Taxes for Primary residence temporarily being rented

[nawhite]

I own a house. I lived in it for 3 years. While I have owned it, it has appreciated about $100k. We started renting it this year and probably will for another year.

So now I'm doing my taxes and as far as I know I have two options.
1. Don't depreciate the property on my taxes this year and then likely sell next year or the year after while it still counts as a primary residence (lived in for 2 of the last 5 years) and thus not pay the capital gains taxes.
2. Take depreciation now and then don't benefit from the primary residence benefit ever.

As far as I can tell I can't both use depreciation for 2-3 years and get the primary residence benefit when we sell but I would love to be proven wrong.

Anybody have any experience with renting a primary residence for a couple years before selling?

[bacchi]

If you have a rental, the IRS will assume that you depreciate it. You can't choose to not depreciate. Well, you can, but it gives you no benefit.