Being 1/10th Correct

Welcome to Sunnyside Up-stairs, an online journal that documents how we fill a gutted 600 square foot apartment with a $30,000 budget.

This $30,000 budget was not always so.

In April of 2012, the tenants in the separate upstairs apartment of my family's home had moved, leaving the space open for my young 3-person family. As excited as my husband and I were to have a space to call our own: a kitchen, a bathroom, two bedrooms, and a living room just for the three of us, with my daughter's grandma and two uncles living downstairs, I was thrilled to embark on a budget-friendly renovation journey. I envisioned painting a few cabinets, repairing and painting all walls, and laying down new flooring throughout as the only big projects we would tackle.

I was 1/10th correct, which means I was 9/10ths wrong.

It took just a few days of careful looking to find mold, mildew, mouse holes, and electrical issues that we had to fix before we could move in. Suddenly our $3,000 move-in budget ballooned to $30,000 when we calculated the bathroom and kitchen remodels and the labor to complete them.  If we were going to gut our apartment, we wanted to handpick what products would furnish our home from the start.

This is a chronicle of the journey thus far: the mishaps, the budgets and work lists, and the hopeful successes of making a home upstairs from my childhood home.  Beyond that, this a journal of God's goodness to us; of what can be possible with a limited income, limited tools, and definitely limited financial resources.  I pray that this documentation of our journey will be a help and encouragement to someone somewhere!