2018 - The Year of the Reno!

Happy New Year, Happy New Year! It has been a few months (read: 6 months!) since we were last posted to let you know about our summer suffering without AC. A lot has happened since then, but not much that is visible in the house yet. Knock on wood, but the renovation should begin in honest at the end of the month. In the meantime, let's catch you up. 

1. We finalized our design. 

We worked with Hill & Hurtt to finalize the design for our house. Since we first walked through it we have had a general sense of the design, so the drawings came together pretty quickly.  The only two areas that took time to think through were the third floor design (which you helped with!) and the back wall of windows that we wanted to add in the kitchen.

If you recall, our kitchen has two awesome long windows with a wall in between and no door out to the back garden.  I have been dreaming of making that a full wall of windows for some time and we worked through a lot of iterations trying to conceptualize the right design. While it was tempting to add some french-inspired steel doors, we ultimately settled on a design that maintains a look in line with the style and history of the house.

Here is where we ended up:

We are going to create a small bay with a door out the center. While not pictured, there will be steps out the back and into the garden. The windows will be widened from what they are now but will maintain the same double-hung style that is in the house right now. 

2. We went out for bids with contractors.

The process of finding a contractor for the project took longer than we had anticipated going into the reno. For those who haven't been through it, it took about 2-3 months. Hill & Hurtt helped us identify three contractors, we met with everyone, walked through the house, in some cases did second walk throughs, provided the contractors with the drawings, and then received bids.

There was a 100k difference between the lowest bid and the highest bid (yikes) so needless to say we quickly whittled it down to two contractors. We then spent time seeing projects both contractors had completed and then chose someone (MasterCraft Solutions)!

3. We got our permits (!!!!)

We have heard horror stories about the permitting process and our home is in a historic district, so we were nervous about the permit process. At the end of November, Kyle, Eric Hurtt, and I went down to the DCRA in the hopes of being able to go through the Homeowners Center for a permit and avoid the dreaded Project Docs online process. (Project Docs is notorious for delaying the permitting process for many months). 

We were not successful in going through the Homeowners Center because they considered the 10-inch bay window we were adding to be an extension of the home and they can't approve extensions. After about 10 minutes of anxiety at the thought of our project being potentially delayed 3-6 months, we were told we could try and "walk through" the permit. 

For anyone who doesn't know what "walking through" a permit means, DCRA has a DMV-style process where you take a ticket and then walk your drawings through all the different permits for review - Zoning, Structural, Mechanical, Plumbing, etc. You get a number to meet with a Zoning representative who reviews your project and either approves it or raises items that need to be fixed. Once you have been approved by Zoning you get in line to meet with a Structural expert and so on. 

As with the DMV, it is tedious, takes hours, and you are subject to the whims of the person you meet with. Needless to say, we did not get out of Zoning on day one, but it only took one trip back to DCRA to get what we needed.

4. We got financing (or will have financing soon).

While we haven't quite signed the loan documents, we are finalizing a construction loan with Sandy Spring Bank, which has a 1 year construction loan into mortgage program. If everything goes smoothly (fingers crossed!) we will be closing on financing next week.

5. We found an apartment.

Lastly, we can't live in the house while we are renovating, so we needed to find an apartment. We did some house hunting and have a one-bedroom apartment lined up in the building directly behind our house. We couldn't pass up the convenience of living close by and checking in on the home, plus we would miss our neighborhood and neighbors too much!

Okay, so you're all caught up (mostly). If everything goes smoothly we will be moving out in the next two weeks and starting the reno at the end of month (eeek!).