something else for a little while. I mean, like, if you have like the tools to make it faster and like you've got like 5 friends that will help you do it, it's like when I'm doing it by myself is the only problem. And then I'm not gonna spend, you know, $1,500 on like a fancy electric drywall sander and everything. So I kind of have to, it takes me a long time. It's hard on your body. And I'm by myself. Sanding is hard on your body. I would say that's probably one of the physically demanding parts of the renovation. Yeah, and you want to make sure, because like you'll start doing the ceiling and then you'll kind of think like, fuck this, I don't want to do this anymore. But you have to, you know, make sure you do it correctly. Mm-hmm. And I mean, now Grayson's done it quite a bit and he's pretty good at it. And if you look around our house, like it mostly looks decent. You can see that in the videos. If you're here up close, you can see little spots that we'll go back and fix at some point in the future, mostly on the ceilings and in the corners. Those are the hardest areas. And like Craig was helping me too, and he hasn't done it before. Craig was learning. Yeah. So like there's, yeah, it's, it'll bother you. Like everything you do is gonna bother you. It's just how it goes. But I mean, realistically, even if you hire a professional, they're not infallible. They're not perfect. Well, like we've looked around at like your mom's house. If you like put your head up against the wall and the, the light from the window hits it, you can see like screws, like where the screw spots are and some spots that look a little wonky. So nothing's perfect. Perfect. So just know that ours is just a little more wonky in some spots. Well, because we're also rushing the process too, because we're like, oh my God, we need to get this done. Yeah, if we didn't have to— like, I feel like the upstairs is going to end up being a lot better because we're not going to be running around trying to do it as fast as possible. As much as it would be nice to have the children in their own bedrooms, yeah, we will survive for now. Um, okay, have we argued about this house? Um, the kitchen was probably the one that annoyed me the most. Yeah. Yeah. When we like put it in, you're like, I don't like it. I'm like, oh my God. And the other thing was, the only other thing I feel like we've argued about that like I remember is the lights in here. Oh yeah. Being in a straight line. I still don't like them. It's okay. I'll learn to live with it. I just don't look at the ceiling in the dining room very much anymore. Well, the only, the part that we argued about was the fact that you were like, I don't really care, pick whatever. And you had talked about like two different options. And then when I told the electrician to do one, you were like, well, that's not what I wanted. Apparently I did have opinions, uh, but for the most part, I mean, I think we're just fortunate that A, we have similar design choices, and B, our give-no-fucks level is also at an extreme right now. I care a little bit less than Brittany does about how things look. Someone— she's like, I think we should do this. I'm kind of like, sure. I think a lot of other couples going through this process would have divorced by now. Like, we're not even married, but you know what I mean. Um, you see content about that. It's just like, if you can survive a renovation with your partner, you're set for life. I think it just depends on how much you, you care about— like, if I was— I mean, one, I'm gonna have more or less my own space in the attic so that I can do whatever I want with. I like— that helps a lot. I feel like if some guys really want things to look a certain way, it's like they're pickier than others. I can— I'm more of a function over form type person. Like, I like when stuff looks nice, put it. Also, I mean, we've made it this far through our renovation journey, and I think we're also at the point where if we do something and we don't like it, we know we can just go back and change it later. And it's not that we spent, you know, 10 grand to have somebody build us a fireplace. I don't like fireplaces. Uh, but you know, like, we can— we just know that we can fix it. Like, nothing is permanent. Yeah. And also, me and Brittany have like a lot of the same tastes on things, So we kind of just decide to do the same stuff. Mhm. Mhm. Okay, what's been the hardest part emotionally? Honestly, it's like right now with all— not like this exact second, but with all the kids in the house and like no one's listening. Or, or even worse, now that I, now that I think about it, is like when I put all the flooring in and then the flooring popped out, I'm like, oh my God, what's the point point. Like, we put something in and like over there the floor separating because we don't have like the trim in, and there's like a little bump, and it's like, it's so annoying watching the spots. Or like, there's a spot over there where we cut this like big entryway back because, uh, we needed to put trim. Yeah, so it used to stick out, uh, out this way more, um, but we cut it back. Watch the YouTube video. We did, we did the floor first, and I didn't really think about it, but it goes down into the floor. So now there's a big like square where it was that I have to like fill that, figure