What you need to know when you are remodeling your house.

The thought of remodeling our new house three years ago was so exciting!  We had so many ideas and dreams,  three years later we are still at it remodeling one thing after another.  I’m going to give you some great tips on where to start and what to save for later!

Our house was a rental for 7 years, a darling couple bought it thinking they could fix it up and fill it with babies. (its 6 has bedrooms) After a few years of trying to get pregnant and couldn’t they decided to travel out of the country to get in-vetro. which they did twice and got their two darling babies.  But that’s all they were going to have and didn’t want a big drafty house.  We were looking for a new resident and I told her we would buy it if they ever wanted to sell…… so they did and we were lucky enough to get it.

Now I told you it was a rental right?  The place was a huge project just waiting to become our dream home, so I’ll give you the run down on what I did first.   If you can get any extra cash out when you are financing to buy a home, I would suggest you take a bit out to start the renovations.  Don’t go over what you can afford but do have some expendable cash to start with.  If you are renovating and you cant work in a few thousand dollars into your mortgage then save up most of the money before you start. Or use a net worth calculator to see what your home is worth and if this will up your value.

The first thing you need to think about is are you going to live there while the renovation is going on or sleep on your sisters couch.  If you have huge projects like we did I would suggest grabbing your sleeping bag and camping out in your mamas house.  We had 1 month to finish our big remodeling stuff before we moved in, so this is what we chose to do in that month.  (and I mean night and day!!)

1. look around the house and see what big construction things are a top priority, and do those first! They will probably be the most expensive but doing the big things that really bother you will really make your house your own.  Just so you know that most of the things your think you are going to fix or change when you move in your house don’t  get fixed if you don’t do it before you move in. 
2. My first thing was to wall up a double entryway.  I didn’t want people coming to my house and seeing right into my living room dinning and piano room!!  I needed some privacy LOL.
3. along with that went getting rid of the slate floor.
4.  We also decided to dry wall over the  arch that was over the fire place and fix the basement wall  where we had taken out a huge built in.  That was the best money ever spent.
5. Paint we had to paint the entire house.  The paint was dark and cabin-esk and my favorite color is WHITE.  so we settled for a nice light cream and creamy gray, with all molding and ceiling painted a  glossy white.  Painting is also better done with nothing in the house.  Since we were replacing the carpet in certain areas we didn’t even need to use a drop cloth, in places.
6. Run a gas line,  this was also a great idea to do before we moved in because then the dry wall guy could fix the holes in the ceiling.
7. I painted all the kitchen cabinets which was a huge undertaking seeing that we had two kitchens,(one in the basement).  I’m so glad that i just jumped in and did that project, who knows if that one would have ever gotten done if it wasn’t done before we moved in.

After we moved in there was a laundry list of other project to be done, the floors, the kitchen Island, the master bath.  I’ll be showing you all the renovations in future blog-post because not only was it hard but I need someone to appreciate all the time and sweat it took.  LOL  Its a tricky thing to do remolding, but take the leap and go for it.  You only have one life to live so make your home into what you want it to become,  The place you want to come home to!