After about 20 years of home ownership (5 in starter home & close to 15 in contractor-built home), my husband and I have confronted an almost uncountable, mainly because we haven’t kept track, number of learning experiences related to home improvement and home ownership. Many of those issues resulted from normal home-ownership challenges, but many, unfortunately, stem from a contractor willing to cut corners (yes, I’m being kind).
Those two perspectives allowed us to experience each of the following situations as homeowners:
- Building not one but two decks plus an extension on one
- Discovering that some realtors are wonderful but others are somewhat unscrupulous and still others quite sensitive
- Trying to have a dog & dealing with other people’s dogs
- Installing carpet
- Repairing drywall
- Revamping bathrooms
- Learning that friends don’t always make the best contractors
- Repairing basement flooding (or “seepage” as our insurance company likes to call it)
- Resurfacing a kitchen floor with an 1” incline (seriously, a marble will roll down it)
- Re-insulating the attic (twice in two years)
- Re-shingling the roof
- Installed additional/proper attic venting
- Learning to love a competent but talkative and chronically late contractor (who is also going to be your neighbor)
- Realizing the value of loving neighbors who love your kids
- Location! Location! Location!
- Trying to garden
- Keeping a used hot tub running
- Power washing your deck and house
- Trying to landscape & deciding to hire it done
- Building a tree house
Over the months to come, I plan on sharing how we handled many of these situations in hopes of others learning from the woes, mistakes and interesting challenges that made us much wiser and more patient homeowners and that also went a long way in building and strengthening our character.
DISCUSSION: What topics listed above would you like to hear more about?
Thank you, Dan, for inviting me to participate in Hip Diggs. I look forward to sharing more of my life in addition to what you see at Struggle to Victory.