out how to cut a piece out and then put it in there and glue it down. It's all these like things. If we just did it all in the exact right order you're supposed to do it in, there wouldn't be such an issue. But we didn't have the option to do it. Now I've got to like look around and be like, or all the outlet covers that don't cover all the holes. I'm not turning the computer around for that one. He's looking at the one behind the dining room table. Um, yes, that's fair. I think the first couple weeks in January when the pipes were frozen and the, the main floor wasn't finished, I think that was very hard emotionally, trying to keep the children somewhat safe and clean. Oh yeah, but it's definitely like when, when like the stuff you're doing isn't working. That too. Um, I think that's the hardest part for you because you're actually doing the doing. For me, the hardest part about this renovation emotionally has been the separation because is I'm so used to having you around so much, especially because you've been on paternity leave, because she's not independent at all. Won't argue that one on the podcast. Um, but then there would be like weeks at a time where you would go down to the house and I wouldn't see you. And like, not only am I single— I, I say solo parenting at my mom's. Like, technically they're there and they do help, but they have— but they make it worse than just being by yourself. Themselves. Yeah, kind of. They like actively watch them, but like the mental load is difficult. Different house, different rules, different sleep schedules make it challenging. Having to try and keep my children quiet until 2 o'clock in the afternoon, don't even get me started. Um, so I mean, that was difficult emotionally. And like, Grayson is my emotional support person who I would vent to, but I couldn't vent to him because the only way I could talk to him was on the phone in front of the person I wanted to vent about. So I'm doing a power move. Oh my God, my mom's driving me absolutely insane. She's batshit crazy. The recliner. While she's watching, you just say like, instead of my mom, you say she, but like make it really obvious. Meanwhile, she's the only other she in the house. Um, yeah, so I mean, for me that was difficult, just how much time we had to spend apart because Grayson was here working and I knew that he needed to be here. But then, you know, I was also at some points, like over the summer specifically, super pregnant, really exhausted, didn't have a lot of help, um, because my dad was still working full-time at that point. Um, that was hard. And then, you know, having the new baby phase— you stayed here, you stayed at Mom's a little bit more when the baby was new. Honestly, I, I don't know, it must have been a week or something, right? Yeah, it wasn't a lot. So I mean, there was like a lot of sleep deprivation. And then, you know, I was going back and forth a lot too then. You were. And like, you know, I wouldn't see Rhett as much either because some days they would go down to the house and they would stay for a few days before they then came back. And like, having the one car meant that we couldn't really go and see them. So if Grayson had the vehicle, like I was stranded at my mom's and like sometimes there were other vehicles that I could borrow, but like it made it difficult for me to take the kids anywhere because we didn't have our car and none of my parents' vehicles would have enough room for that many car seats. Okay. Take 3. I hate the storage on my computer. Um, yes. So the renovation has really taken a big emotional toll on me. I think more so than the last ones because we were together for them, like living under the same roof at the same time. Time we could take breaks, we could help each other. We also had fewer children. I don't think our first house was worse though, because for me I feel like it was like we weren't used to being parents. So like anytime I went to do any work on the house at all, like I remember you literally being like, I feel like you're using this as an excuse to not take it. I'm like, what do you want me to do? To be fair, we started those renovations before we had Talia. I know, but I'm like, okay, so I just don't do them? Like, what do you I think I have grown a tolerance to understanding that the renovations have to happen. Well, it would be like, it wasn't that I was doing them, it's that it was taking me longer than like an hour to do any given renovation. You're like, well, why don't you just do like an hour at a time? I'm like, because if I do something for an hour, it takes me 30 minutes to get everything ready to then do the project. And every reno project takes longer than an hour. That's true. Also, to be fair, Talia was our hardest baby. And I think that was mostly because I was having issues feeding her, but we didn't realize that until 6 months in. So it was a very hard first 6 months for us. That was a rough transition. The rest of the kids have been substantially easier, so that, that helps a lot. I didn't have so much of an issue with separation because I was so— I was like busy, and it was much easier to work without other people here. I think a lot of that for me though, I mean, the separation was a big thing, but also, I mean, I don't really want to say this and put it out there, but also I have