We purchased a small corner home in the Madison, Wisconsin neighborhood of Bay Creek in 2018. The project would ultimately take two full winters for my husband Michael to complete, with the help of our fathers. We moved into the home in March of 2020, just two days before the first coronavirus lockdown began.
When we purchased the home, we had plans to do some remodeling and updating before moving in. Unfortunately, as soon as we began the project we discovered that the house had severe structural issues that could not be overlooked. The whole house needed to be torn down to the studs and rebuilt. Both the timeline and the expense of the project doubled.
This out-of-focus photo best captured the emotion our family was experiencing: distress and sadness.
Michael’s father, Doug, was by his side for most of the rebuilding project. They worked in the wintertime when Michael could step away from his work at our solar-panel installation business, Drews Solar. That first winter was particularly brutal: all the insulation was removed from the house, the back of the house was torn off, and a frigid polar vortex kept the temparatures below 0*F some days.
Michael did almost all the work on his own, but we hired a crew to come in to drywall the house once all the framing, electrical, and plumbing was complete. We visited one evening to see the progress that had occurred during the day. With drywall up, it was finally beginning to look like a home.
Our daughter, Vesper, grew up visiting the house over her first two and a half years. One of her favorite days was when Michael rented a small excavator to grade our yard.
A few weeks after we moved in, I put together a video tour for our family and close friends. In the first few months of the pandemic, no one was able to visit our new home. Many of our good friends have still not been able to visit.
