Todd and I bought our house back in March of 2011. At the time, we were pretty sure it would be a home we would live in for a long time. Over the past 2.5 years we made lots of changes and upgrades to make it more the way we wanted it. Before we moved in we painted all but one room, ripped up carpet, installed hardwoods on the first floor (second floor was already hardwood), gutted the family room, and gave the upstairs bathroom a mini facelift, and replaced fixtures in both bathrooms. We eventually had a fence installed, a pool installed, a patio installed, and did some major work to the landscaping. We also had a security system installed, and an Anderson storm door installed on the front, and had the driveway sealed.
Even with all of the upgrades there were still many things that we wanted to change on the house. First and foremost, we hated the kitchen. The previous owners had just renovated it about 4 years prior to us buying it, so we hated to gut it right away, but it was just not our taste. The exterior siding and color-- yellow is so not us. The upstairs bath. Twin pedestal sinks, and an old jetted tub with gold hardware is not my idea of luxury. No master bath. Lack of closet space in the master, only one car garage, and most of all no basement (or bonus room for the girls) since our house was on a slab. The upstairs windows needed replacing, as did our roof, and our driveway. We knew that some things couldn't be changed, but we wanted to do as much as we could within reason.
We decided to get a quote to do an addition in hopes to add a second car garage with bonus room above, and a master bath/walk in closet above the existing family room. At that same time, we planned to replace the upstairs windows, and exterior siding and roof. We knew that it'd be a pricey project, but we loved our home, and if it all worked out, we planned to stay there for a really long time.
After the quote came back, it was clear to us that the decision was made for us, there was no way we'd sink that amount of money into our house as we'd easily out price the neighborhood, and still wouldn't have a new kitchen or upstairs bath. The numbers didn't work. On to Plan B.
Plan B was to have our house appraised by a local agent, and to see if listing made sense. The market has been crazy, so we knew that we'd probably get more than we paid (including the upgrades we'd done), but we just weren't sure what we'd do if we sold. The inventory was so low. We wanted to stay not only in the same town, but the same section of town (making our options even less). After meeting with our realtor, we not only decided we were going to list and hopefully sell, but that if all went well, that we'd be building instead of buying!
With all of that said, things moved extremely quick. We were under agreement in less than a week, and had to get creative. We are currently renting a two bedroom townhouse for the next 8 months while our house is being built. I'll update about that progress soon. We are SO excited about building our dream home.
In the meantime, here are some pictures from our listing! You can go back to see the befores here!
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