If you know me in real life, you know that we have been renovating since we moved in! 

But I’d like to start with our decision to move and what that looked like!

Hubby and I tried selling our starter home once before and failed – I’m talking like, we couldn’t even get an offer to break even. It pretty much took the wind out of us, but we always kept looking for our dream home. (Funny story about me being a planner – when we moved into our 1st home, I said, “we’re here for  5 years – that’s it!” And we were there 5 years, 2 months before selling!).

At one particular home we were checking out, 1800 old school farm house, we called a contractor buddy of ours to come out and start giving us pricing on renovations, etc. He had mentioned a family member was going to be selling their house in a few months and for us to come check it out once we were ready – so we kept that in the back of our minds.

One Thursday afternoon, I came home from work, and said, “we should really list the house. The selling market is hot and we’ve put so much work into it over the pandemic, I bet you we’d sell.”

Of course my husband was hesitant, but we called our realtor and had it listed by Friday morning.

Before we could even get a POD at our house or pictures listed on the MLS, our realtor had 11 bookings set for our house that weekend and by Sunday evening we had 4 offers, 2 full, and a bidding war on our hands. <que excitement!>

Well the excitement was short-lived when we realized, Oh crap…we have nowhere to move, when the conversation above came back into my head. I said, “let’s go see Harry’s families house!” 

I knew from the moment we drove down the driveway that this would be our forever house. It was in the town my husband grew up in, had over 7 acres of land, we could afford it, and we knew who built it – so knew it had good bones.

The house was in perfect condition, it just needed full head-to-toe renovations. 

This is where the fun starts!

When we moved in, we had all of the carpets upstairs ripped out. New flooring put in, new trim installed and painters on standy. 

We literally hit the ground running. Things were hectic as our dog just underwent emergency foot surgery, we have 2 girls under 4, we just doubled (and then some) our square footage, and moved into a kitchen with no stove of refrigerator. HA!

The upstairs was painted and furnished pretty quickly, and that’s where we remained prisoners to the house (LOL) as the contractors started on the main floor.

All flooring done, all trim, painters called back, cabinets on backorder for over 10 weeks, and so so so many moving parts – it all seemed like a blur!

So we have been in our house now since November and the kitchen is pretty much complete. We are embarking on our addition journey (stayed tuned for part 2), and then we are renovating all of the bathrooms for a complete home! 

It has been an intense and wild ride, but I hope you love the transformation pictures!

What questions about renovating do you have for me?

J 

Our kitchen “during” renovation!