Pain in the attic. And that’s exactly what this project was, a pain in the attic or should I say ass. Vince and I both had experience with home renovation prior to us dating. So once we got engaged and we moved in together, Vince decided he needed a “man attic.” Given our combined background, finishing an attic seemed simple enough — especially since we decided to hire someone to do all the drywall. So basically all we had to do was just finish the room from that point forward. Easy peazy.

Not quite.

Once we decided to move forward with the attic, we realized we had to get the materials up there. Our house is old, with narrow halls and staircases. There was no way drywall was going to make the turns— we sorta missed that small detail. So we ended up bringing the bulk of the stuff up over our side porch on the second floor. Vince had to carry drywall up a ladder, over a porch and then into the attic. Not ideal (or fun), but it worked. We started this project in July, literally the hottest time of the year to be working in an unfinished attic. I worried every day that my poor contractor was going to keel over from the heat. But three weeks later he was finished and it looked amazing.

Now it was up to us to finish the walls, floors, windows, cubby spaces, trim and molding to make this attic a room — not to mention bringing the sectional and big screen tv up (we had to make a couple compromises, but Vince made sure the TV was not one of them).

With all of the small details, and only working on weekends this project felt like it was never ending. We ended wrapping everything up right before Thanksgiving —  so about three months later. We can renovate an entire house in that timeframe.

The worst part was actually trying to furnish and decorate. You would think this would be fairly simple, but given the angles and heights of the walls and the size of the furniture we were trying to fit in, it was a puzzle. Vince and I must have rearranged that sectional a dozen times. And the tv, that’s a whole other story. Its huge, but we made it work and it turned out to be a really nice space. So needless to say, this project was a pain in the attic. Which is what made us choose this as the title of our renovation blog. The attic was our first project together and where it all started.