You are really moving along, Trek. I give you credit, I know nothing about "house stuff." Not to play the stupid little woman, because my mom knew about and did all of the work around the house, but I am all thumbs with tools and never had any interest in even choosing the flooring or carpets in the first 3 houses we owned. I know what I like in furniture, but my way of operating is to go in, buy it without too much comparing, and leave!
A little over 2 years ago we bought a 22 year old contemporary house on an impulse. We had been thinking of selling our typical 4 bedroom 2 bath colonial in a development and had looked at some older victorians. But the rooms were so small and the amount of work was daunting. We looked at our house on a rainy day when the ride we were leading was cancelled. The previous owner had the house stuffed with ugly unfinished antiques and junk everywhere. She had let her college aged daughter paint the rooms weird colors and let's just say she didn't know how to paint either. The powder room was bright green and red. Two bedrooms were purple. The lower level (family room and guest bedroom) smelled like mold. But, we fell in love and knew there was some work to do. The house is in a very unique neighborhood, with access to a community pond and hiking trails.
Well, let's just say we didn't know what we were getting into. We found out this house was built on spec and for about 7-8 years a series of renters lived here. There were rumors of rock bands and drugs. The people that owned the house before the woman we bought it from never fixed anything. Everything was cheap early eighties, the lowest priced stuff you can get from Home Depot. The heat and AC blew like crazy in some rooms and didn't work in others. Our heating guy said he couldn't fix it! My husband fixed it. The smoke detector went off every time we cooked. One of the lights in the kitchen went on and off every 2 minutes. First, we painted all of the rooms. We got all new lights, rewired everything, replaced the outside doors (none of them could lock!). We hired a contractor to demolish the kitchen and put in new cabinets, floor, and move the new appliances we had bought. The contractor also redid the powder room, where there was a cabinet so big you couldn't open it. The new tile went from the front door to the kitchen. That took 6 weeks. We set up our fridge in the dining room and cooked on a microwave and hot plate and washed dishes in the bathroom. The time went buy very quickly, but I haven't bought store roasted chicken since! During this time my husband totally redid 2 of the bathrooms himself. They came out great, but it was hard work for him. During this time, we found out a lot of other things in the house were broken and he fixed them. Nothing was standard. When all of this was done, the contractors demolished and redid our bathroom and enlarged my closet. I can't describe how bad the master bath was. This was done from the middle of April to June. It got delayed a little because one guy didn't show up to fix the hardwood and the schedule got off track. But it's beautiful now. Then, we landscaped the front of the house and said no more until next year! Last spring we had all of the windows replaced, which has taken about 20% off of our utility bills. My husband spent most of last summer, to October doing the back of the house and building a patio. I carried about a ton of rocks. Oh, and we had a bunch of wood rot fixed, along with 2 decks that we found out were about to fall down.
WE have one more area in the front to do this spring and then we are done until the outside needs to be painted in about 2 years. That's not counting the driveway that needs to be replaced and the garage that we would really like to rebuild...