We have this acronym we’ve been throwing around when it comes to our house remodel: EAC. It stands for “Easy, Awesome & Cheap” which are three rules we apply to an idea before letting it get out of the brain storming stage.

Every project we start HAS to meet these criteria:

Easy – we’re pretty lazy and also doing our remodel between full-time jobs, so we want to make sure the upgrades we’re doing are either easy to do ourselves (so we don’t get over our heads) or are affordable enough (we’ll get to that in a second) for us to hire someone else to do it.

Awesome – There’s a lot of things we could do to our new house, but some of them will have a higher return and an overall larger impact to any potential buyer. Since we have to pick and choose, we need to pick the projects that will have the bigger bang for our buck. The awesome projects.

Cheap – Since we got a killer deal on our place, we have lots of room to make a profit when we decide to sell down the road. But we still need to be conscious of where we spend our money. There’s a definite cap on the comps in our neighborhood and we only have a two bedroom (which is always less desirable than three). We can command a little bit of a premium based on our renovations, but ultimately our max asking price is already pretty much set in stone.

We have to find the fine balance between doing just enough to make the house amazing, and not doing unneeded renovations that will just eat away at our profit margin.

We also need to make sure that we’re getting good quality materials for as cheap as possible, and always be looking for great deals.

Soo…

With all that in mind, our first semi-major renovation project was the downstairs powder room. It is definitely an example of the EAC motto at work. The entire redo cost us just around $300 and took the room from ghetto to fabulous.

We’re still putting the final touches on it, but check back here in a week or so for a post on the entire process and bunches of photos!

A few months ago, the fiancee and I closed on a renovated village home in a tiny little town in France. The picture above isn’t the house — it’s a barn — but that’s the sort of thing you see if you drive in any direction. Almost right between Carcassonne and Narbonne, our house is just a short drive to the Mediterranean and only about 2 hours to Barcelona in a corner of south-western France called the Languedoc.

To a lot of people, buying a house in a foreign country, especially one where you barely speak the language (un peu, seulement) might seem crazy. But to us, it was a promise to our future and a commitment to adventure; have you seen the price of airline tickets from the US to Europe?

What better way to travel to Italy and to Ireland, Russia, and the Netherlands than to live in Europe, where so many other countries are just a short train ride away?

But this isn’t a post about that house, its a post about the second house.

The second house was bought almost on a whim after we learned that yes, buying something (if it’s the right something) is actually cheaper than renting, especially with the current tax breaks. Plus, at the end of however long you plan to live there, you’ll likely get something back. When you’re a renter, you’re lucky if you see your security deposit back.

So today we closed on a second house a little closer to home – just east of Nashville.

The house is what folks here call a condo, or what people where I’m from call a townhouse (and the french would perhaps call it a “village house“). But regardless of what you want to call it, it was an incredible deal. Listed on regular real estate sites, it turned out to be a bank-owned foreclosure that was in excellent condition and priced significantly under market value. Another victim of the sub-prime mortgage racket.

We have big plans for this place, plans that we are going to share on the site in the hopes that it will inspire you to create your own lovely spaces.

Here’s the major projects we’re going to be tackling (somewhat in order):

• Redo kitchen with new cabinets, granite counter tops, and new backsplash. (Oh yeah, and buy some appliances)
• Convert upstairs “Jack and Jill” bathroom to a master bath and a second 3/4 bath.
• Reface fireplace wall with stone/tile.
• LANDSCAPE.

We had to have the banisters on the deck replaced by a licensed contractor so the house could pass appraisal and we could buy it; it looks about 20 times better than what’s in the above photo and it’s one thing we can cross off the list.

But going forward we’ll be DIY on these projects as much as possible. Between the two of us we have enough knowledge of basic construction and drywalling, tiling, and powertools to look like we might know a thing or two. For the rest, we’ll be relying on the educational power of YouTube. And if that fails, we’ll be bringing in the big guns: the contractors.

Of course, our first project is a fresh coat of paint (that green kitchen just isn’t kickin’) and moving in… but I hope you’ll stick around and check out the progress on our new place.