Some of you that know me personally or who have been reading along for a while know that my husband and I gutted {down to the studs} our home when we bought it a few years ago.  It was right after we got married and a true adventure since we lived in the house with our 4 dogs while it was being done.  I thought it might be fun to share with you the stages of the renovation and the decisions we made along the way.

A little back history….Hubby and I both owned homes before we met so this wasn’t our 1st rodeo as they say.   My last home was a renovation job as well.  Actually if I could ever dig up pictures of that house before and after it would be fun to share.  During my 1st renovation project I was working at AOL and traveling globally 3 out of four weeks in a month.  My fabulous mom was my Semi Realtor/General Contractor.  She actually found the house for me after an exhausting search.   I remember being at a layover in CA coming back from India and she called and said “I think I found the perfect house.  It’s a bit over budget and needs work but do you want to look at it tonight when you get home?”.  Keep in mind I had been traveling for 20 hours but was desperate to find a house.   We went and looked at it and put a contract in that night!  I loved that home it was in the heart of Falls Church City and I could walk to everything!  Over the course of a couple months mom was my partner in crime every step of the way.  When I’d come home from being on the road we would go and select kitchen cabinets, flooring, paint colors, etc. and then she would make sure it all was implemented while I was gone.  Such a super mom!

Anyhow on to my hubby and I and our renovation project.  We sold James’s house literally the weekend we put it on the market so with a contract pending and 4 dogs waiting we needed to find something fast!  We put in a couple offers on a few different houses and one we lost the other just didn’t pan out.  This house we looked at a couple times and the 1st time I literally walked in it and it smelled so bad I said “No thank you!” and didn’t even want to look upstairs.  James fell in love with the backyard.

We passed the 1st time on this baby and found another house we loved but got beat out…so we revisited this house.  At this point we were going to have to rent if we didn’t find something.  After much negotiation we bought her.  We were thinking she would need some work and planned on taking down a few walls and gutting the kitchen but figured other than that paint, pulling up carpet and refinishing the floors would help a lot.  Yeah right!

We got our contractor in the house and he quickly informed us that we had plywood on the walls and no insulations … oh and P.S. you need to rewire the entire house.  Ughhhh. How were we going to do this and live here with 4 dogs?  Well we lived in the pretty nasty 300 sq ft basement for 4 months while they gutted the entire top 2 floors down to the studs.  I’ll dig up a picture of where we were living it’s scary & hilarious all at the same time.   So here are a few BEFORE pics for you…..stay tuned for the next blog post.  If you want to cheat and see a few picture of the house now go here.