Renovating your own home sounds more romantic than it is. I gutted a 3 lvl (4 with basement” town house adjacent to Eastern Market about 13 years ago.

Some things to be aware of:

Historic overlays. Even if you technically aren’t in one,if you are close the city will scrutinize your permit applications even more, and neighbors tend to insert themselves into your business.

Structural work. If you are replacing a roof or digging out the basement, or anything that involves the structural party walls between you and the neighbor, be prepared for hell. Your neighbors will be pissed because of the noise and intrusion and potential damage to their house. You will have to hire a company to inspect and monitor settlement of your neighed structural supports. Thousands extra.

Be prepared to have a lot of shit “take a walk”. Construction sites attract thieves. We had some appliances, copper pipe and a tool chest belonging to the contractor “take a walk”.

DCRA is worse than dealing with the DMV. Your contractor will call for inspections and It frequently took 5-7 business days for them to show up. A different inspector will show up each time, one will pass you and then you will go to get your electrical final (for example) and the different inspector will countermand the original inspector, costing money and time to redo. I’ve built and or renovated homes in 4 other places not in DC in my life and DCRA is hands down the worst permitting authority.

For a full gut you should add 3 months to whatever time frame the contractor gives you.

And we moved out. It allowed the contractor to move quicker and saved us the stress and headache of living through a renovation. It did add budget stress because we were paying for two places.