The One We Chose...

If you read the last blog article, The Kigali House Hunt Tour, you would have seen the huge selection of houses we looked at before finally making a decision. It's funny hearing everyone's votes for which house they thought we picked! Most people guessed that we'd chosen the 2 Story house in Rugando-

Sorry to disappoint! We did NOT go with this one!!! In the end, we wanted to be as close as possible to the action in Kimihurura, and we thought, we won't be interacting with the stubborn landlord very often anyways, right?! Plus I couldn't get over the stone wall and fireplace, and we just had our hearts set on the Original House. (If you're interested in the 2 Story however, we worked with a great realtor, Peter, from Plut Properties! I definitely recommend him, and this house!!) :) Here's the Original  House again:

We were walking to this house, and dreaming about how pretty it is, when we met Jean Luc, a realtor at Forrest Jackson across the street from the Original House. We told him we're not looking for a house, we actually just finally decided to go for one! He persisted, and we said, there aren't any houses here for our price besides this one, believe us, we've looked. He said he had something though. Jean Luc took us to a house that was just a few doors down from where we had been staying all week, with a cute little 'House For Rent' sign. An available house in our price range in Kimihurura that we somehow hadn't seen! 

Now this place was interesting. It was higher up on the hill, away from any noise that the Original House was near. We walked in and met Anne Marie, one of the owners of the house, and she was just a DELIGHT! She showed us the house, and said they were in the middle of renovating a little bit, and that they could do more renovations if we wanted as well. I was thinking, man, why can't the Original House that we're going to choose have a landlord like her?! Then we started talking more. And her husband, Claver came too. The two of them were so happy and cute and excited. It was tempting to choose this one because of them- but the living room was so small, and it's a smaller house in general, and those tiles were too crazy and mis-matched throughout the house for us! But it has a backyard house- now that could be fun as a guest house for visitors! Ideas started rolling. We started by asking Jean Luc, "I know the answer is no, but what if part of the renovations was to knock down these walls to be able to see into the kitchen and make the living room bigger?" He thought we were crazy, but asked anyways, and Anne Marie's reaction seemed positive.. What about knocking down the walls of the backyard house to make one open loft type house? What about replacing the tiles? And fixing up the kitchen? With every what-if they seemed excited to move with renovations, as long as we could provide upfront rent money to cover the costs. 

Now we were truly in a predicament. The Original House was already nice, and they won't make any changes. This New house has a TON of work to be done, and the landlords sound up for it. It surprisingly took us a while to decide. Probably 3 full days of imagining both scenarios. The Original House was bigger, but we don't need that much space, the New reno house can have custom changes that I get to decide- but there's the unknown of the budget that I get to decide within, and if we can pull it all off. 

It seems crazy that we didn't know right away, that of course we would choose the fixer-upper!!!!! How exciting to gut the place and start from scratch! I took measurements, went home, sketched up a quick drawing and list of renovations, Claver and Anne Marie officially agreed after going through the list with us and their contractor, we signed a contract, and got to work! We're getting our own open floor plan contemporary style home designed by ME! Whattttt?!?! We are SO excited to show you every step of the way! Here's our list of renovations that we started with, and are currently working on!

Main House

Main living area

• Repair all broken electrical switches and outlets
• Remove interior walls surrounding kitchen, pantry(store) and interior hallway
• Build archway leading to bedroom hallway
• Remove and replace tile from entire home (hexagon clay tile preferred)
• Extend wood ceiling to cover kitchen
• Clean all paint off windows
• Remove paint splatters from master bathroom
• General clean-up throughout

Kitchen

• Remove granite from island and replace with large counter extending into main room.
• Insert cooking stove with oven into the new counter.
• Replace cabinets to match new kitchen design
• Add refrigerator and place to left of the sink
• Replace the sink and center under window so that window can open fully.
• Replace granite countertop to fit the sink and refrigerator (using old granite you already have)

Backyard House

Outside

• Painting outside of the house
• Repair concrete surrounding the house.
• Seal the exterior bathroom entrance.

Inside

• Remove two interior walls leaving the space open except for the bathroom.
• Repair concrete floor with smooth finish
• Repair walls
• Paint interior walls
• Replace kitchen cabinet
• Clean all paint off windows

Bathroom

• Add interior door to bathroom
• Repair floor and walls
• Paint walls
• Add shower (including half wall)
• Add toilet
• Add bathroom cabinet
• Add sink

Let's get busy!!!!!!!!!

Love,

Teri