Yep, I'm alive and did remember the other day that I started a blog and abandoned it so I'll try this again. No promises though... since apparently I have made a couple of empty promises and have not felt bad enough to follow through on them.
I have a problem: First House How Much Do You Invest Syndrome
John and I bought our house a month before we got married after a year of searching for something that wasn't cookie cutter, new construction, uninteresting neighborhood category (not dissing anyone in that type of house but it wasn't what we were looking for). Well we finally found a contemporary, very unique house as close to the Razorback football stadium as we could afford and a mini bonus; it had a jail fence for the dogs!! Not kidding, it had razor wire on top of the chain link fence in the backyard. The previous owner had a cat.... what ELSE was she keeping back there??! We took that down but it took a year... I'm sure people driving by saw our lab and boykin and were like "really? They need razor wire for those two dogs?". We don't.... but it discouraged Tara from even THINKING about climbing the fence. Now that it's gone I don't think she even considers climbing and thank goodness. Ok back to our house.
It's 1,500 SF and 2 bedrooms... 2 small bedrooms. I'm not complaining because I do love our house, even though I NEVER thought I would like or live in a contemporary style house, but it really just isn't a long term house. We will very soon outgrow it and will sell by next summer. Not this summer, too much going on, but 2012. So. How much do we do to it? The economy hasn't gotten any better regarding real estate...even in Fayetteville. We have a great location close to the university, close to I-540, close to all amenities so I'm not worried about selling it. But we didn't exactly get a bargain on the house and have already replaced the roof, painted the entire exterior, put a lot of money into the yard (even though a professional may laugh at that statement by the looks of things today) and did some painting inside. Our next step is replacing the awful carpet on the stairs and upstairs in the bedrooms and loft... which isn't cheap.
And then what... how far do we go? The bathrooms and kitchen are fine. The previous owner updated those and I can live with them although I would love to get rid of the linoleum in the downstairs laundry room/bathroom and replace it with a fun tile. Not going to. I now want to repaint the entire downstairs and upstairs loft. Problem here is it is a two story living room with painted beams and I just don't have the patience, time or ability to get on a 25 foot ladder and tackle this job. So do we hire a painter? What if the buyers HATE our color choice and want to negotiate a repaint or a paint allowance? Backing up: the two story living room is coral (already there and I loved it), the kitchen is about 4 shades darker than the coral so almost red, the dining room is a marigold yellow which I was supposed to paint in JANUARY and didn't do... the staircase walls and upstairs office/loft are a deep taupe. Actually all of those colors are fun and look great in the house and were there and I refused to paint them when John proposed it because I was so excited to have a coral room in my house (a southern thing). Now I'm sick of them and want a fresh neutral pallet to show off furniture, drapes and wood floors versus focusing on the bold wall colors.
We (I) need (want) new drapes in the living room. Seems like an easy thing, but no it isn't. I bought drapes before we even bought furniture. Literally moved into this house with John's stanky college bed and a twig table. No lie. We didn't have blinds or drapes to block out our neighbors curiosity so had to search for drapes that I thought would work with the walls and whatever furniture we ended up buying. Couldn't find anything that wouldn't cost us precious money we needed for things like a couch so Pier One came to the rescue. I really liked the drapes and still liiiike them but don't love them. I'm finally figuring out the feel of our house and after getting furniture in there it just feels so dark with the chocolate drapes (that have a subtle pattern in our wall colors) and the furniture that ended up being dark as well plus the bold wall color. BUT do I invest in getting drapes made that are perfect and fit the windows perfectly knowing very well that we will be moving into a house that most likely will have taller ceilings and more traditional sized windows? I don't want to go the cheap route again because that's just another $150 on substitute drapes versus perfect drapes. Plus, I can't decide whether to invest in painting or just live with the colors and have perfect, lighter, drapes. I haven't mentioned the metal mini-blinds we have on some small windows still and hope that you will forgive us for this massive no no in decorating but we have strange size windows and no desire to invest in wooden blinds and honestly I HATE blinds anyway and wish we could just live in a fish bowl and let our neighbors see into our uber exciting home life....
Soooo what do I do? One more thing to think about.... we replaced the front porch too. Forgot about that one. I also think we will end up needing to refinish the hardwood floors in the entire downstairs before selling because of puppy feet scrambling over them for 2 1/2 years and us not managing to negotiate that into the contract with the previous owner. All "not cheap" items.
I have an idea on super cheap drapes but it is a weekend project for me.... I might share what it is after I do a little more research on how to carry the plan out. If I do it and it works and I get positive feedback from my husband then I'll post how to do this! Don't get your hopes up though since I tend to make empty promises on projects and then never share the results...
Next question on first house dilemnas.... do we just keep our house, build a new one and rent this house to college students or a cute little family that doesn't need more than two bedrooms?? Another discussion for another time but one we've contemplated since day one.
Thanks for reading after months of neglect!
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