mentioned it before, but I really do think that I have ADHD, and I think, um, I've tried to get diagnosed for it, but they won't do it while I'm pregnant, and I've been perpetually pregnant, so we're still waiting on that one. Uh, I should, I should talk to my doctor again about that soon. But, um, before, I used to have, like, I had developed coping mechanisms. I used to work out, I used to read, I used to journal, I used to do my oracle cards. I couldn't do any of that at mom's because of the amount of judgment that came with it from her, from not understanding why I wasn't devoting every waking second of my life to my children like she did with us. She wants do this to our kids. Check out the video, you'll find out. What's she doing there? And it's frustrating because then I had to put all of my coping mechanisms in a box and pretend they didn't exist. So I would be irritable, I would be frustrated, I was tired, and it was stressful because all the things that I knew that would help me combat that, I didn't have access to. So it's been a lot better being able to be here and being able to be like, Gray, I need a break, I'm gonna go and do this, whatever, whatever. And let the kids do something on the their own for like 5 minutes. If you're not actively staring at your children in my mom's house, she thinks you're a neglectful parent. To be fair, in her house there's enough stuff around that the kids can't touch that you literally have to watch them 24/7. So, and like legit, like it would fall on them. I mean, a lot of the stuff, it would just be annoying to pick it up. It's piles of papers. She has bad filing systems. Yeah, it's not like, it's not like anything would happen into them. But she just gets angry whenever they touch her stuff, which is all over the living room and the kitchen, the only two areas the kids are allowed in, because the basement wasn't finished being renovated. So aside from sleeping, they weren't allowed to be down there, and they couldn't go down the hall because that was her storage room, her bedroom, and Brandon's bedroom, and they weren't allowed in any of those rooms. So they were allowed in like, what, a 200-square-foot area? It was the same for 5 kids. 5 adults and 2 large dogs. Yeah, because like we weren't allowed anywhere either. Yeah, so it's just— that was rough. It was like living in an apartment. Um, okay, I don't want to ask too many more questions, but I wanted to maybe do one more. Uh, who makes most of the design decisions? Me. I feel like we talk about them pretty often, but it usually goes like, I think this would be a cool idea, and then I just kind go, yeah. And then that's about it. Every so often there's something I don't like. Uh-huh. Uh, favorite transformations? I mean, the bathroom for sure, but I feel like the one that was the quickest wow was refinishing the bathtub. Oh yeah, yeah. And that one's hard because I look at it now and I'm like, it couldn't have been that dirty. And then like when you look back, then you walk outside— God, well, that too, but you just literally open the back door and the other tub is sitting on the deck. That one looks better though. It looks better than the previous one. Yeah, mm-hmm. Okay. I also like the flooring. When we put the flooring in, like, it kind of made everything look like an actual room. That's true. I do kind of regret that we didn't do this flooring in the bathroom though. Yeah, I think it would have looked really good with the green. Yeah, you're probably not wrong, but I have been thinking about it and I'm thinking maybe I paint the vanity this color. This color? Like the trim color in the bathroom because we have the, the dark brown from the trim. I don't know, because I don't like the look of the white wood in there anyway. Um, okay, I think there's maybe two others that we need to talk about. First one is, what's it like renovating with children, specifically our number of children? Um, and what lessons have we learned during the renovation process? Yeah, I mean, they just want to do everything anything. Like, they just want to do it with you, which is— it's fine sometimes, but like, not— the problem is we have too, too many. So like, if it was— and they're too young— if it was just Tully and Raya, I'd be like, okay, come with me. But then it's like Rhett and Luca are like, what are you doing now? I want to do it. And, and they can't do it. But there are some things— Luca's funny. He literally just follows you around like a shadow. But then Grayson will go upstairs to do stuff and he gets so mad that he can't go up with you. And then if you happen to forget the baby gate, he's up there like white on rice and he just stands there staring at you. Yeah, but like, yeah, the problem is they don't make like protective— I mean, they do, but not like everything you would need, like protective equipment for kids. So it's like, if I'm doing anything that's gonna put sawdust in the air, I'm sanding something, it's like they just can't be there. So, and that's like most projects. Um, yes, so I mean, that's definitely a challenge because also as parents, I think part of our parenting style— and again, I posted a reel about this— is that we want to include them in these things, but it's difficult and they don't understand why they can't help with things. So I mean, certain