So, two years ago we were faced with the dilemma that lots of youngish couples are faced with when buying property, do we want to compromise the standard of house we buy for our first home in favour of location, and renovate?
Our answer was a resounding “Yes Please”… Which can be loosely translated to “We love pain!”
Don’t get me wrong, I doubt very much if, given the opportunity to turn back time, we would have made any other decision. At the time however we would have pinched ourselves constantly for over a month to get ourselves ready for the pain knowing what we know now.
We’ve all seen the Dulux ads where a young couple, together with their English sheepdog, put one coat of paint on a wall (no undercoat) and all of a sudden the room has $5000 worth of new furniture in it and looks like something out of “Better Homes and Gardens” with the only process shots being couples frolicking and playfully dabbing each other on the nose with paint (Don’t do this, that stuff doesn’t come off easily!)
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We’ve all seen the DIY videos on YouTube… Looks easy doesn’t it? Have you ever thought that the manufacturers of these products make these DIY videos to expand their market to people of non-trade backgrounds by showing qualified people doing the job (and subsequently making it look easy)? The manufacturer gets a second bite of the cherry too when the DIY home handyman buggers the job up and needs to get a professional to fix it… awesome money making venture!
Then there are the trips to Bunnings… So many things to buy and build… So many things to add meaning to your life and expand the already rich tapestry of your existence! Best of all, they are all designed for the “Home DIY Handyman”… A word of warning; most (if not all) are not worth your relationship /marriage! Do not attempt this at home kids, it will end in pain!
So, to get to the point of this blog, why does renovating never stop taking? The answer is you will never actually finish…
For example, late last year, we finally got off our butts and replaced our kitchen. Not wanting to pay the exorbitant amount of money that dedicated kitchen manufactures’ charge to supply and install kitchens we decided to buy the kitchen “off the shelf” at a certain Swedish flat pack furniture retailer and do a lot of the work ourselves. I should mention here that our house was built in the time of “Asbestos… Is there anything it can’t be used for?” so a simple “cabinet in/cabinet out” job quickly became a total demolition before any of the real work could begin.
This was all factored in however… What wasn’t was the two week time frame blowing out to 6 months before it was totally completed!
I do take all supreme responsibility for this fact, I did crack the shits and was completely over it until the unpainted walls drove me so mad that it just had to be finished. This however caused the following issue:
Renovating one room makes the adjacent room look like shit, or, what I have come to call the “Comparative Crap Effect”.
Our lounge room used to be the one acceptable room of our house, but since the re-sheeting, new cabinetry/tiles and, really, complete overhaul of the kitchen our lounge room, by comparison, looks like shit. So now, the lounge room needs a complete face lift (which will more than likely also involve an almost total demolition of the room as it stands). After that is complete, the hallway will no doubt fall victim to the Comparative Crap Effect…. So the cycle continues!
Having had this rant I wish to stipulate… Renovating is rewarding and seeing your house evolve from someone else’s home into your own vision is a wonderful feeling… just beware… everything costs more than what you initially believe it will and takes twice as long.
As I said in the beginning, given the chance again I would have gone down the same road… We live in an area we love in a house that is slowly becoming our own… However there is a lot to be said for living in a package home in the outer suburbs!
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