Love this home, love this home, love THIS home….
No, I’m not a secret hoarder (though after cleaning out the kids closets, I’m terrified I might get there someday). This is our playroom, and all of that stuff is everything from Kendall and Leyna’s rooms. We’re getting new carpet in all the bedrooms, which trust me, I’m thrilled. I really am. Especially considering we haven’t even had carpet in our master bedroom for months and months. Just a concrete floor.
And no, not a cool concrete floor- a concrete floor that looks like someone just ripped out the carpet. It was either live with that, or live with the putrid smell of decaying dog piss, so I chose the “industrial” look.
This all started with a master bedroom renovation. It sounded easy enough. Paint the walls, get new sheets, have SOMONE ELSE install some carpet, build us a new bed…
That’s the first half of the bed, unstained, against old paint with old bedding. Can’t WAIT to show you all the big reveal. Mostly because that would mean all of this is behind us.
Meanwhile, we live in a house turned upside down. At the mercy of the carpet installer’s schedule and our dwindling renovation budget, which is mostly being eaten up by take-out because ain’t nobody got time to make food and clean dishes when you’re renovating!
(Seriously, we’re carving out a healthy slice of the renovation budget for the kitchen when that comes to pass to pay for meals out. REAL TALK.)
I am so over the renovations. So over the weekends filled with trips to Home Depot and Lowes, Scott busting his ass to build this and paint that, me trying to keep the kids entertained and out of his way, never making it out to do fun family things on the weekends, never getting caught up on the laundry or blog projects I try to save for the weekend. I’M SO DONE WITH RENOVATING THIS HOUSE.
But we’re close to the finish. After nearly 5 years of non-stop projects, this house is thisclose to being pretty close to something I absolutely love. After this mess is put away, and this project behind us, we’ll just have one major renovation to complete- the kitchen. Then it’s just little things. Things that (hopefully) will not require the entire upheaval of our lives, our schedule, and our furniture.
And then… we’re staying. For a while. Which, of course, why would we want to leave when we finally get this place just the way we like it?
Because we thought we’d sell. We thought we’d FINALLY put it on the market, probably before the baby comes. We thought we’d FINALLY build or buy a bigger house with a bigger yard, closer to all the places we like to visit.
We thought all that, and we planned for all that, and then we stressed over all of that.
The market is hot! Sell your house now! Build in the community you fell in love with before they’re out of your price range in 6 months! Make sacrifices! It will be worth it!
Except it won’t. Because the thing is I am SO OVER renovating that I absolutely refuse to move to another house that doesn’t have EVERYTHING. EXACTLY. AS. I. WISH. And that? Just doesn’t exist… in our price range… for now.
So in 9 months to a year one of two things will hopefully happen:
A. We’ll have enough time between us and the big renovations that we’ll look back on it fondly and decide we could do that again (and then, please, TALK ME OUT OF THAT).
B. We’ll magically find a house that was perfectly built for us.
Regardless of which of those options shakes out, we will definitely NOT have a newborn then (the baby will at least be 6 months old), and I will definitely NOT be pregnant.
Until then, I appreciate what IS ours. I celebrate what IS done, and stop focusing on what is not. I reorganize closets and set up a cosleeper and changing table in our bedroom. I take this time to edit the stuff we have in our lives. I, once again, remind myself to love the home we’re with.
But first, I call and hound the carpet installation guys again because OMG SO MUCH UPHEAVAL IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW WHILE WAITING FOR YOU.
I’ll be posting lots of mater bedroom renovation progress pictures this week over on Instagram (@BabyRabies) if you want to witness my slow meltdown, and – hopefully- triumphant end.
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New Post! Love THIS Home- A Renovation And Life Update http://t.co/OcaoW9xhrM #DIY #Reno
I hear you on the renovations and we’re not even doing anything near the scope you’re on…just paint and window treatments and odds and ends. But it really does eat up your time, energy, sanity, and money…OMG the money!
