The journey begins…

My goal with this blog is to document our experiences tearing down & rebuilding our home in Santa Monica.

Writing it down is a good way to think things through. Down the road, it’ll be helpful to remember why we made certain decisions. And, should it come out well, a resource to point at on how we did it.

Best case, someone more savvy happens to notice the blog & gives us advice. Lord knows we’ll need it.

That said, our journey actually began in 2012 when we purchased our home. It’s a small house but on a good lot & in a good neighborhood. We knew it would be enough house for just the two of us. With three, it’s a bit smaller but doable. It’s too small when we have family & now with a second child on the way, we definitely need more space.

Our original plan was to do an addition, possibly a second story. But we changed to a teardown for a few reasons:

• The foundation. It needs work in general & wasn’t meant for a second story.
• Existing layout not conducive to an addition. We saw a lot of crazy additions when we toured open houses. “Why is the master bedroom off the TV room?” and those types of things. We want a house that makes sense & we’re happy to live in.
• Clean slate. By tearing down, we’re not constrained by the existing layout, foundation & so on.
• Savings. We were able to save up a bit more, making it financially feasible.

For the last 6–12 months, we’ve started thinking about our plans & made some (slow) progress.

But here’s to breaking ground in 2016!