Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles (joyful ukulele music) - I guess we bought a house. This is the reality of setting up a home. (baby cries) (Hannah gasp) (objects clattering) Was this a crazy decision to do while heavily, heavily pregnant? Yeah. (paper rustling) - Whoa. - It is a magical house. (joyful music) - Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm The World's OK-est Mom and we just did the most wild thing we've ever done in our entire lives. We just bought a house sight unseen, clear across the country, in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Now Matt and I have about two weeks to completely renovate and fix this house up before I am physically not able to fly anymore. So we're gonna get started on doing that and see if we can turn this house around 'cause it's a bit of a fixer. So wish me luck. Never done anything like this before. Flying to New York for all of us as a family is very expensive and so we had to make the decision to wait to go until after we had already (faint explosion roaring) found the house. It was still really stressful not being there in person. (paper rustles) I am about to get on an airplane alone, very pregnant with all of my children. I'm very nervous. We took a red eye so I think that helped. The flight was pretty painless and honestly my number one tip for parents out there if you're flying with your kids, bring a bunch of lollipops. Just each one will buy you 30 minutes of quiet. We made it. How was the flight guys? - Good. So we land, Matt picks us up and this is my first time seeing the Catskills, let alone this house. So we're on our way to the house. We're gonna see it for the first time. - [Matt] One, two, (suspenseful fairytale music) Three, turn around. - Whoa! (Hannah laughing) - [Hannah] Oh my gosh. It's just life changing for all of us. I kind of shut down for a second. It was like, "Oh my god, that's our house." Oh my God. - Are you happy to be here? Yeah, oh my gosh, this is awesome. (paper rustles) (upbeat xylophone music) So let's talk about why this house even happened. One, Matt and I are wacky people. This was one of the most wild decisions we've ever made. I think the best way to explain this is that I am a cancer zodiac. I love home. I love having home base. I love just making memories and everything revolving around the home. So it has always been such a dream of mine to have another place that's like our home away from home where we can go as a family, we can enjoy holidays and just make special memories in another location. This house is on nine acres. Half of it is absolute forest, but not only that, it has a half acre large pond. Kids, of course, wanted to just take off running, exploring the grounds. - Blackberries. - [Hannah] Oh my goodness. - Blackberries. - [Hannah] Look at these. - So tiny! - There were blackberry bushes all over the property. My farm girl dreams are coming true. Oh my gosh, these are crazy good. The other thing about seeing a house that you own that you need to fix up is you can't help but just see work to be done everywhere you look. My work is cut out for me so I'm just gonna start unboxing some stuff. I'm exhausted. (paper rustles) (slow funky music) The vibe I chose for this house was modern farmhouse so I wanted everything to look clean. I wanted everything to look simple. So my plan in my head in renovating this house was we would just go room to room. One room at a time and do it, finish each one with a neat little bow and move on to the next. And what I realized very quickly was it wasn't gonna be that way. It was gonna be kind of a mad dash of like this arrived, set this up, this arrived, set this up. And just do what we can when we can until the house is finished. Two fold out couches complete. (paper rustles) (upbeat suspenseful music) - Now the main thing impacted by this timeline was the furnishings. I had to order everything before I even left, before I'd even seen this house. My current huge dilemma, I ordered nightstands for all the bedrooms and one pair just never shipped. When I reached out to customer service and I said, "this never shipped." And they said, "okay, we'll look into it." And then I got an email saying, "we're sending you a replacement." And I look and it's gonna arrive when we're gone. So I had to cancel that replacement. Nothing will ship in time anymore. I'm freaking out. (electronic blipping) - How are you? - [Hannah] Hi, I'm good. I'm in my little lodge. - How has it been restoring that house? - The word I'd use to describe it is frantic. Trying to get everything together and it's been just nonstop work. - I have a surprise for you. I've been following your Instagram stories and I see that you're antiquing. Are you finding awesome things? - I don't know why it is so hard. I cannot find a small nightstand. So it's been a game of Tetris getting all the bedrooms together. And I have one room that has two twin beds that barely fit and I have about this much space for a nightstand and I cannot find anything. - I found something that I think you're going to love. We bought it and I sent it to your home. - I could cry right now. Oh my gosh. This has been- I