We have been living in our current home for 6 years now. A year and a half ago, we made an attempt to sell our house because we thought my parents were going to move in with us. Circumstances changed and my aunt was able to help my parent's out. At the time we were sad because we actually really liked our house. After putting the house on the market and falling in love with another house, when things did not work out, we found that there are many things we do not like about our current home anymore. However, we love our neighborhood, our back yard, and the memories we have made in our home. So, we have decided to renovate and make the changes we want instead of trying to find the perfect home (which isn't as easy as you would think). There has always been little things I wanted to change here and there, but this is a complete make-over. We are only 1 month into this process since we have made the decision and this is where we are/what we've learned:
1. Find a bank. So, when you decide to do any major home renovation, the bank will have to be involved unless you have lots of money saved up. The problem is a bank will not loan you the money until you have a blueprint that they can appraise. You can't have a blueprint until you know how much money you're going to have. You don't know how much money you're going to have until you know what your new home is going to appraise for. You can't get an apprasial until you have a blueprint. Then you're back at square one.
So what's the solution? You make a lot of assumptions. You assume that you can remodel your house to appraise for a certain amount so that you can get 80% of that to do the remodeling. It's a vicious circle and a lot of gambling.
2. Find a contractor. There are many options out there and many types of contractors. Intially we were going to have a friend who does general construction to help us piece everything together but then after we went to the bank we realized that we may need someone who does this regularly. So, through a co-worker we got introduced to a really awesome family business that will be the project manager for this whole process. They take care of everything! From helping us identify the right bank, to building the blueprints, to finding sub-contractors to do the work, to supervising the remodeling, to helping pick out materials, to keeping us within the budget, everything! We also found out that we have mutual friends which made it all the better.
3. Build a blueprint. Now we are getting into the meat of things. Although the nerve-wrecking part is that you don't know how your finances will work out--again you are basing everything on several assumptions. But this is the fun part. Based on our current blue-print, we start moving this wall here and that room there. You can really start envisioning what your renovated home will look like. This is also the part where you start developing real hopes and expectations, you start day-dreaming about your renovated home, and can't concentrate. Now that we have a bubble design of what we want, the architect is going to draw everything out to scale with all the details.
We are just getting started but we are super excited. We have cut back on eating out, buying clothes, and going out. Life will be a little messy and we'll even have to find a place to live temporarily when they actually start construction, but since we plan to live here long-term, we think this is well worth it. I'll try to take pictures and document the process as we go along.
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