My fiance and I bought a house last October. It is a big house that hasn't had much updating since it was built in the 50's. The man we purchased it from was a "bit" of a hoarder (Oh MY GOD, THE STUFF) We had to look past fun things like bottles of laundry detergent and years worth of fruit of the month boxes to see the potential in this house. It wasn't easy.
Since we have moved in we haven't done much. One of the biggest problems of the house was the water and it has taken us months to get that under control. The house is on a private well and the water is full of iron and sulpher. It smells AWESOME. Let me tell you nothing brings on a nervous break down faster than weeks of showers that smell like rotten eggs and ruined rust stained laundry. It has taken a brand new filtration system, replacing every pipe in the house, replacing the water heater, bleaching the well, and an intensive cleaning of the water softener to get us to a somewhat good point. We still have to drain our water heater every 2 weeks or so to keep the sulpher smell from building up.
i'm sure you can guess this really ate up a lot of the money we had set aside to do fun things like update the bathrooms and kitchen to make them less 1950's-tastic. We are also planning a wedding for September of this year and as much as I have tried to do it on the cheap, NOTHING comes cheap in the Chicago area.
We have finally started working on a project though! A fun one! Over the next couple of months we will be updating our sun porch. My favorite part of the house. Stay tuned for a getting started post on that. WITH PICTURES!
I'm exited about documenting this whole process. Even if no one ever reads I will be glad to have it all in one place. Maybe it will help keep me sane during all of this. Ha ha