literally. I was about to go cut down a tree and use the stump. - You're gonna love it. It's like definitely in the style that we were talking about. - Well, I have to pay you back. So can I send you the money with Zelle? Is that cool? Yeah, I use Zelle all the time with my family too. - [Hannah] I've been using it so much since this whole project started. It has been a lifesaver because the money will go to you just in minutes. It's so much easier to pay. Okay, you'll get it in a couple minutes. I appreciate it so much. - No problem at all. Please be safe and we'll see you when you get home. - [Hannah] All right, bye. (paper rustles) (gentle upbeat music) I was going through every single room and thinking about what I needed to do and then it would dawn on me, I don't have a vacuum. I don't have light bulbs. I don't have soap. I don't have cooking utensils. I don't have any of this stuff. I needed to make a trip to town to get some essentials. We found- - Fans. - Fans, we found pendant lights for outside wall sconces. We did not find any chandeliers. We found a doorbell. Oh, we took pictures of the bathroom vanities we want. - Oh, we got more paint. - We got more paint and light bulbs. - Woo hoo! Something that's so special about this area is there are farms everywhere. I am at a farm stand. Ooh, so cute. So right at the end of our street there is a gorgeous farm stand with these giant tomatoes, giant zucchini, corn. And I had to stop and I had to get some fresh produce. Oh my gosh, you guys look at this tomato. And then I got two zucchini and I got four corn and it was $7. And I'm very excited. We're gonna cook this tonight. I just made the most beautiful plate. Farm foods, cheese and then little foods from the co-op; smoked mackerel, stuffed grape leaves, and cornichons. And I'm gonna devour this. Oh, look who's here. What are you gonna have? Grape leaf? How is it? (Matt moans) This is one of my giant tomatoes. So delicious. Look at what Matt's doin'. Is this Henry's work? (baby babbles) You wanna play run in the grass? - Yes. - Okay. This is the reality of setting up a home. - Hello. - Woo! (kids yelling) - Okay this outdoor table, very nice. I'm building beds and I had to order these before we even got here. Each bedroom has these baseboard heaters that are throwing me off; I thought I had space. I toured all the bedrooms. I saw that it was gonna be a really tough squeeze with the beds that I had bought. Each bedroom has baseboard heaters where you cannot put a bed frame. This bedroom originally was gonna have two twins, but I can't do that because there is a baseboard heater. So there's just nowhere for me to put two beds and the twin beds are gonna go in here. It's not perfect. This closet opens up as well. It's gonna be a tight squeeze. This is why I'm really feeling like we're not gonna get anything done cause. - [Child] Hurry, come on. Anytime, I try to sit down and do something, Henry oh my god. Another thing that definitely factored into this furnishing is my pregnancy brain. Sometimes I do this thing where I'll order something and then forget, and then I'll be like, (Hannah gasps) "I never ordered it." And I'll order it again and again and again. So look what happened. I am drowning in bath towels. I firmly believe you can never have enough towels. A couple or, you know, 60 extra towels never hurt anybody. We got the magical chairs that we've been so excited about and they're gonna go in the living room. The living room is like not even close to done, but we're gonna set 'em up just to see if they're comfy. Is it comfy? Yeah, I must fall asleep for a second. Oh my gosh, that's beautiful. Too bad the background is so bad right now. (paper rustles) (gentle guitar music) Just because you're renovating a house doesn't mean fashion goes out the window. Fit check. Is this antiquing clothes? I've got my maternity overalls. Wish us luck. Please give us coffee table vibes. Desk and bench, look how cool this bench is. The owner of the shop made it and he used charcoal leftover from cooking to color it. So on the way back, I had heard about an amazing soft serve place in a little town called Delhi. We are in town getting ice cream. - Ice cream. - Saturday night. They have 30 flavors of soft serve and this is something that I surprisingly can't get in the desert. So I was so excited for us to go. I love soft serve more than anything. I think it is so good. - Hi. - [Hannah] What do you think? - Really cold. - It definitely gave me some motivation to really like get into gear and keep goin' with this house. (paper rustles) (joyful electronic music) Havin' breakfast outside. It's so nice and we don't have a dining table inside yet. Obviously we didn't have time for a full kitchen remodel, nor the budget. Those remodels are very expensive. So I had to get really creative and think about ways that I could improve this kitchen, brighten it up, just make it look a little more modern. Today I'm attempting to start painting the kitchen cabinets; kind of in a time crunch. This isn't something I was really supposed to do, but we gotta do what we gotta do to get this done. I'm doing this padded sticky stuff for the kitchen