#2 - Why add on? Why not just sell?
(I wrote this yesterday morning, and pulished it just now, so the dates/days are confusing.)
We have already informed several people about our plans to add onto our house and we get a lot of questions. The most commonly asked question is:
Why add on, why not just sell?
Before I answer, please know that anything I say about our family priorities and the things we want out of a home are specific to us. When I say, "We don't need giant rooms." or "We won't use this-or-that type of loan." I'm not saying that someone who has giant rooms or other loans has their priorities mixed up. Anything about us is not something against anyone who does things differently than us. MMMkay?!
Onto the question! This question is simple, the answer is pretty complex. I have been dreaming of moving out of this house for many years because of its small size. I love the atmosphere of our home. I love our neighbors. I love our city. I do not love that our house has no family room, and that the main bathroom is very small. It's so small that we had to buy a compact toilet, and a vanity that was one of about 3.4 options available on all of the internet.
I also would prefer to have a little more counter space and kitchen space for the amount of cooking that I currently do (we eat almost every meal at home), and for the amount of cooking I aspire to do (I would love to do one-day meal prep, more baking from scratch, canning, giant meals for giant groups of people.) We enjoy entertaining and we love being a place for people to land if they need somewhere to stay overnight. We also want to use our home to minister to anyone who has a need of any kind...a place to go for a meal during a tough time, somewhere to stay when they're passing through, etc. etc. All of this is possible in our house, but it's cumbersome, and takes some skillz, technique and extra effort to pull it all of with out losing one's mind. And you know what happens when the mama loses her mind? Let's just say it's far worse than toothpaste smeared all over a bathroom wall.
It seems moving is the perfect solution to this. However, there were several other things to consider. First, the current market in our neighborhood (i.e. school district where the kids attend) is very active and sought after. We don't want more than a 15 year mortgage. Most houses in our desired size would absolutely max-out our budget and would still require renovation and/or updating. We would maybe get a little bit more space or one more bedroom and/or basement, but we would be starting at square one with home projects and maintenance after already putting a ton of money and work (Matt does everything himself) into our current house.
Aside from a few minor aesthetic details, over the past 13 years, the structure of our house hase been updated as needed (bathrooms, window flashing, windows, roof and sheeting, gutters, vents, landscape), and done so by a guy (Matt) who is very particular about doing things right and well. Stylistically speaking, our house is pretty much exactly how we want it (flooring, trim, walls), and any home projects left to do (more trim, lighting, interior doors, HVAC, electric...I can't really think of anything else!) will either be addressed in the renovation (HVAC and electric) or can be taken care of down the road (lighting and doors) because they aren't essential for daily living.
Adding onto our house (1 master bedroom with bath, 1 family room, 1 upstairs guest room with bathroom, plus moving the laundry and HVAC out of the kitchen into the addition.) will cost us significantly less than what it would cost to sell this house and purchase another one. And once we're finished, we'll know our house inside and out, it'll be mostly complete, and we know that everything that has been done to it has been done well.
We aren't looking for enormous. We need more rooms, but we do not need giant rooms. Our new rooms will be a nice size for living and entertaining, but they will not be unnecessarily large.
We have been working on this house for the 13 years we've lived here. Our kids are 8, 10 and 12, and right now we are prioritizing being finished with major home projects so we can have even more time to enjoy this part of their childhood. When we moved into this house, it was just the two of us with Baby on the way. At that time, we had lots of time and a little money. At this point in time we have more money than we had in the beginning, and less time to pour into home projects while we're busy raising our oh-so-precious (also crazy) kids! We're still of the mind that it's best for me to be a homemaker (who always has a side-gig for a little extra cash-flow), so we're still a single-income family and there are still sacrifices we make in order for me to be home to run the show here, but we're able to spend a little more to get what we need more immediately and then tie up all the loose ends and be done tackling the enormous projects. And then we can kiss major home projects good-bye for a good long while.
The beginning of this project was this past Monday. We remortgaged our house with the cost needed for construction rolled into that mortgage (I'm sure I'm not using the correct terms.) If we weren't able to wrap it up into a mortgage we would not have even considered it. We worked hard to get out from under all other debt--car payments, student loans and consumer debt--to be left with only a mortgage. We don't owe anyone any money except the bank that has our mortgage and that feels good!! It would've taken us a decade to save up the cash to do this build while still enjoying life, and there's no way we would've considered taking out a personal loan, maxing out credit cards, using a line of credit, borrowing from our retirement or taking any other type of loan. Being able to have it all neat and tidy and taken care of in one house payment was a priority for us. So, that's what we did!
Now it's Saturday and we have a dumpster in the driveway and Matt's out renting a jack hammer to take out part of our patio. The brick siding comes off today as well. Once this demolition starts, there's no turning back! Which is scary!
But, I read a quote by Elisabeth Elliot (She's good. Read her books.) just yesterday. It don't remember it exactly but it was along the lines of, "If you wait for the fear to go away before beginning something new, you'll never start. Just do it scared."
Sounds about right!
Here are the exterior before shots. I'm getting up the nerve to show all of the interior before shots I took of our closets! Just to show how and where we store things. We have limited closet space and no basement, so it has taken some serious creativity though the years!
