Status Update: 3/31/13

After a wonderful Easter with family, I was finally able to check on the progress of our newest home and I was blown away! Andrew has been telling me the progress and I have seen his pictures, but it is more amazing than I could have imagined. I probably haven't been by the house in 2 week and while I had seen all of the walls up, all of the crown molding installed and all of the kitchen cabinets in - when it was all painted with primer and the hardwood floors were installed (they are gorgeous narrow planks to match the original floors that we are restoring in the front of the home) it really looked amazing! We have also installed new large windows, a built in desk and a wonderful wine bar in the dining room.

Closing and Early Reno Pictures!

On Friday we officially sold our first investment home! We are extremely excited about the company really beginning to take off now. Our newest house is coming along quickly and should be ready in just a few weeks! Below are some of the early renovation pictures. Not long into the renovation, while removing the wood paneling in the den, we realized that the fireplace was fake and had no venting, so we decided to remove it. We also needed to install support beams in the kitchen which while not in the original plan, wouldn't affect the openness like we had feared. We recently met the neighbors, who are the original owners of their home. We were able to show them our home and learn about the past owners and the original layout - the dining room was originally a bedroom and the addition was added in the 1970s! It is really nice to know more about the home we are working on.
 

Staging

After several months on the market, we decided to stage the first home. We were extremely impressed by the positive difference staging made to the home. We had a lot more showings and much busier open houses. We noticed that people stayed in the home longer, asked more questions and we even got multiple offers!! I am not sure what percentage of this can be attributed to staging and what can be attributed to the holidays being over, the marketing picking up AND the Houston real estate market having the lowest inventory in years, but we are very happy and this home will soon have a wonderful new owner! We are now firm believers in staging a home to sell!

We have a name!

After months of discussions, brain storming sessions, late night googling and being stumped - we have a company name! Andrew's old classmate, Mandy Estrada, who is a very talented graphic designer among other things, helped us come up with a name we could agree on - Two by Four property group! (please click here to see Mandy's site). We are so grateful to Mandy for thinking of this name. We knew immediately that this was the one when we saw it.

This name has multiple meanings - 2 and 4 are Samantha's favorite numbers as well as her birthday, 2x4s are basic building blocks and also (the stretch) "to buy houses for".

You can see our new logo now on the top of the blog, this was also a long process... but now we are branded!