New Adventure

We have started down the path of our home remodel. It is both exciting and terrifying. Exciting because the end will be glorious—I only hope to live long enough to fully enjoy it (more on that in a moment). It is terrifying because the scope of the work we want to do is, uh, massive.

Step One was to call in a designer to help us determine which items on our wish list are feasible and which are fantasy. To his credit, designer one whom we will call George, did not laugh at my wish list item of a firepole from the upstairs bedroom to the fridge. In fact, he claim to have integrated one in a previous proposal which was ultimately rejected by the client. Score one point for George. While reviewing our wish list—which is a huge poster-size post-it note hanging in the living room, btw—he asked what we meant by "babyproof the house." I told him that item could be disregarded since none have gotten in yet. (Actually, it was added by a visiting friend who didn't seem to think our random piles of straightpins were safe for her young 'un.)

We knew the remodel fell into the category of massive undertaking when George said he was "ethically bound to tell you it would be cheaper to raze the house and build new rather than try to retrofit" our wish list.

This is where the question of my mortality comes in to play. The T and I do not see ourselves taking out a loan to pay for this all at once. Rather, we have a pile of cash now and we will use it as best we can to pay various tradespeople like carpenters, electricians and plumbers to do major things like take out a bearing wall, rewire the house and possibly move a toilet or two. Then we will jump in with our own tools and do as much as we can while our cash reserves build up again. Taking this approach, it may cost us more to then call the electrician to come back and rewire another section of the house rather than doing all the wiring all at once. But to do all the wiring may mean having all the walls open at once and I don't see us able to live in the space during the remodel.

When we sat down with designer two, whom we will call Brien, he asked us up front what kind of money we wanted to spend on this project. He asked this while scanning the previously mentioned poster of ideas. We said we had 20 years to spend on the project since we're not going anywhere. I'm not sure how he took this. Either we're adventurous or completely insane. It was tough to tell what his eyes were saying.

Both designers are off pondering what they can do with this space. Stay tuned for when the results start rolling in.