in two days, my husband will attend a home buyers workshop. after that, we will hopefully be given the green light to begin looking at homes to buy. in light of this new development of our home buying process, my brain has begun working, and won’t shut the fuck up. as i was laying here, trying to take an afternoon nap, my brain began circling through the various things i’ve learned about houses over the years, and what i should keep in mind when we buy one.
foremost in my mind right now is a hearty piece of advice that i advise everybody who owns their own home to take.
*Make your home beautiful NOW, not after you decide to sell it.*
a trap i’ve seen so many people fall into, is letting their homes fall into disrepair. they complain about the nasty carpet, the ugly walls, the poor landscaping, or the unappealing bathroom. (and much more) then one day they have to sell their home, for whatever reason. don’t think you’re immune… things happen. you have to move for work, family, or you just have to downsize or upscale your home size… whatever. shit happens, and you may not get that 30+ years out of your home that you were imagining. what happens now with the ugly bathroom, carpet, and paint job? well, you fix it of course! you spend hours and tons of $$$ fixing up your home for someone else. you’re still in the same financial situation you were before you had to move- maybe even worse off, yet still you manage to come up with the money to make these improvements, for the sake of selling the home.
don’t fall into that trap.
keep your home nice so not only do you live in a nice, comfortable home- but you can concentrate on something other than fixing your home up if you ever have to sell it.
when i was a kid living in Connecticut, my mother was unexpectedly transferred to a sister plant in Tennessee. what happened then? we had to move. the first thing they did was remodel the bathroom. i can remember sitting in the crusty old tub, trying to get clean while tiles fell off the walls, the toliet clogged, and the dirt in the cracks in the floor undid the majority of my scrubbing. then all of a sudden we had to sell the house, and my parents poured thousands into the bathroom to modernize it. they literally replaced everything in there… we had to use a Porta-Jon for a whole week while the crews tore the walls out of that room. when they finally finished we had a beautiful new bathroom, and we promptly moved out.
a couple years after we moved to Tennessee, the roof in our house started leaking. my bedroom was hit the hardest… the walls were made of plywood, and they buckled in and warped from the wet. sure, my parents replaced the roof and made it stop leaking, but they didn’t do anything for my bedroom; they only did what they had to. eventually the walls dried, and i had very funny shaped walls. when it became obvious that i needed new walls in my room, i started coloring on them. it started out as one funny little quote i really liked written in a sharpie marker, and eventually exploded into every friend of mine signing the walls and drawing pictures. when i needed a phone number, it was signed on my wall. i had poetry, art, and a record of every friend i had on that wall. it was really, really cool. one day, in a fit of adolescent fury, i punched a hole into my wall. it was huge… so i covered it with duct tape. another day, i punched a brush through my wall, and added more duct tape. my wall was officially ghetto fabulous. i can remember sleeping one night, and hearing a scratch-scratch coming from inside my walls. i figured one of our cats had gotten in my closets (which doubled as roof crawlspace) and was scratching to get out. it was coming from the duct-tape fix, so i peeled back the duct tape, to reveal some very long, disgusting claws that were NOT feline… a possum had gotten into my closet somehow. i screamed, used a broom handle to push back the tape, and didn’t sleep well for months after that. yes, my room was a wreck, and that’s just one of the rooms in the house that fell apart. when my parents moved into that house, they didn’t replace any of the curtains, they didn’t paint a single room, and all the flooring was what we had walked on when we looked at the house and decided to buy it.
life moved on, and i grew up and moved out as soon as i could. eventually, my parents decided to move to Virginia for their work.
what’s the first thing they did? you guessed it! they had my old bedroom completely renovated. they had the walls professionally painted in the entire house, and replaced the carpet. the house was brand-spanking-new, and the first thing they did when it was done- was move out.
that’s why i am giving that piece of advice out today.
don’t fix your house up for someone else!
fix it up for you.
when things go wrong, you’re eventually going to have to fix it anyways… don’t procrastinate to the point where you can’t even enjoy your hard work or spent money.
replace the carpet that you hate looking at. get some blinds for your windows. save up to replace the shower stall. take the time to paint your rooms… trust me, you’re gonna have to do it eventually if you own your own home. do it now, while you can still enjoy it.
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