Room by Room by Roof

I’ll never forget the day we signed the papers on our home. When we walked out of the attorney’s office, after shaking the seller’s hand, I turned to Johnathon with the biggest smile on my face. He wasn’t smiling. He doesn’t get as overly excited as I do, but I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t be at this momentous occasion! We just bought our “forever home”. We get to paint the walls, landscape the yard; we could run around naked if we wanted to! All the fun things of being a home owner! I boasted “Aren’t you excited about OUR NEW HOUSE?!” – “Yeah, I guess” – “You don’t seem excited.” – “I’m excited, but now the real worries begin: house notes and maintenance.”

What you should know about my incredibly wonderful, loving, sweet, awesome husband is he worries about nearly everything. He worries too much about most things and worries even more about the important things. However, he was right. The painting I was excited about is fun, until you run in to paint peeling everywhere when it should stick, cracks, and poor patchwork. The landscaping is fun, until the mower, weed eater, and tools tear up. Running around naked is fun too, until you realize you need more curtains. Maintenance. Ugh.

I had a checklist of things I wanted to do to our home over the first 5 years of ownership:
1. Create Johnathon’s Sports room and my craft room
2. Redo the kitchen (completely gut it and start over)
3. Renovate our master bathroom
4. Replace the fake stucco yellow stuff with vinyl siding
5. Landscape the yard like a PRO

After 2 years of ownership, here’s my REALITY checklist:
1. Paint rooms when we can afford them, one room at a time adding bits and pieces as we go
2. We can gut our kitchen in 30+ years, after the kids move out, and we’ve saved 30-40k to do it.
3. The master bathroom can wait 10+ years, my ideal bathroom is expensive and we’re paying CASH
4. The stucco stuff does need to be replaced soon (it’s rotting in certain places) but our roof needs to be replaced and that comes first.
5. Landscaping of the yard must be a little at a time as well. Thank goodness I have friend with a green thumb the size of Canada and she gives me free plants and help when needed.

Besides moving the furniture several times and hanging photos sporadically, here’s what we’ve done so far:

Curtains - We purchased blinds to cover the main room windows and a curtain for our front door. The bedrooms have hand-me-down curtains that don’t match, but the windows are covered. Other windows have sheets to help with the heating/cooling bills until we can afford the curtains I like. I admit, I have expensive taste but I’m a frugal shopper. I refuse to buy something to “just get by” when I can save the money and get what we REALLY want. Sheets get us by just fine. No one uses those rooms anyway.

The main kitchen wall – We painted it red and hung several items. HELPFUL TIP: If you’re painting a red wall, do not use white or pink tinted primer. It will make your wall look pink. Use the gray tinted primer, let it dry for several hours then paint your first coat of red. Let that dry for 24 hours (at least) then paint your second coat of the red. You’ll thank me. Also, your paint will appear to have streaks for a few days. Wait one full week for the paint to fully dry. THEN look at your wall and your streaks should be gone.

John’s sports/guest room – After a small fight between me, nails, peeling paint, and bad paneling, John and I sanded, primed and painted the room. We also touched up the trim and bookcase with a fresh coat of white paint. We’re in the process of hanging shelves and photos, as well as looking for curtains to complete the room. So far, we’re happy with it.

The Roof – My husband has been able to make patches but it still leaks in places. It will be replaced this summer.

The Yard – The grass gets cut. The trees lining our yard and the banana trees in the center get cut back each year. Other than that, nothing has been done to it.

All in all, it’s been a very busy and productive 2 years. Throw in a 20 month engagement and extremely detailed destination wedding, I’m extremely proud in how far we’ve come. Johnathon was right, maintenance is worrisome, but I was right too. It can be so much fun. Take some advice, one room at a time, pay cash for all renovations or “facelifts”, and try not to stress about how or when it will be done. Your home wasn’t built in a day but it does require maintenance, DAILY. Remember, you can always paint over it. Personally, I can’t wait to see what else comes along.