Placing our home in perspective
We’ve owned our home for 1 month, and it’s been a month of perspective. A month of challenge, grief, and loss. All along planning work on our new home.
Soon after our house closed, B and I started to plan out the work that we needed to get done in our home before we moved in. We were faced with a ton of decisions and a small budget.
What floors to get? Should we redo our California/popcorn ceilings? Is new trim necessary? Should we hire a contractor or try to hire tradespeople individually? Can we really afford all of this? How much does a new bathroom really cost?
We started with some big picture planning––our project values for the project to help guide us and stay on track, and unified.
Project values:
Work done by a specific date so that we can move in
Cost saving
Reliable workers
Those might seem like basic values but they actually helped place some boundaries on the project so that we didn’t get too ahead of ourselves. For instance, if being completed on time is essential, then we can’t do everything we want to do. We need to prioritize which tasks need to be completed before we move in and which ones we can wait for another season or year.
We also spent time consulting with friends who have done major renovations and work (in comparison our work is a teeny tiny project). They actually recommended that we leave our California ceilings throughout the home and not mud them/replace with new drywall. It would save a ton of money in labour costs, and save time as it would take a long time for it to dry. Fixing all the ceilings would delay our flooring install and wall painting.
We only have about 3.5 weeks to get things done before we need to move in and out of our current apartment. Personally I’m processing what elements of the home do I need to embrace/accept, and which ones are worth investing time and money into changing. The California ceilings can stay for now.
Our house is about 1800 sq/ft (including the basement, main, and second floor). If we make changes consistently throughout the whole home, it adds up. Talking and dreaming about changes we hope to see in our first home together quickly got overwhelming so we decided to K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid)––which funnily enough B didn’t grow up with that phrase and his reaction was hilarious when I said it in passing to a friend. 🤦🏻♀️
The current state of the home also plays a role in what we want to update before we move in. The house is only 20 years old, but has mostly housed student renters (I don’t think the toilets have been cleaned in 10 years) and everything is builder grade. Except for the carpet being beyond nasty and the basement shower which has rotted, it’s actually in really good shape.
What we’re working on:
Ripping up the carpet and installing all new vinyl plank flooring in all three levels
New baseboard trim
Replacing the ceiling in the living room and two basement bedrooms in order to install pot lights
Replacing shower in basement bathroom with a tub and tile, and installing new lighting
Installing new toilets
Instead of hiring a renovation/contracting company, we decided to privately hire a friend who is a contractor to help us do some of the work, alongside us hiring out the other tradespeople. We will demo ourselves but not do any of the trades work. With such a limited time for the project and such a big amount of work, it’s not feasible to spend valuable time trying to learn something that may save us marginally in the long run.
After we made that decision, confirmed our project values, and set the scope of the work we started to look at flooring.
Flooring:
Walking into a major flooring store in our city was majorly overwhelming. We quickly figured out that there’s a million options and at some point you just have to pick one. We didn’t want the selection process to drag out too long so we talked with three reliable stores in our city, took home a bunch of samples, crunched the numbers, and chose within a week. As I learned in wedding planning, it’s always better to make a decision together in strength, giving yourself grace that it’s normal to be wary and wonder if you made the right choice. Especially when the cost is so high and you have to wait months until you see it fully installed.
B was gracious and gave input and advice but at the end of the week, let me pick the flooring I liked best. For him, it didn’t really matter. And even though I love what we chose, I realized it didn’t really matter for me either.
During the week that we were selecting flooring, it felt like everyone we knew had a crisis. A friend’s grandfather passed away. Another friend’s marriage was collapsing. My mom’s car was hit in a parking lot. And another friend has close family in the hospital with Covid-19. It shifted my perspective of how important the people in the home are, over what the home looked like.
Does it matter which floor colour we have if our marriage is broken and abusive? Obviously not. It helped place the process in perspective too. Working on creating a new home and space is valuable and fun, but it’s not worth becoming obsessive about––neglecting people and relationships in my life. With full and draining work weeks, I only have mental space to focus on planning our new home Friday-Sunday. But then the weekends are full of caring for our current home, getting ready for the next week, attending Church, and trying to rest and restore. That means we have to really space out the work and planning. Thankfully we have tons of time! We want to keep this project in the right perspective and place this winter.
What’s next?
Now that we’re in the Christmas season it may slow the progress down a bit until the New Year. Not because we have a ton of people to see and places to go––but because we need to stay at home doing as little as possible in an attempt to recover from a year of challenge.
This week we are going to start looking into trim and visiting a trim company to source styles and determine cost. The company which is installing our flooring will also be installing our trim (was included in the cost!), so we just need to have the trim delivered to the house in the spring. We are also continuing to price out materials and get quotes on trades so that we can access our budget and (hopefully) have realistic expectations.
We’re not going to share our final material selection until the work is done in the home, but here are some photos that channel our design and style.
Inspiration photos:
Photo sources: @thecottinghamcottage and Pinterest.