The last time we talked about our remodel was way back in September, after the new floor had gone down. I’m happy to say that we’re done – at last!

I need to do a true “before and after” shot but this will have to do for now.

All of our appliances were in and functional by late September so Marla was able to get back to cooking indoors, which was a blessing after two full months of eating off of paper plates and cooking on the grill three meals a day. (We were doing scrambled eggs and pancakes on the griddle by the end.)

Appliances were tough for us. We made many, many trips to the show rooms at Pacific Sales trying to envision ourselves using the various makes and models for years to come. (The San Juan Capistrano showroom is by far the best of all those in southern Orange County, FWIW.) In the end we decided Jenn-Air was for us and got a convection/microwave oven, range, dishwasher and refrigerator all in the same line to keep things matching.

So far everything has been a delight, though we’ve yet to try out the convection bit on the microwave and haven’t really used the convection setting on the oven, either. The dishwasher is totally silent, thankfully, so visitors on the pull-out sofa downstairs will be able to sleep peacefully at night.

By the first of November we were largely done with major (re)construction and had only “little” things to do like painting, trim work and getting new furniture. You know, all the things that we could do ourselves during our copious spare time…

Just before we left for Thanksgiving we got most of our new furniture in and needed just a few more things to complete the room. The first week of December our new mirror and lighting arrived.

A year after we first seriously sat down to start researching what we wanted, nine months after visiting and interviewing our first contractors, five months after tearing down walls, two months after getting a new floor and a month after putting the final coats of paint on we can say, at last, that we’re done…

And I’m already wondering what’s next!