Kicking off the Hord Home Renovation

Here we are, halfway through our home renovation!

Fillip and I have dreamed of owning a home for as long as I can remember! We’ve been together since we were 14 and we’ve both always had a passion for real estate. Overall, purchasing a home and going through the renovation process has been a very exciting event for us!

Fillip and I are both originally from Ohio, but when we moved to Long Island, New York, we knew that we wanted this area to be our home. Before finding a house we fell in love with, we rented in the same neighborhood of Long Island for 2.5 years and lived in Brooklyn for four years before that.

The house we moved into was built in the ’30s and was never renovated – so you can imagine it needed some updating! The floors were badly distressed, wood paneling was everywhere and the kitchen was wallpapered with yellow checkers. Fillip and I have always been great at seeing past the “ugly” and envisioning what a space could look like and it’s potential – which is much needed when looking at older homes and in organizing, of course! 😉

We had fun walking through the house and discussing our visions for each room (including which walls should be torn down, haha)! We also ended up waiting almost a full year under contract for the house, so we had plenty of time to brainstorm ideas on how to best layout the space before even moving in.

We knew we wanted to get started on renovations right away, but I must say, every time we move into a new home (ugly or not) we always end up making it a home that we fall in love with. There was a point before our renovation that we were considering holding off, but we knew we needed to dive in sooner rather than later. So as soon as we moved in, I set up an appointment with our contractor, John Strom of Strom Home.

Fillip met Strom a few years back (at the local pub, of course) and before I even met the guy or had a house to renovate, I knew I wanted him to renovate our future home.

Strom is young and energetic! He definitely makes the process fun and is on my same level of OCD (which of course is needed). We had plenty of meetings with him to discuss our plan and budget and soon enough, his team got demo’ing!

See our latest blog on “How to Prep for a Home Renovation the ‘Horderly Way’.”

Our plan was to only renovate the downstairs level of our home while we live upstairs. This, of course, wouldn’t have been my first choice, but was the best option to save on cost-of-living somewhere else. We don’t have kids yet, so we decided we could make it work this way!

Before Strom’s team started tearing down walls, we moved everything upstairs. We turned what we call the future “nursery” into our office and our guest bedroom turned into our temporary living room.

We are familiar with living in smaller spaces as we’ve made our way through many studio apartments, however, the dust is a whole new level! No matter how much we try to stop it, it’s everywhere and simply something we’ve had to accept!

Check out our latest video, “Hord Home Renovation, Part 1 – Strategy & Demo” and keep following along to see more! We can’t wait to show you this transformation!