Category Archives: Reno

Let the Fun Begin

May 22, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

It’s official…our house is now under construction! Yipeeeeee!!

But seriously.

Charles and I went over to the house yesterday to check up on the progress. Here are the beautiful sights we walked into…

You may think that you sense sarcasm there, but you’d be WRONG! I never thought I’d be so happy to see raunchy carpet strips, beat up walls, scaffolds, and construction lights in my house!!!! Today is our “plaster guy’s” third day in the house. He has been slaving away scraping the walls and finding the (many, unfortunately) cracks in the plaster. But it’s got to get worse before it gets better, right? He’s planning on at least a couple of weeks just to get the prep and plaster finished, then we will have to wait about 30 days before we can even think about primer, much less paint.

This rain has made me very nervous about our back porches falling off, so I was extremely relieved to see these bad boys in the kitchen last night:

I’ve already gotten the report this afternoon that the back porches have been securely “jacked” and the workers have started the process of sorting the wood into usable and non-usable piles. My sigh of relief can probably be heard for miles and miles.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, we are now armed and dangerous. Well, really just armed. We had our alarm system hooked up over the weekend, so don’t be getting any ideas!

Happy Hump Day, people!

Spring Has Sprung!

April 16, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

Finally!! We had an unusually cold and long winter this year, so I am happy to see everything starting to bloom. In an effort to chronicle the yard during each season so that we know what we have, Charles and I went over to the house on Sunday to take a few pictures. (Special thanks to my dad for letting us borrow his super nice camera, and thanks to Charles for being the photographer!)

It’s safe to say that we have no shortage of “alive and well” plants!! We have azaleas (both pink and white), dogwoods (both pink and white), pine trees, wisteria, camellias, holly, daffodils, and liriope, just to name a few. Most of it is overgrown and needs some serious manicuring, but it was all so beautiful this time of year! You can consider these the “before” pictures!

Here are the pictures of the dogwoods in the front yard. We plan to remove the pine tree on the left side (it causes a problem almost every time there’s a storm) and replace it with another dogwood to match the right side.

As you can see, our front shrubs need a little work. We also plan to take out the tree on the edge of our property line…it’s hollow and is definitely in danger of falling on the house during a big storm.

We also have LOT of azaleas all over the front, back, and side yard. They are beautiful right now, which seemed fitting for the weekend of the Masters. We also found a huge camellia bush along the back porch, and wisteria was growing at the back of the lot.

And then there’s just a whole lot of random…

It’s a little overwhelming, but I’m choosing to look at it as a positive. This yard has SO much potential, and now we know we can grow just about anything in it! To start, we plan to just trim everything back and get it under control. One day, I’m hoping for something like one of these:

If you’d like to see all of the “before” pictures, you can check them out here.

Lastly, I’d like to give props to my hubby for his awesome picture-taking skills! I’m super impressed!! And like it or not, you just earned yourself a new job…project photographer! :)

HALLELUJAH!!

April 10, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

Hallelujah and thank you, Jesus! We FINALLY got our appraisal yesterday afternoon…and the news is good!!

We found out we really are getting the house for a steal, and we have plenty of wiggle room to work with. We are sticking with our original plan and only doing what we can reasonably afford at first. (Trying to be responsible and all that jazz.) But we can definitely breathe easier now knowing that we are not wasting our time (and money) on a house that will never give us a decent return. And lucky for us, we aren’t planning to sell for a VERY LONG TIME!

Speaking of selling and moving, have I mentioned how much I hate moving? I have moved every single year since I moved into the dorms for college — that’s 7 times!!! Charles is the same way, and we are SOOOO tired of it! We decided that, fingers crossed, this will be our last move until the nursing home or the funeral home….whichever comes first. ;)

So now the fun part starts: getting everything in order so we can make our closing date of May 10. And then the really fun part starts: renovations!!!

Bathroom Trade-Off

March 12, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

As I mentioned yesterday, the master bathroom is a no-go for this first round of renovations. The trade-off is that we can renovate the smaller guest bathroom upstairs so that we have an actual bathroom to use in the meantime. If you need a refresher, here’s what the bathroom look like now:

As you can see, it’s a little bit cramped and not as functional as it could be. We love the tub, and are planning to use that in our master bathroom eventually. But for guests, we really felt like a shower would be much more practical. So here’s our plan…first, we will knock out the “water closet” wall that separates the toilet. Next, we will close up the door to the outside porch. Then, we will insert a porcelain tub into the space where the toilet is currently, and tile in a shower around the tub. We want to move the toilet to the far side of the room, and insert the awesome pedestal sink we found in the middle. Of course we will rip out the hideous vinyl and put down some sort of tile.

I’m thinking we should go with a black and white, clean, simple look for this bathroom. It isn’t very big, so we don’t want a whole lot of “fluff.” I love this inexpensive tile that we found at Home Depot:

And here are a few examples of my bathroom inspiration. I’d like to pull a little bit from each of them:

I love this tub and subway tile

Pedestal sink with cute medicine cabinet

I love the black border mixed in with the polka dot tile, and the sconces

Such a cute hexagonal floor pattern

All inspiration photos from Pinterest.

