Home Improvement : The Journey

Back in October of 2005 my wife and I signed a contract with a local contractor to add on to the back of our home. We added 13' to the back which meant that we added a new room in the basement, expanded our kitchen, expanded our master bedroom, moved our master bath, redid a deck, put dry wall into our exisiting basement, added a Beam vacuum system (to both old and new portions of home) and a new roof.

Like many couples who think of adding on, we did our research: we poured over magazines, books, walk through Home Depot, Lowes, furiture stores, watch all the shows: HGTV, Trading Spaces, While You were Out, Clean Sweep, (and my favorite, House Lift, do a search on Discovery.com). We went to open houses, remodeling "shows", took in all the Lawn and Garden shows that are held in abundance here in the midwest. We went to IKEA and got ideas--loads, etc. We were stopping and starting as to whether we even wanted to remodel or just move. My banker suggested...no...pleaded that I talk to a real estate agent about our plans, and get his take. As it turns out, the agent we were referred to,, was an established agent but was dating a parent, whose daughter wasn't the kindest to our daughter.... We did entertain him and listened to the fact that our home probably would be, by the time it was done, "...the most expensive house in our neighborhood, and that we'd never get what we put into it, when we go to sell it...." Yea, yea, blah, blah....yawn. It is obvious that at that time, we'd made our decision to remodel.

Now, had I been really intelligent, I would have blogged everything that has happened since those early days. Well, instead what we'll have here is some real intelligence about how one contractor works. Now to his credit, the majority of our home is complete but we are still longing for a few items to be finished and complete. To his credit, the majority of the work has been first class, looks great, and I am proud to brag about what we've done.