It's Monday again, folks; and while I'm already suffering my usual husband hangover, we can add in a rough night's sleep and a possibly sick toddler to the manic Monday blues. In spite of those things, and the buckets of rain outside, I'm in pretty chipper mood because it's going to be a "short" week (the hubs will be off Thursday and Friday). We have plans to go away Thursday night to Atlantic City for a night of gambling, yummy food, a comedy show and hopefully some shopping. I might even go wild and have a coke or two with dinner (I'm cuh-razzzy, I know)! Then Friday is something we've been talking about for a year...DEMO DAY!!!
I mentioned some time last week (and in posts last year) that the hubs and I have been sloooooowly remodeling the house. We bought it back in 2007 (about 6 months before the market crashed- great timing!). We were lucky enough to pay below market value (which was high because everything was then), because the owner was K's Grandmother. I really didn't want to buy the house, I knew it needed a lot of work and honestly, we are not handy people ::a very big understatement::. The hubs convinced me that we'd have it two years tops- since we paid less than market we could fix it up, throw some paint on it and sell it at a profit. Of course, having never been homeowners, we couldn't have possibly known just how handy we weren't, how much work really goes into a house, and of course, that the market would be crashing almost any minute.
Once the market crashed, we both went into reluctant homeowner depression. Okay, so I made that term up- but it's the best way to describe the overwhelming amount of people our age in the same position. People who bought their first time homes in a good market, only planning enough space for themselves and maybe one baby (one/two bedroom condos and town homes) with the thought that once they needed to expand, they could sell and buy something else just as easily. None of us expected to feel "trapped" in our first time homes. SO here we are, in year 5, and only last year accepted the fact that we would be here much longer than we expected, and decided to finally make the place our own.
In that time, we've done a lot of cosmetic updates and re-did our kitchen. However, something that's been irking us since we moved in was our master bathroom- it's completely outdated with multiple shower issues. Unfortunately, when you can only do one "big thing" at a time, it takes a while to get to everything. Then we got a little incentive when the shower started leaking into our newly re-done kitchen; we were (thankfully) forced into pushing the project to the top of the pile. After a year of talking about it, lamenting about it, and pushing it off, demo day is Friday! This is the first project where we've hired professionals to come do the work, so I don't know what to expect, but obviously I'm pathetically excited.
We are very lucky that although we felt trapped here for a bit (can't really say I feel that way anymore), we actually bought a house big enough for our growing family. It's kind of funny how things work out like that...it's no longer the fixer upper we bought from Grandma, but the house we perfected our painting skills in, where we figured out our decorating tastes and grew out of our "college decor." It's the house where we got our first dog, and had to fix many of our first dog disasters (as in she ate through the sheet rock of our walls and chewed up all the moldings in the kitchen...). It's the house we made our first nursery in, and brought our daughter home from the hospital to. With every memory we make and every personal touch we add, it transforms from being our first house to being our first home. When I think of it that way, it's really hard to fathom that I ever regretted buying it.
So with all that excitement going on this week, you can see why a little less sleep and some rain aren't keeping me down. I'll be back later this week with some raves (some pregnancy some just raves) and an update on our demo process. I hope everyone had a great weekend!
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