Office Reno - Project Status Updates
Renovation Progress Report
It’s hard to believe, but the last post I wrote about our new office building was four months ago! In that post, I shared the design for the lobby and reception area. In real life, we were deep in the demo phase. We’ve made a lot of progress since then, so in this post, I’m sharing what the building looks like today!
I know it doesn’t look like much yet, but this is a huge improvement from where we started!
How we got here…
When I first shared that we bought a new office building, I made lots of naive statements such as, “demo will be minimal in <insert random room here>” and “we’re going to focus on <insert different room here> for now so we can get back in the building quickly.”
Ha! What a fool I was!
Over the past four months, we actually ended up taking everything down to the studs. And I mean EVERYTHING.
It seemed like everywhere we turned, we found more and more rotted wood or problematic areas that needed to be addressed. We were scared of what we weren’t seeing, so we took it all out.
At the time, it honestly kind of sucked. Every single wall had at least two layers of drywall and one layer of sheetrock. Hours upon hours of hauling buckets, shovel-fulls, and trash cans filled with debris in the freezing cold still haunt my dreams.
But honestly, it was the right call. See Exhibit A, where we discovered there was no flooring left underneath the toilet:
Exhibit A
And while it pains me to lose any bit of character from the building (here’s looking at you, arched doorways), demoing everything allowed us to shift and remove some (non-structural) walls to really make this building our own.
Finally, after months of demo and EIGHT 30-foot dumpsters of rubble, I’m thrilled to say we’re deep in the process of installing drywall. And better yet - we’re not doing it ourselves! Woop!
How it looks today
I know a building full of unfinished drywall doesn’t look very exciting. But for all of us who have been working on this project, it feels like a huge accomplishment.
As soon as the first sheets of drywall started going up, I think it really hit everyone just how far we’ve come. Obviously, there’s still work to do before we can officially call it “done”, but it feels so much closer to the finish line now!
What’s Next
Once the drywall is complete, we’ll jump back in to prime, paint, install trim, and do all those finishing touches. Somewhere in there, we’ll also have the floors refinished.
We assumed they were too far gone, but our flooring guy thinks they’re salvageable. We forgot what they looked like without all the crud on them and even mopped a spot so we could daydream about what they’ll look like in the end.
In the meantime, I’ve been staying busy with our other renovation project (Charlie Foursquare) and working on the designs for the rest of the rooms here. I can’t wait to share them with you. Stay tuned for those posts coming up soon!
Catch up with these posts!
We Bought a Hair Salon! (Office Building Reno Intro)