Comments on: Our House - Project Recap

By: Baldomero Fernandez

Baldomero Fernandez — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:48:53 +0000

Your place is looking amazing, my wife and I have just started a project somewhat similar to yours although the main difference being its new construction but your site and home are a huge inspiration to us. http://www.greeninmedusa.com Good luck in the future.

Warmest…
Baldomero

By: ctiare

ctiare — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:29:47 +0000

Congratulations! There might be a lot left to do but if your photos are any proof, the results so far are outstanding and are worth 172,000 pats on the back.

Since I’m planning on going through the same process starting in a month, I’m interested to know how the banks and your local permit agency took your having done most of the work pre-loan. Was your local contractor also a personal friend who could permit draws from your bank for typically unpermitted uses like furniture? Our problem is that we want to do majority of the work ourselves in order to save us money but we still would like the bank to loan us money for supplies. Our contractor would have to initiate each financial draw and I’m not sure how to establish an understanding between us as homeowners that we want to do as much of the work as we can. Wondering if your situation was similar and if so, would you offer any suggestions?

Thanks and congrats again!

By: Chad

Chad — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:57:47 +0000

We’re remodeling a lot of our house while we’ve been living in it. The out-of-pocket expenses have allowed us to keep everything manageable, preventing us from getting a large debt load, but it’s made cost estimates hard. We have no idea how much our bathroom cost us, probably around $8000, but we didn’t keep good enough records to tell accurately. It’s frustrating in some ways, but buying things in little chunks made the whole process easier to swallow.

It’s nice to hear that you’ve had a good experience with what we’ve been too afraid to do, hiring contractors to do work paid for by the bank. Maybe I’ll get up the courage to do something similar. My wife would certainly like to see things progress a little faster.