Becca Sewing in Her New Home!

Earlier this month, our 3 month hotel stay finally came to an end! In case you missed it, my husband & I made the decision to sell our small home close to DC and buy a larger home a little further out. In order to sell for top dollar, we had to take on some renovations - and that was best done if we just moved out. We thought initially this process would just be a few weeks, maybe 6 tops...so a hotel didn't seem like a bad idea. Hindsight? It was literally a 3-month journey from the time we broke ground on the renovations to the move-in date in our new home. Perhaps a short-term lease on an apartment would have been more comfortable.

We wanted a lot of things from our new home, but at its core the 'must-haves' were: a comfortable living space for my parents (who plan to move in in 2023), enough of a yard that we're not on top of our neighbors, room for visiting family/friends, office space for Jason, and quilting space for me. Anything else was just icing on the cake. :) The home we bought checks all of the 'must haves', and is quite lovely - but still has some projects we'll need to tackle (for example, we know we'll need new windows soon). If you'd like to see what our new home looks like, you can check out my virtual tour here.

Originally, the plan was to settle my quilting room in my parent's apartment until they moved in. And, then long-term we'd build a detached building on our property to serve as the ultimate quilting studio. When I shared the idea with my mom, she asked why we didn't just finish out the garage so I could have an attached studio. Immediately, I thought absolutely not! I had a home with an attached garage, and I intended to use it to park my car. But, then I started thinking about it a bit more.

We have friends with garages...where do they park their cars? In the driveway or on the street. We considered the cost and pulled estimates to build a detached studio vs. finishing the garage and found it was more affordable to finish the garage. After a lot of discussion, we decided on the garage reno. It's a quicker and more affordable project that we can do now, instead of a couple years out.

The best part of this entire project is it lets me really design my entire quilting space from literally the ground up. The walls are already in place, but I get to hand-pick everything else! From the carpet, to the outlets, to the paint color - and I'm super excited. I've enlisted the help of my realtor-turned-friend, Mary, in the renovations. She designed all of the updates to our Arlington home - and they were just absolutely amazing!

Together, we are designing what we call 'The Ultimate Quilter's Studio'! Right now, the project plan includes recessed lighting, sufficient power to run ALL of the equipment I need (including a dedicated minisplit to heat/cool the space independently of the house), an AMAZING fabric wall with lots of nooks and crannies to showcase my stash and collectibles, and lots of windows for lots of daylight! In the mean time, I've setup camp in our family room and have been enjoying sewing in front of our lovely fireplace. :)

This week, the project officially kicks off. In a world without supply issues, the overall timeline would be about 3-4 weeks. But, windows (along with everything else it seems) are on back order. We put in the order for the windows & doors when we signed the contract at the start of November, so maybe that will help! The quickest timeline would have the garage reno completed by Christmas, but it assumes absolutely no issues arise (ha!) and windows/doors are delivered on-time (or even early!) timeline. However, the more realistic timeline has the project fully wrapping in mid-January 2022.

I'm so excited to take on this journey and plan to feature the garage reno in my daily VLOGmas video series on YouTube! I'd love to share this journey with you!