If you ever think it's a good idea to buy the ugliest house who you can find that needs a crazy ammount of work, let me be the first to tell you it's a BAD idea.
Ok, I really don't mean that. Yes it's been an insane ammount of work. Yes, It's been really expensive. Yes, it's been all consuming and yes living in a construction zone is a little less than convienient. However, the reality of what it has been like is not nearly all the nightmare our friends think it is. Here is the jist of many of our friends thoughts....
"It must be like camping. I hate camping"
"Your kids have slept in your room for 2 months???? No thanks!"
"You guys must be fighting constantly."
"Ya'll are CRAZY."
It has not been like camping. Luckily we finished most of the work upstairs before we moved in. The upstairs is the same size as our old house (about 1300 sq. ft) and has a huge living area, master bedroom and bath, and a laundry room. So for my sanity I pretended we were living in a loft all sharing a room and putting stuff where we could. Our kids did sleep in our room until about a week ago when the flooring went down in the basement... really lower level. And it was fine because we would work every night until we dropped and would just crash. Moo deciding he needed to see us 2-3 times a night did get really really old. Luckily, he favored Hubs side of the bed so I slept pretty good inspite of the midnight wakings.
We have had a few fights. We have only had 2 big fights and they were both about subcontractors. I'll leave it at I was right. And if you need a really expensive mediochre work crew, I know just the fellows. We have actually leardned that we are stronger and more teachable than we realized. We both have learned skills we didn't think we could handle and have been surprised with pretty good results.
We are down to just the finish work throughout the interior of the house. Baseboards, triming out windows, closet doors, and paint colors. We have too functioning, allthough still pretty ugly, bathrooms. It's cool to see this dark, smelly, dated place transform into a light, modern, clean family home. We have work to do on the outside too, but that will have to wait until spring and probably won't be posted on here anyway.
