The Plan

I accidentally deleted this post so here it goes again…

Before we even had a signed contract, we began working with Chris Reebals of Christopher and Associates ( http://www.candassociates.com/index.php?page=home ) to come up with a plan for our renovation. Being in construction, Josh and I have come to appreciate the value in a good set of construction documents and were happy to find Chris to help us get our thoughts on paper.

The original floor plan is shown below. As you can see, the rooms are very small and the house is very chopped up and maze like.

Josh and I had our “wish list” of sorts that we wanted to make sure we incorporated into our renovation. Our list included:

·         A fireplace (now that we live up north J)

·         An open kitchen/living area

·         A master bathroom and closet

·         A dining room that will fit a table for 10 (Josh and I both have large families)

After our first meeting with Chris, we were convinced for “resale” and to fix the front elevation that we should add a second story. Here is the final elevation drawn by Chris. I still can’t believe that the existing house can look like this but Josh and Chris assure me that it can.

Below is AutoCAD Drawing (click to enlarge) of the new floor plan for the first floor. As you can see, we are relocating the stairs to open up the living area and kitchen area. We are also doing a small bump out in the living room to make that room a little larger and a little bump out in our closet. We are leaving the one guest bedroom and bathroom as they are and just replacing the tile, bathroom fixtures, doors, crown and base in those two rooms. We are also adding the porch off the back. The porch was one of those "if we don't do it now..." items. Although the butler’s pantry layout has changed since this drawing was created, it will still remain in the same location. The laundry room shown will be used by us as a pantry but will have a hookup for a washer and dryer in case we get sick of going into the basement to do laundry.

For the second floor, we are adding two bedrooms and two bathrooms. There is also a place for a future forth bedroom or bonus room ("resale") that we most likely will not finish out during this project. The second floor will also include a computer desk area in the common area at the top of the stairs since we didn’t have room for this on the first floor.

The final two drawings shown are the front and rear elevations drawn in AutoCAD. We are making a few small changes to these but overall they will be very similar to what is shown. Josh and I are both very excited about the plan for our new house and ready to get started…and finished!

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

Everyone we talk to tells us the same thing “it will be more work, take longer and cost more than you ever imagined”. I am now convinced they are right. Honestly, I knew they were right from the beginning but I thought it would be better for my mental health to pretend like they weren’t.

 The first day we looked at the house we discussed renovating the kitchen and bathrooms and doing two small bump outs off the back of the house. The larger bump out was to expand the living room/kitchen and the other to add a master bathroom and closet.  We also talked about increasing the ceiling height from 8 feet to 9 or 10 feet in the living room/kitchen area.  Needless to say, it went from there and we ended up with a plan that is much greater than either of us originally imagined but one we both love.

The first issue was that the house needed a new roof. We came to the conclusion that if we were going to have to replace the roof then we should just go ahead and raise the ceiling height from 8 feet to 10 feet. Then it was the flexibility that would come with adding a second story to the house. From then on, each time Josh and I talked about the house one of us would inevitably say "well if we are going to do ____ then we should just go ahead and do _____while we are at it” or “we will never come back and do this later so we should just do it now” or my personal favorite “it will be good for resale”. Has anyone ever read the children’s book “IF YOU GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You_Give_a_Mouse_a_Cookie? Apparently if you give Josh and Kate a house they will probably ask for _______.

The Project

When we began looking for a house, Josh and I seemed to agree on one thing. We wanted a PROJECT. Not a little project but a "whole house needs to be gutted" type of project. We knew from our last house that we are project people and that we would not be happy with renovations done by another owner. Why waste the money for an already renovated home, when we would want to tear it out in a year?  So after about two weeks of searching, we decided that we had found the house. It had everything we wanted: 

• Large Lot - Our Santa Rosa Beach lot was the size of a postage stamp
• Trees - Our SRB lot also lacked trees
• Good School System
• Quiet Street
• A Project: The house had not been updated since it was built in 1958

After a few times back and forth with the owners, the house was under contract. We closed on the house in September and I snapped these pictures to document the before.

View From The Street

 Glamorous Entry

Current Family Room

(The Previous Owner LOVED Pink)

Dining Room

Kitchen

Original Pink Oven

We have all the Paperwork and it is in Perfect Condition

This will soon be on Ebay!

 Breakfast Area in Kitchen

Back Family Room

Hallway

Guest Bedroom No 1

Guest Bathroom



Guest Bedroom No 2

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Stairs to Basement

Basement

Basement

Backyard

Chapter 1: The Beach

Josh and I started the first chapter of our adult/married life together in Santa Rosa Beach in 2005 in the house shown above. Although we loved Santa Rosa Beach and our cute little house, we would end up discussing the possibility of a move each year and this year was no exception. We began evaluating a move at the beginning of July and by the end of July it was official...we were moving to Birmingham.