The Bidding War

March 11, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

As promised, we got our bids from our contractors over the weekend. And it wasn’t as bad as we thought…it was worse!! :( We knew that it was going to be an expensive reno, but we never guessed it would cost us so much just to get into the house, much less make it look pretty. To say the least, Charles and I were pretty bummed. I even had to cancel my chicken and waffles date with the girls because I was in such a horrible mood. (Did I mention NC State lost too? NOT a good day!) After a lot of discussion, Charles and I decided to step away from it for a bit and come back to it on Sunday.

Sunday rolled around, and we felt much calmer and rational about the whole thing. I created a spreadsheet (yes, I’m a nerd that loves spreadsheets and checklists) to compare the two bids. Each bid in and of itself was a little depressing. But we organized our list into the “musts” and the “wants,” then compared the two. It turns out that if we combine parts of each bid, it leaves us in a much better financial situation. I have come to terms with the fact that I’m not going to get my dream master bathroom this go-round, but that just means I get to use that entire room as my closet for a while!! Could be worse, right? This girl loves a big closet!

Basically, we are going to have one contractor do the woodwork around the house (including stabilizing the porches, reconstructing the eaves, and replacing the gutter system) and plaster work in the interior, and another do the exterior painting and HVAC work. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s the jist. When we combined what we want to do, we settled on a plan that leaves us about $10,000 under budget, which will give us a comfortable contingency fund.

So what’s the next step? We are setting up an appraisal for hopefully sometime this week. The appraiser will take our bid and go through the house, appraising it as if every item on the list was done….the floors, the walls, the bathrooms, the kitchen, the entire exterior, etc. That will give us the figure that we can borrow against. Just keep your fingers crossed that it’s enough!

Today Is The Day!

March 8, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

It’s Friday, and you know what that means…we will get our official bid in this afternoon!! I’m so nervous, which I realize is a little silly. We already know what some things are going to cost, and we already know we definitely won’t be able to do everything on the list, but I’m anxious to see just how bad the numbers are going to hurt. But I’m SUPER excited too! After we get our bid in from the contractor, we will be one step closer to owning our Barbie dream house. (Don’t tell Charles I called it that!)

As I get ready for the next step of the process, I can’t help but think back on all that I’ve learned so far. Let’s recap…Charles and I first found out that the house was on the market around September of last year. At that point, Charles had just started his final year of law school, I had just finished my first full year of work, we had only been married 2 months, and we had no idea where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do at the end of school. We put the house in the back of our minds until we were home for Thanksgiving. We decided “spur of the moment” that we wanted to check out the house. So we called the realtor, who happens to be a family friend, and she took us over there. I immediately loved it. It was incredibly intimidating because of all of the work, but I could instantly see the amazing potential. I could see Charles and I making a happy life there. I could see us raising our kids there. I could see us living there until we had to move our bedroom downstairs because we couldn’t climb the stairs anymore. I could see our “forever home.”

But again, we were stuck. We still felt that it was too soon and we didn’t even know if we wanted to move back there. We decided to mull it over for a while. But then, completely unexpectedly, someone came along and put an offer in on the house in early December…the bank accepted immediately. I remember when I got the call. I was in Charlotte for work and Charles called me at about 8 am. It definitely ruined my day. I think it took “losing” the house for Charles and I to realize how much it meant to us and how much we wanted it. Well the people who offered must not have been as crazy (er, adventurous?) as we are because they walked away after only 2 days. In the end, this was the best thing that could have happened. We realized how much we wanted the house, we had more time to think about it, and the failed offer forced the bank to lower the price! Funny how those things seem to just work out, huh?

So we put an offer in on the house in late January and, after a week of countering, our offer was accepted. Since then, we’ve learned more than could ever be put into words. We have learned how the “purchase and restore” loan works. We’ve learned how contractors work (and sometimes don’t work). We’ve learned the realtor game. We’ve learned about tax credits and historic preservation. Most of all, we’ve learned patience. For those of you who know me, you know this isn’t my strong suit. But I’m becoming more and more patient. This is a slowwwww process and I’m learning to roll with the punches. It only took me 25 years and a falling-apart house to get here! Now I’m the one telling Charles, my always-patient, always-calm rock, that we need to wait and see. “We don’t need to rush the contractor decision….Let’s just wait till Friday…We don’t have to get this appliance now.” I’m learning that being patient gives me time to process it all. And this is A LOT to process! I’m avoiding rash decisions and making the best decisions for our home and our life. It’s quite liberating! Why didn’t I come to this realization earlier?? ;)

Keep your fingers crossed that the bid we get this afternoon isn’t TOO painful! I’m sure I’ll be letting you know…

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to set your clocks forward tomorrow! Time to SPRING FORWARD! Spring…the perfect season for construction, right? :)