We had lots of ideas for what we wanted to do when we looked at the house, but I wanted to live in it before doing too much planning. I’m certainly no architect, but with the goal of doing almost everything ourselves, we also aimed to design the renovation ourselves.

My SketchUp skills are not great, but nevertheless I created a SketchUp model of the existing house that we could use to try out different ideas, both for the exterior appearance and the floor plan. Below is what I came up with at the time – very rough, but I was proud of myself! The kids had fun choosing “stuff” from the SketchUp library to put in the house like the cars and flamingo (and so much more that I had to save a separate file for whenever they came to “help”!)

After much debate about what we should tackle first, we came up with the following rough plan:

• Phase 1 New Windows: Replace all windows except where walls will be moving in subsequent phases.
• Phase 2 Deck: Build a deck off of the kitchen/dining area and add stairs.
• Phase 3 South Wall: Remove chimney and re-clad wall.
• Phase 4 Back: Close in exterior staircase and and convert to usable interior space (bathroom upgrade + closet).
• Phase 5 Front + North Wall: Add garage, re-do front entrance, replace plexiglass “skylight”, and re-clad north side wall.
• Possible Phase 6: Vault ceiling and replace roof (we’re still debating this one!)

Also sprinkled in with the above would be a few mechanical items (heat pump water heater and Heat Recovery Ventilator) plus plumbing and electrical to make it all work. Interior re-finishing would also happen as we work through each exterior wall. I guess we’re sort of doing a gut renovation wall-by-wall, while we live in the house.

We are still debating the order and details of some of these projects, but overall it covers the big items that we want to tackle. This also allows us to start with easier projects and work our way up to the more challenging projects. And there are still many questions about what we’ll be allowed to do in terms of permitting, since we intend to apply for permits as we go through each project/phase. (One big question, for example, is whether we’ll be allowed to put stairs beside the deck as shown above.)

Of course, the best-laid plans of mice and (wo)men often go awry…