It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks filled with showings and open houses and fur-filled feline field trips to the park and obsessive vacuuming and pillow-fluffing and floral arranging, but it happened.
Our house sold. YAY!!!
And, with our house now sold (yay again!), we’ve entered full-fledged house-hunting mode. The buyers wanted an incredibly fast closing (three weeks!) (seriously – who moves that quickly?) so we need to find somewhere new to live asap. Sadly, three measly little weeks isn’t much time to find an amazing house, put an offer in on said house, get an inspector’s blessing on that house, and move into our next humble (and awesome!) little abode. Luckily, we can live with family and friends for a bit until we close on our next home, and we’ll stash all of our worldly possessions in a storage unit in the meantime. Yep, I’m guessing we’ll be of no-fixed-address (also known as “Hotel du Mom and Dad”) for a couple weeks at least.
But my current dilemma is this: as we begin to seriously (and rather feverishly) house-hunt, do we look for another fixer-upper, or do we search for a house that’s shiny and lovely and perfect as-is? The thought has crossed my mind that it’d be nice to move into a for real “move in ready” sorta place. The whole concept is a little foreign to me though. Our first house was adorned with layers of old wallpaper (in each and every single room) and rainbow-painted baseboards and a kitchen that was far uglier than our current one ever was.
Need proof? Here’s our very first kitchen before the wallpaper removal and epic painting project began…
Yep. We bought that house. And it took weekend upon weekend upon weekend to make it pretty and lovely and into a good home for Sweetie and me and the cats. It was a great little house. It just required a bit of work (and a lot less wallpaper.)
The same is true for this place. It too needed a lot of work when we bought it, although not nearly as much as our first home (thankfully, this was a wallpaper-free house from the start!) Still, I’ve spent many many weekends painting walls and caulking baseboards and trim, and trying to make everything here lovely. And I now adore our house. It feels like “us.” And I’m very sad to see it go.
But that’s my dilemma: the weekends consumed by painting and flooring and reno-ing and obsessing… Do I want to continue down that long and tedious road yet again with our next house? I’m undecided.
On one hand, we’ve made a very good profit on both houses we’ve owned, mostly due to all the work we’ve put into fixing them up and making them pretty. And I do love the sense of accomplishment I get when I stand back and see what I’ve done with just a bit of paint and a whole lot of manual labour. Renovating has become my little hobby – it’s what I do in my spare time, and I like it!
But, there are certainly other things I could be doing with my time. And this is where I become a little unsure of what to do next. I’ve spent the past three years obsessing about this house and worrying about my kitchen and wondering what I should do next and painting nearly every single weekend. Would I like to do something else on my weekends? Like relax perhaps? Maybe…
And there’s my inner debate. To fixer-upper, or not to fixer-upper… That really is the question. And there are houses currently on the market that fit onto both ends of that spectrum. We’re going to take a look at houses over the next few days, and hopefully one will feel like home. Either a home that needs work, or a home that’s move in ready. I guess we’ll see which calls to us most, and that’ll be the answer. :)
Wow…I forgot what your old kitchen looked like pre-makeover! What a difference paint makes!
I know! I still can’t believe Sweetie managed to talk me into buying that house (it was so ugly when we moved in!) Looking back, I’m really glad he was able to see beyond the garish decor – it turned out to be a lovely little home (it just needed a whole lot of paint!)