January 10, 2005
Old Houses
Old Houses
I love old houses and I love our old neighborhood, but after reading various house renovation blogs and imagining our kids living in a lead paint filled house, I'm so glad that someone else did most of the hard stuff before we bought this place. Our house still has plenty to redo and make ours, things that weren't remodelled all that nicely and that we'd like to improve upon eventually, but we don't have to worry about lead dust in the meantime.
I am constantly impressed by what doing their own renovations are able to do by themselves, but I cannot imagine doing half of it with three little ones tearing around. Even painting becomes a huge chore with the kids on hand.
Some day we'd like to put an addition on the back of our house. In the near future though, our dreams are less substantial. This year I really hope to get a window and fishscale shingles put in our front gable, build a brick path along the side of the house, and paint our burgundy kitchen cabinets some other color. That's not dreaming too big, I hope, but then again, we might have done some of those things this year if other projects and expenses hadn't cropped up.
I'm just glad we have the luxury of time with most of this stuff. Many things like our kitchen cabinets and our bathrooms are kind of ugly, but one can live with many ugly things for a long time as long as they are fundamentally ok.
Most of the home improvement things that my wife and I have done in the past were done to help sell a house, so we never got to enjoy them for very long. With the current TaterBed, things we finished a few years ago are still being enjoyed. We have a few more we would like to do (doesn't everyone?) but it's difficult to finance those projects with only one paycheck.
Do you already have enough bedrooms so that your 3 "yung-uns" will have their own room, or will you have your daughters room together? Some parents like to force the issue and keep siblings together in one bedroom even if they do have the space for an extra bedroom.
Posted by: MarcV at January 11, 2005 11:31 AMWe have a 3 bedroom house, so two kids will have to share. Right now the older two are sharing a room, but of course, eventually it will be the girls who room together.
Posted by: Jordana at January 11, 2005 01:03 PMUm...well...I'm more impressed by moms. I really am. As I am staring down the final count to "do we? don't we? we really want to...but is the house clean enough? are we sane enough?"...I become more and more amazed by women my age with children.
Sure. I can use a miter saw. But I can teach anyone to use a miter saw in 10 minutes flat and it is easily unplugged if you want it to be.
Motherhood. Man. That's 24/7. THAT'S hardcore. There's no unplugging there. (Well, not without a lot of Tylenol PM and tequila. And eventually you wake up.)
And funny blogging moms? SUPER HARDCORE.
Posted by: jm at January 15, 2005 08:48 PM
Jordana Adams, Chief Pontificator