Monday 29 July 2013

Home Sweet Home.....right?

My topic today is home ownership. We purchased our first home last summer and were so excited to get moved in and settled! My mother in law was moving in with us as well, since we had renovated the basement to be a bachelor apartment for her. So basically a toddler, a tween, and two moves.....maybe we weren't excited about that part?

Thankfully for my sisters and brother in law, who without we still would be moving to this day. We were also lucky to only be moving a few streets over, which made the back and forth trips with loads of boxes a little easier for us ( easier yes....but not more fun.....). Anyway we got it done and are still alive to talk about it, so I chalk it up as a success!

Now comes the real hidden topic! Nobody really tells you how hard home ownership really is! There is always so much to do! Fix things that have broken, upkeep things so they don't break, check to see which items need upkeep....its a never ending battle! I know it will get easier in the coming years as our yearly maintenance become routine and our knowledge base of the ins and outs of what makes our house tick become second nature, but boy! oh boy! I have to say this year was full of learning!

I think the hardest part is having the confidence in ourselves to say "Hey, we can fix that!" Rather then call somebody and pay them to do it. Now I am not saying I'm going to try to re-wire our house or anything major but I'm sure we are far more capable to doing things then we think! That is what Youtube is for right?

The bottom line is we LOVE our house, no matter how much we complain about the amount of work it is, if we could go back in time we would chose the same house over and over again!

Would you like to win a 25$ gift card to Home Depot for your own house? Leave me a comment letting me know what do-it-yourself projects you guys have done around the house! Remember you need to be a follower of my blog and you need to have "liked" my Facebook page!The more followers and views I have the more giveaways I can do!

I will have a random draw for the winner on August 15th!

Good luck!

6 comments:

  1. Home renovations are difficult and really annoying to do; however, once its done, simply being able to point to something and say "We did that all on our own! (or at least, Ryan did!)", is enough gratification!
    In the past 2.5 years since we've been living in our home, we have painted almost every room, redone a bathroom, rebuilt our fence, rebuilt our deck and stained it, and have done loads and loads of landscaping - all while my other half has been away for 1.5 of those 2.5 years!
    Up on the agenda next for this year - a new roof and basement!

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  2. Yes, there is more upkeep on a home than most first time homeowners expect. Things like making your home more attractive, painting, upgrading bathrooms, redoing the kitchen, refinishing the hardwood floors, landscaping, are all works of joy for the most part. The things that drive you crazy are the plumbing issues, flooding basement, broken garage door opener, foggy double pane windows, failing furnace, septic system failure, and the like. We've been in our first home for 38 years now, and all the things we've fixed and upgraded need it again! Oh well, that's what retirement's about right?

    So a recent fix up project came about when I began to smell mold in my walk in closet. Oh oh, that's not good. I pulled out the clothing, the boxes piled up on the floor next to the wall, and there was a spot of growing mold about 18" wide by 24" tall - covering the painted sheet rock.

    Very upsetting. My husband cut out the sheetrock and found that the mold had developed due to a leak in the little water tube that went into the back of the refrigerator for the iced water dispenser! (Our kitchen backs up to our master bedroom closet. Apparently this is a common occurrance, so if anyone reads this, keep that in mind and check behind your fridge every so often! Luckily the mold was confined to the sheetrock. We fixed the plumbing to the fridge fairly easily, then let the area dry out using some fans in the closet. In about five days he patched up the sheetrock, then repainted it and we haven't had a problem since. It wasn't as easy as it sounds, but it worked.




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  3. II can do nothing, my husband everything! He ripped out the basement, re did the lay-out and then started from scartch with re building, hes replaced all our windows except one. He re-d the kitchen and layout, painted all rooms, tore down all walls, re wired and re insulated and giprocked. He has re lanscaped the yard and much much more! He built his own house with his dad many years ago in Gaspe also!

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  4. Marc has done a lot in our house, though not much this year as we've been busy with the three boys. So far he's redone the entire basement, built a she'd, built a deck, installed lighting on the main floor and up stairs where there was no ceiling lighting, added a door for access to the garage from the house, replaced the flooring in all the bedrooms ...I'm sure there's more. And we still have a list of things to do!!!

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  5. Renos can be fun and a pain all at the same time, for me the rush is the end result! We like to take on a small project each season, this way we dont have too many things going at once. We recently re-did our entire bathroom, something I do not recommend unless you have more then one washroom in the house! It is just about finished now and I am in love with the results! Hard work does pay off!

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  6. We had our house built so there wasn't a whole lot that had to be done, but we did finish the basement ourselves and install a third bathroom and we seeded and sodded the lawn, built a garden box and built a patio and front walkway. Thank goodness for the kindness of handy friends and neighbours! Otherwise our brand new house would be a dump!

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