October??

Today I am both excited and a bit anxious....

We may be starting this project in ONE month!! I can't believe it! I have done a lot of looking around the house the past few days wondering what I will pack up, what will come with us to our temporary home, and what I will toss! In about a week, two tops, we will know for sure if we are moving forward next month...here is an update!

We really LOVE the contractor. We went Thursday night up to his home and saw his work, and some of the materials he was recommending to us. Both he and his wife were so kind to open up there home and we chatted with them for a while. Mike and I both agree that he will be very easy to work with!

On Friday we met with our mortgage broker and got the low down on how this would all work. She ran some numbers for us and we decided on a maximum budget for the project based on the final mortgage payment numbers. After we met with her we went out to lunch and discussed our plan. It looks like to get the project into our budget we are going to have to cut some things out...which is fine, as long as we get 3 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and a new exterior, I am one happy lady!

We are probably not going to touch the garage at this point, which means we won't have the two extra rooms over the garage, but those rooms are a bonus and right now we are working on necessities! By cutting out the addition over the garage we save all of that money and also avoid having to put in a sprinkler system in the whole house. Right there saves us at least $10K, that decision is a no-brainer as far as I am concerned! So, we will just put the second floor over the main house and little addition that we currently have, and save the garage for another day year! We will put new siding on the entire house and hopefully have them build the front porch at the same time, but we will probably hold off on the back deck for now! Of course we are making these predictions without actually having a quote, but we have an idea what the quote will come in at and have an idea of what these extras will cost, so we think we have it pretty close to our budget....but we could be totally off....

Our To Do List for the Week

• Check with the Fire Chief to make sure that we are correct in assuming that if we bring our renovation total to below 50% we can scrap the sprinkler budget.
• Get the feasibility study from the the inspector that came out to the house. Basically a document saying that, yes, we can do the project we want to do.
• Cross our fingers and toes while we anxiously patiently wait for the bid.
• Researching what we want for fixtures and paint colors, as we may be making those decisions very soon, and I don't like to be rushed...
• While unrelated to the project, I have a certain 6 year old that I will be sending off to her first day of 1st grade this week! She is very excited and I would be lying if I said, I wasn't a wee bit excited myself!

 Stay tuned, by Friday I will either be jumping for joy and packing like crazy or very sad that we couldn't make the budget work. Today I am confident that it will work out!!!