Renovation project: Farmhouse

Now that I've introduced myself a little bit, I'd like to introduce our current project!

This little white house might not look like much, but we've got plans for this old gal!

This house is part of a large piece of property that we bought and it includes over a hundred acres of farm ground. Our original plan was to build a new custom home in a different place, but after running into many issues, we decided to pivot.

This is a smaller home than we were originally planning, but we've come up with some ways to make it work. I've always loved getting really creative in our house options. I'm not kidding when I tell you we've lived in a hundred year old off grid farmhouse, a schoolhouse, and a library. We see the possibilities in a lot of different scenarios! If you are feeling really adventurous, you can go read my old blog I kept about our time in that off grid farmhouse.

Once we decided to pivot to renovating this farmhouse, we initially thought we would just do some cosmetic work...new flooring or paint. Then we realized that we needed more room, so we decided to convert the garage to a master bedroom suite. And it just kept escalating 😂

The plan now is new windows, new siding, garage conversion, new back mudroom/porch, new front porch, new addition/library, convert the basement into bedrooms, new flooring, new kitchen and most exciting of all, a complete layout shift.

And that's how projects escalate...it's very common in renovations to start at one point and to finish at another. That's why it's super important to keep your budget in mind when making decisions.

And of course, once you start digging into the walls, all sorts of fun surprises are waiting for you! We've already had to add additional blocking to the sheathing and tear out all the drywall and walls in the basement due to mold. I do NOT play around with mold. My health was super affected by mold in another home we lived in and it's taken years to get my health back.

Here are a few images from Sketchup where I was playing around with new window placement, trying to get the best from both an inside and an outside perspective.

I'll be back to talk about our decision making process and how we arrived at the window placement/addition/porch sizes!