Renovation Update: 2024 into 2025
To recap: in spring 2024, we interviewed five design/build firms; we signed with one in June and, over the next six months, created a whole-house renovation plan and then tried to scale it down to fit our budget. By Thanksgiving, though, Jon and I realized that we were not on the same page with the firm we’d chosen, and we ended our working relationship with them in mid-December.
Click here for all home posts to catch up on the details.
It was an incredibly frustrating - and expensive - process, but we’ve been reminding ourselves that it was a valuable learning experience. And it means that we’re not starting totally from scratch as we head into 2025 with a new firm, one that came highly recommended by my friend Heather, who is working with them on her Capitol Hill rowhouse!
We’ve had two meetings with the lead and designer from that firm and one call with the architect, who is coming over tomorrow to walk through our house. If all goes smoothly, which we really think it should since we’re jumping into the deep end thanks to the work we did with the first firm, we should be submitting drawings for permits in early March and breaking ground in June.
On the bright side, we’ve had months more to add to our savings account than we’d originally planned. And, if we do have to move out of our house and in with my parents over the summer, it’ll be super helpful timing given Jon’s travel schedule in June and July as well as our vacations in August (as opposed to trying to move back into our renovated house over the summer amidst all of that). I’m not going to lie, though… it was really tough to throw our annual Hanukkah party in our unrenovated house after wildly promising last year that we’d have to skip it in 2024 because we’d be mid-renovation.
No one else cares, of course. Our kitchen is literally falling apart and our single bathroom very clearly hasn’t been touched since the ‘70s, but that doesn’t stop our friends from accepting our invitations and having a great time at our home. It’s still hard to feel like we’re behind this admittedly arbitrary timeline that we - okay, I - set for us, though. From what I hear about big home projects, I should get used to that feeling!
