I’m sure many of you will have had the experience of major home improvement work being carried out to your family home. How many of you, however, have started an amazing home improvement project only for it to never quite finish?
I’ve been thinking about this recently. It’s all because of a comment someone left on my blog.
Long-term readers will know that just over a year ago, we bought down a wall dividing our kitchen and dining space and created an open plan area. I wrote a few blog posts about it at the time but never got around to a ‘big reveal’ once the builders had left.
This is what my reader was commenting on. They wanted to see the finished kitchen.
There’s been no ‘big reveal’ because one wall still needs to be tiled. We’ve also reached a stalemate because when the work was done, we had a new wall built to separate our new, open plan kitchen / diner from the smaller, snug-like sitting room.
This new wall requires painting. Only thing is, the entire house needs decorating. We could afford to decorate the house, but before the house is decorated, we need to repair some damage that occurred to our bathroom ceiling when we had a new roof put on about five years ago.
Alas, we don’t quite have the funds available to us to repair the bathroom ceiling at this stage. It makes sense to get it all done in one go and so we are, you see, a little stuck.
When we moved into our house, I got speaking to a neighbor over the road. I filled him in on our plans.
He was a lovely guy, a good 15 years older than me I’d guess. Clearly speaking from his greater experience of home improvement and raising a family he remarked: “That’ll keep you busy for the next 25 years.”
I am beginning to see that what he said we very true. Once you have a property functional, the stresses and strains of raising kids and perpetual financial shortages seem to take over.
Mrs Adams and I have made clear our intention to move to a new house in a year or so. This gives us a year to knock the place into shape.
Who knows, it may just happen. If so, I’ll do the ‘big reveal’ just at the point we leave this house and go on to our next one.
Are you in a similar position? Have you started a major building project only for it to never quite finish? Maybe you are super-organised and did finish off your major building project. If so, what is your secret?
8 thoughts on “Home improvement projects: Do they ever end?”
John, you’re right. You start a project, and it seems to go on forever, never to be finished. Although, I always find that as long as you keep up momentum, you eventually get there. It sounds like you have lots of little jobs, which is always the worst.
But I think chipping away at one at a time helps. You know that wall that needs painting? Do one layer at a time, once every weekend. You could even get the kids involved.
The tiling? Section it up and work on an area at a time. Of course, it makes sense to do everything at once, but unless you’ve got the funds to bring people in, that’s not going to happen. Good luck with the decoration and move!
Yeah, it’s having the money to do everything at once. That would be idea. That was the original idea but soon after moving in we had to replace the entire roof! Love your idea of doing it bit by bit. I need to give this more consideration.
If you live in a house the home improvement projects never end. There is always something to fix or something to improve either in some of the rooms or outside in the garden.
Absolutely! I so hear you. And after the school summer holidays, there is so much more that needs doing!
Home improvements are long-lasting and always important. You cannot just leave something for the future because it is a “small repair that can wait”. It may become a serious problem in the future. In my opinion, to avoid such complications, it is better to take care of it.
I like you approach Charly. On that note, I’d better go and see to some small repairs!
Interesting read.
Thank you Andrew for commenting. I hope you’ll visit some of my other blog posts.