Home Owners turned Renters:
Part 1
Virginia Beach, Virginia
It’s been a long time coming. I know over on Instagram I have been eluding to so much going on here in Team Wayne land and I have FINALLY found a few minutes to sit down and tell y’all about all the craziness going on with our move and new house. This post will have a part one and two because there is so much to dive into in regards to the final product of our Home Base House here in Virginia Beach, why we decided to sell, and our new rental that we are just about finished renovating. So let’s dive in.
The Project Home Base house was exactly that… home base. If you click on the link, you’ll read all about our beginning journey when we bought the house sight unseen and flipped the entire place top to bottom. Project Home Base was supposed to be a flip house for the end goal to be sold in order for us to make a profit in a few years. We also wanted it to be a safe haven that Sean could come home to after a hard days work flipping other houses for our full time house flipping business.
The kitchen was a labor of love that took all of the two years of living in the house to finish. The upper cabinets were new and the bottom cabinets were painted Carbonized by Behr paint. At the time, replacing half of the cabinets was all we could afford. We loved the two tone look though and we were so pleased with the final product. The countertops are marble and complimented the pretty square tile backsplash from Home Depot that I swooned over the whole time living there.
The Original Plan:
When we bought the house, our plan was to live and flip for approximately five years or so. We would take our time to renovate and enjoy the journey with low pressure so as to focus on our business flips and not take on anymore stresses of renovating our house along the journey. We would flip this house for fun and make it our own slowly. At least… that’s what we originally planned.
Around the end of the two year mark of living here (Summer 2021), Sean and I were revisiting our plan and our timeline for staying in this house. After bringing home Nolan (baby number 3), the house was starting to feel smaller and smaller, especially since I’ve been getting the itch for another puppy ;) We were crunching numbers and came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be able to move into a house that we’d been dreaming of for approximately another five-ish years from now. We were originally fine with this conclusion. Besides, the house was finally just about finished!
More on what happens next in part 2…
For now, I want to stay focused on Project Home Base because this is the last I will really be posting and remembering this old girl and all the happy memories and projects we completed here.
Things I will never forget about this house:
Sean put in his very first hardwood bamboo floors into this house. The original house has two different old laminates running through it. The first is seen in the kitchen two pictures above that were more of a yellow tint with brown streaks. The second laminate was the red flooring seen in the left hand picture above. Natural Spice Bamboo flooring from Lowes has been a staple of ours in our flips since the beginning. You can see them here in our very first flip house in Cleveland, Ohio. Spice Flooring was installed throughout the entire house by Sean.
2. Sean and I painted the entire house top to bottom.
My personal favorite was Retreat by Sherwin Williams in the master bedroom. I loved how it added personality and mood to the space while also remaining more on the neutral side of “greens.”
3. The special, unique touches we added to the house like the custom open shelves in the kitchen and the barn door in the 4th bedroom/playroom.
I always want to be able to take risks in our houses and in design because risks are how you learn and grow. Some turn out exactly how you plan them, and others surprisingly fail. But that’s the fun part of it all!
4. The fourth thing I will never forget is the extra bonus room Sean and our friends/employees made together.
They took a section of the garage and created a beautiful, tiled laundry room. Not a lot of the houses in our neighborhood boast of a laundry room that is sectioned off and custom made. The houses are a touch too small and most have the laundry inside the garage. This project was such a big win for us in terms not only doing something so large for the first time but also adding a ton of value to the home.
Like always, this man behind the camera is the real winner here. He has worked so many hours laboring and making our visions realities. He works tirelessly for hours on our business and also in our home. He’s a dreamer and a visionary and I couldn't do life without him.
Will we miss this home that we transformed, brought home a new baby, and made lots of first time Virginia Beach memories? Sure, but what is to come and the reason for selling far outweighs the nostalgic feelings toward the Home Base House.
In part two, I will talk more about how we acquired our new rental home, why we decided to sell our Home Base House and what the renovation process has been like in this next home for us.
Ann | DESIGN