I have had so much fun scouring my files for photos of our house before, during, and after our exterior house renovation! November 1st marked the one year anniversary of breaking ground and beginning the process of updating the exterior of our home. Let’s dive in to this exterior house renovation update – 1 year later!
To be clear, this is just an update showing the exterior transformation. We’ve made a ton of progress inside, but we’re still chipping away at all of those projects, so those updates will come later.
I feel so fortunate that we made the decision to get this started when we did. I can’t imagine starting this process during a global pandemic. It’s been a labor of love, patience, and determination, but we so happy with the results, and can’t wait to tackle more projects this fall/winter!
Exterior House Renovation – Before
Here’s what we started with. I always thought of our home like a cute little gingerbread house. Especially when we put up multi-colored Christmas Lights! It was cute as it was, but we needed more space, and that odd little corner/addition (on the left in the photo) always bothered us.
We were about to fix all of that, create the space we needed, and give the whole exterior a modern facelift.
Here’s what was accomplished before digging out the basement:
- Remove brick veneer from the south side of the house so beams can be placed
- Trenched in line for drainage from the new basement to ditch
- Moved gas line to make way for digging/addition
- Plugged old well where new addition would be
Once all of those tasks were completed, we were ready to dig out for the new basement addition. It was quite the sight watching the dirt being removed bucket load by bucket load. It was really strange when you could see through under the entire hole to the other side, with a portion of our house hanging up in the air! And yes, we lived there through this. haha!
I got in on the skid steer action!
Fox Blocks Foundation Installation
Once we were completely dug out and all supporting beams were placed, we were ready to pour footings and begin reconstruction! We used Fox Blocks as our foundation for the new basement addition. We really enjoyed working with this product, and are thoroughly impressed with everything about this insulated concrete foundation.
The first layer of Fox Blocks is the most tedious to get set correctly. 
The process of building with Fox Blocks is much like connecting legos. 
Since we were building up, we needed to get ALL remaining blocks on the inside of the space. 
So many Fox Blocks! 
It was fun to help in getting our walls built up!
Building the Addition Above Basement
We were so thankful the weather worked in our favor throughout this entire process! We were pouring our walls on December 21, 2019. It was wild! After we got everything poured, we needed to get the beams pulled out. We waterproofed the exterior, and then we were able to get the addition built. This addition is now our third bedroom – a full master suite.
Building floor joists and walls! 
Walls are raised! 
Roof on and windows in!
The House Exterior Today After Renovation
We are so happy with how everything is coming together. I’m looking forward to the grass to grow in next spring and get some landscaping created around the perimeter of the house. I am also in love with the black (exterior) windows! We’ll add shutters and lights to the front. And I’d like to wrap the porch columns at some point and redesign the porch layout a bit.
Before and Afters
Before 
After
As I look back on this past year, I can’t believe how much has been accomplished in such a short amount of time. And yet, I feel like we should have so much more done by now! haha We got a bit lazy with the nice weather over the summer months, so we’re gradually working our way back into things this fall. I am so ready to get more spaces finished completely!
Our Exterior House Renovation Update
What do you think? What’s your favorite part of this transformation? Please let me know in the comments below! If you’re interested in reading more about our house renovation, you can find those posts here:
Thanks for commemorating our one-year ground-breaking anniversary by reading this post. I’m so glad you’re here. If you have any questions regarding the renovation process, drop them in a comment for me below!
To the Chaos!
-MG
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