And so it begins!

In January we (us and my parents) purchased the house we have been renting for almost 11 years! We are going to update the house and convert the garage into a bedroom with bathroom. We are thinking that we will either sell the house, rent it out or maybe live in it a bit longer once everything is done, depending on the housing market at that time but that is a ways out so for now we are just focusing on the remodel. 

We live on Holgate Blvd (in SE Portland) which can get really busy, especially during rush hour but being in the Woodstock neighborhood is a plus. It is very up and coming over here and last year the New Seasons opened on Woodstock and there are a bunch of yummy places to eat close by. We are on the bus line so public transportation is very easy and it doesn’t take very long to get to down town or up to the max. We are also in an excellent school District, the Woodstock school district, which has a Mandarin immersion program.

Last summer our neighbor sold her house (which she purchased about 3 years before for really good deal, but the house needed a TON of work) for $380K and she was also on Holgate, so it gives me hope that even though we are on a busy street it won’t deter people from wanting to buy.

I’m hoping to chronicle the adventure of remodeling our house, I’m not going to say that this will be a DIY exactly, because my husband has been a remodel carpenter since 2004 (holy crap that’s 12 years!) and he went to PCC (Portland Community College) and completed the Building Construction Technology Program before that, but we will be doing it all ourselves minus a couple of things we will sub out.

I don’t have any pictures of our house so I did a screen shot of google maps!

Remodeling any size house can be stressful but especially so when your house is less than 1000 sqft and you have three small children. Currently our house has two bedrooms and one bathroom, a living room and a kitchen with space for a kitchen table. There is a utility room with storage, a chest freezer and the laundry in it and a garage which is used for storage (basically the black hole of stuff). We have a super weird hallway between the bedrooms, bathroom and living room that has a doorway to the kitchen too but it doesn’t really make sense (will post pictures). We have a decent sized yard but our house is located basically in the middle but slightly west so the east side of the house has the biggest yard area.

This is gonna be fun folks! Will keep you updated as I believe we will be starting in the next week or so!s