Phase Two: From Surgery to Recovery – Our Home’s New Hip

Phase Two: From Surgery to Recovery – Our Home’s New Hip

Phase One was all about appearances. We wrapped the house in a fresh “new skin”: new siding, new doors, repaired roofs, nine new windows, and even a bit of much-needed TLC for the garage. From the street, the place stopped looking tired and started looking intentional—more like a well-kept home than a project we were always “going to get to someday.”

Phase Two, though, is where things started to feel like major surgery.

Inside, the house has been stripped almost down to the bone. The old framing, dated wood paneling, and every last bit of decorative trim that once tried to hide the years—all of it came down. Walls were opened up, floors were exposed, and rooms that had felt familiar for years suddenly looked like a set from a renovation show halfway through filming. It’s one thing to schedule a “procedure” for your home; it’s another to live inside the patient while the operation is happening.

The first step was leveling the floors, giving the house the structural equivalent of straightening a crooked spine. Then came new drywall and ceilings, hung and mudded with the kind of care you only appreciate when you see the surfaces sanded smooth and ready for paint. Coat by coat, the walls and ceilings turned from construction gray to fresh, clean color. At that point, the house finally started to feel less like a medical chart and more like a recovering patient.

Of course, none of this transformation happens without a lot of hard work and patience. Our crew has been relentless—measuring, cutting, lifting, sanding, and cleaning up more dust than I thought could exist in one building. And right in the middle of it all is my wife, Kellie, quietly doing the kind of detail work that makes everything else shine. Her painting has been careful and steady, the kind of slow, repetitive effort that doesn’t get a dramatic “reveal” moment on TV but completely changes how a room feels in real life.

Living through this has been stressful in all the predictable and unpredictable ways. There’s noise when you want quiet, clutter where you’re used to walking freely, and constant reminders that the house isn’t “done” yet. It’s like trying to heal from a hip replacement while the hospital is still under construction. But as the new flooring goes down—board by board—the house feels like it’s taking its first careful steps on that new hip: a little awkward at times, but clearly stronger and more stable than before.

Next comes Phase Three: true recovery. That’s when we’ll add molding throughout the house, frame the rooms with clean lines, and finally build the custom kitchen island we’ve been imagining since the first day we signed the HELOC papers. If Phase One gave the house new skin and Phase Two gave it a new hip, Phase Three will be the part where this old place learns to dance again.

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