We’ve reached an exciting time (again!) during our house remodel…FINAL PLANS! After the architects presented us with three revised designs, it was our job to decide which design we wanted to move forward on. We can’t say that there was a definite winner. There were elements of each design that we liked. Before I get into that, let me remind you of the three designs I told you about in this post: Design #1 Design #2 Design #3 Here are…
Today we are so excited to share with you (for the 2nd time) the initial plans that the architects drew up! After our first design was WAY over budget, Chris and I went to work designing a new home. If you remember from our last post, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out a new design that stayed within our budget AND still looked cool. Here are a few things we considered: More square footage needed to…
Hi! Yup, we’re still here. We’re still doing a major house remodel. We’ve been hard at work on the house but have no progress to show for it! Let me tell you why: The house was broken into. What a total bummer! We went out to the house a few Fridays ago. As we were enjoying the solitude along with some huge snow drifts, we got to the door to find it ripped open via crowbar. They’d dumped things out…
Now that the design phase of our house remodel is finished, we are starting to think about supplies, fixtures, and design elements. Anyone who has built or remodeled a space knows that the amount of decisions can be exhausting. With the square footage in this house, we know we need to be very mindful of the budget. I am going to work extra hard to be sure that the whole project comes in on budget (or even under)! So when…
An architect. An architect? Did we really need one? We’ve done a house remodel before. We could do this ourselves, right? Looking at what we’ve done so far and what we have ahead, there are many decisions to be made on this house remodel project. Whether or not to hire an architect was a rather big decision! I am forever trying to cut costs and find things we can do ourselves. Chris has the same mindset but believed that an…
It’s been hard work cleaning out the house and preparing for this house remodel. We’re to the point that we can start thinking about design! Woo-Hoo! Cabinets, outlets, bathrooms, OH MY! So many things we’ll need to think about. I watched an episode of Dr. Oz last week. He talked about decision-making exhaustion. The number of decisions we make throughout the day correlate to feelings of exhaustion by the end of the day. With the number of decisions we’ll need…
Knock, Knock. Who’s There? We told you about our plans to take off the second floor in this post. Today we’d like to share with you more about our plans to change where the front door was originally intended to be. As you look from the road up to the house, you can see that the builder had placed the front door to face the road. There really is no logical way for guests to arrive at the front door…
Hi everyone! The heavy snowfall last week kept us from working on the house. But that left time to enjoy the Iowa home show circuit. We started out attending the Des Moines Home Show last weekend and the Waterloo Home Show yesterday. Let’s start with the Des Moines Home & Garden Show: We started the day with anticipation. Right now things are a blank slate, so the possibilities are endless (of course, within budget). It’s been 10 years since we…
As the snow piles up in Iowa, the ability to get work done on the house each weekend gets hard. That’s why we thought it would be a great time to talk about what our plans are once we start construction. As you know, we’re dealing with a house that is much bigger than our needs. So our goal is to make this big house…a little less big. We didn’t make this purchase blindly. Thankfully, before any offer was made…