Journal of a Renovation

The new owners of a lovely house in Peekskill have started a blog to record the joys and travails of the restoration they're about to embark on. Restoration and Renovation will share the owners' adventure as they bring their home (which I featured as a Hot Property) into the 21st century. A and J (as they call themselves) were kind enough to take a moment to answer a few questions.

Where are you moving from? We're moving from Montclair, NJ. We were there for about a year. Before that we were in Los Angeles (Studio City).

Why did you pick Peekskill? We really liked the feel of Peekskill, all the great older architecture, the artsy downtown, the proximity to the river and the fact that it is not a cookie-cutter community. Every time we visited the area, it seemed like we met friendly people, too.

What are your plans for the house? We are hoping to restore it with a few updates. The exterior needs some serious TLC. We'd like to add another 1.5 bathrooms and update the kitchen (but no granite). Our preference is to try and create classic updates that blend with the style and period of the house.

Have you done this before? We have some experience. We completely gutted and redid the kitchen in our 1926 bungalow in Studio City and did some additional renovations on the rest of the house. This will be our first time creating a bathroom from scratch. Our last house in Montclair didn't need quite the same level of work, but we did a lot of cosmetic work on it.

What's the biggest lesson you've learned from past projects? Plan everything out down to the smallest detail before getting started. On our last project we just jumped in and ended up sort of figuring things out as we went, causing us to have to redo several projects. For example the sink faucet we originally bought didn't end up fitting and we had to buy a new one. If we had realized that before the walls were up, we could have adjusted, but by the time we figured it out, it was too late. You also need to factor into your budget that unexpected issues will arise and that, if you're doing it yourself, you're going to make some mistakes and therefore might need a bit extra in terms of materials. A smaller thing we've learned is that you can never measure too many times or too carefully. Measure twice and cut once.