Home Renovations in the Pandemic

By Rene Rodriguez
Posted Wednesday, Jul 29, 2020

I started a “small” decorating and renovation product at my home back in October 2019. The initial plan was to redo my dining room, and I hired an interior designer. What was originally just one room, morphed into the entire first floor, including the kitchen, living room, den, and front hall. What I found is that when you do one room over, it makes all the adjacent spaces look old and tired.

During

When I started this project, coronavirus wasn’t even a figment of my imagination, it was all but inconceivable. Fast forward to February 2020, and the pandemic began to wreak havoc on the construction process. My kitchen cabinet doors and drawers had all been removed to be sprayed (painted) off site when the painting contractor informed me that his painters no longer felt comfortable working at my house with the virus spreading. So I lived with my new “open concept” kitchen for several months, until they felt comfortable enough to return, wearing masks and socially distanced.

Almost all of the vendors we’d placed orders from were suddenly shut down, from fabric mills to cabinet makers and beyond. I started to wonder if my house would ever be put back together again. Finally, beginning in June when the statistics started looking better in Massachusetts, the vendors and contractors started opening up and coming back to work.

After

Everything takes a little longer during the pandemic. The silver lining is that I’ve been working from home mostly, and therefore able to accommodate all of the various tradespeople working at my house. It’s just one trade at a time, painters, carpenters, electrician, and designers, all wearing masks and practicing Covid guidelines to stay safe and healthy. My house is finally starting to come together, and I’m very grateful for my home, now more than ever.