Look for What’s Not There
For our 4 year anniversary in our home, I decided to relive our walk-out basement renovation…Yippee! No, but seriously it will be fun to do this with those of you who like this kind of stuff. We purchased our home, second home together, in 2016. Matt and I spent the first seven years of marriage in an 1100 square foot home off Sycamore View in Memphis—the house we brought Charlee home from the hospital and where I gave birth to Levi in his bedroom. This was the longest I had ever lived in a house…EVER — having moved around so much growing up. It was really hard for me to leave, but we were starting to think about the future with our growing family, schools, commute time, etc.
This was my first experience in the home buying process. Matt showed me our previous home when we were engaged, but that was the extent of my involvement. As you can imagine, I was pumped! At first, I was trying to convince Matt to build a house. We wanted a little bit of land, he wanted a lake and I didn’t want a cookie cutter home. We kept finding lots with no utility hook ups and we were told it could cost anywhere from $10,000-$25,000 to run electricity, water, gas, etc and that this couldn’t be included in our home owners loan. So we decided to look at existing homes. After searching for a few months with no luck, I changed my search fields on Zillow to 3-bedrooms instead of 4 and expanded a little further out than we had originally planned. I found our home, I just had to look beyond what was there. We loved the land, it was just what we wanted and it felt right. With 4 acres and a pond, we knew this was the house, but how would we make it work? The finished part of the house was only 600 square feet bigger than our current first home. There was the potential to renovate the walk-out basement, but we did not have the out of pocket money to do any major renovations at the time. We had learned quite a few things on our search, one being that (most) renovation loans usually only cover cosmetic changes and not structural. This basement needed it all. At this point, I was pretty worn out on the searching process and feeling a bit defeated. One morning at bible study, I was sharing my frustration and a friend who was also a realtor told me about a 203k loan and gave me the name of someone at Community Mortgage. I immediately called Mrs. Debbie, our realtor, and she was on it!
This process was very overwhelming. The loan calls for everything worked out before closing! Because the previous home owners were AMAZING and for some reason decided to give us patience and grace through the process, we were able to do it. A 203k loan calls for blueprints drawn up for the renovation, a certified contractor with a bid proposal, current appraisal and a second appraisal based on the plans for renovation. Can you imagine doing all this on a home that is not even yours yet?! Definitely calls for willing and patient sellers. We lost our contractor in the middle of the process and had to find another one willing to work with a renovation loan. We found out contractors do not necessarily want to do this because the bank controls the timing of payments. Looking back, we see God’s hand all over it! The sellers could have pulled out at any point because it was taking too long. We had someone from church help with the architectural plans. We found a contractor pretty soon after losing our first one and he was timely on getting the cost back to us. Because of this home and renovation, we had plenty of room to grow, which at the time, we had no idea that is exactly what God had planned for us…adding three new big kids from Belize!
OK sorry for the long back story! In the next several posts, I will walk through our renovation with you! I was an insane person when it came to spreadsheets, details and timeline. I was a full time working, pregnant mom of two toddlers. To say the least, I was no fun for our contractors!
5 Things I learned from the renovation:
1. Find your inner CONFIDENCE!
You are paying for this and that makes you the BOSS. Do not be afraid to ask your contractors to redo something. This is your home! I was so afraid to say things and then I waiting too long and they were even more frustrated with me. Learn what you like and stick to your guns.
2. If you can dream it, they can do it! (Within budget, obviously)
Do not let anyone tell you, “well it’s not usually done that way” or “we have never done that before”. Creativity starts somewhere. New trends have to start somewhere, but who cares…as long as you like it! A tub in the middle of the floor because you want a straight sight line to the lake…is just fine! Do it! You have tiles you bought years ago in Mexico because just maybe one day you would renovate a house…put those bad boys in the shower cutout!
3. Have fun during the process!
It will take way longer than proposed timeline, mistakes will happen, many things will go wrong, but just enjoy it. I know it is a lot of money, but the stress will kill you if you let it. You’d rather it be done right, then fast. Learn to go with the flow.
4. Do your research!
You can always find a less expensive way. You do not have to go with what your contractor suggests. They bring in lights you do not like, ask for specifics on size and go find your own.
5. Stay organized!
Google drive is your best friend, share it with your contractor. Having a spreadsheet, google folder, visuals helped throughout the process. It saved time and stress.
Layout of existing basement
Every room was cut off from the other with no central heating and air, drop ceilings, concrete floors and a random shower in one of the rooms.
Layout for renovation
Before pictures
Hearth Room/Family Room:
Hall/Mechanical Room:
Room #1/ Renovated Bath Area:
I would love to answer any questions in the comments below! Stayed tuned for room-by-room renovations.