Three months later...

So...I started this months ago with grand intentions of updating it every week or so with pictures and stories as our renovation unfolded. Three months later, it turns out we've done tons of work...and I haven't written about any of it!

Since becoming the proud owners of 1480 Monroe Drive we have completely gutted both bathrooms, refinished our floors, refaced the fireplace, stained our cabinets, installed granite counter tops, turns half of our attic into a FABULOUS closet, and even done a little bit of gardening. Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it :)

I'll go into more detail on a specific projects in future posts, but here are a few pictures that will give you an idea of just how far we have come...


We ripped out our hallway to make space for a master bath and a staircase to the attic. Piles of sheet rock and layers of dust covered pretty much every inch of the house for a week while the demolition took place and then the new walls took shape.


Everything in the house got crammed into the kitchen while we sanded and refinished our wood floors. Luckily, this part of the project only took two days!


Gus completely gutted the bathroom and added space to make room for a master bath. This is what it looks like after it was gutted...


And this is what it looks like after Gus finished :)


We are mid-way through completely updating our kitchen as we speak. The granite is in but the cabinets, back splash, and new floor are still in process. Hopefully pictures of our finished kitchen will be ready soon..but that's all for now from your two fearless renovators :)

The Renovations Begin

Like I mentioned, our first love nest needs a LOT of work! It is a tiny three bedroom, one and a half bath with outdated bathrooms, and dingy, half-finished basement, tiny closets, and peeling paint. Other than the location, the potential for renovation is probably the thing that excited us the most about the Monroe house. Gus wanted a "project", but I'm afraid he may have gotten more than he bargained for!

We have a week and a half before we have to be out of our condo, so the plan for phase one includes gutting both bathrooms, getting rid of a hallway, moving the door to the front bedroom and the half bath, building a master bath, and finishing half of the attic, which Gus is going to turn into the closet of my dreams :) We also need to pain the entire interior of the house and sand and refinish the wood floors.

Seems like a bit too much to fit into the two week time frame we are working with, but Gus seems confident he can make it happen. Here are a few of our "before" pictures...

Our Story Begins...

My husband and I have the most incredible love story. We stumbled upon each other unexpectedly after months of missing each other, and knew almost instantly that this was what we had been searching for our entire lives.

We started dating in September of 2007, got engaged in February of 2008, and were married on October 19, 2008. To say it has been a whirlwind would not even begin to tell the story!





Last week we made probably the second biggest decision of our lives...we bought our first house! We had been looking for months...and months...and months. We had made offers on three houses before this one and had watched all three fall through for one reason or another, each time feeling more disappointed than the time before. Everywhere we turned someone else was talking about the fact that it was a "buyers market" out there. We listened to CNN talk about it, read about it in the NY Times, and got constant reassurance from our Realtor that the deal of a lifetime was just around the next corner, so we kept looking. We had been living in the heart of Midtown since we got married and wanted to stay as close to the city as possible, so most of our house hunting revolved around Grant Park, an area just South of Downtown Atlanta. It wasn't our dream location, but based on a ton of research looking through hundreds of comps around town, we decided it was the closest we could get for now.

Speaking of our dream location, where we really wanted to live was in the Virginia Highlands. I rented an amazing house there the year before Gus and I got married, and it was always the place we talked about settling eventually. Too bad even the most simple bungalow in the Highlands started miles outside of our budget...or at least that was what we thought! About two months ago Gustavo stumbled upon a listing on Monroe Dr in the heart of the area we dreamed of someday living. If was, of course, a foreclosure and had been empty for almost a year. It was also on the market for just over half of what it had originally been listed at, but I didn't dare let myself believe that it could be the one we had been searching for.



Turns out it was! Last week we closed on our first place...a charming little cottage only a mile from my office and a short walk from Piedmont Park. It was built in 1930 and comes packed with charm and in desperate need of a multitude of renovations, which is where this little blog will begin. It will be our story of our first place together - our first love nest :)