I’m gonna share a little bit of my experience so far going through our second house renovation now. When I think about making changes to a house I’m expecting more of a happy HGTV type experience but it’s more like Gordon Ramsey Hells Kitchen and that’s ironic because I haven’t even started on the kitchen yet.

I feel like when you are a full-time mom you have so much house work and upkeep that it’s hard enough doing it while living in a completed house. Now I decide to make a dream home while I have 2 kids, 1 of them is only 6 months old and going to be living all through the construction so I pretty much am a smart human.

Heres the exterior of the house now (mid construction and sorry for the shit photos).

Great bones, on the open water, with a pool and lots of potential. This house was originally listed for 1.7 million. We were not necessarily in the market for a million dollar home at the time but they lowered it to 1.4 so we threw out an offer of 1 million, thinking worst case scenario they would say no and we would be in the same situation as we started or maybe even worse, they would say yes and then we would have to figure out how to buy a million dollar house. They countered at 1.1 and seeing as the comps in the area were between 1.5-3 million it was kind of a no brainer.. we had to figure it out. We already knew we would have to make changes to the house but it just makes sense to put 100k or so into a house that we could turn into a 500k+ profit if needed or otherwise make it our forever home which would be priceless.

Moving on from the buying process, here is the list of honey-dos (even though my honey doesn’t do shit himself but you get the point)
1. Interior flooring and paint. This wasn’t so bad because it was all completed before we actually moved in.
2. Exterior updated and painted
3. Pavers, patio and pool updated
4. Master bathroom update
5. Kitchen and living space
6. Jack and Jill bathroom upstairs
7. Downstairs bathroom updated
8. Laundry room updated.
Now that I’m writing it all up it seems like a bad idea out loud… but it’s gonna be great!!

This is my biggest struggle while going through this experience that I don’t think a lot of people understand. You get an idea in your head and your beautiful, naive self thinks “oh we get a guy who can come do blah and they come over and they do blah and and we pay them and it gets done and life is grand”. Literally a dream but not reality. This is reality so far with just the exterior alone… “Hey guy, can you come give me a quote to fix up the outside a bit so that we can paint the house and make it look better?” Guy: “Yea, it will be 2 months and $95,000 for what you want to do”. Ok (impossible) let me shop around… 7 quotes and 3 months later, “yes 3 weeks and under $10,000. “PERFECT” I thought. then 2 months later and over $10,000 in… I am living with an almost done exterior that still needs to be painted, needs a new railing and new front door. Knowing what I know now, I can kind of predict that whatever we are quoted will take 4 times as long and probably double the price. Also I don’t understand how it’s so hard to get an honest quote and find someone that will just come do the work as they say? It’s like Pretty Woman home edition in the way that I’m saying “here is work and here is money for the work, please take it” yet it’s hard to just get it done.

So far we have finished 30% of the house and it is still livable as of now but I am a little worried about doing the kitchen because that’s my life-line as a homemaker.  I think I am going to move onto something a little less inconvenient like a bathroom maybe?

This is the current kitchen. Smaller than we want, but it functions.

This is some of the kitchen inspiration (courtesy of Pinterest) –

This will also be a part of the one living space update and we are removing that fireplace. I know there are people who tell me not to tear it down but I live on the water in FL and I will enjoy the view from the kitchen a lot more than I will enjoy a fire in 100 degree weather… who the &%@! needs a fireplace here?!?

Anyway I’ll keep posting more updates and I’ll share some of the ideas I have too, as I go through it, but one thing I can suggest is if you are updating a new home and if it is possible, try and get as much work done before moving in. We did this with the last house and it made life so much easier because we could have multiple things being done at once instead of having to live around it.

However… the plus point of living in it for a little while really gives you a better idea of how you function in the house and what ideas for the layout would actually work better. This does help a lot when planning the changes. So there are definite pros and cons to both ways. We have been talking about getting into a possible rental when we do the kitchen just for our own sanity and maybe it will get things moving faster? Thoughts?

Anyway, thanks for reading and if you want to send me any suggestions or a bottle of wine, I’ll allow it.

xoxo

Shannon