How an office building turned into my first apartments

Alpine kept outgrowing every space we had. Interest rates were low, and buying our own building looked like the smart move. So we started shopping for commercial space.

Then I ran the numbers on what the building would bring in as apartments instead of offices, and it wasn't close. So we did something I'd never done before. We gutted it and put in apartments along with our offices.

I'd love to say I had a plan for all of it. I had a plan for some of it. The rest was permits and zoning with the town, vetting contractors I didn't know, and watching the budget like it owed me money. Every week brought a new question I didn't have the answer to yet.

Filling the units was the easy part. That surprised me more than anything.

What I took away from it:

• Run the numbers on the best use, not the one you walked in with. We went looking for an office. The building wanted to be apartments.

• The town is part of your team whether you like it or not. Start that relationship early and be easy to work with.

• Hire contractors the way you'd hire a crew. References matter, but how they talk about the last job that went wrong matters more.

• A budget doesn't get away from you all at once. It goes a thousand dollars at a time.

You'd think a project like that would scare someone off real estate. It did the opposite. I flipped a house, tried short-term rentals in Florida (being a hostess is not in my wheelhouse), and eventually landed where I am now: apartment buildings in Alabama.

And it all started because we needed an office.