Days to Estimated Completion Date: 170
"I just received notice that the permit is ready to pick up.
I will have in hand tomorrow morning."
- email from Joe, received 11/13/18
WOOHOO! After a year of dreaming, and months and months of detailed planning, today our contractor Joe will have our permit from the City of Dallas in hand and we'll be officially ready to start the project on December 3rd!
Background:
As you may (or may not!) know, we have been living in Adam's parents' house since May of 2014. His dad took a position as Faculty In Residence at SMU, which means his folks moved into a (very nice) apartment within one of the commons (dorm buildings) on the SMU campus. They asked us if we would be open to living in their house while they were gone, initially a three-year commitment. Um, no housing payment and a great house for three years? Sure! They decided to extend their FIR stay to five years, ending in May/June 2019, so we extended our plans to stay in their house ("2359") through that time.
Meanwhile, in the summer of last year, the house directly across the street from 2359 was listed for sale, for the first time in over 20 years. The couple who lived there had watched Adam and his brother grow up, and were pretty intrigued when Adam stopped by to say hello and that we might be interested in the house. After quite a bit of negotiation, we ended up buying the house ("2360")! We love that our kids will grow up so close to their grandparents, and that we'll be right across the street when Adam's folks get older, so we bit the bullet and seized a unique opportunity.
Since Adam's folks would still be at SMU for another year and a half, we rented out 2360 for one year, knowing we'd need several months to do all of the renovations we want to do - pretty big. Recently Adam spoke with our tenants, who were open to terminating the lease a month early, giving us another month for the renovations. So, they're out December 1 and demo begins December 3!
The Plan:
Currently the house has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two living rooms, a dining room, a separate eating area off of the kitchen (breakfast room), a laundry room, a large back patio (12' x 40'), and a small two-car garage (19' x 19') on the front.
(If you haven't yet, you can browse pictures from when we rented it out on our Shutterfly page here.)
In what we're calling the "south wing", where the bedrooms are, we won't do a whole lot: in the bedrooms we'll add new flooring (goodbye, ugly green carpet!) and paint; we will completely renovate the bathrooms to a modern style (goodbye, ugly pink and blue tile and porcelain!).
The major changes include adding footage and opening up the floor plan. We will finish out the existing garage to create more living space, and take in the back patio to be part of the house. Inside, we'll demo the walls dividing the living and dining areas and the kitchen to have one big open space in the middle of the house, open from the front wall to the back wall of the house. We'll then create a new master suite in what we're calling the "north wing" of the house: laundry room, master bathroom, master bedroom, huge walk-in closet, a study only accessible through the master bedroom (hello, kid-free zone!), and significant storage area.
The Floorplans:
Existing Floorplan:
New Floorplan:
("Studio" is our study, and "Hall" is our storage room)
Experiment - Can you see the existing plan faintly behind the new plan here?
Next Steps:
I think that's all I'll post for now... but stay tuned! Things are about to get exciting -- and soon!!
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