Like I’d mentioned on “Busy Bee,” Dan and I own our own townhouse!

It’s fantastic having a place to come home to and realizing that you own it 🙂 Every time I think about it, and really let it sink in, I’m just in awe. I realize that my life can be really crappy sometimes, thanks to all the stupid stuff going on in my body, but fully realizing that I own a house reminds me that my life is also pretty amazing!

Our little townhouse is in need of some TLC, that’s for sure. Before we bought it, it was a rental property. We’re pretty sure it had been a rental property since it was built (1985). Because it was a rental, the fixes were economical and functional, as well as the upkeep. There is nothing wrong with that, rentals can get severely beat up depending on the tenants (my mother-in-law is a landlord, and I’ve heard some pretty wild stories). We bought the place knowing it was a rental and would need work. It’s functional right now, and was when we moved in, and that is what is important.

The house is the perfect size for the two of us, and will probably still work once we start a family. However, the house won’t work once we either have more than two children, or any of the children get to about 3 or 4 years old. Well, we could make it work, but I don’t think any of us would be thrilled about it. The biggest gripe we’ve ever had with the floorplan is the size of our master bedroom. Our master in our apartment was larger (by about two feet on one side), which is when we bought all of our furniture. I know Dan is completely sick of our bed frame, and I’m not exactly thrilled with it, because it has weird legs (at the foot)… they are essentially 4×4 blocks, but they stick out from the frame instead of being flush, and they stop at knee height. Because of their odd placement and height, we’re both constantly running into them, which is a major pain in the knee. I’m thinking that we might see about selling this current frame and purchasing a new one that will work better in our room.

The house repairs and updates have been going a little slower than we’d like, but a big part of that is thanks to my crazy and unpredictable medical bills. Every room needs at least a little work. All of the walls need to be washed and repainted, the ceilings all need to be scraped (years of old popcorn and paint layers), retextured, and painted, and all of the baseboards need replacing. There are several spots around the house where we need to investigate the flooring; some of the tenants had pets (both dogs and cats) and they weren’t all properly house trained. We do need to replace all of the hard flooring (most of the house is carpet, but the bathrooms, kitchen, and entry are hard surfaces) as well. We’ll most likely tile the kitchen, but there are some really nice and sturdy vinyl flooring options available now that we’ll be looking into. The kitchen also needs to be gutted, the cabinets have just worn out (originals), and there are also some new cabinet technologies that will allow us to make better use of the kitchen layout. The laminate counter is also worn out, and we’ll be putting in some sort of hard surface (probably Corian or similar) for durability and functionality. All of the doors in the house need replacing (they’re just worn out), and so do the bathroom fixtures. The bathroom vanities are worn out, the toilets are very inefficient and the seals are wearing out, the tubs and tile are old and have mold growing on the grout and caulking, the old fluorescent light fixture ballasts are just barely hanging on to life as well. All of the windows in the house, since they’re the originals, have developed massive air leaks, so they need replacing. Then there are several smaller things that really just need love.

So far, we’ve been able to almost completely renovate the powder room. We’ve also started work on the ceilings, and have been fixing up our outdoor spaces. I’ll post separate updates on all of these projects, or this one will get overly long. But I absolutely love having a place of my own to decorate and fix up 🙂 I can’t wait until it is “done” (you know, the big things)!