Our Renovation Story...let's start at the beginning.

THE BACKGROUND

If you follow me on Instagram you've probably seen some renovation photos over the past six months. I had planned to blog about the progress while it was happening but then I decided I would wait until the end. And now it's not quite the end but I feel that we're close. So so close.

Here's our house before it was our house (thanks to Google Street View). In need of a little (ok a lot) of TLC, shrub removal, and a new roof.

And here was our house in October 2014 just days before our renovation began. I'll also note that our house was a flip. The original owner was a sweet 90 yr old woman who sold it to a local real estate developer who flipped this thing six ways to Sunday. The whole first floor and finished basement were basically brought to the studs and updated. When we looked at this house we fell in love with the fresh coastal feel and attention to detail. Beautiful beadboard, built-ins and bow window in the living room (the 3 B's!), updated (if not still a little small) kitchen, and best of all - a completely unfinished walk up attic ripe with possibility!

Some of the things that also attracted us to this house were a result of lessons learned from our last house. After living in the country with nothing around us, we chose East Greenwich, Rhode Island for all that it has to offer by way of fabulous schools, amazing restaurants, and east access to highways smack dab in the middle of the state. Another priority was a smaller house with features we love, rather than a giant house with lots of space, but very square, unrefined features like in our last house. And finally, we wanted a smaller yard. After living on 2 acres we realized that lawn mowing was not something we wanted to be doing all weekend every weekend even with a riding mower so we opted for less yard this time around. And after this past summer I can tell you it's life changing! It takes us 30-45 min to mow the lawn with a rechargeable push mower. Which is awesome because it gives us much more time to visit the beach down the street!

After a leisurely summer of barely mowing the lawn and going to the beach, we decided it was time to investigate contractors and found three options to investigate. In the end, we went with Legacy Construction in Warwick, RI and they got to work on the Monday before Halloween.

THE RENOVATION
Our doorbell rang at 7:30 am that Monday and a flurry of activity began while we were getting ready for work. By the time we left the house around 8:15, pieces of roof were flying off.