cabinets and then I got contact paper to line all of these drawers. So I ended up having to take all the cabinets down because they're lacked with some shiny thing. I had to sand everything, primer it, paint, do a couple more layers. I was doing the painting by myself. Was this a crazy decision to do while heavily, heavily pregnant? Yeah. Matt has a very important work deadline today, so he has been like just in the weeds of work, his full time- (Hannah gasps and gruffs) (objects clattering) (Hannah exhales deeply) I was starting to just feel the stress creeping up. Back to work on the kitchen. I'm hoping- So I got this whole section done yesterday and I would like to get this done today. Gosh if I'm like super ambitious, maybe I could- No there's no way. But I can- A girl can dream. So our dishwasher detergent lid wouldn't close. It was completely broken. Another random task that I need to complete is this dishwasher detergent dispenser's broken. You see it won't. (plastic thumping) It won't lock, so I ordered a new one. And it's a little bit more involved to get this replaced, but I think I can do it. I ordered the replacement part and I couldn't get anyone out there to fix it. So I replaced the detergent container. Are you ready for kitchen progress? 'Cause I'm kind of freakin' out here. We're gonna go with painting all of the cabinets white. But then Matt had an idea of what if we take some of the cabinets off and see how it looks having them open for some of 'em It's a very cramped kitchen and so having all of the cabinet doors closed felt a little stifling. So having them off actually felt really open and it felt like we had transformed the kitchen a lot more than we actually had. It's been a crazy long day and we're gonna taste this sugar cube melon that we got at the farmer's market. (Hannah moans) - Yummy. - [Hannah] What do you think? - It tastes like cantaloupe. * - I have a purple thumb. - [Hannah] Wow. Look at my belly. I'm like blocking Henry with my belly. (paper rustles) (suspenseful music) So some bad news. They found that this is all dipping and like collapsing so we have to take everything out. When they started to repair the deck, we all noticed that that actual wall of the house was rotten. Not only was the deck damaged, but it had gone all the way up the wall. So what started out as a simple deck repair turned into knocking the entire wall down, replacing the slider, replacing all the broken tile, and fixing the deck. At this point, I have no wall on my house, there is a tarp instead of a wall, half the floor is done, half is not. There's still so much painting left to do and I'm thinking my goal of finishing the house by the time I had to leave just didn't seem attainable at this point. This is how we're eating. On the floor 'cause we can't use the kitchen today. Renovation meals are very similar to moving meals. It's a lot of frozen stuff, it's a lot of microwave stuff, so we were eating a lot of hot dogs and a lot of pizza. Every day we're doing stuff, I am also trying to find ways to bond and connect. And so the kids had really wanted to make s'mores and I figured let's just do it. - [Henry] Look at this chocolate! - [Hannah] Yeah. How is it? - Good. I am gonna set up my first bedroom for real, like set up the bedroom. Matt and I get along pretty well, but when you're doing something like this and taking on a project like this on a really tight timeline, there can be some friction. And so we were definitely fighting more over stupid things. One of which was that wooden wall. I was like, "paint it, get it done." (hands swiping) And he was like, "No." When I got there, he had left it and it ended up being a great decision. - Nice. - Is that centered? - [Matt] Yeah, looks like it. - [Hannah] Yay! - Bedroom down. So with a bass pond obviously comes the need to fish. Jackson thinks of himself as a survivalist. He's obsessed with survival gear, survival everything; and so this was his dream. He immediately got a fishing rod and he and Matt learned, together, how to fish. Oh my gosh. - We're like city slickers trying to- - I hate bugs. * - [Hannah] Oh my gosh, you guys. Our city was definitely showing as they were trying to fish. We'll get there, that's the whole point. Practice makes perfect and we'll get there. (Hannah babbles) (baby babbles) (Hannah and baby singing) - [Hannah] Ready? Let's do our kiss, our bird kiss. (Hannah and baby imitating a kiss) - Thank you, baby. - Thank you, baby. - Thank you, baby! - [Matt] Thank you, baby. - Something that I didn't think of when it came to renovating this house was all of the kids would be home with us and Henry would need just as much as attention as he usually does at home. (baby whining) - [Matt] I'm workin', I'm doin' work. - [Hannah] He took your toothpaste? - Yeah. - Okay. - [Hannah] Let's go get PJ's on, come on. - Dad! - Definitely struggled with breaking free for a little bit to be able to do things during the day. And what ended up happening was I'd do most of my work at night after the kids were in bed. Now all I wish is that it was light out when I finished this because you could get the full effect of this room. Simple and done. I'm showing