Hey Everyone!
This is Caroline and I do the marketing for DCI. I also happen to be married to one of the owners, Jeff. He's the bearded fellow you will meet when you call us for an estimate. This will come into play in this series of blog posts because Jeff and I just bought a house. A house that I have half jokingly/half seriously named Disaster Castle.
I wanted to blog about the renovations we are doing on this house so that others can get a feel for what a remodel is like. As we are getting into this demolition and remodel I feel even more strongly about sharing our story. There is a reason I call it Disaster Castle! Now, before I get ahead of myself, let's start at the beginning...
We had been looking for a home with a few acres but were unable to find anything we truly liked. We did find possible places but they were out of our price range and would need extensive work. In light of this, we started looking at houses in older neighborhoods. I did not want a "cookie cutter" home. I like places with character that don't blend in with all the other houses. I also don't want my home right on top of my neighbors' homes. So, yeah, thanks to my requirements we again ran into not finding places in our budget that we truly liked or could work with easily.
Then we found it. Our happy/overwhelming disaster that could be made over into a perfect home fairly easily.
The house is in historic downtown New Port Richey just off the river. It's two bed, two bath, built in 1985 with no upkeep or renovation since it was built. We made the decision to gut it and start over before we move in so we could disrupt our lives as little as possible (if you have this option, TAKE IT!!!!). That said, thus far this house has been a journey and a half. I keep telling myself that it will be gorgeous and soon, but I often wonder if that is truly the case because there is so much to do.
I've attached photos that I admittedly borrowed from the internet. I realized going through photos that we didn't really take many intact before photos. The landscaping out front in the picture must have gone by the wayside long ago, because there is no grass and everything was very overgrown. The kitchen is ever so '80s and not in a cool way. The bathrooms and bedrooms were GROSS. And the laminate floors (seen in living room with those tragically epic mirrors on the wall) had carpet padding under it, giving the impression that the sub floor was compromised. Welcome home, welcome to the disaster!