projects are better than others. We let them help with primer, we let them help with first coats of paint. The girls helped you lay flooring the one day. Yeah, it's especially hard though when it's like we're trying to rush, like we, we needed these rooms done and they're like asking to do them all, but then— and they slow you down. Yeah, which I think is the part of the parenting process that most people struggle with because again, this is why we moved, but we live in such a rush, rush, rush, busy, busy, busy society that it feels wrong to slow down to do things at the pace of your kids, even though that's what parenting should be. And it's like, I'd be fine— like, I'm fine with doing that. It's just when, when we don't have— like, we didn't have a functional kitchen, we didn't have functional bathroom, we didn't have anywhere to sleep that was like— what, the kids had to put their shoes on to go to their beds for the longest time. I was also worried because Brett is not very awake when he gets up in the middle of the night to go pee, that he was gonna fall down the stairs. That was another reason we moved the beds downstairs. Uh-huh. Which is nice now because he just gets up and goes potty. And then sits in the back. Yeah, he sits in front of the heater. He can't put his sleeper back on by himself. He likes sitting in front of the heaters too. He's like, what, a cat? He's a cat. Yeah. Heat. Warm. So yeah. So we do our best, but that is definitely a struggle. And hopefully by the time we get around to doing some of the second floor, it'll be better. I say that, but I also know that we are still in a hurry to get it done because we're kind of toast financially until we get the refinancing done. And with you going back to work so soon, we are on a deadline. So they may not be helping with upstairs very much. Yeah, it kind of sucks because I wanted to have them help. They can help us with some of the outside projects because trust me, there's no shortage of those. We have 3 weeks of just pulling nails out of the wood in the backyard. Yeah. Yay! I'm so excited to have to do that before they can go play outside. Also, we have no fencing, which is another thing that we need to deal with. Okay, so that was what renovating with 4 to 5 children is like. Honestly, Orion's the easiest of the bunch because he's only up for a couple hours at a time. He'll bounce in his jumper and then he goes back to sleep. Sleep, and it's the other ones that are challenging. Then Talia. Talia is the next easiest because she actually listens, and everybody else is kind of an absolute nightmare to deal with. Rhea could listen. She could. Yeah, she's old enough, she has the cognitive ability. She just has the personality where she's like, meh. Okay, uh, what have we learned about each other and/or the renovation during the renovation process? /what something HGTV doesn't show you. Literally all of it. So much stuff. It's actually really funny because a couple people have commented that we're their favorite HGTV show. Part of me wants to reach out and be like, sponsor us! I feel like, I feel like a lot of like HGTV stuff, obviously everybody knows what they're doing when they do the work, so it's like that they don't show you it going wrong because 9— you know what, what was I watching? There's something I was watching they like do the work and I know they ran into some sort of problem. Like you'll see sometimes it's like, we're renovating this 100-year-old house and then we put the drywall on and then we did this. It's like, well, you didn't like level any walls. You didn't, you didn't like run into a spot where like something was just loose or like, it's kind of weird how often, or like you can even see it sometimes when they're done and it's like, oh, you just painted the floor in the basement without doing like anything else because probably cost saving and like whatever, they just didn't care. And like, I get that sometimes they're renovating on the homeowner's budget. Yeah. But still, I feel like they gloss over a lot of that. Yeah. Or yeah, just a lot of stuff you can see where it's like, well, I know that didn't work. That is not a permanent solution. I know that's not going to be functional forever. Yeah, that's true. I feel like for me, the biggest thing is when I used to watch those shows, I always just to go, but how much of this is staged? Because like consistently, like you can pinpoint the time in the episode to be like, and this unexpected thing happened. I was like, oh gee, like writing a series. What was the series we watched where they would build the, the, um, the sex rooms? Oh, sometimes that was on Netflix. Yeah, shoot, what was that called? I think it's actually called Building a Sex Room. Maybe we'll have to— I'm gonna look it up. Well, yeah, I'll put it in the show notes for sure. But like, they would do— don't judge us for watching it, it's actually a good job. But like, they would do some of the work and I'd be like looking at it, like, even like, I don't know, you know, like I'm not a professional or anything, but I could like see some of the stuff they did where I was like, oh, you can't— it's called How to Build a Sex Room. Yeah, I like— I'm like, you can't just do that and have it be fine, or what the first episode, they wanted to build it in their like basement furnace