Three things we've learned fixing up our home
We bought our first home as a foreclosure with the intention of fixing it up and flipping it when we were ready to move on to another home. This house was a hot mess when we bought it. I’m talking gross and mis-matched carpet; nasty walls; tile popping up on the kitchen floor; red paint, oak cabinets, and a ceiling fan in the kitchen; poop brown hall bath paint; pink tile in the master bath; only one shower that worked when we moved in. The list could go on and on. We bought the house almost exactly one month prior to our wedding day with the goal of fixing the major things (new carpet, cleaning, and painting) prior to moving in after our wedding. We stripped the house of all the nasty carpet, painted the majority of the walls, got new carpet, and moved our stuff in. When we came home on our wedding night, the house was far from done and WAY far from perfect (still is lol) but it was a home that we could afford and work on together.
Throughout this process, we have learned a lot of things that we WON’T do on our next house. This blog post will (hopefully) help you make better decisions than we did.
Don’t use white grout in a high traffic area
We put down charcoal grey tile in our kitchen with a “Platinum Grey” grout. It looks AMAZING…when it’s clean. Which is rarely. We put the tile and grout down before we got Josie/started fostering and before we realized what a muddy mess our backyard is. HUGE MISTAKE. I can get down on my hands and knees and scrub the grout (with a one part baking soda, one part hydrogen peroxide mixture + a few squirts of dish soap) and within a few days it will have muddy little footprints all over it again *cue tears* It is so frustrating and I am so embarrassed by my brown grout, but I am not getting down and scrubbing my floors for two plus hours on a monthly basis to keep my grout pretty and white. So I beg you, please don’t use a light colored grout in a high traffic area…especially if you have dogs.
Don’t put carpet in the main entryway of your house
Our house is a split foyer. So you come in the door and there’s a small landing and you choose to go upstairs or downstairs. While we don’t wear shoes in the house (besides house crocs lol), there isn’t enough room on this landing to sit down and take off your shoes before going up the stairs, especially with an excited doggo in your face. So 9 times out of 10, they get taken off at the top of the stairs. What this means, though, is the carpet on our stairs gets wrecked. While I don’t enjoy hardwood stairs (because of how slippery they can be) I would prefer that to the poor carpet on our stairs right now. Same would be true of any main entryway, though. If you usually come in the front door of your house, I wouldn’t recommend putting carpet in your foyer. Even if you have a rug, you’ll have to stay on that rug (and keep your kids on that rug) until shoes come off. It just seems like a recipe for disaster to me.
Think about what you’ll use rooms for before putting flooring down
We have this room in our house that we call the garage…because our house doesn’t have a garage, and if you know Ryan, you know we desperately need a garage. Based on the heading of this section, I’m sure you could guess that the flooring in our “garage” is not concrete…it’s CARPET *groans* When we installed carpet in the house, we put carpet everywhere there was carpet before. And because normal people would use our “garage” as some sort of living room. Well…when it’s the largest open area you have in your house, and you need a large open space to do house and other projects, it just kind of morphs into what you need it to be, regardless of what flooring is down. So yes, please, I IMPLORE you to think about what you’ll use a room for before you put flooring down in it.
Well there you have it. The three main things we’ve learned while fixing up our house that I hope save you from a lifetime of heartache (lol).