Wursthorn Home Renovation

This summer we shared our home renovation on our instagram. We wanted to make a final post to share all the details and the finished product.

Enjoy below:

Kitchen

Our home renovation started in the kitchen. We paid for new granite countertops to be installed and got to work on repainting the cabinets. We were on a strict timeline for it. Wesley had taken the following week off for us to put new floors in. This meant we had to finish the kitchen this week.

I, Gracie, did a huge portion of this project after the kids went to bed. I would work from 7pm until midnight. Wesley was still working, so he made sure I had what I needed, helped when he could, and then headed to bed.

I didn’t mind as it was a rare opportunity to do the bulk of a project in the home, plus I love painting. However sanding is not as much fun.

I sanded down each cabinet, and spent my nights painting them. I was worried about the color we chose coming out badly (you never know with green) but we LOVED it. Wesley said he was never concerned about it.

Once everything was painted, Wesley and I worked together to put all the new hardware on it.

We deep cleaned out all the sawdust, wiped the new counters, and admired all our hard work. Somehow, we really did finish during the week! I think it was pure will power along with some late nights.

Entry Way & Craft Room

We started off tiling in the craft room. We knew that we would need a place to put all our furniture from the living and dining area. When we finished the craft room, that would be where it would all go.

When we began, Wesley took the whole week off of work. We were certain we could complete all 650 square feet of tiling in one week. We would do the craft room and entry way in one day, the bathrooms and hallway in another, and then end it all with the living room and dining area. We would use our last couple days to put any baseboards back in.

Looking back, we understand how absolutely wild this thinking was. We started off in our blissful ignorance and happily pulled up our old floors.

When we moved into the house we were told they were brand new floors—which they were. The problem was they were the cheapest vinyl flooring that could be found and were installed improperly. During our first full winter in the home in 2022, the floors began to pop up and started cracking.

It wasn’t long before it became enough of an issue that we had to start laying a couple extra rugs around the home. Time went on and the rugs began to expand. We decided that we would save up and replace the floors in 2024.

Of course, this did not happen. Between miscarriage, Aurelia’s loss, and Behr’s pregnancy, there was no time or money in 2024 for a home renovation. When 2025 rolled around, our lives were so booked with milestones, counseling, and recovery there wasn’t much time then either. So, the rugs kept layering. Eventually, we had almost every portion of our vinyl floors covered in a rug and still there were little spots of concrete showing up in the tiny spaces and corners that we couldn’t cover.

We were surviving those floors.

You can imagine the jubilation as we started peeling floors up that first night. We had put the kids to bed, put gloves on, and happily stacked up the flooring and threw it out into our dump trailer in the driveway. It was a glorious day to begin.

Isaiah, hearing the commotion, came out of his bed and walked around the corner to the craft room as we worked.

“Why are y’all doing the best part without me?” He said.

It was true. This was truly the best and easiest part. We sent him off to bed with the promise that he would get to participate in “the best part” during the days to come.

Once the floors were out, we carefully pulled up the tiling in the entry way, very careful not to crack the connecting tile in our kitchen. Thankfully, we were able to do this without issue.

The problems arrived quickly after this. Our AC had been leaking and repaired recently, but it seemed this had not been its first time. The water had not dried properly over the years and mold was on some of the walls. We began pulling the baseboards out, removing portions of the wall, and prepared to do a bit of mold remediation. Thankfully, the mold was not devastating, but, of course, any mold, no matter how little, is never great.

That night, we prepped the space, put a new ceiling fan in the room, and went to bed a bit disappointed by the mold but overall excited to have started our long anticipated project.

The next day we worked all day. We got the craft room practically complete until we got to the door. The door in this room has an extremely awkward shape and angle. We were stuck for hours. We worked until maybe 1am in the morning before we finally had to call it quits. We did not finish the entry way like we had planned and went to bed.

The next morning it took another four hours of work, but we got that section of the home done. We rehashed the plan with the setback. A few days later, my brother arrived to help us move all our furniture into the craft room, but before that, we continued on to our bathroom.

Bathrooms & Hallway

We thought the easiest part of this home renovation would be the little spaces. Boy, were we wrong! It turns out that these are the HARDEST spaces to complete. We learned this early on with the awkward angle of the door in our craft room. There was so much fabrication to be done. Little corners, toilets to navigate around, and doorways with weird angles were all obstacles Wesley had to fabricate special pieces for.

We also learned just how quickly little problems could turn into bigger problems that would derail our progress by multiple days. We started pulling out the vinyl in our bathroom and discovered that underneath the flooring was…more flooring. The original flooring in our 30 year old home was a laminate wallpaper-like flooring. The vinyl was easy to pull up. Tearing out the 30 year old laminate sheets… not easy. The one hour project of pulling vinyl quickly turned into hours. I found a small scraper in my craft supplies that worked well for scraping glue. Wesley found a razor blade for the tough corners and together we worked into the night.

At some point in all of this I tweaked a muscle of some sort that lead to some significant pain, my forearms and the top of my legs were burning from chaffing, and I was having severe hip pain from working while 20+ weeks pregnant. I could barely move. I ended the day by literally crawling into the bathtub to try and soothe my skin and muscles.

The next day hit Wesley hard.

In the process of prepping the bathroom and fabricating the pieces we needed, the toilet reservoir tank cracked and by the end of the day, we accidentally put a hole in the bathtub trying to move the damaged toilet.

