The Rocky Bay Home renovation project is going to be run as a subsidiary to my company, Amy Dutton Home. But this project has a different scope of project. This renovation will be done on a tight budget with lower quality products than I typically install in my client’s homes and on a fast timeline (December to March). And there are a few reasons why:
1. We need to get this house done and rentable as fast as possible to start generating some income.
2. The house is large (at least it is for us since our Portsmouth, NH home is about 2300 square feet) so there is a lot of square footage to pay for in the renovation.
3. For the most part, the main renovations include the Kitchen and Bathrooms. I’m not an advocate of encouraging anyone to jump into high-end renovation project until they have spent a lot of time in the home and have the finances to invest properly. Neither of these apply to our situation so we are literally “Putting Lipstick on a Pig” here while we tackle some larger issues…like water issues.
The larger issues include water in the crawl spaces, clearing as much of the woods from in front of the house as we can legally to improve our view and repairing the chimneys.
In the areas that I know that will not change, I’m agreeing to invest the money wisely while I’ll be going lower end on other areas and products where I know that these will be replaced in 5 years or so. Let’s just say, the electrician and plumber will be spending quality time at the house to bring everything up to code, so I want to make sure that this investment is a solid one.
We closed on the house November 11, 2018 one week before Thanksgiving. We pushed for this date because all of our kids would be home for the holiday and we wanted to be able to show them the house. During the holiday, we all camped in the Living Room, had a delicious meal in Rockland, ME and explored the snowy ocean shoreline. At the end of the weekend, we packaged everything up, wrapped it in a plastic tarp and turned the house over to the contractor as a job site.
While the winter is long in Maine, we are on a tight timeline not only because of our needs but because our contractor has another project starting in May. Because of this tight timeline, I needed to get organized and quick. December was one of the most intense months of my business with two large client projects wrapping up, maintaining current projects and working on Rocky Bay Home construction drawings and making material selections. But timelines are important and need to be tended to and hey, I’m used to working on deadline!
Rocky Bay Home is project that you will want to watch if you love renovations and want to learn how to do this yourself. Or if you just love Maine and want to stay in the home someday. This will be a journey, come along for the ride!
