Here’s what we learned, house redos are an expensive, time-consuming PROCESS.
If we had remembered what a rigamarole renovating a house is, we would have never signed up to do it. Because of HGTV, we SHOULD HAVE KNOWN what a pounding, expensive headache we were signing up for.
But we refused to hear the HGTV people say 10,000 times, “This project is taking so much more time and money than we ever would have guessed.” But we DID hear them, at the very end of every show, say, “Our house is so beautiful now.” And we focused on their sparkling new fixtures and pretty new walls, and did not notice the dark circles under their dull eyes.
Like every other DIYer, halfway through our fixer-upper project, we realized this ugly, black truth: fixing up a house costs three times as much as you would have guessed, takes four times as long, and is just a really hard process.
We also realized that in the middle of the whole project, you sort of lose your mind. People will say, “How is it going renovating your house?” You’re too tired to explain the binder you filled with pictures of new countertops or your Pinterest boards with clever organization solutions is now just mocking you because your house is turning out NOTHING like you had planned.
That’s about the time you realize, “That countertop guy is really never going to give us the price he said he would” or “We’re going to have to make do with the bunk beds we bought rather than the ones I wanted.”
This is when you get a new plan. This is when you realize a house redo isn’t a straight-line. Projects like this are big, winding spirals. Home renovation spirals grow larger by going back to the beginning over and over again. It’s maddening–and no DIYer would sign up for this process called, “THROW OUT ALL YOUR PLANS AND GO WITH THE FLOW.”
Here’s my best-house-re-dos-are-a-process story…
When we bought the beach house, the walls were mostly blank. Blank walls in a beach house are 6,000 kinds of wrong because they are boring and sad and not at all the cheerful vibe you want in a house that’s meant for relaxing.
So, I was all like, “EASY IMPROVEMENT on the walls!” So many decorating schemes to try, I was having trouble deciding. Should I go with the kitschy wooden signs with cute sayings like, “Dear Lord, Let it be a Flip-Flop Day!? Or maybe the elegant paintings and murals that Coastal Living splashes all over its pages ? Or maybe something to celebrate Galveston? Big historical maps of the island or paintings of the city’s most famous buildings?
The one thing I knew for sure was I had to pick a motif and go with it. We were starting from scratch with nothing that HAD to go on the walls, so I could commit to a single decorating choice.
I bought a whole bunch of whimsical wooden signs with messages like, “If you’re lucky enough to be at the beach, you’re lucky enough!” and hung them on the walls. This is where I learned that when you’re starting from scratch, “all the wall space” is LOTS to cover. All my cute little signs covered about one bedroom. I needed more. But the cost of these cute signs was adding up.
Around this same time, someone posted on Facebook about Sea-Arama, a fabulous marine-world amusement park about a mile from my childhood home. I had FORGOTTEN about Sea Arama and its whales and dolphin shows and water ski extravaganzas. Then I found all these groups on the Internet of people who also LOVED Sea Arama. I thought, “That’s it! We will revive the ’70s era Galveston that has been destroyed by hurricanes! We will revive it on our beach house walls!”
For hours and hours I searched for snapshots of Galveston buildings ruined by hurricanes. Even more hours and hours I spent refurbishing people’s snapshots to blow up into canvas prints and frame for a collage over the couch in the beach house.
When M got to the beach house after the week of ALL MY PICTURE WORK, I was spent. So done. Bone tired and not wanting to ever see a snapshot of Galveston in the ’70s again. BUT I had cool pictures of buildings long gone waiting to become a collage over our couch.
While M hung my mini museum, I collapsed in bed with visions of Coastal Living spreads featuring my snapshots dancing in my head.
Then I woke up the next morning to see the collage. And I was like, “Meh.”
It looked weird. I hated it.
So, we rehung all those pictures in the bedrooms, right next to the whimsical wood signs. And I did what I should have done to start: I took the beautiful oil paintings of Galveston my friend Barb painted for us right off my wall at home. I hung their elegant, white frames right on the wall next to the artsy wood quotes and the historical Galveston snapshots.
It was perfect. Beautiful and eclectic and just like Galveston.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
Because the other secret about home renovations is sometimes you just have to stop the maddening process and say DONE is where we are right now.
Until the next time you decide to renovate your house.
And you start the process all over again.
