Making Our House a Home

When B and I first started talking about becoming homeowners, I was excited. I couldn’t wait to paint the walls and decorate everything. When we ended up buying his childhood home from his parents, I was a little disappointed. Actually, a lot disappointed. As much as I love certain features of the house - specifically the chunky wood trim accents and the built-in shelves and cabinets/entertainment area in the living room - there are quite a few flaws. The previous-previous owners (you know, before my in-laws) installed the gypsum wall board that is used in trailer homes all throughout the house. The walls that remain beneath the gypsum board and the remaining walls that weren’t touched during remodels (aka every room except the bathrooms and the kitchen ceiling) are lath and plaster. Ugh.

In order to redecorate the house how we I want it, nearly every room in the house will eventually need to be gutted down to studs, the insulation will need to be refilled, the electrical should probably be updated, and then drywall will be installed … it’s going to be a giant mess (not to mention how ridiculously expensive it will be).

Remodeling the entire house is my long-term home owning goal, but I have a few short-term goals to keep me satisfied in the mean time.

One of the main things I’d like to do is add some personality to our rooms. We have a total of 5 things currently hanging on the walls. Two wedding pictures in our stairwell, two farmhouse/country style signs that we inherited from the in-laws (aka they forgot to take them with when they moved out - at some point I’ll stop being lazy and take them down … and probably donate them to Goodwill), and a really cute print that I recently found on Pinterest (original location here). Eventually, I’d like to have a photo gallery in the stairwell that covers most of the walls. I just love the look of them - I think the pictures and prints used in photo galleries say a lot about the family who lives in the house.

New furniture is really high on my list as well. We have an oddly shaped living room, and I think a sectional sofa would make the room configuration a lot less awkward. We even found one at the Cash & Carry store that we both really liked … it’s just a matter of saving up $800 to buy it :-/. I’d also like to replace our coffee table and end tables with ones that weren’t $20 for a set of 3 at Target. Yeah, our current coffee/end tables are those cheap-o MDF ones that college kids buy. And I broke the coffee table (on accident. I wanted to play Dance Central, it was in my way … I slid it out of the way, a leg got caught on the carpet, and now that leg is at a really awkward angle - but it still works … I guess). I’d like to get a coffee table with a lot of storage (to make up for the loss of storage that will happen when we no longer have the crappy futon). Our mattress needs to be replaced too. There are pieces of the springs (again) poking out of the mattress on B’s side of the bed, and it sags in the middle, so I can’t help but to lay in the middle of the bed rather than on my own side. It has definitely seen better days, and although the memory foam mattress pad we have on it is nice, it doesn’t make the bed any more comfortable (because it’s impossible).

Finally, I’d like to do a temporary remodel of the girl cave. I’d like to re-attach the wood paneling to the wall (there is one corner where the bottom of the panels have become detached from the wall), paint the wood paneling, and get rid of the ugly two toned carpet. I think there’s something about the house that screamed “put ugly carpet in me!” First we had to get rid of the rust-orange carpet in the small bedroom (there’s still some in the hallway and down the stairs mocking us), and the girl cave has blue/purple carpet with brown spots. Not dirty spots, but random patches of brown mixed in with the blue/purple. B’s parents (his mom) picked that carpet. I don’t know what she was thinking. (edit: B says I’m wrong, that carpet was already there. Either way it’s UGLY!) In order to do anything in that room, I’d need to clean it. Odds are, it’s never going to happen.

Hopefully within the next year or so we can start crossing these things off the list, and make our house a little more “us” and a lot more comfortable.