SingingPraise
05-04-2005, 06:11 AM
We've decided to stay in our house and rennovate vs selling and moving. Even tho we can get a huge price for our house right now in this market, we haven't found anything nice we can afford in our area. And with chelsey in highschool, Zoey starting kindergarten in august, our friends and our church right here - it makes no sense to buy a new home in a totally different part of town.
When we were planning to sell we'd redone both bathrooms (dh is a plumber), put on a new roof and evap cooler. With our flood we redid the back flooring and painted the back bedrooms. The exterior was painted too. The house is actually looking really good. Dh just replaced the back wall, drywalled the laundry room by the dryer that was busted and fixed the lighting in two rooms. We have 2 more very minor repairs and its time to start the kitchen. (replace two panes of glass, fix one ceiling fan)
Has anyone done cabinet refacing? did you hire or do the work yourself? We're hoping to tile the one kitchen wall thats behind the cabinets, paint the other wall since theres not much wall space in our kitchen. Then reface our ugly blue cabinets with wood. Dh is thinking he'll do it himself, but our friend is in the business so we'll get an estimate from him too and see if its worth the time.
then dh wants to tear down the bricks over the fireplace and replace those. He has already bought some beautiful brick - its always bothered me cuz the folks before us PAINTED over the bricks and its just ugly. Thats just a weekend project he says (which makes me estimate 2 weeks lol)
Then the plan is to close in the carport to make a 4th bedroom and add a bathroom there as well. It might be a master bedroom/bath or a room for chelsey we're not sure yet.
Then we'll need to create a new driveway since half of ours will be the floor of the new bed/bath and i'm hoping the city will let us put a garage on the other side of the house. If its too close to the street (we'll find out when we do the permits) then we'll just have to do a covered slab or another carport and put up a storage shed off the side street and make a gate so we can put strollers, bikes, etcs in there.
Since we'll be doing that - we'll re-do the fence around the house as well. Thinking we'll have a nice locked gate to access the shed we'll put up and then the rest will be block. Will talk to the neighbors behind and to one side of us (we're on the corner) and see if they'll go in on it with us.
anyway, i'm rambling but the goal is to do the kitchen and fireplace in the next month or so before the real heat kicks in. Spend the summer doing estimates, drawings, talking to our contractor friends and plan to build when the weather cools in september. Luckily dh is in the business so we have a drywall friend, an electrician friend, a tile friend (ok, a tile uncle. lol)
Hopefully we'll do most/all of the work ourselves and get our materials at cost so it'll stay fairly reasonable.
So any of you who've done serious building and rennovations to your homes wanna share your best tips for keeping ourselves sane. Financial tips? Tips to deal with toddler boy and kitchen/fireplace rennovation? The outside stuff will be alot easier to keep the kids out of , but i'm nervous bout inside repairs and tools and stuff.
I'm very excited we're going to do this. We will be in debt up to our eyeballs lol but the house is going to be great and will be worth alot more when we're done with it. Watch, we'll finish it and then he'll decide we should sell. LOL
Thanks for any btdt advice
:)
When we were planning to sell we'd redone both bathrooms (dh is a plumber), put on a new roof and evap cooler. With our flood we redid the back flooring and painted the back bedrooms. The exterior was painted too. The house is actually looking really good. Dh just replaced the back wall, drywalled the laundry room by the dryer that was busted and fixed the lighting in two rooms. We have 2 more very minor repairs and its time to start the kitchen. (replace two panes of glass, fix one ceiling fan)
Has anyone done cabinet refacing? did you hire or do the work yourself? We're hoping to tile the one kitchen wall thats behind the cabinets, paint the other wall since theres not much wall space in our kitchen. Then reface our ugly blue cabinets with wood. Dh is thinking he'll do it himself, but our friend is in the business so we'll get an estimate from him too and see if its worth the time.
then dh wants to tear down the bricks over the fireplace and replace those. He has already bought some beautiful brick - its always bothered me cuz the folks before us PAINTED over the bricks and its just ugly. Thats just a weekend project he says (which makes me estimate 2 weeks lol)
Then the plan is to close in the carport to make a 4th bedroom and add a bathroom there as well. It might be a master bedroom/bath or a room for chelsey we're not sure yet.
Then we'll need to create a new driveway since half of ours will be the floor of the new bed/bath and i'm hoping the city will let us put a garage on the other side of the house. If its too close to the street (we'll find out when we do the permits) then we'll just have to do a covered slab or another carport and put up a storage shed off the side street and make a gate so we can put strollers, bikes, etcs in there.
Since we'll be doing that - we'll re-do the fence around the house as well. Thinking we'll have a nice locked gate to access the shed we'll put up and then the rest will be block. Will talk to the neighbors behind and to one side of us (we're on the corner) and see if they'll go in on it with us.
anyway, i'm rambling but the goal is to do the kitchen and fireplace in the next month or so before the real heat kicks in. Spend the summer doing estimates, drawings, talking to our contractor friends and plan to build when the weather cools in september. Luckily dh is in the business so we have a drywall friend, an electrician friend, a tile friend (ok, a tile uncle. lol)
Hopefully we'll do most/all of the work ourselves and get our materials at cost so it'll stay fairly reasonable.
So any of you who've done serious building and rennovations to your homes wanna share your best tips for keeping ourselves sane. Financial tips? Tips to deal with toddler boy and kitchen/fireplace rennovation? The outside stuff will be alot easier to keep the kids out of , but i'm nervous bout inside repairs and tools and stuff.
I'm very excited we're going to do this. We will be in debt up to our eyeballs lol but the house is going to be great and will be worth alot more when we're done with it. Watch, we'll finish it and then he'll decide we should sell. LOL
Thanks for any btdt advice
:)