It’s been over a year…
September 3, 2026
We’ve been living in Stowe, Vermont for a little over a year now, and I’m finally getting around to posting my first blog on our website. Procrastination much? At least I’m staying true to who I really am. I’ve been a professional procrastinator since grade school. Some things just don’t change.
We are hiking every mountain close by our home. This is Bolton Valley, at the top of the fire tower.
I’m honestly so glad I’ve waited to post because I can now fully appreciate all the changes and adjustments we’ve had to make living in here this past year. Taking a full step back, living in Stowe has been a dream. It sounds so sappy, but it honestly turned out to be exactly what our family needed. The air is cleaner, the people are fewer, and we feel calmer. It’s a tight knit community around here (the population of Stowe is around 5,000) which has served well for our sons. Their class sizes are small (Cam’s is around 50 and Evan’s is around 70), so all of the kids are like siblings in their respective grades. It’s insanely easy to do everything outdoors around here. Skiing is the favorite in this household, with mountain biking coming right up behind. I plan on doing cross country skiing this year. :)
Cameron (11) & Evan (14) first day of school 2026
Our home in Stowe has become a labor of love and patience. We don’t have the funds to completely overhaul our house all in one go, so we have been tackling projects bit by bit here. This is a big change for me and Steve— every home we have bought together before this one has been completely renovated before we moved into it (mainly because all of the other ones have been uninhabitable upon our purchasing them!). I have to say that I love doing our remodeling slowly ONLY BECAUSE it really makes me consider how we will use the new upgrades and how the change would work best for our family. I’m NOT a patient person. I want all of the good stuff asap. But, I am appreciating our upgrades even more now because I’ve had to live with the “old.”
Our fully renovated living room: new fire place, floors, couch, & ottoman. I had our rocking chair + ottoman reupholstered. Steve replaced the glass in the doors & windows rather than us buying brand new— saved a ton a money that way!
Our home renovations officially started in the fall of 2025. We renovated our living room and dining room first. After that came the kitchen. Early spring of 2026 forced us to do an interior french drain system in the basement from all of the flooding (which was an issue we knew about when we bought this house). As the weather finally got warm, Steve and the boys took down the existing garage in the hopes of building a new one this coming fall 2026.
Our dining room makeover consisted of new floors and opening the doorway to where the computer is sitting.
Taking down the old garage made the exterior of our house look even more decrepit than it had initially. Our original plan was to sand blast all of the old paint off the exterior cedar and restore it to its former glory, but Steve quickly discovered that a) the home’s addition was built with pine (which would not match the original siding) and b) the cedar siding was in delicate shape and could not withstand an intense sand blasting. So, repainting our house became the new plan! Steve did all of the exterior repairs and scraping and powerwashing and painting himself. He’s a regular renaissance man.
Our kitchen was a complete overhaul. The only original thing we left were the cedar walls & skylight!
Once the house was repainted, our original deck stuck out like a sore, old thumb. It had to go. You know how it is… you start renovating one spot, and it quickly spirals to fixing 5 more spots. Our sons helped Steve with taking down and building the new deck. It was a great learning experience for them, and they loved getting paid to do demanding physical labor.
Freshly painted with Benjamin Moore’s Coffeehouse Chocolate & Night Horizon. Our new deck is still under construction.
The estimated cost of repainting our house (this is including the sand and machine for our attempt at removing the existing stain, primer, new paint, caulking, etc.) is $4,500. Our new deck is around $12,000 for all of the materials (cement, wood, cedar, etc.). Imagine what the cost would be if we had to pay someone else to do this for us!
Our front door is painted with Benjamin Moore’s Pumpkin Cream. All of the cedar is stacked and waiting for Steve to install as our outdoor bench.
As for the new garage, we have to hit pause. :( The economy is slumping, and we are feeling the weight of it much like everyone else. We don’t want to overextend ourselves. We’ve actually had to halt a garage build at our last house in Pittsburgh due to Covid, so this feels somewhat familiar. We are hopeful that Steve can start building the garage in spring 2027. In the meantime, we are FINALLY going to tackle are nasty bathrooms this fall and winter! The boys and I are so excited. We’ve been SO SPOILED in our last two homes because the bathrooms were updated and glorious. Here, they are sad and falling apart.
The first bathroom on the renovation chopping block: the main bathroom— trust me, it’s worse in person.