Financing

The biggest question of this entire project was how were we going to pay for it all?

Clearly we are running out of space faster than we have been able to save money, three kids in three years will do that to you. If we were to wait until we could save enough to pay cash it would take us more years than we wanted to wait for more children. 

It came down to the two options: Do we get financing? Or do we look for a new house? Trevor and I have been very particular about staying out of debt so it wasn't a decision we were taking lightly. After careful consideration and much fasting and prayer we decided that it would be very difficult to find a home with more space and a nice yard in our price range... all what we have in our current home. 

We decided to apply for a Home Equity Line of Credit. This would allow us to borrow in smaller chunks and only pay interest on what we borrowed instead of paying interest on entire loan every month until we paid it back. The Home Equity Line of Credit was also helpful in another way. In order to get the line of credit we needed an appraisal on our home, when we got the appraisal back we fond out we had over 20% equity in the home so we were able to remove that pesky mortgage insurance from our monthly payment thus lowering our monthly mortgage.  Cha' Ching! Thanks US Bank!

We began stashing money before we started the renovation and continue now saving everything we can in an account, separate from our regular bills and expenses, to cover our monthly payments on the HELOC.  Once the basement remodel is finished and the last penny spent then we will know the final total and as our friend Dave Ramsey would say with "gazelle intensity" pay off the balance. We have projected that it will take us a little over two years to pay it off completely.

We love are home and we love where we live, the people and community are fantastic. We are grateful to have been able to get financing to get this remodel underway, to make our home more of the home we can stay in for years to come.

Basement Remodel Beginnings

When we purchased our home almost 3.5 years ago it didn't have any of the things that were on our "wish list." Such as Trevor wanted a garage and I wanted a walk in master closet. But the second we walked in we were excited about it.We could feel it's potential in it's sturdy walls and squeaky floors.
It's an old Ranch style home, built in 1957 a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom in 2400 sq. ft.











There is plenty of square footage it just has not been used well. We have two bedrooms upstairs and one down. But like any 60-year-old grandma house the basement is cold, dark, spidery, and not a place I would put my babies. Which means that the 5 of us are in the two upstairs bedrooms.... and truthfully 4 of us sleep in my bed and Ruthie sleeps in her own room because we are all terrified she will wake up in the night. There's nothing like a 2-year-old's middle of the night tantrum to make sure no one sleeps. And honestly, I am tired.

Which brings us to our basement remodel. It was actually kind of funny, it wasn't until about 8 months ago that I realized that we could gut our basement and started over by re-purposing the space to better function for our family. It took me three years to look past what was already there and see what it could be. I was trying to figure out how to squeeze two other bedrooms in the unfinished spaces when the finished spaces weren't helpful the way they already existed.

We have been saving our pennies and have started the process to do a full basement remodel. There are lots of super dumb weird things about our house that will definitely need to be addressed. (the poop pipe, the hole in the middle of the bathroom floor, and the fact that all the outlets seem to be on one breaker. etc. etc.)

Two Summers ago Trevor remodeled our bathroom so we are pretty much professionals. It only makes sense to take on a whole basement renovation as our second project.