What a mess! We spent most of our day fixing problems we created. We were more behind than ever! We recalibrated our plans AGAIN, and started fresh the next morning. Over the next 24 hours or so, we got all the tile laid. At this point we had a good groove going. I would lay the mortar on the concrete and on the tiles, hand them to Wesley, and he would set and space each tile.

The guest bathroom and hallway went similarly. We removed all the vinyl again, prepped the area, laid the tile. It was extremely time consuming in the small areas of the home, but it was such a rewarding moment to finish each section.

At this point, I began to grout the sections while Wesley worked on fabrication. It was starting to come together—even if we were way behind. It became clear that the tile would not be done by the end of the week. It was at this point we found ourselves with the most tension in the house. Everyone was tired of construction, frozen meals, and late nights. We just wanted to be done. However, to finish, we had to just keep moving through.

Living Room and Dining Room (Main Living Space)

Once the bathrooms and hallway was in motion, somewhere in the middle of it all, we started the largest chunk of space. Our living and dining area. This was the easiest and, often, fastest moving sections—even if it took us almost a week. We had to leave a walking space to the bathroom and the boys bedroom while the mortar dried. The boys turned this into a race track. They had a blast while we continued to work across the room.

This section was the fastest because we could get a lot done at one time. It was also the slowest because Wesley had to return back to work. We could only work for a few hours each evening. We could no longer sustain the 1am nights. We were exhausted, our bodies hurt, and lour responsibilities were catching back up to us. We had our summer events, vacations, and other little things that needed to be accomplished—all while living in a nonfunctional home. We steadily worked despite it. I would clean floors during nap time and prep it for grout. Before bed Wesley would make the grout, I would spread it, and in the morning, I would mop the floors until the grout was nicely cleaned up.

I would also check our freshly mortared sections for any pieces that didn’t adhere well. If loose, I would hammer the piece out and scrape up the glue. When Wesley got home from work, we would mix up more mortar and get to work again.

The struggle came as we reached the last two rows of tile work. The room wasn’t perfectly square, and we were tile rookies. The rows had somehow become too tight and we couldn’t fit the last pieces in. We were forced to remove tile, replace, cut down, and puzzle those last pieces in. This took us several evenings of work. It was a sweet and glorious moment as the last piece fell into place.

We finished up the grouting the next day and celebrated with a nice hot meal out.

Walls & Baseboards

We had finished the tiling, but we were not even close to finishing. We had removed walls, dealt with mold, and removed almost every baseboard in our home. We painstakingly began the project of reinstalling walls, replacing baseboards, and painting. This took us from June through August. Wesley’s free evenings were mostly spent with baseboards and mine were spent spackling and painting those baseboards. I decided we needed to repaint all of our doors as well. I spent many afternoons painting through Behr’s nap time. Although it was a pain, it was well worth it.

Once we got baseboards into our living room, my brother came back and helped move all the furniture out of our craft room. We reset the living room and dining area. We added a keyboard for the family to learn on, a new rug, and bought a new couch (our first couch to ever buy!), and even rearranged a little bit. Things were coming together!

Slowly the guest bathroom, hallway, and craft room got baseboards. We repaired the walls in the craft room, but before replacing our wall we had some fun adding our names and a few verses to the frame of our home.

Wesley chose Ezekiel 22:30. This verse meant a lot to him because he wants to be the type of man that stands in the gap for the Lord and for his family.

Ezekiel 22:30, “…and I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land that I should not destroy it…”

I chose 1 Corinthians 15:58. This verse summed up the year for me and had been one I’d clung closely too in many areas of life, especially in the work of our home renovation and pregnancy.

1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

Lastly, we added Proverbs 24:3. This verse was a sweet one to place and a reminder of what makes a home and what we want our home to be—a small reflection of Heaven and hope for us and our children.

Proverbs 24:3, “By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established and by knowledge all the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.”

Lastly, we officially finished our home renovation in our master bathroom. We installed the last baseboards, painted the last walls, and rehung the hooks and curtains that had once hung there.

What a great feeling! Our “one week” home renovation was finished—it only took about two months longer than we intended.

Other Notes and Thoughts

Renovating a house with a five year old and a one year while 20 weeks pregnant was an insane idea. Still, it was a necessary task in a home where the floors were literally crumbling beneath our feet. We laughed, we cried, we fought, we worked together better than we ever have before. By the end of it all Wesley and I found ourselves better friends than when we began. There is nothing like a home renovation to bring you together or tear you apart!

Isaiah had a blast. We let him watch more television than he has ever been allowed to watch in his life. Behr on the other hand felt this was a horrible project. His usual reign of terror in the home was not allowed anymore! We had to confine the poor fella to pack n plays, play pens, and sometimes his bedroom to keep him out of the mortar. One year olds and home renovations are not exactly compatible roommates. Thankfully, we were able to keep him appeased for the most part. Still, no one was more pleased than Behr to have our home back in its usual functioning space.

We learned a lot in the process. By the end, I was well into my third trimester. My hips survived, my tweaked muscles healed, and for the first time in years I felt like our home feels like home. What a gift it will be to bring this baby into the world, and introduce him or her to the place we love most.

Here’s to the adventure of making home a little piece of Heaven you love to be in.

If you want to read my thoughts on grief and home renovations feel free to read this post I wrote as we finished the process of tiling.