MOSES LAKE — Projects and remodelings around the home and yard have been popular over the last few months since the coronavirus outbreak began.

Postponed vacations, canceled trips, funds from a stimulus check or just being around the house more often are a few of the reasons people cited for deciding to take on home improvement projects in recent months.

Ashley Hoffer, a real estate agent in Moses Lake, said she and her husband, Skyler Hoffer, had talked about remodeling their kitchen for a while. Coming back after being away for the July 4 weekend, she said, they discovered the decision had been made for them.

“When we came home, we found out our dishwasher had been leaking while we were gone,” Ashley said. “That caused us to figure out how far it had gotten into. It turned out it had gone all the way down to the subfloors, under the cupboards and under all of the flooring.”

She said they had to tear everything out of their kitchen and virtually redo it from the ground up.

The Hoffers’ home, on Goodrich Road in Moses Lake, was built in 1983, with the kitchen still original from 1983 as well. Ashley said they wanted to take out cupboards and countertops and update appliances.

“That’s kind of what we were looking forward to in the end, to add instant equity, and to feel more comfortable and have more use out of our kitchen for modern-day life,” she said.

In June, the couple welcomed their third child, Kenzie. Having some more time to spend around the house with the baby gave them time to do more than they might have been able to with a normal work schedule, she said.

The renovation project spread beyond the kitchen.

“We actually ended up expanding from the kitchen into two living rooms, a bathroom and a hallway,” Ashley said. “It kind of morphed into a full-house ‘reno’ at this point.”

She said they tried to get things done early on that she felt might be more difficult to finish down the road. Through the remodeling process, one thing she said she learned was that it is never going to end up being just the items you think when you start. While tearing down the kitchen, she said they quickly discovered there was more that would need to be done than they expected.

“When we were demo-ing, we found out our floors weren’t the right subfloors, so we had to redo some of the floors so that it all matched up,” she said. “We had to update some electrical, we had to put in lighting — there wasn’t lighting in some parts of the kitchen.”

It wasn’t simply about pulling things out and putting them back in, Ashley said. The project caused them to have to reconfigure everything quite a bit to accomplish what they wanted to, she explained.

While they’ve worked with a few local contractors on the project, she said, they’ve finished quite a bit on their own. Ashley said it will be nice to just get the project done. She said it would be nice to have it finished if her family comes to visit for the holidays, to have something new to feel accomplished about.

While their hand might have been forced a bit by things beyond their control, the Hoffers said, they’re just excited to see the project completed.

Casey McCarthy can be reached via email at cmccarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.