room area, and then the furnace was just not, not in the spot it was after. And I'm like, so did they just move the entire furnace? I'm like, that's not something you should just do. Like, sure, they might have done it correctly, but the, the amount of time and effort and cost and everything for that, and they just leave it out. You know what, to be fair though, I do have to give that show props for more than one reason, but also because it's ridiculously addictive to watch because they have a very very special— like, I'm gonna call it screenwriters who have done this intentionally— where, you know how usually you watch a renovation show and from start to finish of the episode it's that one couple, it's that one renovation, you wrap it all up? No, no, no, no, not with this one. You see like 3/4 of it and then you get introduced to the next couple, and then in the next episode they'll wrap up the final quarter of the first one and then show you a little bit of the next one, and then show you— so you have to keep watching. The first one, did they do start to finish and then introduce one? So then it's always like you're staggered, so you have to watch another episode. Episode to see the end of this. Yeah, we ended up binging the whole series basically at the same time. You do get to see a finished product in every episode. You do, but then you, you want to— you want to watch to see the finish of the next one that they've introduced in that episode, which is— it was, it was good. It was— you should watch it. It was good. Um, yeah, there's so much that they don't cover on television, and I think a lot of it is A, because it would bore the audience to death and no one would watch them, but B, they just physically don't give themselves enough time in a 45-minute TV episode to cover the amount of stuff that actually happens. It's weird because you would think they would do the classic TV thing of like the, the like sound effect in the background being like, oh God, that, that thing is like— you would think they would make up more problems than they actually have, but they romanticize it. They make it look so easy, anyone can do it. Like, bitch, please. Anyway, uh, okay, I feel like that covers— I feel like that covers a lot of things. There's still so many things I feel like we probably could go over, um, but I think this episode is going to be long enough as it is, so we'll wrap it up for today. But if you listen to this and you're like, oh my God, you didn't talk about this and I really wanted to know blah blah blah, please send me a message on Instagram. We will 100% do an extra episode talking about all this other stuff. But there's just like so much of this and we're so in the weeds, I forget, legitimately just forget. Like Grayson and I had a conversation the other day. We were looking up, we were looking through the photos of when we purchased the house aside from making the reel because we're like, what trim was on the window in the dining room? We want to go find it because we tried to salvage stuff and put it back up so that we can finish the dining room. And we're looking through photos and we're like, shit, I forgot this. And man, I didn't I didn't realize it looked like that. And it's like, because you see it every day, you don't have that wow before and after. I mean, I think it looks really good now. I think it does. I'm not disputing that, but it's also been like 10 months and I've just— my memory is not— I just feel like especially when we like put— when you— I feel like when you put paint on the walls and then put the floor in is when you're like, oh, it's basically a different house now. Mm-hmm. Which is probably why so many like flippers just paint the walls and put new flooring down. Yep. Install some new kitchen cabinets, you know, basic stuff. But we are wrapping up. So if you have any other questions and want us to talk about something else, let me know. We will do another episode. I may not have Gray join me for that one where we're talking about budgeting, cuz that's kind of in and along the lines of renos. They overlap a little bit because our personal budget has gotta support these renos. So that one's coming up soon and I'll probably have some business content coming in and around here as well. So stay tuned for that. If that's why you actually listen to this podcast. But thank you guys so much, and thanks, Gray, for joining me today. We will see you next week on Go Get Great. Bye! Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of Go Get Great. I hope that you found some inspiration and practical tips to help you take your life and business from good to great. If you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to leave a review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. We've got so much more valuable content and amazing guests coming your way. And don't forget to follow us on social media for marketing tips and a whole lot of relatable mom content. You can find us on Instagram @BrittanyMillerSocials and @BrittanyNMiller_. And if you're ready to elevate your marketing game, I would love to work with you. Whether you need help with social media strategy, email marketing, or growing a podcast of your own, Brittany Miller Socials is here to support you every step of the way. 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