We have already informed several people about our plans to add onto our house and we get a lot of questions. The most commonly asked question is:
Why add on, why not just sell?
Before I answer, please know that anything I say about our family priorities and the things we want out of a home are specific to us. When I say, "We don't need giant rooms." or "We won't use this-or-that type of loan." I'm not saying that someone who has giant rooms or other loans has their priorities mixed up. Anything about us is not something against anyone who does things differently than us. MMMkay?!
Onto the question! This question is simple, the answer is pretty complex. I have been dreaming of moving out of this house for many years because of its small size. I love the atmosphere of our home. I love our neighbors. I love our city. I do not love that our house has no family room, and that the main bathroom is very small. It's so small that we had to buy a compact toilet, and a vanity that was one of about 3.4 options available on all of the internet.
I also would prefer to have a little more counter space and kitchen space for the amount of cooking that I currently do (we eat almost every meal at home), and for the amount of cooking I aspire to do (I would love to do one-day meal prep, more baking from scratch, canning, giant meals for giant groups of people.) We enjoy entertaining and we love being a place for people to land if they need somewhere to stay overnight. We also want to use our home to minister to anyone who has a need of any kind...a place to go for a meal during a tough time, somewhere to stay when they're passing through, etc. etc. All of this is possible in our house, but it's cumbersome, and takes some skillz, technique and extra effort to pull it all of with out losing one's mind. And you know what happens when the mama loses her mind? Let's just say it's far worse than toothpaste smeared all over a bathroom wall.
It seems moving is the perfect solution to this. However, there were several other things to consider. First, the current market in our neighborhood (i.e. school district where the kids attend) is very active and sought after. We don't want more than a 15 year mortgage. Most houses in our desired size would absolutely max-out our budget and would still require renovation and/or updating. We would maybe get a little bit more space or one more bedroom and/or basement, but we would be starting at square one with home projects and maintenance after already putting a ton of money and work (Matt does everything himself) into our current house.
Aside from a few minor aesthetic details, over the past 13 years, the structure of our house hase been updated as needed (bathrooms, window flashing, windows, roof and sheeting, gutters, vents, landscape), and done so by a guy (Matt) who is very particular about doing things right and well. Stylistically speaking, our house is pretty much exactly how we want it (flooring, trim, walls), and any home projects left to do (more trim, lighting, interior doors, HVAC, electric...I can't really think of anything else!) will either be addressed in the renovation (HVAC and electric) or can be taken care of down the road (lighting and doors) because they aren't essential for daily living.
Adding onto our house (1 master bedroom with bath, 1 family room, 1 upstairs guest room with bathroom, plus moving the laundry and HVAC out of the kitchen into the addition.) will cost us significantly less than what it would cost to sell this house and purchase another one. And once we're finished, we'll know our house inside and out, it'll be mostly complete, and we know that everything that has been done to it has been done well.
We aren't looking for enormous. We need more rooms, but we do not need giant rooms. Our new rooms will be a nice size for living and entertaining, but they will not be unnecessarily large.
We have been working on this house for the 13 years we've lived here. Our kids are 8, 10 and 12, and right now we are prioritizing being finished with major home projects so we can have even more time to enjoy this part of their childhood. When we moved into this house, it was just the two of us with Baby on the way. At that time, we had lots of time and a little money. At this point in time we have more money than we had in the beginning, and less time to pour into home projects while we're busy raising our oh-so-precious (also crazy) kids! We're still of the mind that it's best for me to be a homemaker (who always has a side-gig for a little extra cash-flow), so we're still a single-income family and there are still sacrifices we make in order for me to be home to run the show here, but we're able to spend a little more to get what we need more immediately and then tie up all the loose ends and be done tackling the enormous projects. And then we can kiss major home projects good-bye for a good long while.
The beginning of this project was this past Monday. We remortgaged our house with the cost needed for construction rolled into that mortgage (I'm sure I'm not using the correct terms.) If we weren't able to wrap it up into a mortgage we would not have even considered it. We worked hard to get out from under all other debt--car payments, student loans and consumer debt--to be left with only a mortgage. We don't owe anyone any money except the bank that has our mortgage and that feels good!! It would've taken us a decade to save up the cash to do this build while still enjoying life, and there's no way we would've considered taking out a personal loan, maxing out credit cards, using a line of credit, borrowing from our retirement or taking any other type of loan. Being able to have it all neat and tidy and taken care of in one house payment was a priority for us. So, that's what we did!
Now it's Saturday and we have a dumpster in the driveway and Matt's out renting a jack hammer to take out part of our patio. The brick siding comes off today as well. Once this demolition starts, there's no turning back! Which is scary!
But, I read a quote by Elisabeth Elliot (She's good. Read her books.) just yesterday. It don't remember it exactly but it was along the lines of, "If you wait for the fear to go away before beginning something new, you'll never start. Just do it scared."
Sounds about right!
Here are the exterior before shots. I'm getting up the nerve to show all of the interior before shots I took of our closets! Just to show how and where we store things. We have limited closet space and no basement, so it has taken some serious creativity though the years!
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