Hey guys! I’ve been meaning to get this blog series going for a while and thanks to a rainy hurricane weekend, I’m finally getting on it.

If you follow me on Instagram then you know that B and I recently purchased a home that we will be renovating. A few people asked if I would blog about the renovation and I thought it would be great to document everything to be able to look back on!

So I will be writing a few posts chronicling what has gone on so far over the past month and then moving forward will hopefully blog with weekly updates. So here we go!

Deciding to Sell

We are currently living in a house that B purchased right before we started dating. He purchased the house as an investment and his intentions have always been to sell it around this time. B was upfront with me when we got engaged about wanting to sell the house this summer, so we’ve avoided things like hanging art and painting rooms.

I really love our current house, especially the kitchen. But it has been a bummer to not really be able to put a personal touch on things, and I was excited to house shop together and find something that we can make our own.

In terms of actual house shopping, we are in our early/mid-thirties and wanted to buy something that we could see ourselves in for a really long time. We started house shopping shortly after our wedding in April and narrowed down all of the things that were important for us in a house:

• Location close to downtown with a good school district and low crime
• Good lot, spacious yard with privacy or the potential for privacy
• House size that is comfortable for us a single couple but that we could grow into if we ever decided to have kids (or adopt 7 dogs… the latter is much more likely)

B was much more into the investment side of a home purchase and I was all about the lot and privacy. I think we balanced each other out pretty well.

Finding Our House

The housing market is crazy in Charlotte right now. Things sell right away and bidding wars are common. It adds a lot of pressure to house shopping! B and I had a really hard time finding a house we liked…. everything we found was either too far away from downtown. had a crappy lot or a tiny back yard. Anything that looked halfway decent seemed to go under contract immediately.

In July, we came across a new listing for a beautiful 2-story colonial in one of our favorite neighborhoods. The house was built in the 40s and had a pretty spacious back yard. It had an obviously poor addition in the 1980s so we knew we would need to do some something about it down the road, but overall the house had a lot of potential. We loved the location and the bones of the house so we decided to put in an offer the next day. Before we knew it, we were under contract!

Inspection

We were expecting a colorful home inspection report because of the age and visible condition of the home, but the findings were worse than what we anticipated. The house needed a new roof and new windows, had electrical issues, and all parts of the addition basically needed to be removed.

We seriously thought about whether or not we should back out of the house purchase after the inspection report. On paper, it seemed like a lot to deal with! But it was the first house that we mutually loved, so we thought we should look into the repairs more before backing out. We met with a contractor to discuss a potential renovation, and he assured us that we could easily fix things that came up on the inspection while customizing a great home for us at the same time. He also had some great suggestions for a renovation itself. We also started met with an architect to discuss everything that needed to be done, and everyone assured us that the house would be amazing with a little bit of work. So we decided to jump in!