3 Things Owning A Home Has Taught Me

A fun way for me to remember Albus' birthday, is that he was born the day before I closed on my house. (Fun fact, I was supposed to have closed on my house on June 15th but someone at the broker's office wrote the date down wrong, and my dad, who was my agent, was going out of the country the day after our original closing date. So my mortgage broker came to the closing with me instead.) So that means I've been a homeowner for three whole years now. I have learned a lot of lessons the hard way. Here are the three biggest things I've learned in the last three years.

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WHATEVER YOU THINK A PROJECT WILL COST: DOUBLE IT: One day, in August the first year I bought the house, I want to say the week before my housewarming party? I hadn't brought Albus home yet, so it had to be very early. I came home for lunch and heard a dripping sound. I went down into the basement to discover it was raining directly under the bathroom. I called the plumber who managed to get there that afternoon and install a little valve to turn the water to the shower off and on in the meantime before he could get back to fix the actual problem. FUN FACT, the house was built in the 60's, so our plumbing is cast iron. What would have been a simple fix for regular pipes required ALL of the pipes around the tub to be replaced. $500 later, we decided that we would replace the tile and drywall around the shower. Three years later, there's still a hole in the drywall. It's on the to-do list, I swear.

If you follow along on instagram, you've probably seen the saga that has been my fight with the English Ivy the people who lived there before us planted. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T PLANT THAT TRASH. I'm begging you. I have been FIGHTING it for three years now and it still just POPS up out of nowhere. It shows up in the siding of the house, it's growing up the giant live oak, but it hasn't killed it yet, so that's nice I suppose. If you're from my neck of the woods, this stuff is like Kudzu but is somehow still on the damn shelves at Home Depot. 

EVERYTHING COMES IN THREES: Much like celebrity deaths, big problems have always come in threes for me. As mentioned before, very expensive threes. Most recently,  we upgraded our bed, but we sold ours before the new one came in. So we were in the guest bedroom, which is just a full mattress. Sorry to all of my guests, I really didn't realize how small of a bed that was until I was used to a queen. You can read all about the mattress saga here & here. Then, while I was washing the new linens for our king size bed, there was a gushing coming out from behind the washing machine. Remember how I said cast iron pipes? Well the reason they don't use those anymore, is because they rust. So the pipes finally clogged up with rust. We snaked them and it seemed to drain juuust fine. So I got that running, and went to run the dishwasher. Which was full of smelly old water. Turns out, the motor went out of that AND the sink was draining into it. Keep in mind, this all happened in the span of three days. Y'all. I thought I was going to lose it. We ordered the new dishwasher (which of course didn't use the same hoses as the old one, even though it was the exact same dishwasher but see lesson number 1.) 

DON'T TRY TO DO IT ALL AT ONCE: I have pinterest board after board of projects I want to do. I spend hours looking at closet organizational systems, shelves I could totally do myself, cool decorative things, a better chicken coop so the owls don't eat the chickens, raised beds so we don't have to buy vegetables anymore. I would start to try to do one thing and then I would get overwhelmed because the weeds were growing too fast for me to clean out a room in the house and then the house was getting to disorganized for me to spend all weekend doing yard work. It's almost like a hamster wheel if you don't make yourself some reasonable plans.

We've started focusing on one room at a time. We've aaaaalmost got the living room the way we like it. New couch, furniture rearranged, OG boat door for a coffee table, now we just need to get the TV mounted & bring the record player in and the living room will be D O N E. I installed our Nest thermostat ALL BY MYSELF* with the help of a youtube video. Maybe an extra thing I have learned is that I can do a lot of things by myself and now with some help. We've also installed a new ceiling fan and a storm door! Our next project, I think, will be the kitchen. We have minimal cabinet and counter space so I've been studying organizational racks for the pots and pans. I also REALLY need to deal with my closet/office space if I want to start writing blogs at my desk and not using a fun little lap desk like a 10 year old.. I've got a plan for the chicken coop too, but I keep telling myself that's a project for when it's NOT the middle of a heat wave. Along with all of the yard things. So, so many yard things. Home Depot/Lowe's, wanna sponsor some DIY home improvement posts? I'm sure the minute we get everything just right will be the minute someone makes an offer we can't refuse causing us to move and start all over again.

So these are the biggest lessons owning a home has taught me. Do you have any homeowner stories for me? Tips and tricks? Cabinet storage ideas? We really need a pantry but there's just nowhere to put one... Did anyone notice I didn't put fix the hole in the wall in the shower on that list of projects I want to tackle next? Are we surprised it's been there for three years anymore?