I said this house would be a five year plan when we bought…guess when five years hits? This May and we’re not going anywhere. I don’t think the market is hot enough for us right now to sell with any reasonable profit and frankly where are we going to go? I’m with you…I don’t want to settle for something that isn’t perfect because I will not move ever again. I’m pushing for a move down South away from the drab weather, crazy real estate taxes and housing prices. We’ll see. But for now I just chant “I love our home, I love our home, I love our home.”
Yes! Come south! We do have cheap houses.
Because of your renovation documentary I’m so relieved we are getting our house up to standards BEFORE procreation. I’m over the nasty carpet in the living room and am tempted to rip it right out until we can have new floors put in. Honestly who puts carpet in the living areas in Texas? Morons that’s who. You are one BRAVE woman!!! Can’t wait to see your master bedroom when it’s finished!
Or C. Decide a “perfect” house isn’t so important.
It’s something I struggle with, too, and we bought a house built in 1964 with the last major renovation done sometime in the 80s. We did some stuff before moving – like the master bathroom, that was gross and not useable – but it’s mainly been a work in progress, and nothing like your progress, it sounds.
Sometimes when I think about the projects I want to tackle – built-ins for dining room, the whole outside – I find myself wondering, “Am I really going to spend all this money on this?” I mean, when I think about how other people in the world live, I already have a palace. Immediately before this house, we lived in a condo with the same sq footage as two rooms in our current house. Extended families of ten live in less space in other parts of the world and here I am thinking what I want more, more, more. So much for wanting to have a small footprint on the earth.
We should have some money coming in later this year, and while I KNOW it should just go straight into our retirement accounts and college fund, I find myself thinking about all the STUFF I want to spend it on. Sigh…
All that said – being close to stuff and people is worth so much. It really changes your life when you can walk to friends & fun. Or at least get there quickly, so you can do things spur of the moment and casually get together.
Ongoing renovations here too! We finished our attic, which took forever. We’ve all been sleeping in one bedroom while the kids room for new paint and flooring, and now we moved into the finished bedroom so that we can do the paint and flooring in our master bedroom. It’s been on hold for two months in the winter, we just weren’t ‘inspired enough’ to do it right away and life got in the way. Now with spring I hope we’ll get it done soon! I’m just so done with remodeling, I want some order. It’s chaos with the kids not having their own bedroom where all the toys should be.
Ugh, I feel ya! We’ve been in this house for 7 years and are feeling the itch. Like you, we are SPECIFIC about what we want….I swear, our wishlist is a mile long. And yeah, a one income family at the moment? SO NOT HAPPENING! That leads me to want to tackle a million house projects while my husband wants to save money to buy our dream house. I shutter every time someone comes over and see ours oak cabinets. Straight up 1993.
Digging the new headboard!
I feel your pain .. and then some. I also think the home improvement stuff is so much worse when pregnant — at least it was for me. We did a complete gut reno of our kitchen when I was 5-7 months pregnant with my second. My job was busy, life was just hectic and my 2-year-old felt like more of a handful than ever. It was most unfun. I was pretty intense about the details, too — and I am not a type A kinda gal. But omg, the looming deadline of my due date made me a basket case. Must. Do. Everything. NOW. Nesting on steroids, my husband called it. Anyway, it all worked out. We did the kitchen. Other projects had to wait, for my sanity. But the best part was once it was over, it was all worth it. Hang in there!!!
LOL I love how you say you “edit the stuff we have in our lives” 😉 such a writer thing to say.
Your headboard is beautiful! Did you build it, and if so, is there a tutorial that you followed to make it?
When we were expecting, we didn’t do a big renovation like you guys but my nesting meant “pull everything out of where it is, then put it back, sorta in the same place it just was.” Good luck to you, and don’t stress too much. Your home is beautiful.
[…] house is FINALLY, mostly in order. The rooms are put back together after the carpet install, and all major biohazards (and even most of the laundry) are clean. We had a great weekend, full of […]