So, this is us. Warren Newberry and Kellie Major. We started our company, ReNew Homes, in 2009, when we completely re-built our Ottawa home after a massive house fire. (Check out our house building blog ... Renewal on Morris Street here http://morristreet.blogspot.ca/) our last foray into the blogworld.
Rebuilding a home after the fire changed our lives. In one year, we built a fabulous home - on time and on budget - in what might have been a really stressful environment. But, instead, we found the experience exhilirating. Picking up the pieces of our lives after a fire destroyed almost everything was truly a life changing experience. We loved the project - and working on it taught us to celebrate what we did best - creating wonderful homes. Tired of hearing renovation horror stories everywhere we turned - we knew we could help others do it our way .... and enjoy the experience to boot!
Our "epiphany", coupled with years of experience doing our own home renovations and helping friends with theirs, convinced us that there was a niche for a boutique, personal home building renovation company - one that would work closely with homeowners as they embarked on significant renovations and new home builds. So we quit our corporate jobs (Kellie worked for a large corporate communications firm and Warren was in technology sales) and started working for ourselves when we launched ReNew Homes. The adventure began ....
To date, we've completed twelve projects alongside many sets of fabulous and creative homeowners. We've done townhouses and condos, massive new homes, and plenty of "gut jobs" on older, character, downtown homes. Along the way, we also renovated our own cottage and completely gutted an older home for ourselves (we sold the post-fire dream home ... sniff, sniff). We also bought and "flipped" two great - but tired - homes in two of Ottawa's most graceful neighbourhoods.
We encountered vermin, several sets of difficult neighbours (this continuous to be the most challenging and often most humourous aspect of this business), faced off City Hall, dealt with all kinds of weather, all kinds of challenging people and found plenty of under the floorboard surprises.
And there's been dumpsters, lots and lots of dumpsters.
We've had the pleasure of working with the best tradespeople in the Ottawa area - you'll get to know them - and an assorrted case of characters - in this blog.
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