Why Buy a Vanity When You Can Make One Instead?

Got to do some damage earlier today.

We bought a dining room buffet last weekend with the intention of converting it into our master bathroom vanity. On top of saving a little cash, we hope to add a unique element to the renovation that a can be proud of.

A buddy from work helped me start the process this afternoon. Still a bit of work left to do, but the sinks look good so far!

New Pictures Are Up!

Here are some pictures of the 1st week of construction.

Here are some pictures of the 2nd week of construction.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. We’ll try and catch back up over the holiday break. Looking forward to hanging with family and friends over these next two weeks!

Stained Glass Window

So we haven’t posted anything on here in awhile. Oops.

We’re currently at Kudzu Antiques in Decatur to pick up a small stained glass window (I’ll try to put a picture up this week).

Torrie had the great idea of building it in to the wall between the living room and dining room/hallway. Hopefully it’ll turn out nice and unique.

How it All Began: Part I

Torrie and I have had a long, arduous journey to home ownership.

We seriously started to consider a home purchase this past April, which, if you’ll remember, was right near the end of our engagement. Despite the poor timing, we were determined to find, purchase, and move into a condo in the Midtown/Virginia Highland neighborhood of Atlanta before our wedding.

We found our realtor through our premarital mentors, Ryan and Heather Van Sickle (who were awesome, by the way). Heather worked at a Keller-Williams realty office and introduced to Rich Richardson, with whom we met with and shortly thereafter began searching for condos with.

Given the current economic outlook of the time, we knew it was a perfect time for first-time buyers in the market. The market for condominiums, however, is extremely flooded in Atlanta, so we knew from the onset that we’d have to be extremely picky when choosing a place. Our realtor hammered this into us as well, as his primary concern was not putting us in a situation that could turn ugly for us in a few years when it came time to sell.

Pretty much the entire month of April was spent pouring over MLS listings and visiting condos on the weekends. We found a few places we liked and a few that we didn’t quite like so much. The process was a little frustrating, though; we couldn’t quite seem to find a place that had the main features we were looking for (2 bedrooms, big kitchen, lots of character) for the right price.

At the beginning of May, it was clear to us that we would be unable to find a place and close on it in time for our wedding on June 14. We relunctantly shelved the search for a couple of months until we could come home from the honeymoon and get settled at our apartment in Virginia Highland.

More to come later on this story…

Demolition Has Started!

We stopped by the home tonight after dinner with Juli and Patrick (Torrie’s sister and her husband), and we were pleasantly surprised to see that demo work has started in the last couple of days.

Our contractor has obtained the permits from the City of Atlanta and posted them in the front window. The old ratty carpet is gone and there’s a big hole where the built-in used to be in the living room. Everything in the kitchen has been completely cleared out.

We’ll try and get by to snap some pictures when we get a chance. Torrie can’t wait to get that sledgehammer in her hands a take out a little end-of-the-semester frustration!

Our First Post for Our First House

It’s now official. Yesterday evening, Torrie and I closed on our very first home in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta. As you can see from these pictures, the house is in need of a little love. The plan is to massively renovate for 3 months and move in come early March.

It’ll be a long process, but we wanted to share our experiences with our family and friends as we prepare to become official homeowners. We’ll try to keep the site updated with posts every few days and upload pictures of the renovation process.

So fire up Google Reader (if you don’t know what Google Reader is and how to use it go here), sign up for our RSS feed, and follow along. Or just do it the old fashioned way like Torrie and check back every hour to see if we’ve updated the blog.