Its been in the works for awhile now, but I thought we should at least try to document the journey so that when our children get older they can see the house they used to live in, the rooms we brought them home to when they were born.
More and more often Collin says to me "Are they coming to build our new house today?"
I respond no, because they aren't coming for awhile, but the journey has started.
How did we wind up remodeling our house you ask?
Well, it actually all started awhile back. Say, when Drew bought this house 5 minutes after he met me. It was a bachelor pad. Well, it still is. We knew that we this house wasn't a permanent house for us once we started really dating but as I mentioned we 5 minutes into our relationship so I didn't really get a say, you know?
Anyhow, a couple years later we were welcoming Collin to our family, finishing the basement, and realizing it was a temporary solution. Either we were moving away to somewhere that had more room or we were staying and adding on. We weren't anxious to move at that moment but it was looming in the background of our lives.
Life went on. We've grown accustomed to our routines, our jobs or lives. But its becoming painfully noticeable how we've outgrown this house. We plan to have two more children, and with those future babies around the corner, we really don't have the room to put them in this house.
Then there was that whole housing market slump thing. It made the idea of selling painful. Over the past four years our house as lost over 35,000.00 in value. OUCH. We weren't really interested in taking a huge hit and we love where we live. Location, location, location they say. We agree.
We mulled over if it was smarter to sell and buy or something add on. We hemmed and hawed. There are moments when I still think "did we make the right decision?" But in the end, the idea of getting exactly what we want in our home, rather than settling for something someone else has built and finding ourselves wanting to change it later, was appealing.
Alas, here are the 9 months.
It seemed the journey actually started a bit ago now, but I'd say we're still in the first trimester. We have an architect, some plans, and a builder. We've been to the drawing table about a dozen times and we're still trying to make our budget match the bid. We've been bending our resources back and forth trying to squeeze every little bit of value from our house, sweat equity, picking quality but fiscally responsible finishes. Its an unending process. Well, I take that back. We'll wrap up plans fairly soon because in the coming month or so we'll break ground and then we start the 6 month clock.
The journey is a crazy one.
Pack up our house for the winter. The whole darn house.
Rip apart the house. Watch every bit of energy we've invested in the basement, in the house, in the moments we've dedicated to making the space ours for the past six years trickle away as we prepare for something new, something better and invited.
Change is always hard, so it is a little bittersweet. I won't lie. But its also going to be a fantastic house that we'll have for the rest of our lives.
Once we take it all apart they start the building process, but not before we move into an apartment. That's right friends. We're headed back to apartment living for a 6 month stay.
Fun times ahead.
And so, to help my boys see how we used to live, how our lives and home has changed since they were born we're going to have a little running documentary. Every month, maybe even every week if you're lucky we'll take pictures to document the changes and see the transition from our current house to the new house.
So, here we are in installment one. Current house, yard and such. Consider it the "Before" shot. However, we've already started here- you'll notice all the landscaping is gone and that most of the inner walls are missing photos and shelves and we didn't take any photos of the basement, but if you want to see that just go back a few blog posts to "school psychologist christmas in a basement".
We're on our way.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment