Home Improvement Anyone?

A queen size box springs and mattress is propped against a hutch in the living room. All the stuff in my kitchen cupboards are on the kitchen table or in plastic tubs. Closet doors lean up against the wall in the hallway. We managed to get my oldest son moved out of the room he shared with his little brother, but his dresser is still in the living room. My husband keeps remarking how "natural" the dresser fits in with the rest of the living room furniture everytime I say we need to move it to my son's new room in the basement. On top of everything, our old cat who has never had an issue with finding her potty has been having "accidents" all over the house.  

What have I done? At the beginning of the summer, I had saved up enough money to do two much needed home improvements. Refinish the wood floors in the bedrooms and get new kitchen countertops. Of course I waited until the end of the summer and of course now the two jobs have overlapped. And of course, once you start making changes you see all the other stuff that needs to be done. I am trying to declutter instead of just put everything back in the bedrooms and kitchen. Once there was no furniture in our bedroom it was obvious that the walls needed a fresh coat of paint. It just seemed like to pptimal time to move my older son into a room of his own instead of back into the room he shared with his 12 year old brother.

I have a book due at the end of september and I haven't written anything substantial since August 5.  I am so longing for things to get back to "normal." When hubby and I bought this fixer upper house almost 20 years ago, I had a lot more energy and thought it would be nothing to repaint and deal with the gold carpet in the hallway and bedrooms, and carpet in the kitchen (yes, carpet in kitchen) and all the other parts of the house that I knew needed to be updated and fixed. Now twenty years later, we are still working on it aand I have much less energy (painting the bedroom was cause for a long nap).

The kicker is that with the last kid slated to graduate high school in six years, we are talking about selling the place then and moving to a smaller place. I don't think all the improvements we had in mind will be done by then.

What have I learned from all this: 

Don't buy a fixer upper house unless you are a fixer upper person (and are young and have lots of energy) 

If you must fix up a house, fix it up before you move in, that way there is a lot less furniture and accumulated clutter to move around

the next house I buy won't have anything that obviously needs to be fixed/updated, cause I know I will notice all kinds of stuff once I move in that I didn't notice when I fell in love with the place

Finally, though it has been a long haul, I love the improvements we have made and get a lot of satisfaction from that...but honestly, I don't think I would do it again.

Sharon Dunn is trying to get back to work on a romantic suspense she has to hand into Love Inspired Suspense called Her Guardian. She has another suspense due for release in December titled Night Prey.  

Comments

[Furniture Stores]

So with you... the next time I buy I want everything to be fixer free...

[insulated doors]

Just wanted to take a moment to thank the author for their post, excellent info!

I had the exact same problem with my garage door in my old house. What a discomfort it had been to replace those parts! But as poor as it had been to fix, it was worse not getting a functioning garage door, This was my first time fixing a garage door but turns out that whilst it may seem intimidating, it is very easy. And the parts are readily obtainable at most hardware stores or you are able to pick them up cheaply online as well. It only took a couple hours to take out the old parts from the garage door and get it in working order once again, so I was pretty happy about that, and so was the wife!

[genie garage door opener]

Thanks for the excellent info! I really appreciate you taking the time to put this together.

I had the same issue with my garage door in my old house. Hopefully I never have to do that again, what a PITA to fix it was! But it had been even much more annoying not getting a working garage door, so after putting it off for awhile I finally went to the hardware store to obtain new components. I didn't have any experience fixing garage doors but fortunately there is quite a bit of info online and it is not that difficult. Best of all the parts are easy to discover either on the internet or at the local big box hardware shops. I believe I only spend maybe 2 hours tops working on that garage door. I could probably do it in half the time now that I know what I'm performing.