it before the art is hung because I'm not allowed to show, you know, other people's artwork. But I would love to get a shot when it's like light outside so you can see how beautiful the view is from this bedroom. (paper rustles) (slow gentle music) It is pouring rain today. I don't know if this is a fun fact; maybe it's a weird fact about me. I love cemeteries. Anywhere we go to visit, I want to go see like old cemeteries. I just love it. So I just wanna drive through and see it. We have so much left to do and four days to do it. Such a benefit to being out here by all these farms 'cause look at this tomato salad I made; it looks beautiful. And I actually like cooked, I made some pasta. So this is like an actual meal and not a freezer meal. We're makin' progress, everyone. (paper rustles) (upbeat music) Today, this day is all about the bathrooms. I'm gonna switch out all this hardware on this bathroom vanity. Looks so much better. The funny thing is when Matt first got there, he called me and was like, "I think these bathrooms are kind of fine. I actually think it's okay like we can just leave them as they are and it's gonna be fine." And then when I got there I was like, "ex-squeeze me?" So I had to get hardware and the countertop for it and install all that hardware myself. And these changes were on the thriftier side and honestly the difference it made in these bathrooms was astonishing. Can you believe this? So extremely proud of this. Hi. I can't believe it. It's changed so much with just a few tweaks. (paper rustles) (upbeat rhythmic music) So at long last, the floors were finally finished, the walls were finally painted, and we could start truly taking everything out of the boxes and really staging the rooms. My big thing, whenever I'm staging a house or I'm furnishing a house, is functionality. I want all of the spaces of the house to function and serve a purpose. Final night and guess what we're having? - [Everyone] Pizza! - We ordered some pizza to pick up, we're bringing it back. I was a little sad that we were finishing so last minute because I wanted to enjoy it. I guess the end goal is that it gets done and that's what happened. (paper rustles) (gentle uplifting music) So the major changes that we made to this house were fully painting the interior; we did a white with black trim. We ended up ripping up a lot of carpet replacing it with a hardwood oak floor. We painted and removed cabinets in the kitchen, painted the back splash. We changed out the toilets and vanities in the bathroom. We changed every light fixture in the house to something a little more sleek and modern. And then the rest was basically just furnishing. This house has a fairly large entry way so I wanted to create a space where people could sit and take their shoes off. You go right into the living room and it's like super comfy and cozy and all set up. There's a breakfast nook. I'd say I'm most proud of the dining room. The way that room came together, the way we showcased that stained glass window that had been hidden before; it's something I'm really proud of. So the first room is the twin bedroom and it has two twin beds; it's perfect for the boys. Words cannot express how much I love this little table. Rob came through; his tables fit perfectly. They were sleek, they were modern, they went in line with the style of the house. Now the big room, the big honker, is the room with the king bed and that's kind of the master bedroom. It has a desk. The other thing I bought was this massive faux cow hide. I absolutely love them. Then we have a queen bedroom. Everything was a very tight squeeze in that room, but I was just so excited to hang my pom garland. And then there's one final bedroom off the kitchen; it's another queen bedroom, it has its own bathroom. And so this is kind of what I was considering like a guest room? It was just a really happy ending to a really grueling two weeks that totally paid off. - [Hannah And Matt] Bye house. - I don't wanna leave. If we could each use one word to describe this trip, what would it be? - Amazing, amazing. - Amazing. - [Hannah] Amazing, amazing. - Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. (baby babbles) - At the end of the day, the kids are in love with this house; it is so warm and inviting. As hard as this was to do, I feel nothing but gratitude to be able to do it because what a special thing for my kids to have growing up. (kids screaming) - [Hannah] Woo hoo! - [Jackson] Oh yeah! - [Hannah] Woo hoo! (loud screech) - [Hannah] He got a fish. Oh my gosh. Wait, lemme get a picture. Oh my gosh. All this work was so that next time we can come and we'll have our new baby and we'll actually be able to take a trip as a family, instead of trying to juggle one more kid with more renovation. So that's all for now, I'm Hannah and tell me what do you think of the house? What do you think it's missing? What do I need to add? What do I have left to do? Let me know on Instagram. 'Til next time. (joyful music)
B1 BuzzFeed hannah bedroom paper room amazing amazing We Transformed A Home As A Family On A Budget 4 0 林宜悉 posted on 2022/10/03 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary